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from the Use-it-up.-Wear-it-out.-Make-do.-Do-without. dept.
Fixers Know What 'Repairable' Means—Now There's A Standard For It - Ifixit:
[Earlier this year], three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published. This official document with an unexciting name details "general methods for the assessment of the ability to repair, reuse and upgrade energy-related products." In plain English, it's a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff. It's also a huge milestone for the fight for fair repair.
We want to repair the stuff we own, so we can use it for longer. This is not only important because we want our money's worth out of the things we paid for, but because manufacturing new products is a huge and underestimated driver of climate change. So if we want to avoid cooking our planet, we need to stop churning out disposable electronics and start repairing more. Like, right now.
The problem is, industry won't do this by itself. Managers get ahead by showing quarterly sales growth, not increased product lifespans. Hence we need the government to step in, banning unrepairable products and helping consumers—that's you!—to identify the most durable products out there, so as to empower them to make better purchasing decisions. And in the EU, our political leaders are getting ready to do so.
But here's the rub: those leaders don't know what a repairable product is. If you ask manufacturers, they will all tell you their products are repairable. If you ask us, some devices clearly are more repairable than others, and some are frankly just not repairable at all.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Monday July 06 2020, @11:26PM
For things like laptops, the circuit boards themselves are rarely the problem. The problem is that parts like the battery and fan - which are parts that will wear out and need servicing, are sealed in and are difficult to access when those parts inevitably wear out. Or in some cases essentially impossible to get to in any manner that allows for the laptop to be reassembled ever again. This means the device is designed to be disposable with the planned obsolescence built right in. Truly universal compatibility may be a pipe dream, but building a laptop that can be disassembled and reassembled with no special tools, with replaceable RAM, CPU, storage, battery, keyboard, etc. is very possible because laptops like these were being commonly built until just a few years ago. That's why the 2007 Dell laptop I'm typing this on is not in a landfill, but I highly doubt that if I bought a new laptop today to replace it that the replacement would still be usable in 2033.
And while obviously hiring Rossman to do repair on a $40 tablet isn't feasible, but the problem is that I would have to hire Rossman in the first place. I don't hire Rossman to replace the bag in my $40 vacuum because the thing is designed so that I can do that myself. Same with the tablet. A small portable battery operated device built 25 years would probably use something like AA batteries, and be designed so that anyone can change the batteries themselves. Obviously you're not going to run today's tablet off of AA's (at least not very long), but what's wrong with some standardized LiOn battery sizes, with standard connectors, and a $40 tablet that I can pop the back off of and replace the standard battery in a minute or two?