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Microsoft's new Surface laptop defeats teardown – with glue

Put down the screwdriver... we're going to need a knife

It appears as if Microsoft has been following the Apple playbook in creating another laptop whose components you can never replace.

DIY site iFixIt tried to take apart the new Microsoft Surface laptop – an ultra-thin and light unit which starts at £979 – and seemingly couldn’t do it without completely and utterly destroying it.

Attempting to crack the box apart, the teardown team met resistance from metal feet instead of screws, clips, adhesive, fabric cover and soldered parts. One of the Surface’s luxury features, for example, is the magic Alcantara material – which turns out to be a reparability downfall. iFixIt appeared to need a knife to cut through to reach its internals.

After navigating through walls of plastic, tape and clips, the site found that it would be basically impossible to replace any of the components.

The processor, SSD and RAM are, of course, soldered to the motherboard, but the motherboard is guarded by thermal pads just to make it even trickier to access. The battery took about 10 steps to get free.

IFixIt ultimately gave the Surface a 0/10 for reparability – a full point lower than the Microsoft Surface Book’s 1/10. ®

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