cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38838572
Shout out to URTechDotCa who was the only reason I could do this without losing my mind.
Im not sure what to think about this. It has never taken me 2 hours to replace a keyboard on any model of Dell. I used to be a bench tech at a local computer repair shop though, maybe it’s just experience?
The keyboard is buried in the guts. Skip to the end and you’ll see that the keyboard is mounted beneath a metal tray that is molded into place beneath all those components.
I had to have my laptop keyboard replaced. Because I didn’t want to try this at home with my single (good) source of computing, I gave it to a professional. He charged 45 minutes for it. I can totally see how a layperson could take 2 hours.
Acer Nitro 5.
There’s a video on youtube for that laptop and keyboard replacement is ~20 minutes.
I think laypeople overestimate how hard replacing computer parts is. Usually it’s as easy as a LEGO kit but if you don’t have instructions it can be tedious.
I think laypeople overestimate how hard replacing computer parts is.
Especially on laptops today (although consumer ones can still suck).
No vendor wants to have their support burning time for simple things like a keyboard.
I can probably do a Dell Latitude in 10 minutes now. I recently had to do a shitty HP consumer keyboard and had to take it apart - though it wasn’t terrible to do.
not with the acer nitro 5. I’ve had to assist in replacing a few. it requires you to take the entire board(and the 2 sub boards) out, which isn’t hard, but also if the system has never been worked on before may require you to pry or grind some locktite style plastic pegs off to detach the keyboard from the actual case which risks you actually damaging the case as well.
It’s super tedious. the 20 minute videos you can find on youtube are either cut or in 3 or 4x speed. the actual process can take a bit cause theres a lot of screws holding the case and boards in.
When compared to the EEE Pc’s or Dell Inspirons which were a simple remove the battery, pop the keyboard out with a flathead, and unhook then run in reverse. It’s super difficult
Hm… the submodels seem to be significanly different. Still: Which video are you referring to?
To be fair I didn’t watch it fully just scrubbed through it but it’s this one:
Yes, this video that’s sped up by at least 5 times is only 20 minutes long…
My main question is why did they take out: the RAM, the SSD, the WiFi controller, and the heatsink for the CPU? I would be very very surprised if there were screws for the keyboard hidden under all of those components. I also hope they will clean off the old and put some fresh thermal paste on the CPU.
The keyboard is under all that garbage. Skip to the end and you’ll see that the keyboard is mounted beneath a metal tray that is molded into place beneath all those components. The manual says to remove all those parts, but in hindsight a lot of them could be left alone. The video has the minimum steps but I found it too late
I have done this repair a few times on dells. It sucks but doable. This was during covid and we had huge delays on getting new devices, so was taking parts from diffrent computers to make a working one. All mine worked fine, I’m good with mechanical things, but Practice stopped when coworker tried it and put long screws where short ones go and the case now has very noticeable bumps next to the mouse pad.
Also shocking how NO ONE knew how to change thermal paste on a 5 year old laptops or why they were all thermal throttling. Corporate waste is real.
Oh ok so the manual is just crap. I’ve replaced one keyboard where I had to take apart the laptop like that, but left a majority of the components together. At least you got some practice in.
Not mine! Pop out two tabs and it slides right out.
Framework be like that, controversy aside I still love how easy the repairs are.
Right? I don’t have a framework but, I have a dell inspiron 15, keyboard replacement is a simple flathead screwdriver between the case and the keyboard to pop it out, unhook the keybard wire and then install the new keyboard the same way but reverse.
