For years, those of us so afflicted with the ability to fix, repair, or further damage computers have spent a great deal of otherwise valuable time decrying the mind boggling decisions made by OEM computer manufacturers when it comes to case design and usability. Of course, most of this is by design; they want you to pay them when something breaks instead of being able to fix it yourselves. However, in the world of laptops, this was seemingly a necessity and not just the post-defecation thought of an evil and angry design engineer at Compaq.

Wiser men than I have said that only fools do hardware repairs on laptops. In the long run, it just isn't worth it. The way things are designed and laid out to fit all of that junk into a small space does not give way to ease of access. It has always been utterly inexcusable for desktop computers; for laptops it is excused but still unnecessary!

It is possible to engineer a laptop so that the chassis, motherboard, and associated components are able to be removed and replaced/repaired. This idea goes deeper than memory or hard drives: it goes down to individual components like card slots, I/O ports, heat dissipating units, and flux capacitors. In a surprisingly ironic turn of events, one of the most hated companies in terms of desktop case design was also the purveyor of some of the most functional laptop designs on the market. That company: Dell.

As Tommy will attest, when we first met and worked at SFA together, we had a huge bank of laptops from Dell. Both of us had spent time taking them apart and fixing them at various times and for various reasons. It was not the simplest task in the world but it was at least possible. I've spent the last three days trying to work on a four year old model from Toshiba and it has been an abject failure.

Nothing has come apart with this unit. The chassis and motherboard are attached via non-removable ribbon cables. The connections themselves are surface mounted onto the motherboard PCB. To unplug them would be to separate a PATA ribbon cable from the connector. After fighting, cursing, sweating, and even a little blood (as any true computer repair demands), I have given up. All of this to attempt to replace a faulty fan. I guess Toshiba will get their additional revenue for this unit.

It's a real shame that these things are so poorly designed with no real reason behind it. I wonder how they would feel if I walked into Frys and started taking apart a new laptop before I purchased it. I've got $5 that says I'd be thrown out of the store before I got the hard drive out.