Laptop maintenance

[Kurt]

After two years of near constant operation I recently disassembled my Toshiba Satellite laptop in order to give the fan/heatsink a good cleaning and was surprised to find that I literally had to take apart the whole thing down to the last screw as seen here:
http://www.irisvista.com/tech/

The good thing is that HDD, memory and CDROM drive can be easily replaced just in case - something I wasn't sure about beforehand.

Still, compared to an older ACER model where I basically just had to loosen two screws and remove a plastic cover to get to the fan, this was a major pain.

Since I'm in the market for a new netbook anyway, I was wondering what are brands/models to look out for in this respect.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Yes, Toshiba does suck in this regard, but if you do it often enough it becomes rather easy. I can do that sort of job in an hour or less. Then again, I do this all day every day

I've heard good things about HP's mini series of netbooks, as well as Dell's Inspiron 11Z line. If you can, go with a screen larger than 10" so that you won't run into some of the UI limitations imposed by the extremely low vertical resolutions of those tiny widescreens.

 

[digitalwanderer]

The Dell Inspiron E1705 is actually pretty easy to take apart/put back together, one of the nicer ones I've worked on. I can take my wife's apart/put it together pretty insanely quickly ever since having to cook her viddy card in the oven.

 

[Grall]

I can't imagine it could have made the caps on the vidcard much good to be cooked in the oven...

 

[digitalwanderer]

It didn't work before I baked it, it worked after.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

The Dell Inspiron E1705 is actually pretty easy to take apart/put back together, one of the nicer ones I've worked on. I can take my wife's apart/put it together pretty insanely quickly ever since having to cook her viddy card in the oven.

All modern-era Dells are easy to disassemble and reassemble, by design. Dell services all of their systems in the field. They have to be easy to work on. I used to be a Dell Field Service Tech. Easiest job I ever had, other than the insane amount of driving and having to deal with Dell phone tech support, of course.

 

[Kurt]

Thanks. I'll have look at the Dells, seeing as large local retailer started carrying that brand.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I got a Norhtec Edubook, very unconventional machine. The internals are dead simple, it's made with cheapness and durability in mind.
http://xcore86.com/site/Edubook

though it's underpowered, and installing a linux distro over the default one is impractical now (except for a modded puppy linux they provide)
unlike the pre-production unit shown, it has two internal SD slots and no external.
It's made with 3rd-world in mind, that's why it's fanless and uses replaceable flash and batteries. the SD card it comes with is slow.

The screen is great and speakers half-decent.

It has shortcomings and can't run what I want yet, but I had to mention it .
A small company makes the system-on-chip on 90nm.