I’m glad. I hate the fact that TV’s are so cheap now that fixing them literally isn’t worth it. Same with a lot of laptops and tablets and stuff. I’d much rather have a chunkier phone than one I won’t ever be able to fix.
In the last few years I’ve fixed about a dozen TVs, they can definitely suck to fix at times (especially the really new ones) but in general the fixes have been simple. And all of them were snagged out of the dumpster at my apartment complex.
And that’s just the TVs I’ve fixed. I like to fix things.
In terms of phones they’re a nightmare though. I’m keeping an eye on HMD phones and Fairphone though as both of them are a LOT easier to fix than other brands.
In the event of my current phone breaking I’d love to get either one of those brands.
Reminds me that I have to fix mine. Just shows the LG logo and does nothing
Probably not much more I can do besides replace caps
NGL when it comes to that kind of fault I usually just replace the mainboard, they’re usually dirt cheap and it’s a hell of a lot easier to swap that whole board than it is to poke and prod for an hour just to find out it’s some 40 pin monster with micro-soldiered pins.
The power board is usually what I do component level replacements on. The t-con board and the main board I usually just swap.
What’s the typical fixable issue you are finding?
For TVs it’s usually really simple, like internal fuses or blown caps. And a few with bad backlights or mainboards that are dead.
For 2 of them it’s been shorts in the LCD itself which meant I had to block the clock pin from the TCON board for the specific part of the screen with the short. Basically killing a line of pixels to get the TV working again. In general if the TV is 4k and smaller than like 45 inches you’ll never see it unless you look for it.
That’s a super involved fix (involving A LOT of trial and error to find the right pin) but it keeps it out of a landfill.
In general fixing a TV is always cost effective unless the actual LCD has physical damage.
hey, I’m getting into this kind of repair. I have good soldering skills and am great at taking things apart, but do you have any tips on how to find the fault? even it’s just a blow capacitor, what am I looking for?
NGL I usually only do component level repairs on the power boards (or in the case of appliances most of the components are easy to find docs for and are much larger) but I usually find stuff by poking around with my multimeter or looking for obviously blown things. But my experience is more from the realm of appliance repair (and all from experimenting).
Testing capacitors can be done (and if they’re big enough) something I’ll do as well. I ain’t gonna test capacitors that are smaller that a grain of rice.
There are times though that it’s easier to just buy a new board rather than do component level repair.
Good news is that when it comes to TVs those boards are usually really cheap.
that makes sense. appreciate it!!
Any tips on finding someone who does component level repair? I have an old-ish laptop (7 years?) and the only issue is the USB C charger seems to be losing connection. If I flip the charger it works fine, so I think the solder just needs to be reflowed.
I think it would take an experienced person <30 min to fix. It’s almost not worth it though since it’s so old, but I’d be willing to pay $50-100 if it makes charging work better.
Usually if it’s a charging port, it’s pretty common that there’s like dirt in there or something.
But soldering a type C connector is pretty tough due to the size. Especially for my (lack of) experience level.
It could be a learning opportunity for you though.
I think that the worst part is the ones that make repairable tech are so much smaller than you are paying top end prices for rather middle of the road performance. This is not true of them all of course but it is hard to look at the fairphone 5 and think it is worth it over a cheap secondhand/refurbished flagship from the previous generation.
This is one of the handful of things me (a leftist) and my rural Trump supporting family both heavily agree upon. It’s nice to find some common ground in such a divided America.
I think we got lucky on it that John Deere and Car companies have been trying to ruin repairability long before it was cool.
And “right to repair” is a nice simple slogan, even the most rural person in America can hear that and will probably go “Fuck yeah I should have the right to repair my car!”
I think it’s insane the rules for anything computer-related or computer-adjacent
“Oh if you make anything using our software, legally it’s ours.”
Could you imagine if the same logic applied if you removed the “Magic Technology is Magic” aspect?
“Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it’s ours actually.”
“Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it’s ours actually.”
The problem with companies like for example Adobe over let’s say DeWalt is that they actually have a pretty strong grip on it’s target market.
If there was only one company that made tools to build houses i’m sure eventually they’d try to pull the same crap if they could get away with it.
You can totally see the same kind of walled garden thinking in things like battery platforms for powertools. Most people buy into a brand and never go elsewhere.
Just got a framework laptop and I’m really happy
Am I the only one that finds it weird that Louis Rossman is not even mentioned in those articles about right to repair? I mean, he said that he didn’t care at all if his name was mentioned or not and that he would be happy if the movement got traction “by itself”, without him being involved. But I still think it’s weird that he is not even mentioned when they are giving examples of pro-repair groups/shops etc. Idk…
But it wasn’t until 2022 that the right-to-repair battle reached wide public consciousness when consumers questioned why McFlurry machines were always broken at their local McDonald’s. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it illegal to bypass certain proprietary systems like the one that Taylor Company, the McFlurry manufacturer, used to fix the equipment.
After a repair startup filed a lawsuit challenging Taylor’s restrictive repair policies, which only allowed its repair people to fix machines, the U.S. Copyright Office announced new exceptions to the copyright law to allow third-party McFlurry repairs. Kit Walsh, a director at the nonprofit rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the change.
Of course it had to be about maccas. America is so weird 😂
I know this is a little OT, but I repaired a dead Karcher pressure washer this weekend… a little effort and I’m much more likely to purchase / recommend them in the future.
If the manufacturer’s grip is too tight, I’m going elsewhere - and I’ll be more loyal to them
Kärcher is awsome, all of their products I have are solid and dealing with the company is ridiculously easy. They always have parts on-hand and repairs are usually a handful of steps. Easy recommendation
the fact that this is and has ever even been an issue is wild.
To me it’s weird to even think of repairing stuff you buy as a “right” - it should be a given. The issue is the nonexistent “right” of a seller to restrict what a customer does with a product after buying it. It’s a no-brainer that should never have to be argued in court or anywhere else. It’s as ridiculous as a shoe company trying to dictate where you can or can’t walk.
When written out like this, it seems simple as - but the most simple version really isn’t what’s at stake. Companies make and trademark specialized tools for their goods, to prevent third parties from providing repairs. Warrantys are written to keep a company from being liable for repair/replacement if a customer attempts to repair a product themselves.
Pretty much every case in the right to repair movement is a challenge to a legally acceptable means of market capture, that just happens to create a stupendously shitty consumer environment.
Market capture is unethical in almost all cases. Unlike humans, if a ‘for profit’ business model can’t adapt and survive in a market, then it doesn’t need to be put on life support indefinately.
It’s like people learned all the wrong lessons from the big beginners of this crud show…(Thanks a lot MS and A**le) This is a major reason of why we can’t have nice stuff.
I was just thinking about this the other day after removing the fifteenth torx screw from the bottom of my Shark vacuum’s roller head. They hid screws under the pipe hatch and the two tiny friction mounted front wheels. Vacuums are triple the price and rollers are no longer removable from the outside.
45 minutes to fix what is essentially a five minute problem. They’d rather you throw it away and buy the whole head unit from the site. They even have bars blocking you from cutting hair from the roller without opening it.
Shit like this is why I still use an iPod 5th gen. No internet. No tracking apps. Just you and your hard copied music on a device that can be opened, repaired, and modded.
Wow. I must have an older Shark; mine comes off with three coin-turnable plastic bolts. Collectible! (I have two!)
I dunno how many vacuum cleaners I’ve scrapped for free from damn near everywhere and 90% of them only have a mega clogged hose. 5 minute fix usually and I made my own skookum twisted wire reamer in 5 minutes with wire and a drill. People throw away good stuff without bothering with it and just buy a new one instead of saving themselves time and money by eliminating the obvious. If a vacuum design gets too complex, I simplify with sheetrock screws. Warranties are made to be broken by making it work yourself. The things you learn that way also helps other areas in life all around.
For Canadian Right to Repair advocates: CanRepair is a brand new advocacy group started by R2R advocates from all over the country. The first Annual General Meeting is on March 25. Sign up to be a member and go to the AGM!
Just had my brother in law show me a concept phone where you just put in block modules for the things you want and need in a phone. Want more battery? Take off your camera block module and plug in more battery block modules.
Obviously the concept as presented is near impossible to achieve. I told him That and said we can get close. I showed him framework laptops that are trying to achieve the very thing he wanted (to a certain extent). He said that if they could make that a phone he would switch from his apple ecosystem in a heart beat. The ability to swap for a bigger speaker on the fly for get together’s and parties was tantalizing (big music guy).
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Nobody actually wants a walled garden, they just get entrapped in them (“it’s just where my friends/music/content creators are”)
They then become convinced that they want it, and its reinforced by the walled gardeners (looking at you, iMessage videos and bubbles)
I know a person who built their own PC (Windows, but still) from scratch for the first time as an adult. Had the money and the opportunity to buy a prebuilt rig in two clicks, but instead researched the market, ordered parts and tools, exchanged a part that didn’t fit the case, learned how to assemble it all by hand, and exclaimed that it was a great experience and would do it all over again.
And yet at every opportunity still buys an iphone despite the cost because it’s “simple” and they “don’t want to learn” something new. That’s not the actual reason - that’s just stockholm syndrome.
