Don't forget leaked schematics and other engineering documents --- which once upon a time were supplied with any moderately complex piece of equipment. It's not surprising then, that the majority of sites where you can find this information are hosted in Asia, former Soviet, or eastern European countries.
I wonder if Google's noticeably worsening search quality in this area has anything to do with where this info can be found, or the legality of it. I remember it used to be far easier to find a PDF someone shared, but now it's very insistent that you're looking for the user manual even if you search for "service manual", and commercial spam has taken over much of the results.
"If you outlaw repairs, only outlaws will have repairs."
> I wonder if Google's noticeably worsening search quality [...] commercial spam has taken over much of the results.
On the contrary, I believe the systematic effort from commercial spams is also responsible for degrading the SNR for everyone.
A common tactic is pretending that you have the files. For example, you can enumerate all the books from a directory and create a single page for every book that claims you have them or tries selling them, while all you get is unwanted software. You can ever create PDF spams, so that even if you filter "filetype .pdf", you'll still see them. Meanwhile, all the genuine files are being taken down.
I tried to Google a service manual for a 6 year old washer, and all I found was the same page hosted on different websites of questionable reliability trying to sell me the full manual.
I used to be able to find even the most arcane manual out there, but it's getting difficult to impossible. Sometimes it seems Google purges and blocks searches for things older than a year. I know this isn't the case, but it seems like it, sometimes.
I have a Dell laptop, and they provide a service manual for it on their website. Parts are inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easily replaceable. No small wonder why I've been a customer since their PC's Unlimited days.
I've had a couple of them, they've been some of the least reliable machines I've ever had. Even getting a set of nubs for the Trackpoint was an exercise in futility - three hours on the phone, followed by finding a local Toshiba dealer (local being a good hundred miles away), only to pay £45 for three clearly used Trackpoint nubs. That was my last new Toshiba, but I do have a Libretto 110CT for programming old radio gear (old enough that the programming software only runs on DOS or Win9x).
My last two laptops were both Thinkpads and I've never looked back. My battle-scarred and heavily-stickered (to cover the scratches) X220 has had a mountain of parts. Heck, I once replaced the DC jack on the table in a convention hotel restaurant, using a friend's iPad to read the service manual...!
The only thing locking down repair manuals and parts will achieve (at least for me) is to make me look at what the company's competition is selling.
I can understand Toshiba’s move if had the monopoly on selling laptops but they don’t. If I had to replace my laptop because it was unrepairable because Toshiba forcefully removed all the service manuals from the internet I would be unlikely to buy another laptop from that manufacturer. However, if I could fix it and but I eventually desired an upgrade then I would be more inclined to chose a model that I was familiar with. Seems like they have not thought this through properly.
I think people who look for or read laptop repair manuals is an insignificant percentage of their customer base.
Case study: Apple starts using pentalobe screws on the iPhone 4. This did not correlate with a decrease in sales, in fact sales have gone up a lot. Ask random iPhone users what the word "pentalobe" means to them, they probably don't know, nor care.
For me, it would be better to focus on drastically reducing the duration of copyrights. At the speed things are going, 2 to 4 years would be good. It would be beneficial for everyone. Drugs, Manuals, Seeds, Arts...
It takes over a decade for most major pharmaceuticals to go through all required research and clinical trials before they ever reach the general population.
Costs can easily go past tens of millions of dollars. A 2-4 year copyright period would require new medications to either be prohibitively expensive, or not be researched at all and only the most profitable diseases would ever get looked into.
Just bringing our duration in line with the rest of the world would be a massive improvement. Star wars and anything from that era should be public domain by now.
Laptop repair companies are disappearing for another reason, too... Brand new laptops are cheap. If your product is cheap to buy, it's harder to make money repairing the product.
This is the case not only for laptops. I was renting a place a few years back and the on/off button on my electric heater broke. A technician came in, brought a new heater and replaced it. I asked him why not repair something that seemed like a completely trivial fix. The answer was that the unit costs about 100€ whereas any technician would bill way more for the short time it would take to open it up, fish out the connector and replace the part. So to the landfill it goes.
Right to repair and right to information though are another.
This also means guaranteed minimum supported lifetimes, access to documentation, system upgrades, and the like.
As for laptops: I've been actively putting off upgrading for numerous reasons including the fact that no current offerings really seem to suit my needs, wants, or reasonable expectations, but bullshit games (factory-installed spyware, Lenovo, craptacular ergonomics (Apple keyboards, strips), and BDSM bootloaders (Android) leave me feeling physically ill.
I was reminiscing earlier that in his 1976 book Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke more-or-less pressages the smartphone, with his minisec, though with some glaring distinctions.
There's a physical keyboard (the 'E' key is mentioned as being worn), devices are durable enough to be intergenerational hand-me-downs (the protagonist inherits his father's old device), and apparently the economics and business models of manufacturing, servicing, upgrading, and developing for the platforms have been solved, as they're never mentioned.
It's the business models of hardware, software, and services which are killing us. To the point of creating actively shitty products and business practices.
My first laptop was a Toshiba. It died a month after the year long warranty and would have cost more than a new laptop to get replacement parts for. So, I'm already on the don't buy Toshiba bandwagon.
What alternative is there? It seems all brands only sell cheap stuff.
I wonder if Thinkpads really survived this after it was bought by lenovo. Maybe high end Dell laptops are durable? ASUS? System76? Honestly I don't know what brand to choose from, and I think I would prefer not to invest in a new laptop if it's not durable, and keep using desktop PCs.
I personally feel that repair manuals and documentation are not the worst problems facing repair at this point.
What I've noticed in consumer electronics over the past few years is increased part integration - pretty much every device is just a logic board with a case and display, along with some support components. Pretty much every logic board is just a collection of switching power supplies, soldered ASICs, mem/disk, and connectors.
Even things like power supply ICs are becoming proprietary,with customer-specific part numbers that are hard or impossible to source. Furthermore anything with a microcontroller and firmware on it is perma-bricked should something go wrong on that. This is something Louis Rossmann (the famous MacBook repair guy) talks about a lot.
Now don't get me wrong, I totally support repair documentation, but being able to get replacement parts and materials is probably more of an issue to those "reasonably skilled in the art" than manuals teaching how to mechanically open something (usually possible to figure out) or even what's connected to what (worst comes to worst, you "beep it out" with diode mode and compare with a working exemplar [REWA technology on YouTube does this]).
The issue with parts and materials is that since we're moving towards proprietary ICs, the motive of manufacturers to not provide documentation/parts is even greater as they don't necessarily want to talk about the technology they are using, whether or not it was really novel. It provides a decent excuse for the manufacturers to fight Right to Repair. Furthermore, security issues and proprietary interests come into play, since you don't want hacked fingerprint sensors and Apple probably doesn't want to sell A-series processors.
Futhermore complicating matters is that component and board level repair remains more of a science project than a process. It is logistically difficult for many companies to bother dealing with selling parts (should they sell just subassemblies at 70% of the replacement cost of the product? Resistors for ten cents?) especially to people outside their network of people. And it's hard to deliver consistent experiences when you actually need to try to fix stuff; a lot of people I know are happy with Apple store service because they DON'T try to fix stuff and instead give you a NEW one, without all the warts and scratches, and it's hard to compete with this if you have to swap parts over and over again with subpar or defectively-designed "refurb" parts like I sometimes see happen with the PC manufacturers.
So I'm sort of half and half on Right to Repair every time it gets brought up. People seem to be warming up to first party repair. I think the biggest realistic benefit to RtR at this point is going to be pressure on first party repair to lower prices and improve service. And that's a good thing.
I think the other issue facing RtR discussions is, not that it's anyone's fault or anything but often it is very difficult to have the perspective of actual design and business challenges faced by the engineers and people delivering products. This makes it easier for companies to refute the claims being made. The people actually working on this stuff from the companies' side usually and understandably never talk about it - so we're only representing largely the end user side, or the reverse-engineering side.
[+] [-] userbinator|6 years ago|reply
I wonder if Google's noticeably worsening search quality in this area has anything to do with where this info can be found, or the legality of it. I remember it used to be far easier to find a PDF someone shared, but now it's very insistent that you're looking for the user manual even if you search for "service manual", and commercial spam has taken over much of the results.
"If you outlaw repairs, only outlaws will have repairs."
[+] [-] segfaultbuserr|6 years ago|reply
On the contrary, I believe the systematic effort from commercial spams is also responsible for degrading the SNR for everyone.
A common tactic is pretending that you have the files. For example, you can enumerate all the books from a directory and create a single page for every book that claims you have them or tries selling them, while all you get is unwanted software. You can ever create PDF spams, so that even if you filter "filetype .pdf", you'll still see them. Meanwhile, all the genuine files are being taken down.
[+] [-] AmVess|6 years ago|reply
I used to be able to find even the most arcane manual out there, but it's getting difficult to impossible. Sometimes it seems Google purges and blocks searches for things older than a year. I know this isn't the case, but it seems like it, sometimes.
I have a Dell laptop, and they provide a service manual for it on their website. Parts are inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easily replaceable. No small wonder why I've been a customer since their PC's Unlimited days.
[+] [-] philpem|6 years ago|reply
I've had a couple of them, they've been some of the least reliable machines I've ever had. Even getting a set of nubs for the Trackpoint was an exercise in futility - three hours on the phone, followed by finding a local Toshiba dealer (local being a good hundred miles away), only to pay £45 for three clearly used Trackpoint nubs. That was my last new Toshiba, but I do have a Libretto 110CT for programming old radio gear (old enough that the programming software only runs on DOS or Win9x).
My last two laptops were both Thinkpads and I've never looked back. My battle-scarred and heavily-stickered (to cover the scratches) X220 has had a mountain of parts. Heck, I once replaced the DC jack on the table in a convention hotel restaurant, using a friend's iPad to read the service manual...!
The only thing locking down repair manuals and parts will achieve (at least for me) is to make me look at what the company's competition is selling.
[+] [-] tomxor|6 years ago|reply
> We’re raising funds and hardware on Indiegogo [1] to collaboratively write open source manuals to replace the ones Toshiba forced Tim to take down.
[1] http://www.indiegogo.com/toshiba
[+] [-] kwiens|6 years ago|reply
Fix away! https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Toshiba_Laptop
[+] [-] philpem|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidhyde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootlooped|6 years ago|reply
Case study: Apple starts using pentalobe screws on the iPhone 4. This did not correlate with a decrease in sales, in fact sales have gone up a lot. Ask random iPhone users what the word "pentalobe" means to them, they probably don't know, nor care.
[+] [-] kantium|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtreminio|6 years ago|reply
Costs can easily go past tens of millions of dollars. A 2-4 year copyright period would require new medications to either be prohibitively expensive, or not be researched at all and only the most profitable diseases would ever get looked into.
[+] [-] yummypaint|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] repairisntcheap|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoz-y|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyberjunkie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|6 years ago|reply
Is that a paid podcast?
[+] [-] Chris2048|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdf333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
Right to repair and right to information though are another.
This also means guaranteed minimum supported lifetimes, access to documentation, system upgrades, and the like.
As for laptops: I've been actively putting off upgrading for numerous reasons including the fact that no current offerings really seem to suit my needs, wants, or reasonable expectations, but bullshit games (factory-installed spyware, Lenovo, craptacular ergonomics (Apple keyboards, strips), and BDSM bootloaders (Android) leave me feeling physically ill.
I was reminiscing earlier that in his 1976 book Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke more-or-less pressages the smartphone, with his minisec, though with some glaring distinctions.
There's a physical keyboard (the 'E' key is mentioned as being worn), devices are durable enough to be intergenerational hand-me-downs (the protagonist inherits his father's old device), and apparently the economics and business models of manufacturing, servicing, upgrading, and developing for the platforms have been solved, as they're never mentioned.
It's the business models of hardware, software, and services which are killing us. To the point of creating actively shitty products and business practices.
[+] [-] cptnapalm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segfaultbuserr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|6 years ago|reply
I wonder if Thinkpads really survived this after it was bought by lenovo. Maybe high end Dell laptops are durable? ASUS? System76? Honestly I don't know what brand to choose from, and I think I would prefer not to invest in a new laptop if it's not durable, and keep using desktop PCs.
[+] [-] ollie87|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chendragon|6 years ago|reply
What I've noticed in consumer electronics over the past few years is increased part integration - pretty much every device is just a logic board with a case and display, along with some support components. Pretty much every logic board is just a collection of switching power supplies, soldered ASICs, mem/disk, and connectors.
Even things like power supply ICs are becoming proprietary,with customer-specific part numbers that are hard or impossible to source. Furthermore anything with a microcontroller and firmware on it is perma-bricked should something go wrong on that. This is something Louis Rossmann (the famous MacBook repair guy) talks about a lot.
Now don't get me wrong, I totally support repair documentation, but being able to get replacement parts and materials is probably more of an issue to those "reasonably skilled in the art" than manuals teaching how to mechanically open something (usually possible to figure out) or even what's connected to what (worst comes to worst, you "beep it out" with diode mode and compare with a working exemplar [REWA technology on YouTube does this]).
The issue with parts and materials is that since we're moving towards proprietary ICs, the motive of manufacturers to not provide documentation/parts is even greater as they don't necessarily want to talk about the technology they are using, whether or not it was really novel. It provides a decent excuse for the manufacturers to fight Right to Repair. Furthermore, security issues and proprietary interests come into play, since you don't want hacked fingerprint sensors and Apple probably doesn't want to sell A-series processors.
Futhermore complicating matters is that component and board level repair remains more of a science project than a process. It is logistically difficult for many companies to bother dealing with selling parts (should they sell just subassemblies at 70% of the replacement cost of the product? Resistors for ten cents?) especially to people outside their network of people. And it's hard to deliver consistent experiences when you actually need to try to fix stuff; a lot of people I know are happy with Apple store service because they DON'T try to fix stuff and instead give you a NEW one, without all the warts and scratches, and it's hard to compete with this if you have to swap parts over and over again with subpar or defectively-designed "refurb" parts like I sometimes see happen with the PC manufacturers.
So I'm sort of half and half on Right to Repair every time it gets brought up. People seem to be warming up to first party repair. I think the biggest realistic benefit to RtR at this point is going to be pressure on first party repair to lower prices and improve service. And that's a good thing.
I think the other issue facing RtR discussions is, not that it's anyone's fault or anything but often it is very difficult to have the perspective of actual design and business challenges faced by the engineers and people delivering products. This makes it easier for companies to refute the claims being made. The people actually working on this stuff from the companies' side usually and understandably never talk about it - so we're only representing largely the end user side, or the reverse-engineering side.
[+] [-] ackfoo|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blograbbit|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]