alt Hacker News> Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or does the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for, lets say 7 years, and then warehouse and ship those parts, probably multiple times. Or keep a low rate production line running for 7 years? What happens to the parts that don't get used? Are they scrapped?
None of that is relevant in this context: The parts are available, but the laptop is designed and built such that the alone keyboard cannot be replaced.[1]
[1] Not sure if this is possible on that specific laptop, but with a steady hand, a tiny drill, maybe a magnifiying glass too, you can maybe drill out the rivets, then replace the keyboard, then either re-rivet it back again or tap very tiny thread into the laptop and use screws.
The laptop is deffinitely designed in a way that the keyboard is extremely hard to replace. Took me like 5 hours across 2 days. Rivets are not even the worst part, I used tiny drill and carefully glued in the replacement keyboard using phone screen glue (B7000) between the keys. (glue needs to go both on the frame and on the keyboard as there is a gap that needs to be bridged) Since there are screws along 3 of its edges, I deemed it good enough. drilling and tapping or riveting would have been extra painful.
What makes the repair more complicated is that 1) you need to take out basically everything to get to the keyboard. There are many different screws, luckily ifixit has a disassembly guides with their sizes. Still it was a bit painful to reassemble. 2) One of the things you need to take out or at least lift is the glued in battery - this took a lot of careful prying with thin plastic sheet and dousing it in ipa. 3) backlight is glued on to the case in an extremely fragile way, so it needs to be replaced with the keyboard or will probably look uneven after repair. (i reused the old one as I don't mind it but still, it could just have been glued to the keyboard itself and it would be easier to repair.