Repairable Laptops in 2024

These days, there are thousands of models of laptops and desktops to choose from and everyone has different needs, perceived value, and budgets. I spend most of my working time on a computer (and even a good chunk of my free time too but I’m a proper nerd). I’m happy spending pretty much any figure on a laptop. I’m currently using a 2023 MacBook Pro 16 which cost a whopping £2500! But I spend about 10 hours a day on the thing, and I get a lot of value and joy from using a machine like that. 

What’s the point? Well, if you’re using a computer everyday for work or to run your business you need to buy something good. Something that can cope with your 50 open Chrome tabs (which means you need lots of RAM) or something fast enough to run Adobe Photoshop with big bright screens. I must admit, good screens make a huge difference and they’re often overlooked. Don’t try and deliver sofas using a moped, get the right tool for the job. We can help and offer advice here, feel free to give us a call. 

So what happens when, after 10 years you’ve used two or four different laptops between your team, you now have twice the staff and they’re using either their own machine or that ‘old one’ as a temporary measure? Well for a start you might be in a compliance nightmare, are the personally owned devices encrypted to comply with GDPR? Are you re-using passwords and sharing accounts? Are you sharing company data from a personal OneDrive account? This is when you need us to step in and set things up properly to manage growth and keep you running efficiently.  

With daily use, comes inevitable wear and tear - screens can get cracked, keyboards loose keys and machines get slower over time. Most “off the shelf” or “PC World” type laptops are difficult to get parts for, so when breakages happen, repair is a nightmare. We’ve ordered keyboard keys from America for £50 just to keep a laptop going. 

Using a proper business laptop like a Dell 5540 can improve things. Dell offers parts and warranties for good amounts of time, and you can get the basics fixed quickly by a professional Dell engineer. After a while though, you end up with several models in staff hands and it gets even more complicated as one model might have part availability, and another doesn’t. This is why large businesses stick to just a couple of models, it makes fixing/replacing them much easier. 

An even better solution is Framework. A brand creating fully repairable, fixable laptops in 13” and 16” sizes which we’re currently testing and will soon be rolling out to customers. We can change the ports; need another USB type A and never use the HDMI? No problem. Break the screen? We can order a new one and fix it! Spilt wine on the keyboard? Let's replace what's broken and keep that machine running! Repair is noble, we want to keep this stuff out of landfill.  

Framework laptops solve many problems experienced by us and other local businesses and as part of our commitment to ethical practices and the environment we’ll be recommending Framework laptops for as long as they remain relevant.