Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss an Honest Pod study on pets and attractiveness in dating profiles, Foxconn starting production in India, Apple cutting production of the iPhone 12 Mini, McDonald's taking orders using AI, Apple and kid-friendly podcasts, and more.

Our guest this hour:

George Shchegolev, Co-Founder and VP of Operations - Route4Me

Kent in Chandler, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: "I recently got a notice that the battery on my Dell Latitude laptop is nearing the end of its useful life. I'm wondering if this is a part I can purchase and easily replace myself. The old batteries were just "clip-in" but this new one is only replaced by taking out some screws and I'm not really confident in my ability to get inside my laptop. If I have to take the laptop apart at all, I'm not really interested in that. So I'd like to know how difficult it is to repace the battery in that."

https://media.blubrry.com/into_tomorrow/content.blubrry.com/into_tomorrow/03-12-2021-H1S1.mp3

Kent, it depends on your specific model, the Latitude line is pretty big, but on modern laptops it will definitely take a little bit more work than with the old clip-in models.

If there isnt a specific compartment for the battery that you can access from the outside, then Dell probably considers it not user replaceable, but dont let that dissuade you if you want to hang on to your laptop for a while longer. That mostly means theyre not going to make it easy for you.

Normally, replacing a battery involves removing the whole bottom plate of the laptop, when you do that, you should be careful, some manufacturers stick cables to it to keep them from moving around. You can usually peel them off easily just dont pull as soon as you open it until you know you wont be pulling anything off.

From there things will vary depending on the model, batteries are large so they are usually easily accessible, but laptop components are pretty packed in so sometimes their connectors are buried under some other part.

If youre going to attempt this, look for step by step guides online with pictures. ifixit.com is a good place to start. Those will show you both what to expect, and how to reverse what you did if you have to. Keep some tray for screws, there tend to be quite a few in different sizes. Lastly, be very gentle with everything you remove, you dont want to crack a small piece of plastic and have a loose connector to deal with after you put the laptop back together.

Having said all that, a battery swap is probably not going to be too hard to do, try to find a guide for your specific Latitude model before you start, but dont think you wont be able to do it just because theyre not clip-on anymore.

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