I had to remove a few hard drives from a few laptops this morning to do some swapping. Some of them went really easy, others, not so much. For quick comparison, here’s the basic stats on the hard drive removal process for each.
Mac PowerBook G4:
- Tools: #0 & #1 Phillips, 1.5 mm Allen wrench
- Screws: 34
- Connectors: 5
- 4 Keys
- Battery, ram cover, keyboard, front cover, hard drive casing
- 90 min
- High probability of inflicting cosmetic damage to laptop
- You need a guide, and plenty of organization and patience
HP OmniBook 9000:
- #1 Phillips
- 3 Screws
- 5 minutes
IBM T61p:
- #1 Phillips
- 5 Screws
- 5 minutes
IBM wins as having the most user-friendly design, followed closely by HP. Apple… uh, yeah right.
Apple’s products tend to be very user-friendly as long as you fit nicely into one of their predefined use cases… hard drive replacement apparently isn’t one of their use cases.