After the last few days I've been reminded that I really hate laptops that must be fully pulled apart just to replace the BIOS battery. :-(

Is it just poor design or are they just being hopeful that the laptop will be replaced when that little battery dies, otherwise why can't they just be like others where that battery resides under memory, HDD or the keyboard where it is easily accessed?

Cheers.

I vote it's for planned obsolescence. When you machine wont keep the time, or slows down and crashes a lot from overheating, many people take that as a sign they need to buy a new one.

Same reason as the make the cooling fins / fan so hard to get too when they need cleaning out.

OK, occasionally it's accessible by removing the keyboard, or a bottom hatch. But usually it seems to be the first part they grab when assembling the machine, and add everything else around it. Whole machine ends up laid out in bits on the desk, just to clean a fan. And don't get me started on using 4 different types of screw...

2 of mine have their batteries under the memory and the other is under the keyboard (no, I don't use laptops for crunching), but I've now had 4 here this week that needed a near complete strip downs and today was the worst with 2 workbenches were being taken up with a laptop spread out over each.

Cheers.