If HP could stop putting screws under the rubber feet/strips they would sell a lot more laptops.

Serious... every time I go look at HP notebooks I look at the base models because quite frankly I have the hardware laying around and If i didn't I could buy it a lot cheaper than HP sells it for as an add-on. Then I go check out disassembly and sure enough... they always have 2-4 screws under rubber feet.

Its inconvenient... you have to pry off the rubber foot... careful not to damage it... then when your done hope there is a new stick remaining to hold it on when you put it back in place. Its not like they are trying to hide the screws because they already have 8 or more around the chassis fully exposed.

As near as I can tell its to discourage disassembly... and encourage people to buy over priced upgrades. All it does to me is send me to other brands.

Anyone else annoyed by this?

 

Yep... I stopped buying HP in 2013. Much happier with my Dell 7577. HP's build quality has gone down since 2012-2013ish when I last bought a laptop from them. They don't think their designs through, but rather cram as much as they can as cheap as they can in whatever chassis looks good, even though the cooling solution is sh!t and under-engineered to get the job done.

Dell on the other hand, is much more thoughtful with their designs and engineering implementations and the numbers back it up.

 

I have friends, colleagues and family with HP laptops - I know two people among them who have ever opened their system. Increased difficulty in opening systems doesn't seem to be preventing people from buying HP, so far as I can tell from my own observations. Apple doesn't make it easy for users to replace anything and they don't appear to be struggling to sell systems.

I do personally agree though - which is why I often buy Dell Latitude systems.

 

Not really...

Price, avalibility, and "features" (advertised/over-hyped nonsense about some amazing thing it can do) make the majority of laptop sales.

The consumer base that actually opens up laptops to swap components, clean fans, or repaste is relatively very small.

Exactly. As far as HP and others are concerned; the underpaid worker in the white mask down the assembly line is FAR more competent than the consumer, and should be the only one touching the internals.

For the most part they are right too; I would not trust 95% of the people I know to open a laptop and swap a SSD and reinstall an OS.

Unfortunately it is the enthusiast and people who make a living from repairs that suffer.

 

It depends on the model. My ENVY laptop has 4 of them but the two of them where my battery is at has screws that holds the bottom cover. I disassembled it dozens of times for years and the glue still holds.

Lets be real the average customer are not going to disassembly their laptops like us on this forum. I kinda hate the way current laptops are designed because you'll have to remove the entire bottom cover in order to upgrade the components and its a good chance you'll break the plastic clips on the cover and its not just HP

 

I'm not typical, but in my world, I update machines often and resell the old ones... my memory/storage requirements exceed that available on many models and the combination of inflated prices on higher capacity components and the fact that I almost always have what I need available already make maintenance / accessibility a big feature to me. Some machines are easy to open, others are a pain in the arse... but the whole 'peal off the glued down bits and hope they aren't damaged and restick ok when your done' is a level of nonsense unique to HP. So when I'm comparing machines HP drops to the bottom of the list off the bat... then has to overcome that handicap with better features / performance for me to even consider buying one.

I have an HP gaming desktop that I've had for years and its a great machine. but I keep passing on HP for portables for that one reason... and its something they don't need to do.

 

I would tend to agree with the views expressed earlier that an average customer or most of the users do not care about opening the laptops or typically are the USE CASE that company thinks of while making laptops. The DIY crowd till now mostly falls in the DESKTOP world rather than a laptop. But I can understand the frustration caused by such designs - I have the first gem HP Omen 15 - wherein I was thinking of increasing my ssd size from Pre-installed 256gb to 512gb, but was unable to do so as his would require the rubber lining at bottom of laptop to be removed. The design was chosen such probably to give a particular design feel to the laptop andddd... honestly, to an extent, the design was good or really stood out.

However, when it comes to the point of design & functionality over form factor, I believe it is an open debate...

 

Always the odd one I suppose... I was doing DIY desktops since the 8086 / Nec V20/V30 chips were rocking... but i've been upgrading memory and drives in notebooks for decades. Accessible maintenance is always on my top 5 features for machine purchases. Unless its a specialty machine like a surface.

Btw... I almost picked up one of those aluminum first gen omens at microcenter on closeout for $800 but passed because the first thing I was going to do was put in a 500gb ssd and hit the same snag you did. Very cool machine though... quality wise it puts the later omens to shame.

 

I have a 2017 HP Pavilion 15t. I upgraded the ram and installed a m.2 SSD.
There are ten screws to remove from the bottom cover, but fortunately, none of them are under the rubber strips.
The bad news is. The screws are tiny. I used a tiny screwdriver from a cheap eyeglass kit, and that tiny screwdriver
broke just as I was removing the tenth screw. Fortunately, I was able to remove all 10 screws.
But then, I had to slowly and carefully pry/pop off the bottom cover, without breaking the plastic.
No damage except for a few notice-able scuff marks.
I open the laptop and see. There is no screw included to hold down the m.2 SSD.
Fortunately, the m.2 hole accepts the same screw as the bottom cover. That leaves 9 screws to secure the bottom cover. more than enough.
I would love to remove the cpu/gpu cooler and re-do the thermal paste, but darn. more tiny screws. cancel that.
I spent many years tinkering with desktops, but laptops are so much harder to work on. Those tiny screws are a nightmare.

The worst story I read on this forum is from people who bought HP laptops with pre-installed SSD, and no pre-installed HDD.
Later, they try to install a HDD and discover they need a HDD mounting bracket which was not included and costs big money to order.
Glad I dodged that bullet by buying a base model with HDD, and installing the SSD myself.