Razer Blade 14 upgradability/repairs (what about old gens ?)

Hi !

I wish to buy the new "Razer Blade" with the 14 inch screen. It is not quite cheap though. Therefore, I would like to know if it was possible to :

- change the battery myself ?
- change the storage drive (myself too) ?

I don't care if it voids the warranty : I guess that the drive won't fail within a year, so warranty will be over. And the battery isn't under warranty.
I know it isn't possible to change the RAM, but 8gb is enough I think (I'm no video editor...), even for the future. And RAM never really fails...

I don't live in the US, I live in France, so if I import a Blade, it means I won't really be able to send it back if I want Razer to change my battery, for example. Well I could, but it'd be long and expensive.

So this is adressed to current (lucky and early) Blade 14 owners, which have maybe opened it to see what's inside. But also to old generation Blade. Is the Battery in Blade R1, R2, and most importantly Blade 14 changeable ?

Thanks for your answer !

PS : I'm French native, so pardon me if I make mistakes.

 

if you can get the battery sure, you can try changing it, how hard it will be is another matter.

storage probably something like the taped 17 r2.

but given the fact that is already pretty hard to get a PSU for those units you can guess how hard it will be for you to source that part

 

hey check out this video.. Razer Blade 14 Unboxing & Overview - YouTube
he shows you the inside of the laptop towards the end of the video. Yes, you can change the msata ssd and the wifi network card as well.

 

I tried to upgrade my Blade 14" to 2x256 and downgrade to Win7 and it has been a damn nightmare. The Blade refuses to boot off of a USB drive, and Win 7 setup hangs on launch. I've basically bricked the thing, and Razer Support (only for laptops, of course) isn't open until Monday. Not very impressed with Razer at the moment.

 

You need to get a USB CD drive. If you did a little research you'd see that is the sure fire way to install win7 on machines that are playing difficult with bootable USB drives.

Also, I don't understand people trying to downgrade to Win7, Win8 overall is a decent improvement and everyone knows there's addons to change things back for those resistant to new things/change. But I guess that's another argument for another day.

 

gets disappointed because s/he cant install an OS that isnt supported, interesting.

there are some people that did that on the main thread about the new models, check a lot of pages back

 

I tried it with a USB CD drive and no joy. It looks like I'm stuck with Windows 8. I don't find it to be an upgrade at all, especially on systems without touchscreens.

What was the point of this comment?

 

Windows 8 will be more like Windows 7 in the August/September timeframe, but will have the additional benefit (if you see it that way) of Metro.

 

To install windows 7 on the razerblade, you would have to turn off the secure boot they have in the bios. After that you should be able to install Windows 7 with ease. I have Windows 7 on my 512 gb ssd for my daily things, and I have ubuntu for my 256 ssd for work. Both running great besides nvidia driver for ubuntu, but then again I don't really need it for work.

 

if you dont like windows 8 just install stardoc, its a $5 program that puts the start menu back and everything works just like windows 7 with the super rapid booting of windows 8.

 

Secure boot might be the issue, then try using the CD drive. I've personally had bad experience using bootable USBs and I didn't figure out why, but I used an external CD drive and it worked in a pinch for a Samsung 5 series Ultrabook