Microsoft shareholders have filed a resolution demanding the company consider making its products easier to repair. As You Sow, a non-profit that specializes in shareholder advocacy, delivered the shareholder resolution on Thursday.
The moves comes after Microsoft announced last year that it would be a carbon neutral company by 2030 but campaigners say it hasn’t done anything to to make repair easier.
The shareholder resolution is demanding that the Board “prepare a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, on the environmental and social benefits of making Company devices more easily repairable by consumers and independent repair shops.”
Is this a simple PR move or could it be the beginning of shareholder driven change on Rightt to Repair?
In the latest update to this story, Microsoft seems to have agreed to commission a study to investigate the links between sustainability and repair and take action on its findings by the end of 2022.
As You Sow has now agreed to withdraw its resolution with the company. In exchange, McBee says Microsoft has agreed to hire an independent consultant to study the benefits of increasing consumer access to parts and repair documentation, including impacts on carbon emissions and waste. While the study will not be made public due to concerns over proprietary information, Microsoft is required to publicly post a summary of its findings by the beginning of May 2022.
It sounds promising, but I suppose it remains to be seen what they actually put into practice. Though it sounds like Microsoft is already committed to some actions:
Based on those findings, Microsoft has also agreed to make new parts and documentation available beyond its authorized repair network by the end of 2022. It has also agreed to launch new, as-yet-unknown initiatives to facilitate local repair, according to McBee.
Microsoft are clamouring for market-share against Apple in the hardware sector - wouldn’t it be nice if someone on the board realised that repairability would be a huge differentiator.
As you say, no action yet but the wind is blowing in the right direction.
I really want to believe this is a good faith move on Microsoft’s part, I really do. But there’s a little voice in my head that’s saying leopards don’t change their spots. Readers need to be aware of this:
^ This! Yes, I think repairability becoming seen as some kind of competitive advantage would be a bit of a game changer.
I was also interested to read that there are similar shareholder-led initiatives at Apple and John Deere. It will be telling to see whether this move from Microsoft has any impact on those too.
I agree that’s a concern and thanks for sharing that ‘Embrace, extend and extinguish’ article. It never ceases to confound me how companies are able to co-opt or colonise spaces and movements.
I guess we’ll learn more when the summary of their secret report comes out in the spring.
Meanwhile, Microsoft are setting arbitrary limits on the hardware that Windows 11 will run on, encouraging people to replace perfectly functional machines. The overt reason seems to be security but the difference is insignificant for the vast majority of people. This is puzzling, given how hard they pushed people to upgrade to 10 in the first place. Are they bowing to pressure from Intel (having recently lost Apple’s custom) or the PC makers?
Yet it gets stranger. It appears there’s a registry setting you can set called AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU, then reboot, and Win 11 will install on any hardware you like!
Sooner or later they’ll get fed up with supporting Win 10 and Win 11 and start pushing people to upgrade. Presumably at that point they’ll remove the arbitrary hardware limitations, having already got the people to upgrade who are besotted by windows with rounded corners, who can afford a new machine they don’t really need, and who don’t care about the planet! What are you thinking, Microsoft?
Meanwhile, I can see nothing in 11 that would ever persuade me to upgrade. I’m more likely to upgrade to Linux! But then I said that when 10 came along. My dream machine would have a Windows 7 desktop running on a Windows 10 kernel. I can’t imagine there’s any reason whatsovever why it couldn’t be done.
If you do fancy playing with W11 - even on a VM - then this article, written by some numbskull, will get you through the traps.
At the moment - I haven’t found anything that 11 will do that isn’t possible on 10, but some of the XBox stuff coming down the line is probably going to be 11 only.
However - Microsoft have history in the ‘not quite keeping their own promises’ which is different to breaking their promises. We know that they have released patches for XP, way after the EOL date and that the ‘1 yr free upgrade’ to Windows 10 is still active today. I have a feeling that the restrictions may evaporate at some point and that machines which are currently classified as unsupported, may get updates.
After all - 14th October 2025 is going to be known as ‘Chuck it in a skip day, sponsored by Microsoft’ so it could be a handy PR offset if they quietly drop the barriers and open it all up. The OEMs will still sell tonnes of new kit and Microsoft have a soundbite-sized rebuttle ready to go.
I’m really hopeful for 2022, but I’m not impressed by this.
If this is what Microsoft pushes as acceptable repair, then they’re deluded or believe we’re much stupider than we are.
The design/layout of the machine goes back to how the majority of laptops were 5 - 10 years ago. The tell-tale sign is the way that the topcover & trackpad is attached to the motherboard. This does make keyboard replacements more simple than ‘modern’ laptops, which I suppose will be one of the ‘most replaced parts’ on education machines.
What’s annoying is when he says that Microsoft have “worked hard to make a repairable laptop” - and they really haven’t. This is basically a HP Stream netbook with soldered-in RAM, non-replaceble eMMC and a keyboard which is plastic riveted into the top-cover so that the whole lot needs to be ‘repaired’ (apologies about the poor image I’ve bodged together - red circles are unreplacable plastic rivets).
Just because it’s not glued together, doesn’t make something repairable. At least the DC jack isn’t soldered to the board and the touchpad appears to be removable (yellow circles).
Though they’re not mentioned, iFixit’s kit is used in the video and we know they’re prototyping tools to fix Surfaces. I hope iFixit’s remit extends to helping Microsoft (and others) re-design with repairability in mind, because this isn’t it.
Yeah this low-end education device isn’t the best example of repairability when it’s made of only 6 or 7 parts. Hopefully their higher-end stuff will at least become a bit less terrible for screen and battery replacement.
Still no mention of parts availability, but the modular parts are welcomed.
At 1:16, he pulls off the ‘Cosmetic Plate’ which looks like a custom-cut piece of sticky-back plastic - I’d love to see him stick that back on!
Also mentions that the battery is glued on for ‘end of life recycling’. Good to know that the battery isn’t expected to fail in any way, before the device is traded in!
And in the latest development, Microsoft’s study on the impact of repair confirms that repair reduces waste and carbon emissions .
This was the last of the commitments from their right to repair announcement last year, the partnership with ifixit covered the other two commitments (availability of parts and mechanisms to support repair).
And more importantly, on the back of this, “Microsoft will be taking actions to enable greater repairability of its devices by the end of the year”.
They met their deadline for releasing this report, so here’s hoping they’ll meet their deadline for taking actions too.
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