I don't get why you give it 7/10. The two most common watch repairs are: 1. Battery replacement (granted fairly easy here, but still a glued back), and 2. glass replacement, which is basically impossible. It should have been a 3/10 IMHO.

I'd recommend you to read the iFixIt mission statement, but you'd figure out they're right soon enough when your first iProduct breaks one way or the other 1 month after the warranty expires..

Using screws and clips does not imply that a product cannot be slim and beautiful, btw.

You write:

> The tray-free disc loader is modular, making it easy to replace.

Are you sure? My best guess would be that the drive assembly is matched against the motherboard so you cannot switch the unit. At least that has been the usual Sony DRM policy. The custom "SW3-302 SCEI 1220EM42E" could well be doing the DRM stuff on the motherboard side, but you didn't disassemble the bluray unit, so it's hard to tell..

You write:

> Power supply is held behind lots of clips; however, we don't expect many internal repairs to the power supply.

With two capacitors (on the left of your picture) right next to the heat sink of two diodes I'd expect a fair amount of capacitor replacing coming in about two years from now..