Hacker News Reader

Comment by spijdar | Hacker News Reader

I think you and GP are conflating "repairability" with "upgradability".

The only two components in a laptop that are essentially guaranteed to fail in a short-ish timeframe are flash storage and the batteries. As long as these two are replaceable, I think a device is reasonably "repairable".

While there's a definite chance of the CPU and memory etc. failing, I think for most people the trade-off in size and weight to accommodate sockets aren't worth it from a repairability perspective.

That's where I draw my line, anyway. Flash storage and batteries are essentially guaranteed to fail in 5-10 years of use, and absolutely need to be replaceable. As long as the build quality is decent, the rest can be integrated.

View on HN

Whilst I think your argument is valid, I still think lack of "upgradability" correlates with planned obsolescence. All the manufacturer would then need to do is to add a few components that have an expected lifetime just after the warranty time.

On the whole, I agree with you that at the very least the battery and RAM should be easily replaceable. I just happen to also think that the increase in weight/bulk is worthwhile tradeoff for the option for me to decide when I want to stop using the machine, not the manufacturer.

PC was the exception to the norm on the 8 and 16 bit home computers, Apple as survivor of this vertical integration philosophy has showed OEMs where the profit comes from.

So naturally OEMs are making laptops as extensible as Atari, Mac, Acorn and Amigas used to be.

Want to extend it? Plug an external device, for everything else buy a newer model.

This seems to be the future as classical desktops fade away replaced by cloud instances and NUCs.

Paradoxically to the current topic, NUCs want you to bring your own RAM and disk.

Not all of them, specially those being used as thin clients.

A socketed CPU doesn't add much upgradebility if you have to stay within the same generation. I think a T530 can take a quad core ivy bridge but nothing newer.

AMD was really better in this aspect.

My impression is that even on a desktop computer which is highly modulable, after 5/10 years you have to throw away everything but the case and maybe the power supply. New CPUs won't have the right socket for your mothercard, the RAM will need to be DDR(n+1), same for the PCIe port.

The last few years of AMD desktop CPUs would like a word.

GP said after "5/10" years. AM4 was only launched in 2016, and is already "showing cracks" in support, where old motherboards will, in practice, not support new CPUs without juggling firmware.

Obviously I can't predict the future, but I feel like AMD will release a new socket within a generation or two, which fits within the "5/10 year" mark.

Sure, but 5-10 years is a long stretch, considering we are talking about a notebook that you can't upgrade once it is built. Surely there's a middle ground where upgrades should be possible within a couple of years?

Also, 16GB sounds awfully low to me. Why has the laptop industry decided nobody needs more than that? It seems to be the limit for laptops with soldered memory, with few laptops coming with more than that. Anyway I voted with my wallet and bought a laptop that has a Ryzen CPU and upgradable memory and SSD, and a very manageable weight.

Yeah, I have an AMD FX-8150 (AM3+) based desktop tower from 2012, which I recently wanted to upgrade, and which largely inspired my comment :)

Even with AM4 based CPU, I'm under the impression that recent CPUs cannot always use old mothercards.

> I think you and GP are conflating "repairability" with "upgradability".

Why do you think one has to be exclusive to the other? Easier upgradability means easier to repair.

And the rare failure of the soldered RAM makes what should have been an affordable repair a very expensive affair as they force you to buy a new motherboard!

Note that another major issue with soldered RAM / SSD / CPU / unremovable batteries is that it makes you, the consumer, more vulnerable to price gauging. For e.g. If you don't want a 4GB or 8GB RAM, you are still forced to buy the 16 GB RAM from the laptop maker and have to pay them what they want, even if it is available for far cheaper from other reputable vendors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com