the whole "it's modular! here's your screwdriver! you can service your laptop by yourself and replace the ram! don't forget your coveralls, you're a hardware technician now!" thing seems a bit.. theatrical? but who knows, i've never owned a laptop with fixed storage and ram so maybe i'm not in the target demographic. also, who knows, maybe their inverted dongle thing will become a standard?

i've always just used thinkpads. they do a pretty good job of picking the right ports in the right quantities and have almost (excluding the ultra-ultralights) always allowed for replacement of ram, disk and sometimes have had a modular bay for cd-rom/dvd/additional disk/etc. quality seems to have dropped a little recently, but overall, still decent.