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Comment by thegrim33 | Hacker News Reader

You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and incentive to keep making more like them.

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It's possible that some informed consumers choose longer battery life over replaceable parts. Your choice is not always the right choice.

In 2025, I expect my laptop to be lightweight, fast, 14 hours+ on a single charge, silent and run cool.

I care more about all of those features than the replaceable parts.

the difference between a thinkpad T14 with replaceable RAM and SSD and a T14s with soldered RAM and SSD are minimal. depending on the specific generation and features, the T14s can be heavier than the T14.

i'd accept soldered RAM if it is at least 16GB, (though 32GB would be better) because i'd rarely need more than that. but a soldered SSD never. that holds my precious data, and even if i have a full backup, i do want to be able to take out the SSD when the laptop dies, or replace a broken or worn out SSD (as i had once). the risk of not being able to recover data from a soldered SSD is just not worth the few grams saved in weight.

If you had a full backup, why would you worry about your data?

My important documents are synced with cloud storage, my photos and videos are synced with iCloud, Google Photos and OneDrive.

My code is pushed to a remote git repository.

I can add more external storage. I would be more concerned about RAM.

a cloud backup for a 2TB disk is too expensive or to slow. an offline backup is not automatic and only current the moment i run it. a combination of both is more complex. an always synced full backup is difficult to achieve. it is possible when the only places where i use the laptop are at home and at the office. as soon as i add traveling and using expensive mobile data my backup becomes unreliable or to expensive to maintain or restore. in other words, even if i have a full backup, i can't always rely on it.

BackBlaze at $7/month is too expensive?

And when you are traveling you don’t keep your important documents backed up? What happens if your SSD goes bad?

And if a restore would be inconvenient when you are traveling, getting a new laptop and hypothetically connecting your SAD wouldn’t be?

the data storage alone is not the issue. the cost of accessing that data is. not every place has unlimited fast internet that would allow you to download that much data without problems.

with a replaceable SSD i can (and in fact just did a few weeks ago) take the SSD from the old laptop and put it into the new one. took me 5 minutes.

restoring all that data from the cloud would have cost me a few hundred dollars in mobile data fees. or several weeks of visiting a restaurant which has free data, but would also have racked up a restaurant bill not to mention the time that would have been taken away from working.

With BackBlaze you can have them ship you your data on a hard drive. They charge you for the hard drive. But if you send the hard drive, they refund your money.

backblaze doesn't support linux or any kind of unix at all, which makes that a non-starter. and i could not find which countries they can ship to, but i am pretty sure they won't be able to ship to china without me having to pay import tax on the disk and cost of shipping back. and i wonder if they can even ship worldwide. i also have to install their proprietary software on my computer which means that despite encryption i have to trust them with my data. i'd rather not.

so sure, there are ways to get around the limitations of a soldered SSD, but so far i have not seen any that are worth the benefit of a few grams saved in the weight of my laptop. because that is what we are arguing about here.

backups are good, and everyone should have one, and they are certainly covering several failure modes regardless of whether the SSD is soldered or not. but an unsoldered SSD also covers a few failure modes that a backup doesn't cover. at the cost of a few grams of extra weight. my goal is to maximize the recovery options. so i have backups and a replaceable SSD.

the ultimate solution would be a laptop that supports two SSDs so i can run a raid mirror like my desktop. one of those SSDs could even be soldered in that case.

That’s fair.

But soldered versus non-soldered is a secondary issue to you not having up to date backups somewhere that are easily accessible.

But even then there are backup solutions for Linux that backup to S3 and S3 Glacier is cheap. I have 3TB and my AWS bill is $4 a month.

And “RAID is not backup”

i do have a cloud backup. as i said the cost of that itself is not the issue. the cost of accessing it is. the raid protects against the "dead SSD" failure mode.

if you have a backup but can't rely on it, is it really a backup?

it's reliable in the sense that the data is there and won't get lost, and i can always access it to download bits and pieces if i need them. it is not reliable in the sense that i could always do a full restore from it without cost. having an unsoldered SSD reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the risk of me having to do a costly full restore from that backup.

The nice thing about picking up older laptops is that the upgraded models don't really hold as much extra value compared to what they cost new so if you keep looking you can get a pretty maxed out machine for not a lot more than the more common low-end ones.

Do you work 14 hours in a row?

I travel for work not as much as I use to. But a full day on and off planes with layovers can turn into 14 hour days.

And that 14 hours turns into 8 going back and forth between conference rooms with it powering a USB C portable monitor which is getting power and video from one USB C cord.

not the same person, but i don't. however my laptop for sure does because even when i am not working it is used as a communication and entertainment device. and when traveling those hours go by fast. unfortunately battery run time is one of the issues that linux hasn't cracked yet. i wish i could get 14 hours of battery time out of my laptop

I would so gladly sacrifice lightweight for power, battery, reparability, or price.

Same with my phone.

I don't think there is any middle ground left between thin and portable and all soldered and replaceable components and "transportable" instead of "portable".

Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but with upgradeable components.

Have you considered a Framework laptop? They have 13-inch and 16-inch models and are designed to be upgraded.

https://frame.work/

Do they have 15 hour battery life, run cool and silent like my MacBook Air?

The Framework laptop has way too many compromises

https://www.theverge.com/24185827/framework-laptop-16-six-mo...

I have the 16” Framework model and I bought it as a replacement for my personal 2019 Macbook Pro 16 after the Macbook screen died last year. Apple wanted more than $700 for a replacement screen. After 17 years of owning Powerbooks and Macbooks, I decided to ditch Apple and instead buy a laptop that I could repair and upgrade easily. I’d compare Framework models to the Macbook Pro in terms of battery life and performance. The battery life and performance of new Framework builds don’t quite match the stats for new Macbook Pro models but the tradeoff is that the Framework models are less expensive, upgradeable, and very closely resemble the portability of a Macbook Pro.

They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.

You realize that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement right? Everything you are stating as a negative has been a solved problem for four years.

Portability in terms of weight it might be close. But according to the reviews I’ve seen they run hot and loud.

Because of timing and layovers, I spent an entire day going from ATL-LAX-SJC. Not having to worry about battery life and actually being able to use it on my lap without having to worry about infertility from the heat was a godsend.

> Other than an incredibly annoying habit of failing to sleep when its discrete GPU is awake,

I don't think we can blame Framework for that on their own, Microsoft must surely have a contribution to this.

But still, after getting used to apple's offerings I don't think I'd like a laptop where you need to check if it actually went to sleep instead of just closing the lid and moving along.

> They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.

Bigger is fine to a point. Less battery life, same. But the heat and noise when you have alternatives that don't have the problem...

Sure, when it's switched off, which is the only way you're getting 15 hours of battery life from a Macbook air.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/macbooks/apple-macbook-a...

> The fact that the battery lasted over 14 hours on a single charge in our battery life tests again shows just how good the 13-inch MacBook Air is for people who want a compact laptop they can use almost anywhere.

There are always going to be tradeoffs. For me, on both my 13 (11th Gen Intel) and 16 (AMD), the battery lasts long enough ("a few hours", depending on workload), and they run cool and quiet enough (again, depending on workload). Still performant, still portable, more flexible than any other laptop I've ever owned.

Assuming Framework remains solvent and doesn't change the physical layout of their motherboards, I don't anticipate ever needing to buy another laptop.

Hah, I was going to say they're an US only thing but I opened their web site and they gave me localized pricing this time.

Ofc, it's easy to run prices through a converter so I wonder where they ship from and where the warranty is located...

They've been offering their products in an ever expanding number of countries:

https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...

In terms of shipping, they have multiple warehouses around the world.

sadly, i'd prefer a size in the middle, a bit larger than 13.5 inch. also, i really need a trackpoint and dedicated mouse buttons, as i keep triggering the touchpad accidentally, so i have to disable at least the tap options, if not the whole touchpad alltogether. if framework would add some options there i'd consider it.

> as i keep triggering the touchpad accidentally

That's the miracle with apple's OS. And I say OS because I'm sure it filters out accidental input in software. The trackpad is made by whoever makes them for the x86 laptops too, but I really can't remember when it registered a touch when I didn't want it.

(I'm sure it happens occasionally, but not enough to be worth keeping track of.)

I really, really, really wanted to like Framework, but for the type of work I do with a laptop (GPU / CPU / RAM intensive video editing) I can literally get a laptop with twice the performance of a Framework laptop for half the price. Not to mention Framework laptops only display option is a (admittedly decent) IPS panel, when miniled and OLED panels are becoming increasingly commonplace on devices that cost less and offer better performance. They have also not come out with a new GPU module since launch, and their current GPU offering is woefully under powered, especially given it's absolutely ludicrous $550 USD price tag and there are seemingly no plans for any more powerful GPU modules in the future. I love the idea of a repairable / upgradeable laptop, but I really can't justify spending twice as much for half the power just for the thus far unrealized promise of future potential.

Before Framework there wasn't a good option if you did anything more than office work. Even Framework's offerings aren't powerful enough in many ways.

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