Hacker News Reader

Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't know what is it with these laptop manufacturers that refuse to offer the 16GB RAM upgrade option. Since the RAM is soldered on, it practically forces me to buy a Mac to get enough of it... and the actuall chips don't use more space.

What gives?!

View on HN

Broadwell-U supports up to 2 channels with an 8GB DIMM per channel.[1] For configurations up to 8GB, you only need to run traces for one channel. Supporting 16GB requires more design work (need to run twice as many traces) and wastes logic board space on lower-RAM configs. Apparently, Lenovo decided the trade-off wasn't worth it.

1. http://ark.intel.com/products/85212

Edit: If the 2015 X1 Carbon is dual-channel, I'm not sure why Lenovo would lack a 16GB option. I guess mounting twice as many RAM chips could hit space constraints.

The article linked up top claims that Lenovo has run two sets of traces - the 8Gb is dual, not single channel.

Ah thanks, that makes sense actually.

It's market segmentation [1].

Basically, the problem the vendor has when selling a product with a large appeal is that they want to sell it at the highest price the buyer will bear. If portion A of the buyers budgeted $100, and portion B of the buyers budgeted $150 for your gizmo, how do you price your gizmo to extract maximum value from the buyers from A and B? If you sell it for $150, A won't buy. If you sell for $100, you're missing out on $50 from B.

The solution is to make minor modifications to your product to sell the Basic version to A for $100, and the Premium version to B for $150. If you've done your manufacturing right, the cost of one over the other is minimal, and you're getting the maximum value from both portions of buyers-- I mean market segments. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation

And to expand on your your issue with the availability of 16GB models... you represent a small enough niche at this stage that it's not worth Lenovo's effort to design and source parts to accomodate your segment.

But I can't buy any small laptop / ultrabook from Lenovo (or most other manufacturers) with 16GB at all, no matter the money.

Calling it segmentation would make sense if I could actually give a boatload of money to buy something that includes it. Getting a huge W workstation really isn't an alternative.

Look for a used X230, it supports 16GB and an ExpressCard slot.

Those have 1366*768 displays, and that's just sad.

Otherwise it's great laptop.

1920x1080 IPS is available as an option.

Not true unfortunately. I've looked into it quite a bit.

You can buy an x250 with a full HD display, and it accepts a 16 GB DIMM. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X250-Ultrabook-... https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB-... https://squareup.com/market/MemphisElectronicRetail/imm-g-d-...

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x250/...

shows

12.5" FHD (1920x1080) IPS Display 400nit, WWAN

16GB PC3-12800 DDR3L (1 SoDIMM)

My Lenovo S540 came with 16gb ram plus SSD and 1920 x 1080 resolution, it's pretty damn small (I've travelled Europe to the States several times with it in hand luggage easily).

If the size of a market segment is 0 because no-one sells to it, then no-one knows how big it is.

Apple sells to it with the 13" MBP, which you can get with 16GB RAM as a BTO upgrade. I doubt that many people opt for it, but it's not a non-existent market.

I didn't explain my point very well. What I was trying to say was how can "laptop manufacturers that refuse to offer the 16GB RAM upgrade option" (as izacus put it) be considered market segmentation (as AceJohnny2 said in his reply to izacus). It's not a segment to those that don't sell anything to them, and because they don't sell to them, they have no (first-hand) data on how big that segment might be if they were to sell to it.

I refuse to buy any laptop with less than 16GB of RAM. Spent almost 1 year searching for a laptop to buy. Had to buy a 14" ASUS-RoG G46VW[0] and replace the screen for a 1920x1080 one.

[0] http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/G46VW/

A 2 second google search would show you that the market segment is not 0.

I feel you, I had to get 32GB which left me with little options: http://www.asus.com/us/site/g-series/G751/

Take a look at HP Zbook and Dell Precision series, too. Business class support and excellent hardware design.

I bought a Lenovo W530 just so I could get enough ram. 16gb isn't enough for me (I run a lot of VMs and high memory applications), so I wanted a laptop with swappable memory. I now have 23gb of ram. I believe the system supports up to 36gb.

Don't know if there are good, but I think it's a better options than Macs: http://www.metabox.com.au/

Just found them because I want a laptop without a webcam...

From reading the reviews, these things are basically tupperware with computer components in it. Do not buy.

They use 'barebones' Clevo shells, which are then configured by different vendors.

I have a laptop based on W230SD and I'm very happy with it. It contains a proper i7, not the underpowered U model and also has a 3k screen, 2x mSATA slots and is easily upgradable in a 13.3" chassis.

Not may people realise just how underpowered the U processors are for any real CPU intensive work. 4xxxU i7 processors are on a par with 2xxxx mobile processors.

You sacrafice ultrabook thinness and some battery life, but the return is a very powerful, cheap, upgradable laptop.

Thanks for the comment, it was what I searched at the time.

Thank you for your advice!

With Thinkpad X250 you can select 16GB RAM option.

Are you sure? All my searches led me to 8GB max.

EDIT: aha, seems like a company called Intelligent Memory makes a single 16GB module [1] that works with X250.

[1]: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/now-16gb-ddr3-module...

If you go here: http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x250/...

You can select a 16Gb option for the X250. It does say "single SODIMM" though, which presumably means single channel memory => a very expensive SODIMM & sub-par performance compared to a dual channel equivalent.

That doesn't seem available in all stores. The 16GB option is not available on the US store.

Nope: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x250/...

> Memory: Up to 8GB (1 DIMM), DDR3L-1600 PC3-12800 1600 MHz

Toshiba and Pixel have 16 GB.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com