Side note: integrated batteries are still replaceable if you're handy. (Though not quickly swappable like you're suggesting for more energy capacity over a single day!)

On the MacBook Pro I'm typing on right now, I replaced my the battery myself a few months ago. It took about an hour including a thorough cleaning of the laptop internals and I documented it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAYFDDxUxHA . That's still 59.9 minutes longer than it would have taken if had a modular battery, but about the same price in dollars. And a fun little weekend project.

Where did you get your replacement battery from? I was looking into replacing my battery, and my options for sourcing the part appear to be Amazon or iFixIt. The former’s reviews are show a number of people complaining that the part they received was of poor quality and barely held a charge (although this might be a vocal minority? Hard to tell). The latter is almost the price of just getting Apple to do it in the country I reside. What route did you take?

I've replaced my 2012 MBA battery a couple times now. Totally worth the ~$50 and 10 minutes it takes. Damn thing is a personal workhorse 8 years later.

Something I discovered the other day, while looking for a high-wattage Dell USB C adapter to use with my older XPS 15 (which came with just a old-school charger, so it doesn't get full juice out of most other USB C ones) is that the new 130W Dell USB-C charger only shows up as 90W on an older one like mine.

Looking around, stuff like this isn't uncommon. Apparently a lot of HP's won't work with non-HP USB C chargers at all, for instance.

That's probably because USB c only goes up to 100w for power delivery. Anything higher must be manufacturer specific, so I guess dell hasn't provided any updates for thee older xps to understand the new charger's protocol thing. Not great, but probably not malicious.

I had a xps 15 with 130w charger, and used it with the dell usb-c/thunderbolt docks (wd15/tb16). The wd15 had a 130/180 watt power supply option, after subtracting for the dock's power usage they were specified to provide 90/130w to the laptop. I had the 130 watt wd15 and it still worked perfectly with the laptop. The laptop never discharged while connected (maybe if you spend hours compiling a big project on 8 cores while playing games with the nvidia card?). But I assume it would charge slower/not at all if under heavy load. And the bios warning for a lower power adapter can be disabled.

It should be capable of taking 130w over the USB c port; dell explicitly specifies that it should be used with the 180/240w wd15/tb16 docks which provide 130w to the laptop. XPS 15 9560 iirc.

I guess it's possible to build something similar to this, but for Dell: https://www.tindie.com/products/mikepdiy/lenovo-charging-por...

Yep, I've worked from coffee shops and in trans-European trains where I couldn't get a power lead. No matter, a 25,000 mAh battery is sure to get you through the day. USB-C charging is absolutely fantastic.

Or do something like charge one phone from another.