Even in my many years of having desktop PC's, I think I've only once upgraded RAM separately and never upgraded the CPU without replacing the motherboard.
If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear.
These new products are crap, to be honest.
Sandy Bridge era ThinkPads accepted 16GB. How long ago was that? Is it 10 years already? Granted, it was total, not per slot. Wasn't officially supported, but it worked. Tried personally, memtest passed, all good. IIRC W520 even took 32GB(4x8GB). Ten years of progress and ... still no progress. Who even buys this crap?
>If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear.
Somewhat agree with you on this point. Safe to say that if RAM works now, it will keep working. Test it after buying and you should be good. You can't scavenge soldered RAM when the device fails though.
This applies to normies too. I mean, it's nice to have (web/g/hot)mail, slack, skype, messenger, element, discord open in the background while surfing the web and I doubt that 16GB will be enough for long.
What if I want to run photoshop and illustrator at the same time? Heaven forbid, they rewrite those power tools to run on electron.
As someone who splits his work between a 64GB workstation and a 16GB ultraportable, there are a ton of use cases where 16GB is a perfectly acceptable amount of memory. That said, 32GB of soldered memory is feasible in a ultra-portable these days so it would be nice for Lenovo to get with the times.
Only for doing Docker/Kubernetes at the coffee shop, from my point of view.
Similarly developing mobile apps is more convenient on a laptop as one can interact with an emulator with proper touch input. But then ide and emulators take memory.
On the other hand developing a web-related code on a laptop locally can be even harmful, as opposite to using ssh or remote extension in vscode. Things are too fast locally and one may become aware of performance problems only after fixing those requires a big refactoring.
So yeah, not being able to repair/upgrade the RAM sucks balls. But if you can live without it, soldered LPDDR4X sucks less battery power and lets especially the integrated GPU do its best work. For the kind of device they're selling, it sort of seems like the right choice.
It does make sense for some forms, but look at all the offerings of Lenovo, especially for home users - even the bigger laptops all feature soldered RAM (or even the weirder combination of soldered RAM + 1 DIMM slot at a more expensive price!).
(Then there's the other factor - unless we force them to explore upgradability in such form factors, they will continue to avoid doing so because the current option is more profitable for them).
From a consumer point of view, soldering RAM / SSD / CPU etc. to prevent easy upgrades and make it very difficult to repair takes away control from consumers on how they want to use their device. It leaves you vulnerable to price gauging and pigeon-holes your device to specific limited use-cases only (for e.g. a new recent trend now with home users is to create a "RAM disk" for heavy torrenting, to reduce the wear and tear on the SSD or HDD - obviously with limited non-upgradeable memory that 4 or 8 GB RAM will no longer be seem sufficient and even though your machine is more than capable, your options are now limited to an expensive upgrade by changing the whole motherboard with a bigger capacity of soldered RAM or buy a newer device with more RAM, hopefully upgradeable this time). Apple is a great example of the price gauging that happens to consumers when you have to depend on them for more RAM or SSD "upgrades option" when you are buying a new system.
Most of the common disparage against my post here is that 4 / 8 GB is more than enough (yeah, just like 640k was during its time /s). Perhaps most have forgotten that one of Microsoft's business model is to sell their OS bundled with the machines (OEM license). Thus, Microsoft obviously has a selfish interest to ensure the OEM's well being (which is obviously in selling more devices for more profit). And so they help them by making their OS more and more resource intensive, thus forcing its users to consider upgrading their hardware (which with soldered parts now means buying a new device). Ofcourse, hardware has outpaced software in the last decade, and with Microsoft also considering a change in its business model (renting softwares), we haven't noticed this trend in the last decade. But that's another threat we consumers have to live with.
I used to have a client who got into a legal tussle, and at one point they called in various key staff to impound their disc drives to archive possible evidence. How do you do that if the SSD is permanently soldered in place, and can't even be readily attached to another machine for cloning or analysis?
I'd also imagine difficulties with end-of-life disposal; you can't just shred the discs and sell the rest for refurbishing or donate them for PR/tax write offs anymore.
And just because you have replaceable parts, and the option to buy from elsewhere, doesn't mean the principle of caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") goes away.
Ultimately it's all about balancing the profits of the company vs the rights of the consumers. While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights.
Even so, laptop manufacturers have brand reputations to protect and don't want customers blaming them for issues that are outside of their control. It's not just a question of who's legally responsible or whether they're obliged to provide support.
There's also the electrical engineering perspective on this. In a low power device, sending high frequency signals over contact-based electrical connections is something you want to avoid if at all possible.
>While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights.
For the vast majority of consumers there is no compromise. Soldering the RAM is just better, period. (The vast majority of consumers never upgrade their RAM, and RAM sticks coming loose is a surprisingly common failure mode.)
I've recently purchased a used T530, which was the last model to feature a removable battery, removable CPU, unsoldered RAM, etc etc(for the pedants - yes, later models still had some of these features, but none of them had all of them). It's a fantastic machine that runs everyday tasks without a hitch and with having the option to easily repair it I hope it will last at least another 10 years. The only disadvantage I have compared to the newer T490 model that I use is that it's about 1kg heavier.
I think it's reasonable that some consumers would prefer a lighter and thinner machine, even if that includes sacrificing modularity/repairibility, but I doubt those make up the majority and most are just apathetic and willing to go the way of disposable consumerism that corporations are pushing to drive profits further.
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.
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.
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.
Even with AM4 based CPU, I'm under the impression that recent CPUs cannot always use old mothercards.
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.
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.
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.
Even if you follow along models with a similar physical footprint as each series has incrementally shrunk over generations (say, compare the 2020 T14 to the t440s).
I've had enough Thinkpads that I lost counter over the years but my next laptop will be of another brand.
Hopefully I won't need a new one until one of the more open alternatives come with a decent 13-14.5" model with 2k display.
To me, using a trackpad or having to carry a mouse around when trackpoints exist would be a massive downgrade in comfort and usability, comparable to e.g. not having a battery.
Thus, as trackpoint uptake from other brands is almost nonexistent, I'll swallow whatever crappy decision Lenovo comes up with in new laptops. They would have to do something exaggeratedly egregious (no battery? no USB ports? That kind of thing) for me to even consider the competition.
It's sad, but as bad as it is that Lenovo makes these changes, to me it's even worse that other brands don't even bother to offer a TrackPoint in at least some of their lineup, considering that it takes negligible space and the inconvenience for people who don't use it is near zero.
Add to that the braindead half-size arrow key design of most models (often paired with a loss of Home/End/PgUp/PgDown keys, thanks a ton Apple) and already there's a comfortable gap between ThinkPads and most other laptops. HP seems to be an exception here, and you'll have to go larger than the 12"/13" range to even find any options there.
I have been keeping an eye out for options of operating the pinter device from a mech without having to ove from the home row.
There are rotary encoders, sensors you can put on the keyboard itself if you make it small and mobile enough, I think I saw something trackpoint-like at some point as well, but nothing fundamental so far.
I don't want to repair my device. I don't want to upgrade my RAM, I want websites, OS and apps not to bloat. There is no reason that Facebook and Twitter don't load instantly and are extremely snappy other than that they can.
If you want upgradeable machines, buy a desktop. You gave up most of the upgradeabliity when you brought a laptop.
I don't know what model of ThinkPad you have, but on most of them for at least the last 10 years, if the RAM is the right type it will work.
ThinkPads traditionally have had PSREF and datasheets that specify the max RAM based on the modules available when they were released. But generally they will also work with larger memory modules of the same type. They just don't list them because they weren't available for testing at the time.
Which ThinkPad model do you have? Perhaps it is one that I or someone else may be familiar with.
https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/lenovo/thinkp...
So I don't know, that may well be the limit. OTOH, if there a larger compatible module from another manufacturer, it wouldn't surprise me if it just worked. Lenovo generally doesn't put arbitrary restrictions on RAM size.
Look at "Memory specification" part.
More consumers need to be made aware of this and everyone should boycott such products. Especially for the price they are paying ($1000+ for this model). If we just give in without protesting about it we are just giving up our rights to repair our devices.