In a universe where you want high-performance energy efficient RAM. Premium ultracompact laptops have long moved to LPDDR which is both faster and consumes significantly less energy than regular modular DDR. And LPDDR does not come in DIMMs. And then you have Apple who are using custom package technology with custom RAM chips to cut down RAM power consumption to under one watt active, delivering close to 20 hours battery. You simply can’t have this with socketed RAM. Modularity is not a free lunch, as much as some people like to pretend.
You make it sound like a prerequisite. I'm pretty sure the reason LPDDR is Low Power is not due to (currently) being unavailable in socketed modules - that would seem to be a side-effect of the original target market (smart phones).
They are just some BGA packages, I see no reason they couldn't be soldered onto a board with a socket. If you scan through the features that make LPDDR LP, they have nothing to do with sockets, or anything affecting sockets: lower operating voltage, more power states, partial refreshing etc:
I think the number of pins is a practical limitation. Current DDR DIMMs use 260-280 pins if I remember correctly, while an average LPDDR4X BGA package is 400 balls or higher. Apple uses chips with 877 balls. It is definitely possible to design modular RAM with high-pinout, but would it be economically feasible?
As an example, even moving away from edge-connectors (which are just a non-starter for 800+ pins) Samtec's highest-density high-speed connector, the NovaRay line [0] advertises 224 signals per square inch, so an 800 pin module would require 4 square inches of connector space alone, not to mention making the system PCB assembly thicker and compromising on speed, power and thermals.
[0] https://www.samtec.com/connectors/high-speed-board-to-board/...
Not to mention that socketting parts reduces your production yield over SMT, increases your assembly cost, and cuts reliability (it's fine on a desktop because you almost never move your desktop, and there's usually a big thermal assembly bolted on top).
One possible other compromise could be soldered LPDDR RAM, but with a DIMM expansion slot for DDR as well. I wonder whether the DDR could be switched off and the baseline power draw eliminated if the RAM usage was below needing it.
The desktop version of LPDDR4 is there, it's just called DDR5.
That said, I don't know that RAM chips are the hill I want to die on, anyway. Could we get to a better place if we dispensed with the whole, "just the one big motherboard," design, and looked to the old backplane-style physical layouts? Then you could have a module that contains the CPU and RAM and suchlike all in a single package, and move other things that may not want to be quite as tightly integrated off to another package.
I definitely remember ordering a replacement headphone socket board for an old MacBook and just putting it in myself, and I've done similar with, eg, the connector port board on a PS4 controller.
But I guess this is one of the hazards of Apple having their AppleCare programme— they can do the math and calculate that saving a dollar on the cost of making and mounting and connecting that extra component still makes them money even if they have to eat the occasional full motherboard in the first three years of ownership.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Logic+Board...
You can see the ports still in place after the motherboard has been removed.
If you design to a socketed DIMM package, you actually have two trace domains, the CPU to the socket, and the socket to the RAM chips. For that to be reliable, you have to adhere to standards for DIMM (or SODIMM) so that multiple manufacturers can build compliant interchangeable parts.
If you solder the chips down to the main board directly, you only have once domain for the traces, CPU directly to RAM. At that point you can tweak the design for several goals, speed, power, etc.. And you can tune the drive strength on the signalling the same.
That is how you end up with more efficient soldered designs over socketed designs.
DDR5 has more roots in the LPDDR4 than in the regular DDR4.
Edit: I guess to clarify, the plausibility challenge is that whether or not it is theoretically possible, the platform owner (Intel, AMD, etc) or the memory vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) are unlikely to support the lark.
Like it or not, repairable/upgradable laptops are a thing of the past. There’s just not component support or sufficient market demand to make the parts removable anymore.
Laptops also make up a major component of that still very alive market so no, I disagree that there is not enough market demand for having laptops that can be repaired or upgraded. It's the industry themselves that have worked to hamper the right of repair while giving nebulous pseudo-technical rationalizations for it.
Given the option between thicker w/ a bit more battery life or thinner and lighter, consumers are choosing thinner and lighter.
> ...consumers are choosing thinner and lighter.
A) I'm guessing actually lighter more than thinner.
B) Are consumers really clamouring all that intensely for "Thinner! Thinner!", or is that a) because that's all that's offered, and b) the relentless hype from manufacturers -- above all, bendy phone maker Apple -- amplified by rarely-critical media?
For instance, in a iPhone 11, the battery occupies less than half of the surface of the phone[1]. On a Macbook pro, it's about the same.[2] [1] see this ifixit video if you want to see it by yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feyqwf3cYtw&t=161s
[2] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/noPvQ2CLs1jptX2p.hug... You can see that the motherboard is much, much bigger than a smartphone.
It doesn't matter that the rest of the form factor is larger: there's not a lot of empty space in these, so a larger main board will still mean a larger and heavier device.
Still bigger than a smartphone (it occupies the entire width of the laptop (when counting the heatsink, 2/3 of the width otherwise), and around one quarter of the whole area).
Also, your original sentence was
> Modern laptop motherboards can easily be about the size of a cell phone.
Here we see that the one and only best laptop in this regard comes close to the cell-phone-sized motherboard. That's far from what “modern laptop can easily be” means. Most laptops sold today have a much bigger motherboard than this.
(BTW, as much as I'd like to see non x86 laptops going mainstream, software compatibility is huge issue for an ecosystem as diverse as the Windows one (and Roseta 2 being too much of a coinflip isn't encouraging…), we might get there at some point, put it's gonna be slow and painful.)
Or, instead of soldering chips, make little LGA slots for the individual chips. I can't imagine the tiny added resistance from an extra millimeter of wire and pin surface contact would impact much of anything and even if it does, I'd rather take that than have no options when the next Windows update makes my machine a paperweight (obviously exaggerating, but it's getting there).
But the majority of people couldn't give a toss about how much of their laptop ends up in a landfill. They're using paper/glass straws, you see.
Perhaps electronics landfills should be local again.
Hold on. This is true for excessive modularity.
Yet, most of the time, lack of modularity (e.g. bundling) creates lock-in reducing customer's choice and ultimately increasing prices.
When PCs became standardized ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible ) prices dropped incredibly.
Literally - 100Wh batteries are maximum you can take on planes
Strangely, the rule comes from ICAO.
Some countries too follow the 160wh standard, but most airlines simply don't bother enforcing anything, but the lowest common denominator.
a hand grenade typically releases 250kJ, or about 70Wh
you're asking for the equivalent of 1.5 grenades in your lap :)
And don't get me started on flour, not only it stores a ton of energy (50 grenades per kg) but it's also highly explosive! [1]
[1]: (only with the right air to flour ratio of course, but accident happen every once in a while: https://www.grupa-wolff.com/a-tragic-flour-explosion/)
The flour conditions of exploding are far more difficult to achieve than a LiIon battery conditions - orders of magnitude difference.
Neither does a NiMH battery. There's no link between vulnerability to external damage and ability to power a laptop.
In fact, there's no fundamental reason why we couldn't run our laptop on chocolate[1], just that it's very far away from current technology.
vs
A grenade releasing that as KINETIC energy into YOUR FACE over the span of LESS THAN A MILLISECOND and protected by a spring and a keychain ring.
Even if a lithium battery of that size experienced a critical failure right in your lap, you'd get away with a few scars and some serious but treatable burns. And I've only heard of one commercial product in the last 15 years that had serial critical battery failures...
Hopefully your laptop and hand grenade have radically different power discharge profiles.
Li battery fires are not unheard of, unfortunately, so the profiles may start to resemble sometimes.
Next, let's calculate the energy input required to heat a small cup of coffee and compare that to a hand grenade. (Hint: The coffee wins easily.) I wonder how many hand grenade equivalents a 10 minute lukewarm shower equates to?
Preferably yelling 'fire in the hole!' each time.
No. If it starts to smoke, you commit & push --force, then you throw it away.
FWIW, the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity systematically explores the tradeoffs.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/...
Written by two economists, it's the only prescriptive definition of architecture that I've managed to find. Influenced me deeply.
Their core contribution is modeling the options with net present value (NPV) to remove the guess work.
--
Tangentially...
They also explain the dependency structure matrix (DSM), a tool for modeling and visualizing architectures.
One big takeaway for me was their explanation of "complexity catastrophe". The crossover point when the cost of change exceeds the benefit. A metaphor superior to most interpretations of "technical debt", IMHO.
So when you have a DSM, these kinds of problems pop out, can't be ignored.
In the DDR5 timeframe, there is less of a power delta as well between DDR5 and LPDDR5.
And even if the DIMM design (it's more than just a slot) doesn't make sense anymore, we could easily make a new "dumb" memory slot standard that would allow us to swap out the chips directly - like we have for CPUs.
You could, but it would take up a lot of space, given the higher pin count, and would most likely increase power consumption.
There is certainly some impact to using DDR4 instead of LPDDR4, but we believe it is still the better choice for most consumers by allowing for greater product longevity at lower cost.
The only thing that really changes between DIMM and soldered on is a somewhat increased trace length. That accounts only for a very small increase in power.
What are you basing this statement on?
- Socketed RAM is limited by the number of pins, DDR SO-DIMM for example has 2-3x fewer pins than your average LPDDR4X module. Having more pins helps running the chips on lower power as it was explained to me by an engineer (something to do with grounding and lower voltage, I am not really sure how it works but I trust the guy)
- Socketed RAM is a least common denominator, there will inevitably be some variance between different modules, which leaves you with less possibilities for optimizing the electrical connection
- Current LPDDR is much more sophisticated than regular DDR, the protocol is different etc. So you can't just stick LPDDR chips on a DDR SO-DIMM and expect it to work
I am sure one could design a modular system based on LPDDR, but the question is whether such system would be feasible. It would be limited to premium laptops only (as modular system would take too much space in a smartphone), it would probably need a higher pinout (which would mean a complex mounting bracket of some sort) and it would require laptop manufacturers to agree on a certain standard.
There are other considerations as well, especially if one wants to break the current performance boundaries. For example, Intel has announced that they will integrate HBM with their upcoming Xeons. How do you intend to make that socketable, that's 2048-bit memory bus. Or consider Apple's new in-house SoCs. By mounting RAM directly onto the package substrate they can potentially deliver high-bandwidth RAM in an energy efficient package without increasing the cost and the complexity of the mainboard. E.g. their upcoming hardware is widely expected to use 256-bit RAM, something that has so far been reserved for workstations. As you make the interface wider and wider, modularity becomes more and more expensive. Why don't GPU's offer modular RAM for example?
It's not physically impossible to make DIMMs with LPDDR4, just nobody really wanted to come with a standard.
I don't think this is the driver of these decisions per se, but it is undeniably a bonus for the manufacturer; non-upgradable devices become obsolete faster, necessitating new replacements.
But it wasn't an artificial limitation. In practice, once larger capacity memory became available with the same technology and form factor, it would work fine. I have upgraded several ThinkPads with memory beyond what the original datasheets said was possible.
The same CPUs that have a socket equivalent for desktops. It's a travesty.
That said, manufacturers have huge ambition to not allow for modular design.
You are cherry-picking an example that fits only a specific category of laptops.
Even so, CPU and RAM could be bundled together into a socketed cartridge that is easy to upgrade.
The real reason is all about planned obsolescence and profit margins.
It only somewhat matters for power consumption in sleep mode when the RAM is the only component being powered, but at least on Windows that’s solvable with a fast SSD and hibernation.
VRAM consumes substantial power to deliver that performance. On many GPUs, VRAM chips are actively cooled. System RAM doesn’t even need passive heatsinks, uses too little electricity to care.
Just really blew my mind how much heat the VRAM contributed.
Modular laptops, phones, etc.. will be always penalized in terms of either performance or battery life for a given size.
[Citation needed], there is no real electrical engineering reason why you couldn't.
Where there's a will there's a way. The problem is there's no will.
"Typical Power Consumption of PC Components - Power Draw in Watts" https://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compo...
Another point is stuff that is soldered in is a lot more reliable as a whole. Amazing how many old machines can be resurrected by reseating the RAM.
Really I'm on the fence. I'm sitting here on a 16Gb M1 MBA also.
Now what I really want to see is replaceable USB-C ports. Those have a massive repair and replacement risk over the normal lifetime of a laptop. Lenovo / Dell etc solder them directly to the motherboard. One bad knock and the whole thing goes in the trash. At least Apple stick them on a daughterboard.
I don't need a top-of-the-line i7 CPU (the improvement when going from e.g. an i5 usually isn't enough to really matter), and the premium you pay isn't negligible. On the other hand, the lower-end models that don't splurge on an i7 and come with a mid-range CPU such as an i5 instead still often have only 8 GB of RAM. That's definitely not future-proof or even present-proof for a laptop that otherwise has mid-range specs in terms of performance.
It seems ridiculous that you have to either pay for a top-of-the-line model or be stuck with sub-par RAM for the entire lifetime of the device.
Corporations will of course happily buy the higher-end model for their developers, so this probably isn't a problem in an actual corporate environment.
There are four low-power single thread cores. They do grunt work at high efficiency but low capability.
There are three medium-power single thread cores. They suck up more electricity when in use but can get tasks that the user cares about accomplished, and sleep all the time that the phone is not running the UI.
Then there is one high-power single thread core, which is just a turbo-speed variant of the medium cores. That's the one that wakes up for user interaction.
Of course, if you can scale power-consumption and computing together, you would just make an 8-core high-power chip and sleep and throttle on demand -- or, in-between, Apple's M1, which has four low and four high cores.
https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-teases-alder-lake-cpus-...
I'm not even asking for upgradeable CPUs or GPUs. Those could be a bit complicated on laptops due to chipset compatibility, power and thermal design issues, etc. But RAM is relatively cheap, can be made relatively easy to replace, and is a common thing to run low on. The same pretty much goes for storage. It seems weird and counter-productive to have components like that be soldered in and non-replaceable even by a professional.
In Apple's case, it simply seems like an upsell. They must have enough volume to sell lower spec, large storage capacity Macbook Airs at stores, or online.
For transparency I actually love the idea behind the Framework laptop, I've been hyped since January!
If the internal USB C ports get damaged, presumably the device can be opened and repaired.
This is the least Appley thing I’ve heard recently. Making everything as small as possible with every single trade off that entails is their style. I say that as a hardline Mac user.
My next phone was the Fairphone 2. I replaced the battery a few times over it's lifetime and upgraded the camera. I bought the Fairphone 3 as soon as it came out (and I'm still using it happily). My wife switched to the FP3 shortly afterwards. We both bought the camera upgrade and spare battery.
1: https://www.ifixit.com/News/30845/your-phone-is-never-waterp...
It's a pleasant nice to have if it is waterproof.
What we can hope for is that SSD acts more like RAM. Maybe it could have a decent sized RAM chip that the OS can dedicate as cache for virtual memory. There’s a chance that at least some hardware manufacturers will continue to allow for replaceable SSDs.
Apple's? And Dell's? And Lenovo's? And every other electronics manufacturare who benefits form planned obsolescence and selling more hardware.
Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry.
>It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires.
Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?
> Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry.
While that's true, that doesn't mean it should be that way. Having everyone buy a new device whenever they need to upgrade makes business sense for device vendors but IMO we definitely shouldn't encourage regularly tossing out good hardware. Not with the ecological costs of new electronics.
We don't need to turn everyone into a tech enthusiast or a computer service person. But if part replacements and upgrades were possible and people knew about it, a local shop or someone else could do the job for them.
> Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle.
The original comparison to cars might have been unfortunate (as usual), and you may be right that things aren't that different with cars. But again, things being in a certain way with cars doesn't mean that's how they should be with other devices. Or with cars, necessarily, but I don't know much about those so I'm not going to argue about that.
That goes for everything though, most people don't know how a car works, yet you can replace every single component. The same goes for desktop computers and household appliances.
This has been the norm across many technical devices that have become part of everyday life. How many regular users know how a radio works? The point is that regardless of how technical they are, these devices have remained repairable by anyone who is so inclined.
The movement to proprietize basic maintenance on the part of manufacturers is purely profit driven, and is carried out at the expense of consumers, the environment, and overall innovation.
One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
Is this a regional thing? In Germany changing a tire is part of the "theory" classes. It's also fairly straightforward.
Changing oil on the other hand is illegal except in places with special drainage systems (like gas stations) because of the risk of environmental damage from spills, so it's not generally something you can do yourself. This restriction also goes for washing your car I think but some gas stations have places where you can wash your car if you don't want to use a car wash.
Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
And where did I say that reparability must be forbidden?
I was saying hat operations like transplanting a more powerful engine into your car is rare and difficult nowadays since grandparent made a reference to cars being easier to upgrade than laptops when that's not always true.
Anyway, swapping an LS into a modern miata is pretty simple and it integrates well due to everything being CANBUS compatible, after a sufficient amount of adapters is applied.
If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist.
For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.
THIS is nonsense. Dell, HP, Lenovo, even Fujitsu-Siemens have been making thin laptops with upgradable RAM for years now (XPS, X1 Carbon and LIFEBOOK series come to mind). Just recently they abandoned this and moved to soldering everything. The Framework Laptop also has upgradable everything and it's not super thick now, is it?
Sure, if you want to set a world record for thinness just because, then sure, soldering everything saves you a couple of mm but it's not why they do it in most cases, but to force planned obsolescence.
You're just throwing names out there without even knowing what you're talking about. The very first generation X1 Carbon came with soldered RAM and no upgrade path, and that hasn't changed yet. I know this because I've owned several generations of that laptop. I just checked Wikipedia to back up my memory before posting and yes, every X1 Carbon has had soldered RAM going all the way back to the first generation with Ivy Bridge.
I'd make the trade off for more mm of thickness anyway.
That's great, then you can buy this modular laptop or one of many laptops that still has user upgradeable ram. Turns out you don't have to make this compromise if you don't want to and people that do can also make their own choice!
My point is that maybe there needs to be an organised pushback against this instead of pretending like customers have perfect knowledge of the drawbacks and benefits associated with a particular design decision and are not at all affected by marketing.
> Seems I have less and less choices in that department these days, especially at the flagship tier
You're making a conscious decision about what sort of compromises you're willing to make with regards to your devices, just as everyone else is that buys electronic devices. There are plenty of phones with headphone jacks that have premium hardware specs. Sure, Apple doesn't have it. Samsung doesn't. But plenty of other manufacturers do, and people aren't buying them. Sony's top of the line smart phones have a headphone jack. LG's Vx0 line had headphone jacks and a fancy DAC built into them. ASUS's RoG phones have a headphone jack too. There's plenty of choice if it's actually that important to you. Buy those devices and hope that you can convince enough other people that the feature is as important to them as it is to you.
You don't need to shit on other people's choices nor assume that they aren't informed about the choices they make to want for the things that you do.
The "free market" is controlled by a very small set of conglomerates.
They get caught red handed deploying anticompetitive strategies every other week.
The fact that there are some that have been persuaded through years of concentrated marketing that bad engineering decisions are desirable is more of an example of manufacturing consent than the "free market of ideas".
Your entire argument seems to be that "not every manufacturer's top of the line devices matches my vision for what is an ideal device, so I want to force them all to change to match that." Not everyone wants the same device as you and no, it's not just because they're all ignorant morons that've been manipulated into thinking differently from you.
Why are you so vehemently against allowing other people to make their own decisions?
However, it's honestly pretty ridiculous to pretend like marketing does not have an immense influence on the trajectory towards consumer desires or that it cannot lead to worse choices by many objective measures. See cigarettes, fast food, hell, even the stupid obsession with buying bank bustingly expensive diamonds for marriage proposals. There would definitely still be a market for all of the above (and personally I am against any regulations limiting the freedom of purchasing even cigarettes for legal adults) but it was marketing that turned it into a cultural norm, not organic consumer demand.
It also does not need to be something that starts off as a bad thing. Thinner devices are better up to a certain point, no argument there. However, it does start leading to usability and maintainability problems past a certain threshold. We have definitely reached and passed that threshold for many devices.
Customers don't exist in isolation, if you are locked in to the Apple ecosystem, you're stuck with their decision to ditch the headphone jack unless if you want to stick to phones before iPhone 7. If your family have been purchasing Samsung devices predominately, chances are you will just assume that it's best to just get one of the latest one because it's reassuring to get a familiar brand and surely the latest automatically means better, right? Feel free to strawman this as me claiming people are morons but for most normal people not preoccupied with tech, these assumptions are reasonable.
Also, pretending like blatantly unpopular decisions like removing the headphone jack and expandable storage are somehow in demand based purely on continued sales figures is stupidly reductive. Humans don't have perfect knowledge of the market and the leaders of that market will not only dominate airtime, they can afford to absorb bad PR if they deem that an unpopular decision will lead to better profits long term.
This is entirely subjective and I disagree. As do many other people. Some people want chonky 17 inch gaming laptops and other people want 12 inch macbooks and some people want something inbetween. Some people want products in form factors that don't even exist. I personally want a macbook with an ergonomic keyboard built in! But that's just me talking about what I want. The market for laptops is large enough to sustain a huge degree of choice, but you are insisting that there is an absolute limit on form factors as decided by... you? If not by you, then by what? The government? A standards committee?
> Customers don't exist in isolation, if you are locked in to the Apple ecosystem, you're stuck with their decision to ditch the headphone jack unless if you want to stick to phones before iPhone 7.
No one is "locked" into the Apple ecosystem. Not even remotely. You're right, if you want a headphone jack on an iPhone you'll have to live with using an iPhone 6s or earlier. It's fine to want a headphone jack on your modern iPhone, but that is entirely different from you not having a choice. There are markets where people don't realistically have a choice, but smartphones and laptops definitely aren't those markets.
> Feel free to strawman this as me claiming people are morons but for most normal people not preoccupied with tech, these assumptions are reasonable.
The entire premise of your argument is that consumers need to be protected from manufacturers. Sometimes, I would absolutely agree with that. But with laptop form factors? Or not having a headphone jack on every single smart phone that's out there? That's absurd. If someone buys a Samsung phone and finds out only after buying it that it doesn't have a headphone jack, there's plenty of actions they can take post-purchase if they find that aspect of their new device untenable.
> Also, pretending like blatantly unpopular decisions like removing the headphone jack and expandable storage are somehow in demand based purely on continued sales figures is stupidly reductive.
Is it actually blatantly unpopular? Are you sure this isn't just the false consensus effect coming into play for you? As I previously mentioned, for things like the headphone jack there are a ton of options with top of the line specs out there. Purchasing decisions are always about compromise and not every niche is always going to be accommodated by the market. My ergonomic keyboard laptop still doesn't exist, despite me very much wanting it to. I have plenty of fancy headphones I can't use with my phone without an additional external DAC. I guess that sucks, but given how I use my phone, it has had almost zero impact on my life. For people that find that feature indispensable though, then they will probably also have to think about their purchase and will rightly be upset that one of the features they valued in the lineup of phones they've been buying isn't there anymore. I encourage those people to be loud about it, just as you are. That's part of this whole market thing, and there's plenty of cases where people's voices have absolutely made a big impact on the decisions made by shortsighted companies. Just don't expect everyone to fall in line with you.
I actually prefer laptops with upgradeable components and I'm definitely weighing replacing my two aging Thinkpad laptops (running OpenBSD and Void Linux respectively) with the Framework Laptop. I had briefly considered a M1 MacBook Air but I already have a M1 Mac mini and I try to stay diverse between form factors. The specs on the Framework are fantastic; even the i5 is a powerhouse, comparable to i7 desktops from just two years ago[1]. With the modular bays I could easily have Void on the main storage and OpenBSD on a module and choose between the two. I already have compatible RAM and M.2 storage laying about so the DIY SKU is a no-brainer.
As for keyboards I'm right there with you; the higher travel on the Framework's keyboard is another selling point in my opinion.
[1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-8700-vs-Intel-...
What I don't understand is why you felt the need to get aggressive and diss me in 2 different posts saying I have no clue what I'm talking about or that I'm making stuff up and calling for my embarrassment, only for a small mistake, when you could have made the same arguments without the personal dissing.
I feel like being kind to others, even if they're wrong, goes a longer way in productive discussions. I definitely will not be replying to you again. Have a good day sir.
I ended up going with the below because I wanted a 360 degree touchscreen Ryzen laptop that I could upgrade the HD and RAM...and I felt like I was searching for a needle in a haystack. Shame on you Dell for never offering Ryzen in your convertibles. Shame on you HP for soldering RAM in your new Elitebook line.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ProBook-x360-435-G7-laptop-...
I would usually go for a smaller, lighter laptop (13"). But within that form factor, given choice over trade offs, I would put performance last (any modern system will usually do), size and weight somewhere in the middle, battery life and repairability at the top.
It's like a thoughtless race to make the thinnest laptop as if that is something that is useful. I bit like the megapixel race a few years ago. "We do it because it's difficult, but we can" kind of thing.
And then we have the aluminum body used on higher end laptops. Is that really better than high-end well designed plastic? When using my wife's Macbook Air M1 I suffer from the razor sharp edges while typing. (Maybe not related to it's thinness or aluminum body, but a big design issue). Has anyone noticed on the Macbook Air M1 the small vibrations it causes in the hands/palms when you slide them over the palmrest ever so slightly? Extremely annoying.
We actually use a 3-prong AC cable to prevent this from occurring.
The sharp edges are still there though.
At least give some FAQ with reasons or ETA when you will be shipping outside the US
I understand your frustration. I'm from the Caribbean, we get nothing, ever :`)
I thought shipping was mostly handled by postal companies anyway?
I just hope that they release the next gen motherboard when it launches. Intel 12th gen, DDR5 RAM. I'm waiting for that big generational jump before making a purchase, and I really hope I can get a Framework.
broken keyboards / trackpads is why i keep having to throw out laptops and get new ones. so I am very interested in this laptop if they are actually going to make working keyboards / keys / trackpad replacements available.
We'll be making the replacement modules themselves available later this summer.
I can see the advantage of fully serviceable if you're on more of a 7-to-10 year cycle, but then you have parts availability. I trust that Dell will still have service parts four years from now. I don't really have any reason to trust that this company will still exist four years from now, let alone still make a full line of upgrades.
(Ironically, I've found that an old, out-of-warranty Dell is actually affordable to do major component repair on - because there are cheap screens, keyboards, even motherboards readily available. That sweet spot where a bunch of business machines are coming off-lease is when you can get a new screen for $35.)
BGA soldering is possible with more expensive IR or convection-based stations and a bit of skill too.
But yes, parts are often not available at all or from unreliable sources with dubious quality.