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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo still makes Thinkpads that are extendable. My P51 has 3! m.2 (2 of which support NVMe,) 4 RAM slots, easily replaceable keyboard and more. But I think most people want thinner laptops, and the thinner ones have less of this. I don’t think this is a headphone jack type situation: people value portability a lot on laptops, and the difference between a rugadized, user expandable laptop and an “ultrabook” are striking.

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My dell xps is super thin and it still has easily replaceable ram and battery. The massive use of glue, rivets, proprietary screws and cryptographic verification in macbooks is not for slimness but for planed obsolescence

Unpopular opinion, but from where I sit the serviceable lifetime of a computer is effectively about a decade, so long as all that non-replaceable stuff lasts the serviceable lifetime of the object, then it doesn't matter how repairable or not it is. Apple charges like 200 bucks for a battery and top case, which is pretty competitive for a replacement OEM keyboard and battery combo.

I think that's about the typical life span of a modern car, too. Anything older than a decade tends to be quite an awful drive. Unless it was built in the days before we decided everything needed to be so expendable.

You'll find the average age of vehicles on the road is around 11 years, and continues to grow longer and longer. Cars cost more, and last longer, so we tend to keep them longer and longer now too.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261877/average-age-of-pa...

A car can be maintained well as long as parts for it are available. That people don't want to spend on maintenance of >10 yo cars is a different issue.

... if you live somewhere they don't salt the roads.

I mean.....in Poland the average age of a car is 14 years, and we have very harsh winters with plenty of salt being used. I don't think there's anything weird about driving a car that approaches 20 years old, or anything particularly tricky about maintaining one either.

I think it depends on the quality of sheet metal. I live in a place where it's all mud and salt throughout the winter, and somehow my car doesn't rust even where the paint is scratched. I think it's because of a good-quality galvanized coating under the paint (it's a boring normal non-luxury car made in Korea, if someone's curious).

The frame is what I worry about more than the body. I'd be happy to keep repairing my ~15 year old truck, but the frame is getting to the point where I'm not sure how much longer it's going to pass inspection.

Some poorly-designed models are particularly prone to rusting, but most cars can put up with this for more than 10 winters without losing any structural integrity.

It's true they don't look great underneath...

I (literally) beat the crap out of my car; it’s going on 13 years and a quarter of a million miles. The engine mount is wearing out so it shakes a lot but other than that it drives great. I’d imagine people with similar cars that actually maintain them have even better experiences.

> I think [a decade is] about the typical life span of a modern car

Stop buying bad cars.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward%27s_10_Best_Engines

That engine list is about driver-pleasing performance, not reliability. It states "The selection takes into account power and torque output, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) levels, technical relevance, and basic comparative numbers."

Which engine(s) that have made Ward's do you have an issue with, from a reliability perspective?

I'd suggest the Cadillac Northstar would be on that list - they pretty regularly need a rear end seal at around 100k, which is something that requires removing the entire engine.

Conversely, there are many engines on there noted for their reliability, Ford Modular V8, for example, GM LS1, Ford Model T engine, VW Air-cooled Engine.

In Canada the AVERAGE car is 14 years old. That means half of them are older than that.

Don't forget, just because a typical owner may sell a car after 5-10 years, doesn't mean it goes away into the aether :).

[FWIW, I have a 2004 Subaru WRX; I make the dealership rounds every year looking for replacements, and cannot find anything that handles better in that price range - in fact, by all accounts modern WRXs are a softer drive]

Your argument is correct, but you might want to retake statistics. b^)

A long tail on only one side (no car has a negative age) means that more than half would be older than the average. You were thinking of the median, not the average.

And of course I got it wrong too... b^)

You can also replace the battry on the X1 carbon (RAM is soldered, though). Lenovo even provides videos showing how to remove the battery and other components: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht508716. No glue, rivets, or weird screws.

It's really mostly the macbooks that are terrible in this regard.

Lighter maybe, not thinner. I There's no reason for laptop to be thinner than ethernet or VGA ports. Give me full size mechanical keyboard instead (minus numpad).

And serviceability!

I don't want thinner, but I want the 13 inch form factor. I could change the memory, the HDD and the keyboard by removing a single screw on my old x220, and with zero risk of breaking little plastic legs.

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