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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

Are there really not laptops anymore with SODIMM memory and discrete M.2 ports for both storage and WiFi? That seems like pretty basic features for anything that isn't trying to be ultra-thin and light?

AFAIK no notebook class CPU comes in a socketable form so I don't know how they plan to let the users upgrade it without a heat gun. Being able to swap out the battery is nice I guess. For that they mostly just have to go easy on the glue, in most laptops you can swap the battery as long as the glue isn't too difficult. It's something you might do once in a laptop's lifetime though.

Can you swap the screen? That is one job that will always give you a headache. How about the keyboard? Maybe the power jack for that time you trip over the cable and rip the jack off of the board?

None of this should be all that hard unless you're trying to make the whole thing less than 0.5cm thick.

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It's surprisingly, but there are exceedingly few 13-14" notebooks still in the market with socketed memory, and especially not with both channels socketed. The same goes for WiFi, though at least storage is still socketed on most notebooks other than Apple's.

We enable CPU upgradeability through mainboard replacement. Since everything of value on the mainboard except for the CPU is socketed, the vast majority of the cost of the mainboard is the CPU itself. That makes the mainboard upgrade path pretty sensible.

We have designed the panel to be replaceable without needing to replace the full lid assembly. It is fastened in behind a magnet-attach bezel (which is also color customizable). The keyboard is held in with fasteners to be replaceable as well.

For the power jack, we actually do one better, and have made all of the ports Expansion Cards which can be hot swapped. This means you can choose the ports you want on the system and which side you want them on, and if you ever manage to damage a receptacle, you only need to replace the card instead of the mainboard!

I agree that what we're doing shouldn't be that unusual, but it is!

I like to buy repairable and upgradeable laptops as a matter of principle (system76). But realistically I replace my laptop every 2 years anyways for the extra CPU performance. Being able to upgrade just that part without replacing the whole thing sounds perfect for me.

I really hope this is able to take off. As do you I'm sure, heh.

The Dell Precision laptops still have sodimms and M.2 storage, not sure about WiFi.

The idea for upgrading the CPU is that you replace the whole motherboard, but keep everything else.

Yes, the screen is easily swappable. The bezel is held in by magnets and the screen is held in with just four screws. Keyboard is replaceable and quite modular as well as the shell, keys and PCB are separate parts. The power jack is also replaceable. Actually, the whole I/O consist of four modules that you can swap out as desired (and a dedicated headphone jack), so you can decide how many USB-C, USB-A, DP and HDMI ports you want. A dedicated microSD slot is also available.

And no, it doesn’t look hard at all, the whole design is very straight forward. Which makes it all the more surprising why it took this long, but I’m glad someone finally makes it happen.

> Are there really not laptops anymore with SODIMM memory and discrete M.2 ports for both storage and WiFi?

Here is one: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 (battery is replaceable without involving a glue).

Every socket pin is a hit to reliability. That’s a Mother Nature problem there is no getting around. A soldered joint will always have better reliability than a pin-and-socket joint. The MTBF math is easy.

So the right way to look at this is you are spending MTBF to get MTTR wins and also upgradability. This may or may not be the right choice for every user, and for most manufacturers its a losing proposition.

Personally, I like the upgradability and understand that real-world shock-and-vibe issues may show up and need me to dig out a screwdriver. Not everyone may share those expectations.

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