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Comment by client4 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure it's been said before by many, but I'd have a few extra mm of thickness to get back replaceable ram, ssd, wifi, etc.

The post yesterday about moving back to an old Thinkpad has me motivated to do something like that for my next computer. A Thinkpad chassis with an updated mainboad, screen, and battery would make me happy.

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Framework Laptop provides customization and upgradeability which sounds like what you want.

https://frame.work

Agreed. I think the disassembly video of the Surface SE is pretty impressive (kudos Microsoft!), but Framework still blows the Surface SE out of the water in terms of internal accessibility and modularity of the laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV2umY3R0vw

Framework gets us a long way in the right direction; still lacking things some of us need - admittedly a minority:

1. Standardized keyboard. For some reason modern laptops hate Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn buttons; but I use them literally every minute of my typing. Arrow keys too are tiny, up and down look to be sharing the same key - so basically unusable on regular basis.

2. Trackpoint/Nub/Nipple. If you're trying to make a small laptop, rather than crippling keyboard for the sake of massive giant trackpad, Trackpoint is the way to go. Granted, higher learning curve for many, but very rewarding in the end.

Again, understanding we are now talking a niche of a niche - "want standard keyboard and trackpoint" subset of "want practical modular laptop"; but that's why old school Thinkpads are still so prized for some.

They did give feedback a a while ago that they are looking into the thinkpad style trackpoint/mouse-button interface as a purchasable option in the future.

Missed that! Awesome sauce, that's incredible to hear :)

Trackpoint/Nub/Nipple. If you're trying to make a small laptop, rather than crippling keyboard for the sake of massive giant trackpad, Trackpoint is the way to go. Granted, higher learning curve for many, but very rewarding in the end.

Yeah, this is the current issue I'm having. I can't bring myself to by a laptop without some form of Trackpoint, which rules out pretty much all but a very small subset.

> still lacking things some of us need - admittedly a minority:

Can't you and a few 100/1000 like-minded people crowdfund a custom Framework keyboard with full-sized arrow keys and and track point? It's designed to have bits of it customized/upgraded (including the keyboard).

I mean, that's kinda sorta how the Lenovo T25 got to be - a one-of, 5000 copies run of basically T470, but with old-school Thinkpad keyboard. It's what I'm typing on right now (Glee!:)

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-25/Th...

Interesting thing to ponder though; I have no idea what manufacturing is like so I assumed that would be much too small of a run to be viable... but I'm completely ignorant.

For (1) you might try ctrl-up/down and in web browsers space and shift-space.

Thanks, but...

1. Keyboards that have non-standard Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn, also tend to have crippled/unusable up & down arrows.

2. I don't believe that shortcut works in any editor I tend to use; it is when typing text that Home/Ctrl-Home, End/Ctrl-End come in super-handy.

(yes, we can now start discussing Vim-style editors etc; but my point is at higher level - we had a standard keyboard layout for literally decades, and now its again a no-man's land of bespoke crippled layouts, presumably in service of thin laptop and vast trackpad)

Ugh, can I ask you to hear my rant?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807256

Lenovo P15 series would be example of laptops that have not gone crazy in light and thin direction, so it has m.2 slots for ssds, and sodimms for RAM as you'd expect, all accessible by undoing few screws and lifting the back cover: https://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-lenovo-thinkpad-p1...

Or some random Dell laptop that seems pretty comparable https://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-dell-precision-15-...

Absolutely love my Thinkpad X1 for running linux; it's pretty much the same design but without the awful number pad. The fingerprint scanner even got support recently!

These machines exist. They’re just not usually stocked at your local big box store because that’s not a mass-market priority. Mass market customers would rather have a machine that is thinner, lighter, cheaper, and with better battery life.

Hoping more companies like frame.work[1] come up and succeed. They have shown it is possible and the laptop need not be bulky or very expensive and still be repairable. [1]: https://frame.work

There are lots of user-serviceable laptops. Just not the mainstream brands.

To be fair, Microsoft does show how to replace the WiFi module, but I absolutely agree on the rest.

Fortunately, Microsoft is not the only company making laptops and filming videos, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMMjSF4QFw&ab_channel=HPSup...

The HP video is much less entertaining, much longer, and the narrator is likely a text-to-speech software. However, I think it’s more informative, for instance it shows how to assemble the device back.

> I'm sure it's been said before by many, but I'd have a few extra mm of thickness to get back replaceable ram, ssd, wifi, etc.

This is the exact opposite of what manufacturers want so I don't think there is any hope of reversing this crazy trend. The vendors copying Apple don't understand that Apple controls their users as they are already hooked to their ecosystem so they have no choice, but people outside of this ecosystem do have a choice and when presented with a thin plate with everything glued and irreplaceable and no useful ports, they will simply look for another solution. Not to mention environmental problems created by this craze.

And a bit more ruggedness again. The superlight notebooks don't really if there are other things in the bag.

On the other hand, socketed parts are prone to corrosion at the contacts in adverse conditions. My old x61 had some issues with the SO-DIMM socket corroding from all the time in my bike bags.

Soldered-down ram and an add-on socket has seemed like a nice compromise to me.

totally guessing here, but that's not the majority of use cases ;)

Soldered parts are prone to fractures in BGA solder balls which are more annoying and expensive to repair compared to cleaning up sockets and rubbing pads with a pencil eraser one in a while.

Socketed RAM modules have more solder joints than the alternative. The packages on your socketed RAM are attached to the module the same way they would be attached to the motherboard. BGA has been used across the board since DDR2.

I don't need to repair memory modules, though. I can toss them away and get a replacement for few dozen bucks.

Good luck finding a cheap commodity replacement for the whole motherboard.

Of all of the parts of your laptop to break and leave you without the availability of a replacement, your RAM is the least of your worries. Damage prone parts that are replaceable are already hard enough to find replacements for. And of all the parts on your mainboard to break, your i/o is going to be the likely culprit. And few laptops modularize those.

Bake your board in the oven (in a pinch a toaster can do) for a quick-n-dirty reflow

I have a 10 year old T420S with a new battery. Im _really_ interested in screen replacements as the original screen is pretty weak.

It is possible to upgrade to IPS display in a T420. This is a starting point. It needs a special controller card and ofcourse an upgraded screen.

https://www.curlybrace.com/words/2020/11/24/thinkpad-t420-ip...

https://www.amazon.com/1080p-1920X1080-Upgrade-thinkpad-Cont...

How did you get a reliable new battery for a 10 year old laptop? Lenovo doesn't appear to make batteries for old laptops, and I've had bad experiences ordering from random sellers on Amazon.com.

Dunno about Lenovo, but once you get old enough, a laptop battery is just a pretty box for standard cylindrical shells.

Carefully shuck the old ones out and solder new ones in and voila.

Upgrade to a refurbished T450s or T460 and you get a very nice FHD IPS display.

but you lose on the keyboard...

X230 with a nitro mod https://nitrocaster.me/store/x220-x230-fhd-mod-kit.html and an x220 keybaord swap is my setup right now.

W530 with a keyboard mod.

IIRC, the cable needs to be modified, because the connectors are different, but I've seen it work.

With the trend for on-die RAM and the lower latencies that allows, it's not going to be possible to remove the RAM in the future.

I think that's a more-or-less acceptable compromise for now.

Who knows, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone add on-board RAM back in to allow for cheaper expansion. Most operating systems support NUMA, this approach seems similar to that idea.

Nobody is moving DRAM on-die. Apple puts DRAM on-package, and x86 laptops using LPDDRx solder it on the main board next to the soldered-down CPU/SoC. The advantage of doing so is not latency (which is still dominated by stuff that happens entirely within the DRAM die) but rather that LPDDR allows for lower power draw for the same bandwidth.

I’d think soldering down has some other benefits:

1) better heat conduction

2) more predictable RF/contact capacitance issues/characteristics

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