At this time laptops still could have memory upgrades, and memory was pretty cheap compared to today. The first thing I did when I bought a new laptop was buying two 8GB SoDIMMs, it was way cheaper than ordering the upgrade from factory.

The thing is, memory in personal computer have plateaued for quite some time. 16GB was not uncommon in 2010. Things are not like the crazy 90s and early 2000s where PC configuration become obsolete in less than two years.