alt Hacker News>The surge in laptops contributed, too. The opportunity or need for expansion cards, additional memory or storage upgrades, and peripherals disappeared or shrank.
We were once able to upgrade CPUs, RAM, video cards, HDD, network cards and replace batteries in laptops, too.
Does anyone remember?
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sahila • today at 5:47 AM
Sure but I don't mind the current outcome. I want my laptop to be small and light and if the tradeoff is the ram and battery have to be glued, I'd take it.
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Pepperidge Farms, oops I mean Framework, remembers.
Bought this Framework 16 laptop less than a year ago so I haven't upgraded anything yet. But if I decide I want a GPU (I don't play games on this laptop so I bought it GPU-less) I can add one. If they come out with a new motherboard that I decide is worth buying, I can swap it out and keep the rest of the laptop. And I can customize all six of the side ports at any time; they're hot-swappable. Currently I have three USB-C slots, one USB-A for when I need a thumbdrive, one HDMI, and one SD card reader slot. I bought a second USB-A slot and an Ethernet slot, so if I need two USB-A ports or if I need to plug into Ethernet, I can just slide the physical locking tab on the appropriate side of the laptop, slide out one of the slots, and slide in the Ethernet or USB-A slot. Then relock the tab so the expansion slot fillers are physically held in place and I can carry on. No rebooting needed, but now I have two USB-C ports and two USB-A. Or three USB-C, no USB-A, and one Ethernet. Whatever configuration I need at the moment.
It's great. I currently don't have any plans to buy a new laptop in the near future (my wife's laptop is just two years old and has plenty of life left in it), but next time I need a new laptop, I plan to buy a Framework again.
P.S. No affiliation with Framework, just a customer.