It’s not your dad’s laptop

“When we buy something – especially something as expensive as a high-performance laptop or tablet – the expectation is that it’s ours to do with as we please.” – Notebookcheck.net

Hold those thoughts, my friend, because the engineers in the laptop industry have very different views of what you can or cannot do with their products.

Experts express concern that laptops lack the ability to upgrade much beyond adding RAM (memory) and larger hard or solid-state drives (HDD or SSDs). Today’s laptops are making it even harder to service.

“Like so many things in life, though, there’s usually a tradeoff for such svelte notebooks and tablets,” continued Notebookcheck. “When it comes to buying an ultraportable laptop, you could say that there are three selling points to choose from – fast, compact and cheap – and you only get to choose two.

Upgrade problems

“If you do end up springing for a compact notebook PC, you may run into a related issue that has many enthusiasts upset: the ever-increasing number of laptops with storage and RAM soldered to the mainboard, rendering them impervious to upgrades.”

Soldering is a process of melting metal (mostly lead), then waving the motherboard over the melted metal so that it adheres to the electrical components loosely attached to it to make the motherboard and all its components fastened.

I call it a race to the bottom that engineers design ever more cheap products to sell more of them. The thinking goes something like, “If I can make it look good, remove processes or replace parts with cheaper ones that do more, we will sell more laptops.”

For example, the old normal was to have brackets to hold RAM in place. Just snap in a module and you have 4, 8 or 16GB of memory. Snap in a new module and the user has more memory. Today’s manufacturing practice is to solder the RAM directly to the board, which means it has no path to upgrades. You can watch a wave solder demo at wave soldering/Wikipedia.

Cutting costs

The manufacturer saved a few pennies on the bracket it no longer supplies and a few moments of time where someone has to install the RAM in the first place. If the manufacturer can save a dollar per unit and they sell a million units, then someone gets a bonus. (Reference: Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (15-inch) Teardown – iFixit (copy/paste.))

The problem occurs when anything goes bad on the motherboard, because your data is on the motherboard. Your data, applications, programs are stored on the hard drive or SSD that is soldered to it. How do you get your data?

Get the picture? Ultra-thin laptops, example the Surface, have everything soldered to the motherboard. So, a single failure can cause a catastrophe.

If you run a business, spend a few bucks and get a repairable, reliable desktop or laptop computer. Ask your rep to explain.

William Claney is an independent tech writer and former owner of Computers USA in the Clayton Station. Email questions or comments to willclaney@gmail.com.