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They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PC

They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality. Now we have come somewhat full circle with Apple's Macbook which has meagre hardware functionality and relies on USB-C to provide the missing functionality in a modular fashion. However it means a nest of cables so it's probably not what anyone wants when they want a modular laptop.

mmastrac 10y ago
I had the same thing. Sure it was bulky, heavy plastic at the time, but it never had the investment to evolve into something more efficient. We didn't have to go down the road to soldering all the bits to a tiny motherboard, but Apple's vision of "small and light at all costs", including performance and battery life, killed all the other paths for the foreseeable future. I might investigate EOMA68 stuff, though it is likely years before it'll be viable, if ever (especially given their anti-intel sentiment): http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68 http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68
- rayiner 10y ago
  > including performance and battery life Apple is the only vendor that has a 15" laptop with high-res screen and quad-core processor that gets 8+ hours of battery life. The only laptops with greater battery capacity than the Macbook Pros are the Thinkpads with extended batteries that stick out of the machine.
pjmlp 10y ago
Apple has driven the market back to the days of 8 and 16 bit computers. The PC was the outlier that allowed for easy expansion. Now we have USB instead of Amiga expansion bays, that required a table with big enough width. Instead we scatter cables and hubs.
delecti 10y ago
Realistically your Dell Inspiron was only slightly more modular than most early Android phones. Battery and external storage were swappable, but the bulk of the remainder was all integrated.
muninn_ 10y ago
What do you mean by "meagre hardware functionality" ?
djsumdog 10y ago
I remember the old mid-2000 MacBooks. I had one with an easily accessible hard drive and ram right under the replaceable battery (which I did have to replace once too). People forget Apple was sued, and lost, in the 1990s for telling people to buy new iPods instead of selling replacement batteries. They started moving to user serviceable stuff briefly, but then went back to their own ways and people haven't challenged them since.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Re iPod: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#iPod_battery_life_class_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#iPod_bat... It was the 2000s, 2005 was the settlement date, iPods didn't exist in the 1990s. They didn't lose, strictly speaking, they settled (which is not the same as admitting fault). Settling lets them save face, even if they may not have had a liability, by not dragging their name through the muck with regards to the poor performance of the batteries and iPods.
- eric_h 10y ago
  I believe Apple offers battery replacement programs for most (if not all) of their products now.
DarkUranium 10y ago
You still have modular laptops. For example, for a Clevo W230SS (known as "Sager NP7338" in some parts), you can choose the display (1080p or 2560x1440 matte IPS, or 3200x1600 glossy), CPU, up to two hard drives (or was it three? Can't recall), W-Lan module, keyboard layout, RAM amount+brand+frequency et cetera. For its bigger brother (which is 17.1'', as opposed to the 13.3'' W230SS), you can also select the optical drive (different brands of DVD and Blu-Ray R-only or R/W drives --- the 13.3'' variant is too small to fit one). The battery is swappable, and the whole thing opens with a set of phillips (you know, the '+' shape) screws. Although you can't choose the GPU when ordering, newer ones tend to have newer models, implying that's also modular (just fixed to a selection of one at a given time). So, yeah --- you can get a modular laptop, but you have to know where to look.
rayiner 10y ago
> They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality. And how much did it weigh? Laptops have come a long way since even just 10 years ago. My rMBP is almost a pound lighter than my original Macbook, despite having a 15.4" versus 13.3" screen, a quad core versus dual-core processor, and a 96 watt-hour battery versus a 55 watt-hour battery. And even if I was willing to cart around that extra 0.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to spend that extra weight budget on increased modularity. I'd much rather they, say, push the battery life to 14-15 hours instead.
- fnord123 10y ago
  Sure. For me the most important concern of a laptop is mass. Then screen resolution. rMBP is a good choice if you rank these two criteria as highly as I do.
marcosdumay 10y ago
At my current (Dell) laptop I can change RAM, DVD, HD and battery. Seems to be the perfect point between a modular and an integrated designs. There's no point adding any extra module, people do not upgrade anything besides RAM, and everything that wears off is included.
rsync 10y ago
"They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality." PCMCIA was so great. In my entire experience of computing and consumer electronics, I think PCMCIA is still my favorite technology. I miss it a lot.

mmastrac 10y ago

I had the same thing. Sure it was bulky, heavy plastic at the time, but it never had the investment to evolve into something more efficient. We didn't have to go down the road to soldering all the bits to a tiny motherboard, but Apple's vision of "small and light at all costs", including performance and battery life, killed all the other paths for the foreseeable future. I might investigate EOMA68 stuff, though it is likely years before it'll be viable, if ever (especially given their anti-intel sentiment): http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68 http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

rayiner 10y ago
> including performance and battery life Apple is the only vendor that has a 15" laptop with high-res screen and quad-core processor that gets 8+ hours of battery life. The only laptops with greater battery capacity than the Macbook Pros are the Thinkpads with extended batteries that stick out of the machine.

pjmlp 10y ago

Apple has driven the market back to the days of 8 and 16 bit computers. The PC was the outlier that allowed for easy expansion. Now we have USB instead of Amiga expansion bays, that required a table with big enough width. Instead we scatter cables and hubs.

delecti 10y ago

Realistically your Dell Inspiron was only slightly more modular than most early Android phones. Battery and external storage were swappable, but the bulk of the remainder was all integrated.

muninn_ 10y ago

What do you mean by "meagre hardware functionality" ?

djsumdog 10y ago

I remember the old mid-2000 MacBooks. I had one with an easily accessible hard drive and ram right under the replaceable battery (which I did have to replace once too). People forget Apple was sued, and lost, in the 1990s for telling people to buy new iPods instead of selling replacement batteries. They started moving to user serviceable stuff briefly, but then went back to their own ways and people haven't challenged them since.

Jtsummers 10y ago
Re iPod: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#iPod_battery_life_class_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#iPod_bat... It was the 2000s, 2005 was the settlement date, iPods didn't exist in the 1990s. They didn't lose, strictly speaking, they settled (which is not the same as admitting fault). Settling lets them save face, even if they may not have had a liability, by not dragging their name through the muck with regards to the poor performance of the batteries and iPods.
eric_h 10y ago
I believe Apple offers battery replacement programs for most (if not all) of their products now.

DarkUranium 10y ago

You still have modular laptops. For example, for a Clevo W230SS (known as "Sager NP7338" in some parts), you can choose the display (1080p or 2560x1440 matte IPS, or 3200x1600 glossy), CPU, up to two hard drives (or was it three? Can't recall), W-Lan module, keyboard layout, RAM amount+brand+frequency et cetera. For its bigger brother (which is 17.1'', as opposed to the 13.3'' W230SS), you can also select the optical drive (different brands of DVD and Blu-Ray R-only or R/W drives --- the 13.3'' variant is too small to fit one). The battery is swappable, and the whole thing opens with a set of phillips (you know, the '+' shape) screws. Although you can't choose the GPU when ordering, newer ones tend to have newer models, implying that's also modular (just fixed to a selection of one at a given time). So, yeah --- you can get a modular laptop, but you have to know where to look.

rayiner 10y ago

> They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality. And how much did it weigh? Laptops have come a long way since even just 10 years ago. My rMBP is almost a pound lighter than my original Macbook, despite having a 15.4" versus 13.3" screen, a quad core versus dual-core processor, and a 96 watt-hour battery versus a 55 watt-hour battery. And even if I was willing to cart around that extra 0.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to spend that extra weight budget on increased modularity. I'd much rather they, say, push the battery life to 14-15 hours instead.

fnord123 10y ago
Sure. For me the most important concern of a laptop is mass. Then screen resolution. rMBP is a good choice if you rank these two criteria as highly as I do.

marcosdumay 10y ago

At my current (Dell) laptop I can change RAM, DVD, HD and battery. Seems to be the perfect point between a modular and an integrated designs. There's no point adding any extra module, people do not upgrade anything besides RAM, and everything that wears off is included.

rsync 10y ago

"They used to be modular until companies started to follow Apple down the current path. I had a Dell Inspiron with removable battery, removable DVD drive, and PCMCIA slot for modular functionality." PCMCIA was so great. In my entire experience of computing and consumer electronics, I think PCMCIA is still my favorite technology. I miss it a lot.