4 ms·

It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable. Even if it was upgradeable, it's not clear to me that the CPU/

by mtzet 6y ago

It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable. Even if it was upgradeable, it's not clear to me that the CPU/motherboard even supports more than 16GB per memory slot. Adding an additional memory slot would greatly expand the physical requirements. Even in my many years of having desktop PC's, I think I've only once upgraded RAM separately and never upgraded the CPU without replacing the motherboard. If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear.

martiuk 6y ago
Do we need to develop a new format and connector for RAM? Where we can get it as low to the motherboard and the sticks of RAM as thin and small as possible?
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Yes, unless we force them to explore and research new options of upgradable RAM (or other parts) for such form factors (thin or small laptops / tablets), they will never do so. (Perhaps something like SD card reader slots for RAM?).
NullPrefix 6y ago
> it's not clear to me that the CPU/motherboard even supports more than 16GB per memory slot These new products are crap, to be honest. Sandy Bridge era ThinkPads accepted 16GB. How long ago was that? Is it 10 years already? Granted, it was total, not per slot. Wasn't officially supported, but it worked. Tried personally, memtest passed, all good. IIRC W520 even took 32GB(4x8GB). Ten years of progress and ... still no progress. Who even buys this crap? >If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear. Somewhat agree with you on this point. Safe to say that if RAM works now, it will keep working. Test it after buying and you should be good. You can't scavenge soldered RAM when the device fails though.
- forty 6y ago
  Maybe it's just that many people find 16GB is enough for their use cases :) (I actually cannot think of any use cases for an ultra-portable when you would actually need more than that)
  - somezero 6y ago
    Ultra-portable is a feature, not an end goal. Netbooks’ end goal were to be portable and they failed miserably. Most people work on thinkpads, I don’t know about you, but I actually cannot think of a time where my browser, IDE plus a few cached programs don’t exceed 16GB.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      Netbooks' endgoal was to be ubercheap, the portability was an afterthought. Even aside from this ThinkPad model, there are plenty of high-end ultrabooks on the market that are not much less portable than the old netbooks.
    - ants_a 6y ago
      There exist other, larger ThinkPads that accommodate user upgradable RAM slots for those that need it. No product can be all things for all people. For example you can get the P1 with 64GB of memory. As someone who splits his work between a 64GB workstation and a 16GB ultraportable, there are a ton of use cases where 16GB is a perfectly acceptable amount of memory. That said, 32GB of soldered memory is feasible in a ultra-portable these days so it would be nice for Lenovo to get with the times.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    Ultra portable is a definition of form, not function. I want to run the same Qubes on my laptop as I run on my desktop. This applies to normies too. I mean, it's nice to have (web/g/hot)mail, slack, skype, messenger, element, discord open in the background while surfing the web and I doubt that 16GB will be enough for long. What if I want to run photoshop and illustrator at the same time? Heaven forbid, they rewrite those power tools to run on electron.
foldr 6y ago
It's also a quality control issue. You can say goodbye to reliable suspend/resume once people start adding cheap RAM sticks to their laptops. The additional parasitic capacitance doesn't help with power consumption either.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  On the other hand, manufacturers only provide support if you buy / replace parts through them. If you buy from elsewhere, they often refuse to even troubleshoot your device. So that argument doesn't really hold much weight. And just because you have replaceable parts, and the option to buy from elsewhere, doesn't mean the principle of caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") goes away. Ultimately it's all about balancing the profits of the company vs the rights of the consumers. While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights.
  - foldr 6y ago
    >If you buy from elsewhere, they often refuse to even troubleshoot your device. So that argument doesn't really hold much weight. Even so, laptop manufacturers have brand reputations to protect and don't want customers blaming them for issues that are outside of their control. It's not just a question of who's legally responsible or whether they're obliged to provide support. There's also the electrical engineering perspective on this. In a low power device, sending high frequency signals over contact-based electrical connections is something you want to avoid if at all possible. >While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights. For the vast majority of consumers there is no compromise. Soldering the RAM is just better, period. (The vast majority of consumers never upgrade their RAM, and RAM sticks coming loose is a surprisingly common failure mode.)
webmobdev 6y ago
> It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable. It does make sense for some forms, but look at all the offerings of Lenovo, especially for home users - even the bigger laptops all feature soldered RAM (or even the weirder combination of soldered RAM + 1 DIMM slot at a more expensive price!). (Then there's the other factor - unless we force them to explore upgradability in such form factors, they will continue to avoid doing so because the current option is more profitable for them). From a consumer point of view, soldering RAM / SSD / CPU etc. to prevent easy upgrades and make it very difficult to repair takes away control from consumers on how they want to use their device. It leaves you vulnerable to price gauging and pigeon-holes your device to specific limited use-cases only (for e.g. a new recent trend now with home users is to create a "RAM disk" for heavy torrenting, to reduce the wear and tear on the SSD or HDD - obviously with limited non-upgradeable memory that 4 or 8 GB RAM will no longer be seem sufficient and even though your machine is more than capable, your options are now limited to an expensive upgrade by changing the whole motherboard with a bigger capacity of soldered RAM or buy a newer device with more RAM, hopefully upgradeable this time). Apple is a great example of the price gauging that happens to consumers when you have to depend on them for more RAM or SSD "upgrades option" when you are buying a new system. Most of the common disparage against my post here is that 4 / 8 GB is more than enough (yeah, just like 640k was during its time /s). Perhaps most have forgotten that one of Microsoft's business model is to sell their OS bundled with the machines (OEM license). Thus, Microsoft obviously has a selfish interest to ensure the OEM's well being (which is obviously in selling more devices for more profit). And so they help them by making their OS more and more resource intensive, thus forcing its users to consider upgrading their hardware (which with soldered parts now means buying a new device). Ofcourse, hardware has outpaced software in the last decade, and with Microsoft also considering a change in its business model (renting softwares), we haven't noticed this trend in the last decade. But that's another threat we consumers have to live with.
- hakfoo 6y ago
  I am surprised we don't see corporate back-pressure at least on soldered storage. I used to have a client who got into a legal tussle, and at one point they called in various key staff to impound their disc drives to archive possible evidence. How do you do that if the SSD is permanently soldered in place, and can't even be readily attached to another machine for cloning or analysis? I'd also imagine difficulties with end-of-life disposal; you can't just shred the discs and sell the rest for refurbishing or donate them for PR/tax write offs anymore.
jpetso 6y ago
To add to "it's a trade-off": LPDDR4X is not replaceable and allows only 16GB max instead of 32GB for DDR4. However, LPDDR4X also requires half the voltage (0.6V vs. 1.2V) and can offer up to 4267 MT/s of transfer speed instead of DDR4's max of 3200 MT/s. So yeah, not being able to repair/upgrade the RAM sucks balls. But if you can live without it, soldered LPDDR4X sucks less battery power and lets especially the integrated GPU do its best work. For the kind of device they're selling, it sort of seems like the right choice.

by mtzet 6y ago

martiuk 6y ago

Do we need to develop a new format and connector for RAM? Where we can get it as low to the motherboard and the sticks of RAM as thin and small as possible?

webmobdev 6y ago
Yes, unless we force them to explore and research new options of upgradable RAM (or other parts) for such form factors (thin or small laptops / tablets), they will never do so. (Perhaps something like SD card reader slots for RAM?).

NullPrefix 6y ago

> it's not clear to me that the CPU/motherboard even supports more than 16GB per memory slot These new products are crap, to be honest. Sandy Bridge era ThinkPads accepted 16GB. How long ago was that? Is it 10 years already? Granted, it was total, not per slot. Wasn't officially supported, but it worked. Tried personally, memtest passed, all good. IIRC W520 even took 32GB(4x8GB). Ten years of progress and ... still no progress. Who even buys this crap? >If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear. Somewhat agree with you on this point. Safe to say that if RAM works now, it will keep working. Test it after buying and you should be good. You can't scavenge soldered RAM when the device fails though.

forty 6y ago
Maybe it's just that many people find 16GB is enough for their use cases :) (I actually cannot think of any use cases for an ultra-portable when you would actually need more than that)
- somezero 6y ago
  Ultra-portable is a feature, not an end goal. Netbooks’ end goal were to be portable and they failed miserably. Most people work on thinkpads, I don’t know about you, but I actually cannot think of a time where my browser, IDE plus a few cached programs don’t exceed 16GB.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Netbooks' endgoal was to be ubercheap, the portability was an afterthought. Even aside from this ThinkPad model, there are plenty of high-end ultrabooks on the market that are not much less portable than the old netbooks.
  - ants_a 6y ago
    There exist other, larger ThinkPads that accommodate user upgradable RAM slots for those that need it. No product can be all things for all people. For example you can get the P1 with 64GB of memory. As someone who splits his work between a 64GB workstation and a 16GB ultraportable, there are a ton of use cases where 16GB is a perfectly acceptable amount of memory. That said, 32GB of soldered memory is feasible in a ultra-portable these days so it would be nice for Lenovo to get with the times.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  Ultra portable is a definition of form, not function. I want to run the same Qubes on my laptop as I run on my desktop. This applies to normies too. I mean, it's nice to have (web/g/hot)mail, slack, skype, messenger, element, discord open in the background while surfing the web and I doubt that 16GB will be enough for long. What if I want to run photoshop and illustrator at the same time? Heaven forbid, they rewrite those power tools to run on electron.

foldr 6y ago

It's also a quality control issue. You can say goodbye to reliable suspend/resume once people start adding cheap RAM sticks to their laptops. The additional parasitic capacitance doesn't help with power consumption either.

webmobdev 6y ago
On the other hand, manufacturers only provide support if you buy / replace parts through them. If you buy from elsewhere, they often refuse to even troubleshoot your device. So that argument doesn't really hold much weight. And just because you have replaceable parts, and the option to buy from elsewhere, doesn't mean the principle of caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") goes away. Ultimately it's all about balancing the profits of the company vs the rights of the consumers. While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights.
- foldr 6y ago
  >If you buy from elsewhere, they often refuse to even troubleshoot your device. So that argument doesn't really hold much weight. Even so, laptop manufacturers have brand reputations to protect and don't want customers blaming them for issues that are outside of their control. It's not just a question of who's legally responsible or whether they're obliged to provide support. There's also the electrical engineering perspective on this. In a low power device, sending high frequency signals over contact-based electrical connections is something you want to avoid if at all possible. >While both will have to compromise, removing options from the consumer and allowing the company to dictate terms outright really harms our consumer rights. For the vast majority of consumers there is no compromise. Soldering the RAM is just better, period. (The vast majority of consumers never upgrade their RAM, and RAM sticks coming loose is a surprisingly common failure mode.)

webmobdev 6y ago

> It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable. It does make sense for some forms, but look at all the offerings of Lenovo, especially for home users - even the bigger laptops all feature soldered RAM (or even the weirder combination of soldered RAM + 1 DIMM slot at a more expensive price!). (Then there's the other factor - unless we force them to explore upgradability in such form factors, they will continue to avoid doing so because the current option is more profitable for them). From a consumer point of view, soldering RAM / SSD / CPU etc. to prevent easy upgrades and make it very difficult to repair takes away control from consumers on how they want to use their device. It leaves you vulnerable to price gauging and pigeon-holes your device to specific limited use-cases only (for e.g. a new recent trend now with home users is to create a "RAM disk" for heavy torrenting, to reduce the wear and tear on the SSD or HDD - obviously with limited non-upgradeable memory that 4 or 8 GB RAM will no longer be seem sufficient and even though your machine is more than capable, your options are now limited to an expensive upgrade by changing the whole motherboard with a bigger capacity of soldered RAM or buy a newer device with more RAM, hopefully upgradeable this time). Apple is a great example of the price gauging that happens to consumers when you have to depend on them for more RAM or SSD "upgrades option" when you are buying a new system. Most of the common disparage against my post here is that 4 / 8 GB is more than enough (yeah, just like 640k was during its time /s). Perhaps most have forgotten that one of Microsoft's business model is to sell their OS bundled with the machines (OEM license). Thus, Microsoft obviously has a selfish interest to ensure the OEM's well being (which is obviously in selling more devices for more profit). And so they help them by making their OS more and more resource intensive, thus forcing its users to consider upgrading their hardware (which with soldered parts now means buying a new device). Ofcourse, hardware has outpaced software in the last decade, and with Microsoft also considering a change in its business model (renting softwares), we haven't noticed this trend in the last decade. But that's another threat we consumers have to live with.

hakfoo 6y ago
I am surprised we don't see corporate back-pressure at least on soldered storage. I used to have a client who got into a legal tussle, and at one point they called in various key staff to impound their disc drives to archive possible evidence. How do you do that if the SSD is permanently soldered in place, and can't even be readily attached to another machine for cloning or analysis? I'd also imagine difficulties with end-of-life disposal; you can't just shred the discs and sell the rest for refurbishing or donate them for PR/tax write offs anymore.

jpetso 6y ago

To add to "it's a trade-off": LPDDR4X is not replaceable and allows only 16GB max instead of 32GB for DDR4. However, LPDDR4X also requires half the voltage (0.6V vs. 1.2V) and can offer up to 4267 MT/s of transfer speed instead of DDR4's max of 3200 MT/s. So yeah, not being able to repair/upgrade the RAM sucks balls. But if you can live without it, soldered LPDDR4X sucks less battery power and lets especially the integrated GPU do its best work. For the kind of device they're selling, it sort of seems like the right choice.