4 ms·

Common? Yes. Normal? No. RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades.

Common? Yes. Normal? No. RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. >It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires. Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?
- amelius 5y ago
  "Make a system that even morons can use, and only morons will use it."
  - tpush 5y ago
    That’s both condescending and evidently not true at all.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Relatively speaking I guess it is true? If your system is so hard to use that only power users consider it, you’ll only have power users, but those represent less than 1% of the population. If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  There are companies who's livelihood is replacing a 4 cylinder engine in an MX-5 with an LS V8.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Yeah, but we were talking about "user upgradeable" here. Even my local dealer won't upgrade engines and most car owners have no idea how to change their oil or a tyre, let alone perform engine transplants. One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      Yes, but a lot of car owners do change their own parts, replacing various filters, adding bolt-on parts, changing out suspension, tyres and the like. Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. Cars are built to have replaceable parts, why can't laptops be the same? There are issues with the M1 equipped macbooks burning through flash due to users swapping out of the 16 gigabytes of memory that are not expandable. I don't want hardware designers to be legislated out of being able to do interesting things with packaging, like with what AMD is trying to do with integrating memory chips vertically on top of their SoCs, but I would appreciate if there was less hardware turned into e-waste due to a single formerly-user-replaceable chip failing or being deprecated. Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
      - sz4kerto 5y ago
        Cars don't need to be very small. Repairability depends on modularity, modularity requires compromises about size.
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        >Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. And where did I say that reparability must be forbidden? I was saying hat operations like transplanting a more powerful engine into your car is rare and difficult nowadays since grandparent made a reference to cars being easier to upgrade than laptops when that's not always true.
- victor9000 5y ago
  >but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradeable That goes for everything though, most people don't know how a car works, yet you can replace every single component. The same goes for desktop computers and household appliances. This has been the norm across many technical devices that have become part of everyday life. How many regular users know how a radio works? The point is that regardless of how technical they are, these devices have remained repairable by anyone who is so inclined. The movement to proprietize basic maintenance on the part of manufacturers is purely profit driven, and is carried out at the expense of consumers, the environment, and overall innovation.
- Delk 5y ago
  You're not wrong, but there are a couple of things here that rub the me wrong way. > Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. While that's true, that doesn't mean it should be that way. Having everyone buy a new device whenever they need to upgrade makes business sense for device vendors but IMO we definitely shouldn't encourage regularly tossing out good hardware. Not with the ecological costs of new electronics. We don't need to turn everyone into a tech enthusiast or a computer service person. But if part replacements and upgrades were possible and people knew about it, a local shop or someone else could do the job for them. > Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. The original comparison to cars might have been unfortunate (as usual), and you may be right that things aren't that different with cars. But again, things being in a certain way with cars doesn't mean that's how they should be with other devices. Or with cars, necessarily, but I don't know much about those so I'm not going to argue about that.
spijdar 5y ago
Does the analogy really work, though? Is RAM more akin to tires or some other component like the fuel tank? I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist. For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.
richardwhiuk 5y ago
As the comment above states, LPDRR RAM is apparently not sold in DIMM form.
Google234 5y ago
Tires are more like the plastic rubber things on the bottom of the laptop. What you want is to upgrade the engine.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. >It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires. Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?

amelius 5y ago
"Make a system that even morons can use, and only morons will use it."
- tpush 5y ago
  That’s both condescending and evidently not true at all.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Relatively speaking I guess it is true? If your system is so hard to use that only power users consider it, you’ll only have power users, but those represent less than 1% of the population. If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
eptcyka 5y ago
There are companies who's livelihood is replacing a 4 cylinder engine in an MX-5 with an LS V8.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Yeah, but we were talking about "user upgradeable" here. Even my local dealer won't upgrade engines and most car owners have no idea how to change their oil or a tyre, let alone perform engine transplants. One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    Yes, but a lot of car owners do change their own parts, replacing various filters, adding bolt-on parts, changing out suspension, tyres and the like. Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. Cars are built to have replaceable parts, why can't laptops be the same? There are issues with the M1 equipped macbooks burning through flash due to users swapping out of the 16 gigabytes of memory that are not expandable. I don't want hardware designers to be legislated out of being able to do interesting things with packaging, like with what AMD is trying to do with integrating memory chips vertically on top of their SoCs, but I would appreciate if there was less hardware turned into e-waste due to a single formerly-user-replaceable chip failing or being deprecated. Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
    - sz4kerto 5y ago
      Cars don't need to be very small. Repairability depends on modularity, modularity requires compromises about size.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. And where did I say that reparability must be forbidden? I was saying hat operations like transplanting a more powerful engine into your car is rare and difficult nowadays since grandparent made a reference to cars being easier to upgrade than laptops when that's not always true.
victor9000 5y ago
>but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradeable That goes for everything though, most people don't know how a car works, yet you can replace every single component. The same goes for desktop computers and household appliances. This has been the norm across many technical devices that have become part of everyday life. How many regular users know how a radio works? The point is that regardless of how technical they are, these devices have remained repairable by anyone who is so inclined. The movement to proprietize basic maintenance on the part of manufacturers is purely profit driven, and is carried out at the expense of consumers, the environment, and overall innovation.
Delk 5y ago
You're not wrong, but there are a couple of things here that rub the me wrong way. > Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. While that's true, that doesn't mean it should be that way. Having everyone buy a new device whenever they need to upgrade makes business sense for device vendors but IMO we definitely shouldn't encourage regularly tossing out good hardware. Not with the ecological costs of new electronics. We don't need to turn everyone into a tech enthusiast or a computer service person. But if part replacements and upgrades were possible and people knew about it, a local shop or someone else could do the job for them. > Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. The original comparison to cars might have been unfortunate (as usual), and you may be right that things aren't that different with cars. But again, things being in a certain way with cars doesn't mean that's how they should be with other devices. Or with cars, necessarily, but I don't know much about those so I'm not going to argue about that.

spijdar 5y ago

Does the analogy really work, though? Is RAM more akin to tires or some other component like the fuel tank? I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist. For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.

richardwhiuk 5y ago

As the comment above states, LPDRR RAM is apparently not sold in DIMM form.

Google234 5y ago

Tires are more like the plastic rubber things on the bottom of the laptop. What you want is to upgrade the engine.