this was always the promise of the beige towers of the 90s: upgradability! repairability! in practice, it seemed that all components were moving fast enough tha

this was always the promise of the beige towers of the 90s: upgradability! repairability! in practice, it seemed that all components were moving fast enough that upgrades maybe extended the life of something by a year or two at best, but ultimately all standards were constantly moving (buses, ram, cpu sockets/chipsets, storage, cases and even psus). compatibility between parts was often a crapshoot, reliability suffered because they weren't burn in tested together and at the end of the day, any major upgrade involved having to replace 90% of the components anyhow. the fully integrated systems seemed to have longer operational lifetimes, to be honest. that said, maybe things are moving slower now, but it seems like a bit of a fetishization of a past that wasn't that great to begin with. the focus on reducing waste is good, but honestly what is more modular here than your average laptop with memory and storage doors?