From an engineering standpoint they made a set of design choices with the m series chips that sacrifice easy upgradability for the benefits of ram soldered in very close to the chips that are gonna use it that smartphones, tablets and most laptops have. Before someone jumps in and says it’s possible to have replaceable ram in that same space, yes, that’s true but you’d have to pull the heatsink off every time you wanna swap it out, and for what? Almost all users never upgrade their ram and choose instead to get anew computer (this has been true forever, btw).
From a sustainability perspective, if no one is upgrading anyway and getting the ram socket off the board saves a few grams of plastic, that’s a net win. Plastic recycling is fake and made up, metal and electronic recycling are real for better or worse. Is it better to keep the 5% of devices that will ever be repaired or upgraded running or reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream on the other 95%? Idk. But I know that apple has a recycling program for devices.
I’m telling you as someone who worked for a long time doing business and individual support that people don’t upgrade their computers. Even when it was the “best” choice, you tell someone $30 worth of memory and a $50 ssd will make their computer better than new and they’ll choose to buy a new one almost every time. Businesses have a refresh cycle and don’t upgrade outside of that.
The overwhelming majority of computers, and I’m talking phones, laptops, towers, mini pcs, all of it. The vast overwhelming majority of computers will never be upgraded or have any hardware replaced at all even as a repair.
Including phones in this ought to tilt it towards getting things fixed too because of all the broken screens but most people just get a new phone when they break the screen or lose battery life.
E: if you want to look for yourself, and I understand why you might, find someone near you doing electronic salvage and peek at the machines they’re stripping out. Not a one will ever have anything other than what it shipped with.
Well, in that case you are correct. Haven’t seen anyone upgrade them unless we are talking about something like pinephone. But I was talking about PCs and even laptops(only RAM in their case).
I am too. I used to think that people upgraded computers because I and the people around me did, but seeing what a local ewaste scrapper deals with I ended up changing my mind. All those computers are in their bone-stock configuration.
Once he got a pallet of gaming pcs, prebuilt originally, but I thought at least these will have upgraded ram and cpus and for sure gpus and ssds. Nope. They were as they shipped. Two of four slots empty, still booted perfectly up on spinning media.
When companies say they’re not seeing demand for upgradability I believe them.
Wow. That’s depressing. In which country you seen it? I heard stories of germans throwing away i5-2400-based perfectly working PCs, but this is something new.
because I and the people around me did,
Same. When I was in school from 15 of kids I talked on semi-regular basis I know about 6 people who upgraded their desktop PCs, 2 who updgraded laptop and 1 who upgraded monoblock. I use school as example because to not have sampling bias towards upgrading.
From an engineering standpoint they made a set of design choices with the m series chips that sacrifice easy upgradability for the benefits of ram soldered in very close to the chips that are gonna use it that smartphones, tablets and most laptops have. Before someone jumps in and says it’s possible to have replaceable ram in that same space, yes, that’s true but you’d have to pull the heatsink off every time you wanna swap it out, and for what? Almost all users never upgrade their ram and choose instead to get anew computer (this has been true forever, btw).
From a sustainability perspective, if no one is upgrading anyway and getting the ram socket off the board saves a few grams of plastic, that’s a net win. Plastic recycling is fake and made up, metal and electronic recycling are real for better or worse. Is it better to keep the 5% of devices that will ever be repaired or upgraded running or reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream on the other 95%? Idk. But I know that apple has a recycling program for devices.
I don’t know about anyone personally who buys new computer when old can be upgraded.
That’s great.
I’m telling you as someone who worked for a long time doing business and individual support that people don’t upgrade their computers. Even when it was the “best” choice, you tell someone $30 worth of memory and a $50 ssd will make their computer better than new and they’ll choose to buy a new one almost every time. Businesses have a refresh cycle and don’t upgrade outside of that.
The overwhelming majority of computers, and I’m talking phones, laptops, towers, mini pcs, all of it. The vast overwhelming majority of computers will never be upgraded or have any hardware replaced at all even as a repair.
Including phones in this ought to tilt it towards getting things fixed too because of all the broken screens but most people just get a new phone when they break the screen or lose battery life.
E: if you want to look for yourself, and I understand why you might, find someone near you doing electronic salvage and peek at the machines they’re stripping out. Not a one will ever have anything other than what it shipped with.
Well, in that case you are correct. Haven’t seen anyone upgrade them unless we are talking about something like pinephone. But I was talking about PCs and even laptops(only RAM in their case).
I am too. I used to think that people upgraded computers because I and the people around me did, but seeing what a local ewaste scrapper deals with I ended up changing my mind. All those computers are in their bone-stock configuration.
Once he got a pallet of gaming pcs, prebuilt originally, but I thought at least these will have upgraded ram and cpus and for sure gpus and ssds. Nope. They were as they shipped. Two of four slots empty, still booted perfectly up on spinning media.
When companies say they’re not seeing demand for upgradability I believe them.
Wow. That’s depressing. In which country you seen it? I heard stories of germans throwing away i5-2400-based perfectly working PCs, but this is something new.
Same. When I was in school from 15 of kids I talked on semi-regular basis I know about 6 people who upgraded their desktop PCs, 2 who updgraded laptop and 1 who upgraded monoblock. I use school as example because to not have sampling bias towards upgrading.
America. Especially for people and organizations that rely on warranties or support agreements it just doesn’t happen.