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0 pointsCamperBob23y ago0 comments

Soldering the RAM is good for literally every single use case that doesn't involve the vanishingly-low probability that someone will want to upgrade the RAM in their tablet or phone.

Less weight, less cost, better long-term reliability... but one in a hundred thousand nerds get thwarted. Wearing my hardware-dev hat, I'm more than OK with that.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

Nullabillity3y ago· 3 in thread

This is just another case of "We made it hard and annoying to do, so nobody's doing it. Let's remove it entirely.".

You need to start from the other direction. How many people are buying new devices every year? What would it take to get them to upgrade their existing devices instead? How do we prevent manufacturers from sabotaging this kind of effort?

CamperBob2OP3y ago

To be clear, nobody, but nobody, is a bigger right-to-repair advocate than I am. And I walk the talk. I've shipped hardware whose user manual, at my insistence, included schematics.

But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly.

The last time I upgraded the RAM in a portable device -- even a laptop PC, much less a phone -- to keep from having to buy a new one? That would be never... and I'd definitely remember that.

Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry.

Nullabillity3y ago

> But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly.

When did you last buy a new PC then? What could have discouraged you from doing so? Those are the questions we need to focus on, not this kind of defeatism.

> Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry.

In practice, you might pay a little more initially but a lot less over the long run.

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rowanG0773y ago

Couldn't agree more with you. There are thousands of valid reasons for having a repairable laptop. But upgrade-able RAM is such a non-issue that it erodes the validity of the entire movement by people claiming it to be important.

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