Any particular brands harder to upgrade?

I want to get a laptop computer. Not in the budget for a new one, but I was wondering of there are any particular brands or models to avoid due to either being extra difficult to upgrade (RAM, etc) or would be especially tough to find parts for.
First time for a laptop. I want to do the usual Office stuff, display images, and watch a movie once in a while. I plan on using it quite heavily on a daily basis.

 

RAM is relatively easy to upgrade except in ultraportables.

 

You can easy tell which models are not very popular and hence not easy to find spare parts. You have more chances to find spares for IBM, HP, Dell, Toshiba laptops than for LG or MSI for example.

 

apple makes their stuff almost impossible to upgrade.

 

I'd avoid MSI and Apple if you want to upgrade; ASUS seems to be reasonably priced and easy to upgrade, but I'm sure there's more

 

I'd venture to say that all laptops are just as easy/difficult to upgrade in that it's just as easy/difficult to take apart some laptop as it is to take apart the next, given that you know what you're doing. The part that varies is whether or not a given manufacturer gives you the information (ie service manuals) to instruct you in what you're going.

There are elements, of course, that are generally very easy to "upgrade" on most laptop models even without a decent set of instructions (memory for one), but it's usually only the bigger brands (Dell, HP, Lenovo) that give users a true disassembly guide. That's why I usually try to avoid buying the really small and obscure brands as they usually offer no such support.

And yes, the same largely applies to spare parts as well. While most laptops share the same set of processors, memory, hard drives and such, the parts specific to a certain line or make of laptop will be much easier to find for mainstream brands than for those lesser known ones.

Finally, there are always those oddballs that are pretty much impossible to upgrade. Usually machines that have a lot of integration (ie ultraportables, Apple, etc) needed to fit a certain form factor will have elements like soldered processors, integrated GPUs, non-standard hard drives and so on which make them pretty impossible to modify.

But for the most part, it's usually not terribly worthwhile to upgrade a laptop past the memory and HDD so don't worry too much about it.

 

The Apple MacBook is by far the easiest laptop to replace the hard drive and RAM in. I could probably have the RAM and HDD out in under a minute.

The MBP is the Apple notebook that is a pain to work on. You have to remove the keyboard to get to the RAM slots.

 

I appreciate everyone's input.
I would like to also ask one other thing, which is not really related to
this specific thread. Would it be out of line to advertise a PDA in the
buy/sell section on this site? Just wondering if it is supposed to be
laptops only listed.

 

I don't think so. A lot of people buy/sell somewhat arbitrary items in B/S/T; as long as you follow the forum rules you should be good to go.

 

Thanksvery much. I will do that.
I'll also show my eBay name too so people can see I am a good person to buy from, or sell to.