Are laptops meant to be user upgradeable?

My old Dell Studio XPS 1640/45 have had 1 base plate, after removing gives you access to every component (heatsink/fan, CPU, GPU, HDD, ODD, Bluetooth, RAM, WWAN, WIFI, etc.). I'm really disappointed that more laptops aren't designed like this. For example, the Samsung QX410 and HP dm4 require you to remove 1 and 2 plates respectively to access just the RAM and HDD. To access the CPU on the HP you have to literally rip the laptop apart (and remove the motherboard).

Is your laptop easily user upgradeable like the Dell?

By easily upgradeable I mean more than just HDD and RAM. I mean like CPU, heatsink, wifi card, and maybe GPU access.

 

I have a Macbook(in sig), but it is a tiny, tiny bit upgradeable. I can (and did) replace the memory and HDD

 

mine is...too many screws though ..expect asus makes their gpu's specially designed so i can't upgrade those....dirty....

 

Anyway, there are some components that are user-upgradeable but they limited usually to CPU, HDD, RAM, and GPU(some). Most of the high-end ones are upgradeable.

 

Acer has pretty good upgradeability, though I haven't changed anything in this machine.

 

I can upgrade WiFi (miniPCIE), add TV tuner (miniPCIE), change graphics (MXM3.0 A or B), change the CPU, change the RAM, change HDD, change the ODD, replace the ODD with a caddy with another HDD. I love MSI laptops

 

Haha yep, MSIs can upgrade pretty much everything. You can even upgrade the keyboard, fan, and screen if you know what you're doing.

 

If you aren't talking about like RAM, ODD, and HDD, it ALL depends on the model you got.

HP's are probably the most hassle to change components like CPU because literally you have to rip everything apart, and I'm talking about all models from DV6xxxx to DV6 (2004-2010) as I have serviced way too many Pavilion models. Older models are just as difficult to upgrade components.

I tend to find older Dell's are easier to service as they have simpler chassis designs. Most of the time you just remove wifi antenna, all bottom screws, keyboard palmrest, the display and voila the guts are there. Sounds like alot but the service manuals make it real easy. Also normally the cheaper Dells (like 700 and under) generally aren't upgradable after CPU as they have integrated graphics or have soldered on GPUs. Though I HAVE seen people swap out the entire motherboard from a GM series mobo for a PM and literally upgrade up but it's quite a feat in doing so. And only certain Dell GPU can actually be removed as they use a proprietary form of MXM (like my Vostro 1500/Inspiron 1520) and usually can ONLY be replaced with Dell parts. Alienware is a crap shoot, the older Alienware (pre Dell) you absolutely cannot get parts for these days you have to go on Ebay.

MSI, ASUS and most Taiwanese brand notebooks (Acer included) share the same common trait as most models can actually be upgraded very easily, but requires extensive research (ASUS uses proprietary stuff like their own MXM) for each and every model. Clevo sort of follow this as well as they pretty much only sell extreme high end, they follow MXM to the letter and usually have good compatibility. I can't really speak for Clevo and MSI as I haven't upgraded any, but this is what I gather from reading all the forum posts and google.

 

Every toshiba notebook I have had was just as bad as that.
It's fun to take it apart the first time, but then it gets really aggravating.

 

They aren't really meant to be. You get a package warranty, not a part by part warranty so replacing anything voids everything.

Desktops are much easier to build yourself and often can be opened up without it voiding the warranty.

 

Not always true. I replaced my CPU in my old 6860fx had it replaced under warranty, I just put the stock CPU in before sending it it. Also upgrading the Ram and HDD usually doesn't void any warranty.

 

i dont even leave my bottom cover on.

when i test a part, i dont disassemble any casing at all.

 

I have my bottom cover on most of the time (not while gaming though), but I leave the screws out so it's quick to pop it open.

 

Yeah, mine doesn't really stay on without screws.

Actually it doesnt stay on at all anymore... went a little crazy with ramsinks, my heatsink doesn't really fit

 

My P7805 has easy access to the CPU, Memory, Wireless, HDD's and ODD. The GPU is a rip apart item to get too but then it is not upgradeable.

 

The only things I haven't changed in my M860TU/M860ETU are the Bluetooth module and the screen. The CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD/SSD, Wifi Card, ODD, motherboard, and casing have all been upgraded.

 

In general, they aren't meant to be. But to keep costs in line for customizable notebooks, you have to include some access to the internals. This is the only reason that most people can upgrade anything in their laptops.

 

Not sure what to say about my acer, you can upgrade a lot, but its not easy (but its not hard either).
I put in an ati hd4670 to replace my nvidia 8600m gt. To do this I had to order a 0.9mm thick, 14*14mm copper plate to fit the gap.
If I want to upgrade my cpu, I have to take out my entire heatsink which I can and did, but I don't think acer meant for the user to do this.

 

Wrong. Now if you upgrade something and you SCREW it up yes that avoids your warranty.

Case in point, we had a guy buy a Macbook 207 last year for 799.99. He said why do you charge 20 bucks to install memory, I'll do it myself. He ended up cracking one of the DIMMs. Pwned.

 

Mine is very easy to access major components. Just 12 screws.

 

Mine requires 1 screw to have access to Ram, GPU, CPU, CMOS battery, HDD, DVD Drive, Heatsink assembly, wifi, WWAN, (Few other network slots), modem, etc. If really needed I also have service manuals to remove everything except the left speakers cover since that requires near full disassembly.

Latitude E6500 ftw.

 

Easy for me? Yes.

Easy for everyone, well everything they care about (memory, ODD, HDD, wireless card) then yes. GFX/CPU no.

 

Wow.... imo upgrading RAM is one of the hardest things to mess up.

 

Ain't it the truth. With HP, you can't even exchange the keyboard without penalty?

This is without a doubt my greatest annoyance with laptop manufactures today, and HP is at the top. As long as they maintain this inability of flexibility in their laptops (no doubt due to pure greed), it will be unlikely that I'll be buy anymore of their computers.

That would offer some flexibility, but still way more difficult than it has to be.

As far as I'm concerned, none of the aforementioned upgrades should be any more difficult than dropping in a new HD or upgrading your RAM: all you need do is make sure the numbers match (which too can be made a lot simpler), and you're good to go.

 

Not necessarily, I see probably 2/100 returned computers with broken laptop DIMMs.

I haven't upgraded HDX but Pavilions have been a real pain to upgrade. For Taiwanese manufacturers I meant in terms of CPU/GPU and you really have to research up for compatibility for MXM upgrades.

 

I'm not really the type to do a lot of technical computer things, but the thought of spending $100 dollars just to upgrade RAM, HD etc. has lead me to become more adaptive.

In any event, when I finally decided to change my keyboard, it literally took me the entire evening to do so. Before I started, I came here seeking advice on how to do it and was told it was a simple procedure. Instead, it turned out to be a nightmare.

You see, Hp puts it behind a protective band that has so many clamps in opposite directions that it's virtually impossible to get it off without damaging the chassis or breaking the band.

Suffice it to say, it required some care and special tools, none of which can be metal. I can only assume they invented a tool/device that can do this a lot easier than those items (a pair of credit cards) I was using. Needless to say, I cursed Hp as well as of their decedents for many years to come.

 

I'd like to mention that HP actually makes the most flexible business laptops ever.They all use MXM. Sure, you are limited to certain cards, but its not just HP cards, its anything at all similar to what it was shipped with.

Tell me a business laptop you can get today for under 300$ and stick something like a fx 3600m in there. Yea, theres the nw9440 and nx9420, thats about it.
As far as the technicalities there, its all under the keyboard. Not so difficult at all.

Their business laptops are really great. What they lack is good cooling systems, but in price, availability, and build quality (especially weight) they are better than a lot of boutique gaming brands.

edit: i guess research is a big thing here with the HPs, which i have done a bit of...

 

Which is why I didn't mention that part. It's getting to them that will have you pulling your hair out.

 

You were talking about pavillions, correct?

I'm pretty sure I've gotten the keyboard off on an elitebook no problem.

 

My sig. notebook, the HDX to be exact. And it's not the keyboard that was the problem, it's the band (which contains the quick launch buttons, volume, wireless indicator, etc.) that surround it.

That thing is a bear to get off; and it had me sweating bullets in fear I would break it. Removing it was like performing open heart surgery.

 

Most HP's are business as usual. Remove a billion screws on the bottom, remove Wifi, remove power button panel, remove keyboard, remove palm rest, remove display and there are the guts.

 

The business ones are easier, the HDX you have to take out the whole motherboard.

HP/COMPAQ NX9420 MOTHERBOARD w/ T7200 CPU 409959-001 - eBay (item 370457573152 end time Dec-17-10 05:17:32 PST)

 

They really aren't meant to be, but they are getting better.

 

It really depends on manufacturers. My personal opinion on consumer based notebooks are getting more difficult to upgrade. High end notebooks are getting easier, how many high end notebooks do manufacturers sell vs entry/mid range?

 

hard disk and memory is usually what is upgradeable.

 

The two things that change the least. With something that is a innovation dependent as a computer, the ability to upgrade should be paramount. Especially on business and higher-end machines.

 

Not always. There are always those 1.8" proprietary Toshiba drives found on the older Sony Z series. Also some of the Z series Sony use a proprietary SSD, they are not 2.5" or 1.8" SSDs. And the Macbook Air has the RAM soldered onto the motherboard.

 

Except that over and over again, it has been proved that "the people" prefer cheaper and less upgradable over more expensive and easier to upgrade. While you and I might prefer more upgradable, enthusiast systems, product history has proven that we are by far in the minority. Current culture much prefers the cheaper, "if it breaks, get a new one" mentality, and considering where prices have been trending for the last few years, there isn't much to deter them, comparatively. It's the old question of "spend $2000 for a system that you can pay even more into later to upgrade it that lasts for 6 years" versus spend "$1000 for a system that isn't really upgradable, but you can buy a newer, better system than the $2000 one (even upgraded) in 4 years for another $1000". I'm exaggerating the numbers a little, but that's the reality of the economics that we're dealing with at present. Computers are just generally getting too cheap.

 

As you can see from HRK's pic, the G51/G60 is easy to access everything. The only sticker is on one of the screws for the heatsink, so anything short of CPU/GPU can be changed without voiding the warranty.

The GPU is theoretically upgradable, but the units with a GTX 260m don't have an upgrade path: Asus redesigned the card for the G53s and the G73 GPUs don't fit either, so it is the strongest GPU option. And Asus also has hardware limitations on some upgrades, especially the Best Buy units (where the Core2 models would take Duals but not Quads, which only work in the reseller models).

Whenever I buy a laptop (especially a Dell), I consider the HDD and RAM to be upgradable and often use Newegg to save on inflated prices from their websites. I never mess with the GPU, CPU, and display, even when it is possible, since these are harder to upgrade later and the prices for parts tend to be higher than ordering with them installed.

 

Yeah except cheap usually means no expandability past HDD, RAM, CPU. They are pretty much capped in terms of GPU performance.

It's also luck of the draw. I so happened to buy my Vostro 1500 before really dissecting and seeing how "upgradable" it was until years after. Knowing know it was a good decision buying a notebook that was very much upgradable.

 

Which is largely the point. The problem is that the cost of upgrades is exceeding the cost of a brand new system with better specs. See how many posts we see these days with "well, you can spend $500 upgrading your old notebook, or you can add $250 to that total and have a brand new one with warranty that will function better than your old notebook even with upgrades." The current pricing trends show that "disposable" notebooks are the way people's buying habits are trending, and that those of us who prefer "upgradable" systems are falling off the back end.

 

Well it's all up to the person. I liked my Vostro 1500 so I decided to upgrade it.

T7500 was free, 4 GB RAM was 70 bucks, 60 GB SSD was 100, and I acquired a Windows 7 COA so total upgrade was 170. I'm going to drop 90 for the GPU and that might be the end of upgrades for the Vostro. And I already have a high end desktop so buying a 800-1400 dollar notebook is out of question, and my desktop whomps 99% of notebooks out there..

 

I'm not talking about a sub $500 notebook, or even one under $1000. Strictly speaking as an appliance, I might agree with you. (Although I don't know of too many $500+ appliances I replace every two years?)

Anyway, I'm referring purely to workstations or those machines that can easily go well past the $2000 mark. There machines typically need to be kept on the cutting edge of technology, but run out of steam when they're stuck with last years limitations.

These are the ones that especially need to have parts that are more easily removed and replaced. You don't want your highfalutin laptop to become obsolete with the simple release of a new data port do you?

For example, USB 3.0. This year they're rare, new season they're common. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. If light peak is in the works and expected around 2011, a workstation needs to be prepped for it. If nothing else, with all the innovation in new panels these days, at least they should be readily changeable.

 

Well also see it this way. Alot of people who buy those 2-4k workstations aren't even paying for it, their companies do. And of course any computer will hit limitations minus super computers, especially laptops.

And mind you those 2-4k workstations are still worth something 2-3 years later unlike sub 1k notebooks. Sub 1k notebooks after 6 months easily lose 150-300 dollars in value even with light use.

 

I'll mention that a lot of people seem to replace their car every 5 years or less, and those often cost $20,000 or more, so proportionately, that's not dissimilar. As for those workstations, for a lot of the businesses that require such expensive workstations, a few thousand dollars is easily written off, as the applications for those workstations run in the millions and billions of dollars (like government, defense, the entertainment industry, oil). For the rest, it may surprise you to learn that a lot of businesses run on very old legacy machines that don't even need to be cutting edge. Several still run on Windows 95, or even old mainframes (especially the banking industry).

As for upgradability, that assumes that it's easily possible. Innovation often will not work if constrained by older interfaces; see how the MXM platform has had to advance, and newer iterations are not compatible with older ones. Light Peak is so radically different that I'm not sure it'll be possible to refit a current machine to use it, without imposing some significant penalties. And while you can upgrade to USB 3.0 via Expresscard, Expresscard 1.0 will limit the bandwidth available for USB 3.0. With screens, 8-bit and 10-bit are the recent advances (IPS and AFFS being relatively "old-tech"), and those are not easily refitted either. Or take for example the recent push into 3D screens. I wonder if they're easily refit as well, or is there some different form of connector needed for them as well.

 

It's not? Buying a new car every 5 years is encouraged solely through appealing to peoples vanity and marketing--it is totally unnecessary:

A car from 30 years past can get you from A to B just as effectively as one built today.

And what about those graphic artist, designers, CG, etc.,that may require state-of-the-art hardware to compete in the industry? Imagine them using a machine with Windows 95.

None of your parallels address that, nor do they dismiss the fact that the industry is being complacent, lazy, and/or greedy.

That's my point, it's time manufactures made it so.

It's not like we didn't know this was coming; it's been in the works since USB 2.0 arrives. The transition should have been a no-brainer.

To repeat my aforementioned analogy, there once was a time when you had to remove the entire dash just to change a car radio. Or tear out and rebuild the package shelf if you wanted to change speakers. people demanded better, and the industry responded. (Those that didn't died out.)

With the laptop now surpassing the desktop in sales, and the rapid change of GPU, screen and ports right now, it about time for the laptop industry to follow the path of the desktop and allow more flexibility in keeping current. We have the technology.

 

Krane, give it up.

I don't want a fully upgradeable 'generic' notebook.

I want a specialized machine that excels in giving me more than the sum of the parts - the extreme examples here are the 'Air' by Mac - no 'upgradeable' computer could be built now or in the future with that highly focused sense of compactness while offering some degree of performance too.

As to your car stereo examples - nothing new there - the industry didn't 'respond' they simply wanted a piece of a new pie. And nobody died out' either; because of not offering easily removable stereos in their cars.

Besides - the simple fact that in cars, we had a lot of physical space to move and change things anyways - not the same as a 13, 12, 10" and smaller and bigger notebook system that need to balance power, heat weight and features in the right mix for the intended target audience.

The 'magic' of the U30Jc A1 that I have cannot be duplicated by simply putting the same components together - unless you buy all the exact components that ASUS uses (and then you can use their exact drivers too).

Don't forget that manufacturers don't go on board with a new idea to offer something better to consumers: they simply see a new way to save money (money that they won't need to spend to tweak, bend and mold a new system to be compellingly different than what other manufacturers offer).

 

You must not remember cars from 30 years ago.

 

? What? Your talking to the minority of all computing devices. Small form laptops are such a niche market because of their contradiction: super thin/light, but structurally too weak to be a true ultra portable platform.

It's very easily to implement upgradeable to compact. The reason why we don't see it is that thin, compact laptops are very expensive and belong to a very small niche market. Why make a laptop that can be upgraded for years to come when you are selling an already limited market product, in other words small numbers? That's suicide for a business.

The same reason by compact/thin notebooks are necessarily upgradeable is the same reason why regular sized laptops now-a-days are not easy to maintain or upgrade. They have become so cheap, that they can be thrown away, discarded every year or two and new ones can be purchased. Remember years ago when the cheapest of laptops was in the $600 range? We just had notebooks on sale for $200 during black friday.

The reason isn't that they can't. It's that they DONT WANT TO RUIN business in the future by making a laptop that lasts years because you can keep upgrading it or making it easy to maintain.

 

Everything in my alienware(pre dell) is upgradable its one plate awayeven changing the mother board is quite eseay

and no they dont use proprietary or w/e the only reason why they are not upgradable any more is that they have the best gpu that is compatiblie with thier old version of mxm aka 2.1

the newer del/alienware are still quite eseay to upgrade hardware wise you could slap anything inside and it would work how ever the bios ofter suport only nvidia or only ati cards