10 ways old laptops are better than new "modern" laptops.

[Ertio]

Laptop vendors like to tell you in their advertising which generation of Intel Core they use this time. How marginally faster the CPU has become. But over the years, they have unfortunately taken many useful things away. Or, as Louis Rossmann would say, it's "death by a thousand small cuts", but they are ten big cuts here.

 

Here are ten ways in which old laptops are better than new laptops.

 

(1) They are easier to repair.

 

On modern laptops, everything is usually glued and soldered, hence difficult to repair without breaking something.

 

Since the majority of people doesn't understand the importance of repairability or dont't care enough, laptop vendors lack any incentive to build repairable products.

 

Manufacturers are incentivized to use any profit maximization strategy they can get away with it, and the end user is thrown under the bus. After all, capitalism is about maximization of capital, not user-friendly products. It's what the name says.

 

Back when computers were more niche and aimed at more tech-savvy people (so-called "nerds"), laptop vendors actually had an incentive to build laptops with  repairability and modularity. But now, with a saturated mass market, those times are long over. That incentive is gone.

 

The average person cares about the "new shiny thing". To hell with how long it lasts. This is the shiny object syndrome.

 

The same happened to smartphones first, by the way. Nnon-replaceable batteries were unfortunately not stopped at an early stage (by "early", I mean January 2007, when the first iPhone was released), hence it expanded to glued-in and later serialized batteries. Probably laptops will suffer from that fate too.

 

The corporate overlords who make these laptops have zero incentive to make them repairable. Why would they? How do they benefit from giving us more freedom?

 

They don't.

 

(2) Their parts can be upgraded.

 

8 GB of RAM are too little for you? You keep running out? Or you want a larger SSD? Well, bad luck.

 

Unless, of course, you have an old laptop with modular parts. Then you can buy new memory sticks off eBay, open a compartment at the bottom of your laptop with a simple screwdriver, remove the old modules, insert the new modules, and ta-daa! You have duplicated your RAM capacity.

 

Some laptop vendors might have the mercy to let you insert new M.2 SSD modules, but sadly, soldered memory is the norm now.

 

(3) Less dependent on USB hubs.

 

In modern laptops, the number of USB ports has been sacrificed in favour of irrelevant "slim design".

 

Remember the good times where you didn't have to worry about running out of USB ports? Or at least worry less.

Remember the good times where you didn't have to carry around a USB hub, and then unplug an existing device to plug in your USB hub? ( Why built-in USB ports are better than USB hubs.  )

 

 

Because laptops commonly used to have four or more USB ports! Even non-gaming laptops used to have three USB ports at the very least.

 

And what about gaming laptops? Well, in 2014, the MSi GT series laptops had six ports, and each of them with USB 3.0.

You don't get this from a 2024 laptop.

 

Now, the norm is one, or if you're lucky, two USB ports. Have fun carrying around hubs. Ah, and an external power adapter if you want to connect spinning HDDs to it.

 

The power supply through USB hubs is far less stable than directly from the USB ports of a laptop, unless the USB hub is powered through an external 5 volt adapter. This is because the cable between the USB hub and the laptop adds electrical resistance, which leads to a loss in voltage. That loss grows the more power the external device drains.

 

And if you are already watching a video from your external HDD/SSD, you have to interrupt playback, disconnect it, connect it to the hub, connect the hub, and navigate to the same file, and find the same position. Yet people keep pretending the dependence on USB hubs is not a big deal.

 

And if one device draws too much power, the entire hub disconnects temporarily and all devices attached to it reset, which could lead to corrupted data if a writing was in progress. In particular, hard drives draw more power than usual while spinning up.

 

  Quote

1. Never connect your external HD thru an external USB hub!

(source: Methodology to protect your data. Backups… - Apple Community)

 

But hey, enjoy your laptop's four millimetres thinner aluminium unibody as you're trying to recover your corrupted data (if you're one of the people who thinks thinness matters more than functionality).

 

(4) Their batteries are replaceable.

 

Not just replaceable, but even hot-swappable.

 

Most of you should already be aware that batteries are typically theshortest-lived part in electronics products. No matter how well they are treated, they will eventually wear down and stop working.

 

It is far more convenient to replace batteries rather than having to treat them with care to extend their life by charging slower and by keeping the charge below 80% and some other inconvenient restrictions on use. This takes away user freedom.

 

In addition, some Dell and Lenovo laptops used to have extra-large replacement battery packs that protruded from the back. I miss those.

 

(5) They had better webcams.

 

Are laptops with built-in 1080p webcams being made nowadays? Because in 2012, they certainly were. See the Samsung 700G7A.

 

Nowadays, they have mundane 720p.

 

Have fun carrying around an external web cam in addition to a USB hub if you need 1080p quality.

 

(6) Full-sized SD card reader.

 

This is especially relevant for photographers and videographers. Many modern laptops only feature a MicroSD card slot even though there is more than enough physical space for a full-sized SD card slot. MicroSD cards require fumbling and have less capacity. There is only so much that can be fit in this small space.

 

So if you need to read a full-sized SD card on a modern laptop, bad luck! You might have to sacrifice your only remaining USB port to an external SD card reader!

 

Full-sized card slots are far easier to handle and to insert. In addition, they have more capacity, more rewriting cycles due to larger memory cells, and, most importantly, a read-only switch to deny write access when unwanted. This prevents unwanted modifications.

 

(7) LAN port

 

Sites load faster through LAN than WiFi, because it cuts out the latency between the router and the device.

You just plug in the cable and have Internet in an instant. No bothering with WPS or passwords. Of course, this requires being close to a WiFi router.

 

(8) dedicated HDMI port

 

To add insult to injury, you might need to sacrifice the only USB-C port for an external screen.

 

(9) rectangular screens

 

If history tells us anything, other vendors have a tendency to copy changes initiated by Apple. Now, Apple started making non-rectangular laptop screens (rounded corner, webcam motch).

 

If those screens are not designed with compatibility in mind, this might be the final nail in the coffin for third-party operating systems like Linux. Or, as Jody Bruchon said in this video, "congratulations, your computer is now a glorified iPhone!".

 

Ideally, existing operating systems that are not designed to work with a notch would just use the part of the screen that is not covered by the notch.

 

(10) non-locked bootloader

 

"Secure boot" goes both ways. This means it can be used against the user too.

 

Windows 11 Must Be Stopped: THE SEQUEL - Jody Bruchon

 

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