[Discuss] Linux on laptops

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 11/12/2015 12:08 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> Are you serious? Somebody's soldering in hard drives (SSD or otherwise)?

Calm down. I'm just jumping to scurrilous conclusions: everything gets 
soldered in these days.

I figure Chromebooks use soldered eMMC, and a quick Googling suggests so.

Apple? They don't want anyone doing field upgrades with discount parts, 
so they would have reason to solder in their flash. A quick Googling of 
"macbook air teardown" yields an ifixit.com hit from this year: "The 
flash memory is still PCIe-based, and remains, thankfully, removable?at 
least for now.". Seems ifixit.com fears Apple will start soldering any 
time now.

Once you start building really small (tables, phones) soldering is 
cheaper, more reliable, works better at high frequencies, and is smaller 
than using sockets. These new in-between really thin notebooks? Some 
will start soldering any day now, if they haven't already.


But no, circa 2015 I would still expect standard x86-type machines to 
use standard*, removable parts because that is the cheapest and most 
flexible way to do it.


-kb


* Standard used to be a socketed CPU, but they are getting soldered...