The hell of computer support

[Sal1950]

Not sure of the timeline on soldering the SSDs but I think it started in the thin laptops then spread to the 2020 iMac among others. Then you get things like this:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ble-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out/
I think they were the initiator of soldered RAM in place of SODIMMs too, in the name of making things thinner and lighter.

Good article, thanks very much for posting that link. It explains pretty well the situation of Apple and soldered-in RAM & SSD. It's an obvious situation of making a product non-upgradable, if you want more RAM or a bigger SSD, buy a new computer.. It's a shame and a situation I personally would not put up with. Windoz is not much better, try to move your OS drive from one box to another and the roadblocks thrown up are near impossible to navigate.

That's why I'm on Linux. Due to a lightning strike and a couple other issues, I've moved my OS drive into 3 different boxes in the last year. Plug in the SATA and power cable, hit the on button, give it about 1 minute for the kernel to detect all the new hardware and the exact same MATE desktop opens that I've been running for about 5 years now. And all the apps are the very latest versions because they've been kept updated by the package management system on a near daily basis.
YMMV

 

[Blumlein 88]

Good article, thanks very much for posting that link. It explains pretty well the situation of Apple and soldered-in RAM & SSD. It's an obvious situation of making a product non-upgradable, if you want more RAM or a bigger SSD, buy a new computer.. It's a shame and a situation I personally would not put up with. Windoz is not much better, try to move your OS drive from one box to another and the roadblocks thrown up are near impossible to navigate.

That's why I'm on Linux. Due to a lightning strike and a couple other issues, I've moved my OS drive into 3 different boxes in the last year. Plug in the SATA and power cable, hit the on button, give it about 1 minute for the kernel to detect all the new hardware and the exact same MATE desktop opens that I've been running for about 5 years now. And all the apps are the very latest versions because they've been kept updated by the package management system on a near daily basis.
YMMV

Another thing about soldered in RAM and SSDs with Apple is when buying a new machine you'd like to err on the side of caution by getting some extra since it cannot be upgraded later. Apple's pricing for increasing RAM or SSD size is obscene. It is 3-400% more than it should be.

Linux really is a feeling of freedom. Apple bugs me in some ways with the OS and especially with hardware cost. Windoz bugs me in other ways with the OS. Linux can be used in a manner free of the hardware more than either OS.

 

[Ron Texas]

apple switched to that when they went ARM, not only on notebooks but on mac's, too
it may be present in some wintel ultra-portables, haven't had the luck of seeing one in person tho, neither in small pc's (1L class) so far on wintel, it's beyond my scope of work/interest (which is mainly in the thread name itself; you might say i've been around for long enough i found myself in the old BOFH stories...)

Thank you for the info on Mac's. As I live in the WinTel world, I haven't run across a soldered SSD, but likely they are out there.

 

[antcollinet]

Thank you for the info on Mac's. As I live in the WinTel world, I haven't run across a soldered SSD, but likely they are out there.

They are.

If you start looking at wintel laptops of similar power/slimness/efficiency to the current mac range, you'll find it fairly easily. I know because I looked just before buying my current newish macbook. This was a direct result of the pricing mentioned upthread. I found equivalent wintel machines were similar.

 

[Blumlein 88]

They are.

If you start looking at wintel laptops of similar power/slimness/efficiency to the current mac range, you'll find it fairly easily. I know because I looked just before buying my current newish macbook. This was a direct result of the pricing mentioned upthread. I found equivalent wintel machines were similar.

Yes, the trend has bled over into the Win machines. One reason my last laptop was a gaming laptop. Those still are setup so you can do memory or HD upgrades. That and I went with an AMD cpu.

 

[antcollinet]

Yes, the trend has bled over into the Win machines. One reason my last laptop was a gaming laptop. Those still are setup so you can do memory or HD upgrades. That and I went with an AMD cpu.

Yep - that's an option. They tend to be on the chunky side though, and with less than stellar battery life.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Yep - that's an option. They tend to be on the chunky side though, and with less than stellar battery life.

You know I think this obsession with thin computers and phones has become irrational. I went with the AMD because while more power hungry than an M1 or M2 ARM cpu it is less hungry than Intel. My laptop is clunky. In this day however what is clunky. It is about the same thickness as the old Macbook pro I have.
The current Macbook Pro is 15.6 mm. thick. My Windows laptop is 24 mm. 8.4 mm difference ( or just about 1/3 inches). In what situation does that difference matter to me at all? The weight from the larger battery? Macbook Pro is 1.4 kg and the one I have is 1.6 kg. (or a whopping 7 ounces). Everything matters, but versus at one time things being twice this thick and twice this heavy that is not much of a consideration to me. Not when the Windows laptop had twice the memory, 4 times the hard drive, can be upgraded, costs $200 less, and is faster than the Macbook.

 

[pseudoid]

You know I think this obsession with thin computers and phones has become irrational.

You know this obsession with thin TVs...

 

[Jeromeof]

You know I think this obsession with thin computers and phones has become irrational. I went with the AMD because while more power hungry than an M1 or M2 ARM cpu it is less hungry than Intel. My laptop is clunky. In this day however what is clunky. It is about the same thickness as the old Macbook pro I have.
The current Macbook Pro is 15.6 mm. thick. My Windows laptop is 24 mm. 8.4 mm difference ( or just about 1/3 inches). In what situation does that difference matter to me at all? The weight from the larger battery? Macbook Pro is 1.4 kg and the one I have is 1.6 kg. (or a whopping 7 ounces). Everything matters, but versus at one time things being twice this thick and twice this heavy that is not much of a consideration to me. Not when the Windows laptop had twice the memory, 4 times the hard drive, can be upgraded, costs $200 less, and is faster than the Macbook.

I agree the obsession with ultra-thin computers is irrational - with Apple I think this was driven by Johnny "thinner is always better" Ives, but the newest MacBook Pro has reversed that trend and now has space again for useful ports like a full-size HDMI port and SD card slot without needing an adapter - the 16 inch is 1.68 cm think and I think this is the sweet spot. This thicker case also allowed them to restore a decent keyboard - chasing irrational thin-ness caused them to adopt a terrible keyboard for a few years).

But It depends on the person and how they want to use a computer, but I do value portability, battery life and performance - IMO gaming laptops are just too thick (and eat battery life when doing useful work so doubly "not portable" as you need a power brick with you all the time) but on the other end of the scale, laptops that are too thin equally stuff from smaller battery life (and often from heat dissipation issues - especially if you want reasonable performance in that thin laptop with good performance).

And this is totally subjective and while I love Linux (and used to love Windows for 20+ years from 3.1 until probably Windows 7 ) - I live in a world where I need to balance interfacing with "the business" ( i.e. senior management level but also designers and their teams ) where I need to use premium software suites from Microsoft and Adobe (and others) and also I have to get "stuck into" the low level engineering issues e.g. debugging issues with cloud services (typically linux based) and MacOS has provided that nice balance between those 2 worlds in a single device, one which I can easily carry on a business trip without needing a power supply. I know people will say what about Windows WSL (and I do think its a great move forward by Microsoft as is Azure embracing linux and Kubernetes ), and I imagine Linux users will say use OpenOffice (but its not he same at least for me).

As for upgradable, I think it's a shame especially that the MacMini has the SSD NAND chips on the motherboard (as that used to be a wonderful little upgradable device - almost a pleasure looking at the engineering taking it apart to upgrade it ) but with laptops for most people I think its different. Other the shocking rip-off upfront cost of memory and storage that Apple charge, laptop upgrades are not something "normal" people do, I read somewhere that 99% of users never upgrade their laptops. I know Apple would argue that having the controller on the motherboard has allowed them to have better bus performance, but I personally would like that upgrade option (I guess I am in that 1% of people) - but for now I just got my company to prepay for memory and storage when I got my latest Macbook.

 

[antcollinet]

So what we find is horses for courses. I just forced myself to hold my nose on the cost, and invested for another 10 years.

 

[Axo1989]

Lets tone that down a bit please.

From you? Pffft. Tone-policing others instead of giving a toss whether what you post is remotely true? Anyway, I don't usually see your posts so no need for a conversation.

 

[Snoopy]

You know this obsession with thin TVs...

I think it's great. Oled TVs at least with a nice backplate and not these plastic case TVs.
I'm looking forward to the day when TVs come without loudspeakers because nobody should be using them anyway.

 

[pseudoid]

You know this obsession with thin TVs...

I think it's great.

You think "what" is great? Is it the fact that your TV on the wall can now easily fit in your wallet, along with all your credit cards?
"It" sounds like you are planning on being a first adopter of the paper-thin roll-up TVs?

 

[TonyJZX]

i had to do a rare callout today... i dont do this all that much anymore... i used to drive upwards of 1,000 miles in a week to visit customers who could be military, transport, medical etc.

towards the end i used to travel with one reasonably modern laptop... ie. quad core 8gb 256mb ssd and an older unit preferably with a serial port

but today i used used an old Thinkpad T420s.... same config 8gb 256mb etc.

always bring a charger + mouse

its enough for me... just use web apps and terminal

but stress can be higher since you might be liaising with utilties, power people etc. and so I just like the way the old T420 line used to be

the layout of the kbd etc. really no fuss

and modern slim units dont have rj45 ports any more

this one is still on win7

onsite work with clients is often stressful enough without having to put up with this new line of slim laptops (eg I have some Acer Swifts and the like that I truly dont care too much for after it upgraded itself to Win11)

 

[RayDunzl]

NBC Television PC Technical Support

 

[Neddy]

THAT Conan bit is hilarious!!
I was actually involved (as a PM) in setting up the upgraded enterprise (tech) support desk for my agency (about 50000 users).
Never ceases to amaze me how 'middle management' will ALWAYS see things from the 'how does this benefit ME' perspective when it comes to streamlining, or faster/better handling of calls, which almost always results in increasing awfulness for the customer....usually of the 'baffle them with bullshit' variety.
I have to say the software they use for capturing and tracking each 'incident' is freaking impressive..but also allows some calls to just vanish into obscurity due to the management 'meddling' (eg, 'this' report I run each week, on, say, call latency numbers, is more important than ANY customer call).
It's a hell I'm very glad I only had to touch briefly on - the internal politics of the bureacracy was stunning.
True change in cust service/product quality only comes from the very top.
And, to be fair, some copanies do an excellent job of it - for example, recent experiences with Litter Robot continue to amaze and impress me.

 

[pseudoid]

Re: "Computer Support"
I am not much of a fan of google [] but credit must be given where it is due:
"ChromeBooks will now get 10years of automatic updates"
TL&DR:

When Chromebooks debuted in 2012, their affordable price tags helped make personal computing more accessible. That also made them a great fit for the education world, providing schools with secure, simple and manageable devices while helping them save on their budgets. In fact, Chromebooks are the number one device used in K-12 education globally, according to Futuresource. Plus, they’re a sustainable choice, with recycled materials that reduce their environmental impact and repair programs that help them last longer.

imo - I'd prefer a Surface over mickey-mouse any day!

 

[somebodyelse]

The credit should go to the regulatory intervention that was going to push them if they didn't jump, and it's still from when they start selling them, not when they stop. Note that the schools and other repairers are still complaining about lack of spare part availability. Surface is a whole other market segment to most Chromebooks, and not without its own problems.

 

[pseudoid]

The credit should go to the regulatory intervention that was going to push them if they didn't jump, and it's still from when they start selling them, not when they stop...

Lemme guess: The "regulatory intervention" will next use threats to get the ChromeBooks for free!
Shouldn't they have thought of these contractual crap at the start instead of when they stop purchasing?
Remembering the kids are the most brutal abusers of products; and all these demands on an item that is offered at prices averaging probably around $400 a pop.

 

[somebodyelse]

Nobody's saying they should be free, and institutional buyers arguably should have known to ask, and to get the salesman's promises written into the contract. It's the retail market where the behaviour is more of a problem - how many people know to look for the non-obvious end of support date, and who would expect a device that's still on sale new to have passed that date already? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...from-8-years-to-10-after-heightened-backlash/