IMO, the fact that the CPU is soldered is a major demerit. I’d much rather if they had a standalone compute module with the CPU, RAM, etc attached so the entire compute platform can be upgraded as the compute hardware has a much faster turnover rate than the peripherals or I/O. A compute module may have soldered ram instead of a slot, but the RAM generation depends on the CPU, so I think it would be much better if you could upgrade them as a unit, as AFAIK data shows that not many people upgrade the RAM separately, and if you upgrade your CPU just a couple years later, you might not be able to use your existing RAM anyway. Further, if we had an open source and high performance compute module and interface standard, we could have really good modular ecosystem for whatever needs computers hardware where you can buy compute modules from lots of vendors and put them in shells of computers from lots of other vendors.
As for “more elecological”, it kind of depends on how you upgrade. Do you expect to need to upgrade the RAM, I/O, etc before replacing the laptop (or needing to upgrade the CPU in this case)? If so, then modular is definitely better. If not, then the modular components require more resources for no real gain.
As a bit of a tangent, I really wish we could go back to removable batteries. Those are almost always the first things to fail and not having to take the thing apart to replace it would go a long way.
IMO, the fact that the CPU is soldered is a major demerit. I’d much rather if they had a standalone compute module with the CPU, RAM, etc attached so the entire compute platform can be upgraded as the compute hardware has a much faster turnover rate than the peripherals or I/O. A compute module may have soldered ram instead of a slot, but the RAM generation depends on the CPU, so I think it would be much better if you could upgrade them as a unit, as AFAIK data shows that not many people upgrade the RAM separately, and if you upgrade your CPU just a couple years later, you might not be able to use your existing RAM anyway. Further, if we had an open source and high performance compute module and interface standard, we could have really good modular ecosystem for whatever needs computers hardware where you can buy compute modules from lots of vendors and put them in shells of computers from lots of other vendors.
As for “more elecological”, it kind of depends on how you upgrade. Do you expect to need to upgrade the RAM, I/O, etc before replacing the laptop (or needing to upgrade the CPU in this case)? If so, then modular is definitely better. If not, then the modular components require more resources for no real gain.
As a bit of a tangent, I really wish we could go back to removable batteries. Those are almost always the first things to fail and not having to take the thing apart to replace it would go a long way.