Can today's Thinkpads still hang with the best of them? (typed on a recently-upgraded late 2006 MBP)
triangle, how did you "upgrade" the MBP you mentioned? Once ram is at 3 gig and the hard drive is SSD, is there anything else to do?
The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
11–20 of 135 posts
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#12This is the most pretentious article I remember reading in recent history but it seems the author has a few interesting points. Can anyone do a tl;dr in plain english?
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
CPU's have been soldered to the motherboards of most laptops for an age now. Memory is beginning to be soldered to the motherboard too- I'm dubious as to how upgradable or modular the next generation will be.
The “soldered to the motherboard” memory on a $400 computer today costs 10,000 times less than the same quantity of memory in 1995. What’s the point of making something repairable generations down the line when nobody is going to still want it because you’ll be able to buy 10 new ones that are each 100 times better for the same price. The only computer parts from <2000 that are still worth keeping around today are th…
The soldered memory also tends to cost the end-user double than exactly the same memory that is user-replaceable. Just because they can charge more for the "upgrade".
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#14"The world is seven billion people swimming in a boiling froth of water, oil, guns, steel, race, sex, language, wisdom, secrets, hate, love, pain and TCP/IP." Yep. There's my quote of the week.
Mine: > More to the point, this is why the soi-disant-designer snob ... comes across as such a douchebag. It’s not “minimalist” if you buy a new one every two years; it’s conspicuous consumption with chamfered edges.
Weren't we also buying a new laptop every 2 years back when they had removable batteries?
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#15I'm not sure I buy the contrast between old computers and macbooks. The smallest replaceable part on a MacBook is the entire MacBook (excluding any wired or wireless peripherals), but the smallest in a normal computer might be the CPU. The CPU cannot be repaired except by replacing the entire thing. You can't repair a CPU or a MacBook, so it seems the the only real difference is how much it costs to replace the broke…
The other difference is the rate at which the part fails. CPUs basically last forever if you keep them sufficiently cooled. Batteries or screen backlights or keyboards, not so much.
But CPU spring connectors don't last forever. If you want to ensure the CPU stays reliable for a good long time (at today's clock rates), you're going to have to solder it down.
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#16This is the most pretentious article I remember reading in recent history but it seems the author has a few interesting points. Can anyone do a tl;dr in plain english?
Design as crafty/minimalism/apple's aesthetic is irresponsible in that it refuses to acknowledge that things can break. Design which pays attention to the reality of a thing's environment and usage patterns, and which does not prompt conspicuous consumption of every brand new version after even the slightest failure of the old, is better.
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#17This is the most pretentious article I remember reading in recent history but it seems the author has a few interesting points. Can anyone do a tl;dr in plain english?
Why would you need a tl;dr, if you've read it?
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
CPU's have been soldered to the motherboards of most laptops for an age now. Memory is beginning to be soldered to the motherboard too- I'm dubious as to how upgradable or modular the next generation will be.
The “soldered to the motherboard” memory on a $400 computer today costs 10,000 times less than the same quantity of memory in 1995. What’s the point of making something repairable generations down the line when nobody is going to still want it because you’ll be able to buy 10 new ones that are each 100 times better for the same price. The only computer parts from <2000 that are still worth keeping around today are th…
I think this is basically true of software as well.
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#19I can see the point.
My hobby is photography. I love my Nikon D5300 to bits, but after a year of usage two buttons are stuck and the eyecup needs replacing. And then there are people using twin reflex cameras from the 50s and they run like butter...
Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other difference is the rate at which the part fails. CPUs basically last forever if you keep them sufficiently cooled. Batteries or screen backlights or keyboards, not so much.
But CPU spring connectors don't last forever. If you want to ensure the CPU stays reliable for a good long time (at today's clock rates), you're going to have to solder it down.
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