I don't get why so many people like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.
They don't come with SODIMM slots, RAM is soldered directly to the board. If RAM goes bad, you have to do circuit level repair which requires a potential reball.
The X1 Extreme comes with SODIMM slots from what I hear, but that is not the X1 Carbon. It certainly won't be lasting anywhere as long as previous Thinkpad models that have replaceable parts.
The brand loyalty of sorts has continued despite ThinkPads getting worse for a while now. I have a T440p because it's the last model with a socketed CPU, coreboot support, and that doesn't need blobs for the iGPU. Beyond this gen I think you're getting the same crap from nearly everyone. x86 is on its way out as well.
I'm probably going to get an M2 Max MBP when available and max out most of the specs. I think it'll be the first laptop I'll have bought new. Lots of soldered parts, yeah, but that's the norm with ARM anyway. Hopefully the M2 Max will stay usable a good decade or so and there'll be more RISC-V options after that.
Sockets are dead. They were good when they were all pro and no cons, but now days, they’re a bottleneck in terms of power consumption and in performance.
When I got my x1c 5th a few years ago it was the best balance of power for size/weight and more rugged than others in that class. I loved it running linux the e tire time. If the Framework had not come into existence I would probably still be using it, and I still like some details better than the Framework. Soldered 16g limit and all. I would have liked more ram, but 16g was enough even for working with vms and compiling and some cad. The speed of the m.2 slot with a high end 1 or 2T nvme was more important than ram for most things for me. And full 40g tb3 ports allowing actually good docking station performance and the fact that the tb3 ports supported displayport without special drivers was just killer.
Sodimms would have been nice but it was just one factor of many, and the total package was just excellent for both linux and windows. I love that machine on linux.
And after so many years, recently I was able to replace the cpu cooler, battery, and cmos battery before giving it to a nephew. The batteries were both still working but 5 years is 5 years and there's no getting around that tbey will start crapping out soon. And the fan had started to squeal so I just got all the parts that age at once.
This is the reason I've moved away from ASUS laptops too, the G14 has soldered RAM. If you want normal arrow keys, SODIMM/M.2 slots, and decent specs other wise the System 76 Oryx and maybe a few others fit the criteria, but the System 76 is going to be the best for Linux.
Out of all the failure domains I've dealt with as a Sysadmin, the most common I've seen across all models has been failing memory which was neck in neck with failing fans on the active cooled items.
I can't justify buying something that doesn't have replaceable memory given how common that failure is.
They don't come with SODIMM slots, RAM is soldered directly to the board. If RAM goes bad, you have to do circuit level repair which requires a potential reball.
The X1 Extreme comes with SODIMM slots from what I hear, but that is not the X1 Carbon. It certainly won't be lasting anywhere as long as previous Thinkpad models that have replaceable parts.