why thinkpads kind of suck

Thinkpads. Truly bulletproof machines, there's this saying: "If you drop a thinkpad, the ground breaks".

But nowadays, I'm not so sure. Things that we used to enjoy in older thinkpads like: swappable wifi cards, external batteries, amazing keyboards, non-soldered ram, repairability are now a rarity.

So in hindsight, peering upon the past with my current understanding. One of Lenovo’s latest devices: Thinkpad T14 Gen 5 AMD, there are minor callbacks to the past. Non-soldered ram and repairability but other aspects hinder this laptop's use in the future like a soldered wifi card. Doesn't really make sense as you'll be stuck with that wifi card in the future and like the jump from wifi 5 to 6, WPA2 to WPA3. You can enable WPA2 but it comes with less security. The sacrifices we make for keeping our hardware out of the landfill or that line "another person's trash is another person's treasure".

So with the sacrifices of the present generation. “Older thinkpads seems like the way to go” you ask. You may call it nitpicking but having to make sacrifices to hold onto 5-10 year old tech, doesn't really make sense if you are a power-user. It makes less sense if you're trying to be more of a minimalist and less of a hoarder or more security minded as well.

There is good news though, with the advent of right-to-repair. I am noticing certain aspects of the laptop ecosystem changing. Repairability is back at the forefront atleast with Framework Laptops. Everyone's heard the stories that if you go the repairability or sustainability route as a company, you sink but Framework has been around for quite some time and has the backing of some big names like: Louis Rossmann and Linus from LinusTechTips.

It's these key players that are supporting a stance. A stance that places the right-to-repair into the hands of the users and pushes the laptop scene into a direction that will retain the memory of what used to be. Old thinkpads may not necessarily be present with the current Lenovo lineup... But even so, there remains another contender i.e. Framework.

So I'm thinking about getting a Framework Laptop 13 AMD, it’s about 2K but I think supporting a cause you truly believe in is almost priceless.

*Editors Note* But still thinkpads are better than most old and recent dell, hp, acer laptops