We used to buy Dells with minimum RAM and add quality third party RAM for way less than Dell wanted for it. They also use ram quantity to leverage other specs we're not bothered about. Of course they are moving to soldered.

Bash me all you want, but after CPU, GPU, memory controller & a host of other things integrated in modern System-on-Chips (SoC), I've long held the belief that next logical step would be to integrate RAM.

Optimal: piecemeal. As in: X sockets on a board, each socket takes a chip that adds CPU core(s), GPU cores, and some amount of main RAM. More chips, more powerful computer.

Keyword: socket. Read: replaceable. Bad chip out, good chip in. Slow chip out, faster chip in. Soldered onto board = reliable, but a defect could junk the whole machine.

> I then had to manually transcribe this, which [w]as “fun”.

Can't you select and copy the text in the photo (on most smartphones and PCs at least)?

i had to move a very very small resistor in the correct place to make a laptop disregard the soldered ram and only use the sodimm

Since the OP mentions Lenovo, look at their other product lines for ones that still have socketed RAM. I'm currently running an E16 with 40GB RAM, 8GB soldered, 32GB socketed. And aside from that it leaves my previous X1 for dead in terms of performance. Lenovo's replacing the carbon fiber case, the whole reason the X1 line is called "Carbon", with crappy black plastic was the last straw.

LPCAMM2 sockets were supposed to provide all the benefits of soldering while still being a socket. Anyone know the state of adoption?

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