Repairable Hardware

January 19th, 2026

A few weeks ago, I jumped at an opportunity to buy a Thinkpad E14 Gen 5, for only $138. This was a very modern laptop, unlike anything I had gotten my hands on before. (The closest thing to this was my T480, not quite on the same level) Nothing like this laptop sells for $138 under normal circumstances, and the listing was marked as Parts and Repair, so I knew that things weren't going to be a piece of cake, but I figured I could still get things up and running. Oh boy, was I wrong. Laptops like the E14 Gen 5 and pretty much every other consumer level laptop being put on the market right now share a similar problem: they are total unrepairable, proprietary bullshit.

The piece of shit in question

When I went to boot up my new laptop, I was met not with the familiar Lenovo boot screen, but rather a black screen and a series of flashing lights from the power button. I had seen this before; it was likely a simple memory issue, so I took off the bottom plate of the laptop to swap the RAM and what do I see? Soldered memory. This was to be expected of course, I knew that, but I hadn't really though of this until just now. With my other laptops with memory issues, the fix was as simple as taking the problem stick out of the machine and maybe putting in a fresh one in if I was feeling fancy, although that might be a step left in the past based on these prices nowadays. Regardless, this laptop was effectively bricked for essentially no reason except for slightly more profit and a (maybe) slightly thinner laptop.

This practice of soldering down every component and making every single part of the computer be directly attached to the same motherboard is an intentionally nefarious practice intended to revoke our ability to use and fix what we own. It should not be ridiculous for someone to want to fix their own computer, and they shouldn't have to compromise on performance or pay ridiculous prices to get their hands on a computer that is properly repairable.

Currently, the way I see it, the only way to get a truly repairable laptop is to do what I do and pick up ancient used laptops from a time before users had essentially been brainswashed into believing that unrepairability and planned obsolescense are normal and acceptable, or you can shell out upwards of $2000 for a new framework. Now, I know that there are some laptops out there like the new P16s and whatnot that are pretty well repairable, at least to the degree of the T480, which is nice, and I'm glad that this is becoming a thing again, but even if that becomes the new norm, things are still not that repairable. This is why I am so fond of older thinkpads. Essentially every component is easily replaceable and swappable by the consumer - even the CPU. This is a level of modularity and repairability that is entirely unheard of in todays market, save the framework, but there is literally no reason for this. I cannot imagine that is is that difficult to fit a socketed CPU into a modern thin and light laptop, but literally no companies are doing this and it is a problem that is likely never going to be addressed directly by manufacturers.

Any particular reason that a company might try to screw over the consumer by using these stupid practices when designing a laptop can be effectively boiled down to profits. That's root cause of almost every problem ever anymore. Capitalism is an undeniable part of how the world functions, and as long as it continues to plague the earth, there will be problems. The problems that Capitalism is directly responsible for are innumerable, and the poor repairability practices that stem from profit motive are a very minor one, but seeing as how it directly pertains to the topics of this website, I decided to go at it from this angle, and because it's super fucking annoying that I can't get my hands on a usable used laptop from the last 5 years without being worried that I wasted my money on a brick. Anyways, that's all I have for this one. This is my first blog post, so I will likely change the stlye and all that but this is really just a trial to get something put up on the site, and fuller posts will be coming.

TLDR: Capitalism sucks and is draining society in a number of ways. One way it does this is by making computers super expensive and impossible to repair so that enjoyable computing is inaccessible and everybody is always having a bad time with their computers.