title: The problems with soldered hardware components
author: 寮
date: 2022-09-17 00:00:00
tags:technology,hardware
threadid: ANcpk8P7Q8m62Zf6a8
----
Those of you on SNS knew I was going to make this post eventually.\
And this is why I don't like to plan articles in advance, because I always end up not writing them.

But anyway, I had an IdeaPad, which "magically" broke the day warrenty expired.\
I tried to open it up, and after much fighting with the body (because just unscrewing alone isn't enough these days, you really have to use a few expired debit cards and lots of force in order top open it up), I managed to open it up.\
Once I finally managed to open it up, turned out I was looking at just a motherboard with some unlabeled chips, all soldered into place (even the fucking battery!).\
So basically, the only way to fix the IdeaPad is to just throw it into the trash, and buy yet another note PC.\
I didn't throw it away, because there's still data on it, which I can't backup, because the PC just freezes up a few minutes after boot, neither I can format it for the same reason, thus the PC is just lying around unused.

But my experience with the IdeaPad made one thing very clear: no more new laptops!\
Instead I rebelled and bought an old ThinkPad, and after a while I rebelled harder and bought a way older ThinkPad, and now I have 2 perfectly functioning ThinkPads, and I love them both (except I love the oldest one more, because it has a better keyboard, a BIOS instead of UEFI, no webcam, and no IntHell ME, also I disabled the microphone in the BIOS).\
And because I don't use soyware, avoid websoytes, don't make any use of soydevvery, and use Artix btw (and with i3), I can use both laptops perfectly fine.\
The only dropback is that I can't play gaymes on it, but I have a desktop for that.

Plus I have a dock for both ThinkPads, so I can use both of them as desktops while at home, and ironically give me access to even more ports than my desktop has, and my desktop is a custom built gayming PC.

Alright, I went off topic, so anyway, soldered hardware component problem.\
Back in the old day (like what is still possible with my desktop and ThinkPads), we used to be able to repair our computers by ourselves like responsible adults.\
Need to upgrade RAM? No problem!\
Need to upgrade HDD into SSD, and maybe add more space as well? No problem!\
Need a new battery? No problem!\
Keyboard broke? I can replace that.\
Screen broke? I can replace that.

With modern laptops on the other hand, none of that is possible anymore.\
Not to mention that you need to be very lucky to even have more than 1 USB port these days, my oldest ThinkPad has 4 of those!\
All part of planned obsolecense, and soydevs are accelerating it too by making more and more use of hardware resources.\
Once the PC breaks, you're forced to buy a new PC, this is the case with all modern laptops, no exception.\
Laptops basically became smartphones with a keyboard and trackpad.\
There's still freedom with desktops however, but looking at the direction both Crapple and Microshaft are pushing, I think that by 2030 desktops will also be turned into consoomer toys, and you won't be able to buy any computer parts, so once your gayming desktop PC breaks, you'll have no other choice than to buy a new desktop PC.\
Don't worry about the gaymes though, that's stored on Steam + iCloud or OneDrive.

Not to be a wasteful consoomer, but I plan on buying up multiple ancient ThinkPads (any series, but must be released before 2008, and preferrably Librebootable) and install multiple different Linux distro's or BSD variants on each one of them.\
Must is 1 more for OpenBSD, nice to have is 3 more for OpenBSD, Devuan, and Gentoo, and might eventually be nice to have is ~~6~~ 5 more for OpenBSD, Devuan, Gentoo, GhostBSD, ~~NetBSD~~ ([fuck you for inserting blatant propaganda and life threatening lies in the manuals](https://man.netbsd.org/vax/covid.4)), and Void Linux.\
No need for one with Artix, because I already have one.
