This is the truth. As I mentioned earlier I had a 30 year career as a manufacturing engineer specializing in components of consumer electronics.
This is what people want. It’s easy to make a toaster that would last forever but it would be more costly to manufacture. Sitting side by side with the cheapie toaster that will have a much shorter lifespan on average, not enough people will buy the expensive one to make a viable product.
This one will probably do the trick. I have found Anker to be a great brand.
I swapped my old HP for a new HP not long ago and was surprised to see no access for the battery. Luckily, I don’t need that feature as I only use the computer at home.
Thank you. I’ll get one as a backup power source.
Yeah, for certain items there has been a bit of a bifurcation into premium for the well-heeled and semi-disposable junk.
The thing is, I’m completely in agreement with you that a LOT of stuff really is better. Just off the top of my head the rise of the inexpensive Class-D amps and cheap entry-level bookshelf speakers that can outperform much more expensive older audio gear is quite impressive.
We don’t really seem to be disagreeing here. I don’t think it’s down to some mustache twirler, it’s sadly the race to the bottom of the market’s shortsighted fixation on “CHEAP NOW” rather than the potential lifetime cost.
Though, the assholes at AT&T that disable the otherwise working FM antenna on your phone? That’s some mustache twirling bullshit.
Audio equipment is one of the things on the extreme end of much cheaper and much better while being much more space efficient than the old days.
Absolutely. I had a pretty good seat at that table for a while. Was at Microsoft on the Windows Phone team then was a vendor for the WP team, AT&T, HTC, TMO and Sony Ericsson. And my wife was at Cingular/AT&T for more than 15 years. She handled the exec level quarterly hardware reviews and would come home with locked cases full of the next-gen prototypes.
Advantages are measured down to cents on the retailer side. And on the consumer side, a great product with just one feature a quarter-step behind can just sink like a stone and destroy revenue for that entire generation of that product. These folks are just not failing to provide the product people want. They may not provide what some people say they want, but what people actually buy is often quite different.
Uggh, swapping laptop batteries. Years ago I had a Dell with two flex bays that could hold batteries, CD drives, an extra hard drive, or a blank filler. It came with two batteries, and somewhere I picked up a third.
Triple runtime seems great, but there was a major bug. About half the time when switching from one battery to the other, the computer would just turn off, even if both flex bays had batteries in them. That meant I had to either completely shutdown when the first battery was almost depleted, then swap the good battery from bay #1 to #0. or find a place to plug in.
I ended up just using one battery and the blank filler, because it saved weight.
I so much prefer a thinner and lighter laptop than a battery that can be swapped. As I’ve said before, I use an M2 Mac Air like it’s a phone. I just use it during the day whenever I need it, and if the battery is getting low at the end of the day, I’ll plug it in.
My problem is that modern laptops are not thin. Looking to replace my old Dell Precision 5550, I’ve made a spreadsheet over the last year comparing specs. Most comparable laptops are chonkers.
| Height Front | Height Rear | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell | Precision 5550 | 0.46 | 0.46 |
| Dell | Pro 16 Plus AMD | 0.78 | 0.78 |
| Dell | Pro 14 Premium | 0.64 | 0.67 |
| Apple | Macbook Pro 16 | 0.66 | 0.66 |
| Apple | Mac Air 15 | 0.45 | 0.45 |
| Lenovo | Thinkpad X9 15 | 0.27 | 0.7 |
| Dell | Pro Max 14 | 0.58 | 0.74 |
| Dell | Pro Max 16 | 0.59 | 0.75 |
| Dell | Pro 13 Plus | 0.78 | 0.78 |
| Dell | Pro 14 Plus | 0.78 | 0.78 |
| Dell | Pro 16 Plus | 0.78 | 0.81 |
| Dell | Pro Max 16 Premium | 0.8 | 0.8 |
| Framework | 16 2025 | 0.71 | 0.71 |
| Dell | XPS 16 2026 | 0.58 | 0.58 |
| Dell | Pro 5 16 | 0.43 | 0.59 |
But it’s much better than older batteries, too, lasting three or four times as long.
Especially as you have no way of knowing whether the more expensive toaster will actually last longer. Maybe the toaster that costs three times as much will have a life span four times as long - or maybe they’re just ripping you off, and the two toasters have the exact same mechanism inside their casings. How can you possibly tell?
So you buy a brand you’ve heard of, you don’t buy the cheapest model, and you hope for the best.
This is exactly what i was about to write. I’m in the market for a new basement dehumidifier. And the #1 complaint is that they don’t last very long. I would gladly pay more to buy one that lasted as long as the one I’m replacing (15-20 years. It’s physically possible to make one that lasts that long.) But i have absolutely no idea whether any of them are actually sturdier.
So it’s partly a problem of information. It’s relatively cheap to learn how a product will work when it’s new, what it costs, how heavy it is… It’s really hard (expensive) to learn the expected lifespan of a product.
And also, I’ve been to lots of all-day conferences that people brought laptops to. And they all provided a place to plug in the laptop. Maybe not enough places for everyone to stay plugged in all day. But laptops charge really quickly these days. And run a long time on a charge. I’ve never brought a spare battery (hot swappable or external) to a conference. I just bring a power cord. I’ve never had a problem.
And these days, when every new laptop can be charged with a USB-C cable (yes, even a Mac) you don’t really even need to bring your own charging cable. The person next to you, or next to them, probably has one and will be happy to let you plug in sometime during the day.
We try to organize things so that there are a couple of power strips under the conference table, so that people can plug in their laptops without creating a trip hazard. Some conference room furniture has power outlets built into the table, or at least outlets set into the floor. Management rarely listens to me but if they did, this sort of this would be planned for when the space is being constructed.
And after all that, the OP wasn’t asking for whether you preferred a laptop with a hard to replace battery or if you applauded the general trend of more difficult to service computers. They were asking if there is a laptop they can still buy with an easy to replace battery.
The answer to that is yes, there is. Panasonic still makes Toughbooks with replaceable and even hot swappable batteries. I’d shop around, because they aren’t cheap, but they do live up to their name. I’ve given my CF-53 (yep, only semi-rugged) a few healthy drinks of Dr Pepper, dropped it from the top of a ladder, etc. It still works 13+ years later. I imagine you could beat someone to death with it (it has a handle for easy wielding) and still send an email from it afterward telling everyone that you did it in the library with the laptop.
The current equivalent would probably be a CF-56. Again, shop around if you go this route, and make sure you know what you’re getting. There are government spec ones that have no wi-fi (but some versions even have a LTE modem), I don’t imagine you want one of those. Also know that there are lots of suppliers who only sell to large businesses, and last I checked Panasonic does not sell them direct to the public.
But if you want to save some cash, there are versions of its predecessor, the CF-55 available on Amazon for reasonable prices. At a quick glance, they both use the same battery.
Dell used to have rugged notebook computers with removable batteries. I had one a few years ago with two battery compartments. I can’t tell if their current rugged models still have the external battery compartments.
Heheh, the OP appears to have sworn off Dell.
And if the OP is really looking for an easy to upgrade, maintainable laptop, there’s always the Framework series of machines. However, they’re still a young small company. Panasonic has been selling rugged laptops for a lot longer.
I had one of those ruggedized Dell notebook computers a few years ago as my primary work computer. I think it weighed about six pounds or about twice the weight of a regular notebook, so I really doubt anyone would want one just for the easily removable battery. They did have a nice carry handle, though.
Yeah, any rugged notebook is going to be heavier, and almost certainly thicker. There’s just about no way around that. My old CF-53 is about 6 lbs. The CF-56 comes in at just under 5 lbs, though. My MacBook pro 14" M5 is a bit lighter at 3.4 lbs, but it’s not a gigantic difference between the modern examples as far as weight goes.
And yeah, the handle is pretty sweet. If my 14" MacBook came with a handle and a removable battery like my old G4 PowerBook had, it might be my idea of the perfect consumer laptop. I would still need to avoid serving it drinks, though.