@B S Magnet
Certainly, I applaud the basic concept of modular laptops. I don't have any problem with that, and if I were going to make laptops of my own they would be too, but on the corporate side, besides simply leaving the option to replace parts in the hands of the end user and using recycled cardboard and I guess aluminum (even though that's nothing to applaud -- the overwhelming majority of aluminum is recycled), their main form of pollution reduction is in carbon capture, itself already a questionable practice with regards to energy use but the company they partner with, Running Tide, has...
a reputation on top of that.
On the actual laptop side, I guess the 13" is fine, besides them wanting you to replace the entire top cover it's alright. Also, their business model being the sale of parts means that their whole low waste thing is kinda eroded a bit by encouraging users buy new mainboards each generation, easily the least environmentally friendly part of the whole equation.
However I have significant issues with the 16" -- particularly in the proprietary PCIe cartridge; instead of using the already existent MXM standard that people already have cards for, this company whose stated goal is moving the whole computer industry in their direction is using a cartridge form factor that literally only works on this one specific chassis.
This means AIBs need to stock more and more SKUs exponentially for the same cards and ultimately discourages more widespread adoption of this particular graphics card format, where if they'd just put their muscle behind MXM to revive it there would be lots of pre-existing cards to re-use, parts wouldn't depend on the 16" remaining the same exact form factor for the next 20 years, and the consumer would have a lot more choice rather than being locked into FW's cards or homemade ones. Is MXM dying? Maybe, but so is SO-DIMM. That doesn't seem to be a barrier.
And there was an RX 6600 MXM card that ran just as fast as the desktop card would if set to 75 W max, so it's not like it's saturated. Or saturatable, since it's just a PCIe form factor like this new cartridge.
The keyboard clip system and rearrangeable panels seems neat but the side panels that I remember seeing demonstrated all seem to be just flash that in some cases are just more things that can break.
Personally, this
seeming attempt at vendor lock-in is a huge red flag coming from a company I was all in on just a few months ago and was waiting on an ARM offering from. The fact they so much as let the idea float around long enough to get prototyped is a concerning look at where their minds are for a company labelled the "anti-Apple"; this sure seems to be their 5-pointed star screw or proprietary battery.
And this is a personal taste issue, but I'd have much rather they gone for 15" 3:2, but that's again just my own tastes speaking and I can't fault them for going with 16" 16:10.
Of course, criticism is cheap; can I do any better? Well, time would tell if any of these things would pan out the way I envision them but I set out a proposal, attached below, for how I would run a company that produces computers in a proactively environmentally conscious way, taking into consideration that the very nature of the industry isn't very green in and of itself.
