I don't see any problem with this. There have always been products tailored for a specific market. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

That makes sense. But in 2000 the cheapest Cyrix MII Compaq was decently expandable in comparison. It seems that $200-$400 PCs today are less fancy than the were a few years ago. More cheaper in quality, but that's been happening since nearly 10 years ago due economic recession.

computergeek92 wrote:

What is the PC market coming too?

To all-online Big Brother dictatorship. I saw new "notebooks" without HDD and wich offered account in online storage (some prepaid period of time inserted in the price already). Everybody has low-tech cheap terminals and pay for online service every month. Everybody in under full control - what programs, what data and how you are using them. Plus it has mic, camera, gps to give other personal info about you, like today smartphones.

DosFreak wrote:

I don't see any problem with this. There have always been products tailored for a specific market. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Try to buy new machine with Windows 7 today as it don't spy as Win10. Or to setup Windows 7 on some new hardware - there are artificial impediment for this. Find a game wich is an outdated console port (like all multiplatform) and requires adequate to this PC system, but not modern PC for $1500 without weighty technical reasons. There are many examples outside computers too where is no free market actually. There is no free market among big business, - what you may choose and by wich price is good controled by mopolies, consortiums and similar. Who and what may to sell is also controlled by not normal market means in big business.

Should go find an older model Xbox 360 that does not support Kinect, then turn of its wifi connection plus Xbox live. Skip Xbox One and it's spying nuisance.

Tablets and smartphones don't have memory upgrades, why don't you worry about them as well?

...or you can just not attach a Kinect to an Xbox One/360. Wow, so hard.

Then the PC market is changing, with more people replacing instead of upgrading.

RacoonRider wrote:

Tablets and smartphones don't have memory upgrades, why don't you worry about them as well?

I'm not worrying about it, I already own a good upgradable PC, I was just surprised to see how the low end model computers have changed.

calvin wrote:

...or you can just not attach a Kinect to an Xbox One/360. Wow, so hard.

Not a console gamer here, I just heard bad things about the Xbox One. So please pardon my ignorance.

I have a 360 and it has not been on the line in about a year. We have shit internet out in the boonies anyway.

computergeek92 wrote:

Tech support at Best Buy told me that many of the new brand name laptops, netbooks, and chromebooks do not have any ram slots to upgrade them and use a tiny capacity microSD card instead of a hard drive. I saw some with a 16gb card... What is the PC market coming too??

Last week I also noticed an add for a 11,6 mini-notebook for just 200 Euro. Had a 32GB eMMC instead of SSD or a Disk. Comes with intel Z3725, HD screen, 2GB RAM and Windows 10. Wonder to what degree the eMMC will slow the system. Claims of Flash media read- and write-speed vary a lot.

It's sad, but things have been moving in that direction for a while now. Make them cheap and disposable enough so that most won't bother getting them fixed. Then sell them over and over again to the same people. Very wasteful, but I really don't think these companies care.

A full tower with without any pci/pcie though? Wow, that is garbage.

Apple leads with its bullshit, and others follow. It's sad, really.

That's how it has been with everything for a while - make everything cheaper and easier to replace.

It took the PC market relatively long to adapt to this model. Well, until Apple was leading the way.

We really need to make companies liable for being wasteful, but I'm afraid this won't be happening anytime soon.

And this...

computergeek92 wrote:

I also saw a friend's brand new HP tower at his place and it has uncut markings for expansion slots on the micro atx case but there's no pci/pcie expansion slots on the motherboard... There's also more uncut markings to fit a standard atx power supply but the tower uses a laptap charger instead... The board is a mini-itx with a soldered on cpu, 2 ram slots, and that's it.

...is shitty to the max. Why don't they use a smaller case then? I would have no problem buying a SFF PC knowing it isn't upgradable. Buying a Micro ATX tower suggests to me I'm buying a computer I can upgrade and repair. Not using 2/3rds of the case is just wasteful.

oerk wrote:

And this...

computergeek92 wrote:

I also saw a friend's brand new HP tower at his place and it has uncut markings for expansion slots on the micro atx case but there's no pci/pcie expansion slots on the motherboard... There's also more uncut markings to fit a standard atx power supply but the tower uses a laptap charger instead... The board is a mini-itx with a soldered on cpu, 2 ram slots, and that's it.

...is shitty to the max. Why don't they use a smaller case then? I would have no problem buying a SFF PC knowing it isn't upgradable. Buying a Micro ATX tower suggests to me I'm buying a computer I can upgrade and repair. Not using 2/3rds of the case is just wasteful.

I've seen a few of those style HP towers over the past couple of years. They really do make you wonder why HP didn't use an ITX case in the first place. It probably would've saved them a buck or two. 🤣

Bought a cheap Acer E5-511 for my mon (Bay trail 2,2GHz quad core, 4GB ram, 500GB HDD, win 8.1 license) and I'm happy to report the ram is upgradable (it comes with two slots and one 4GB stick pre-installed) so is the HDD and you can add a laptop optical drive by removing the plastic stand-in. Also the battery on this thing lasts a crazy 7-8 hours of wifi-surfing and is user removable. Great little machine for 200 euro.

My Asus ROG G751JY gaming laptop on the other hand does not come with a user-removable battery and the 8gb stick it came with is under the keyboard in a non-user serviceable area. It has four ram slots, two are on the bottom and are easy to get to (small lid with one screw) and two are under the keyboard. Of course, you can get to the ram and battery by removing the top cover with the palmrest and keyboard - it takes 5 minutes, a plastic prying tool and a phillips-head screwdriver. There's about 8 screws to remove.

As soon as I got it I removed the slow 8gb samsung 1600MHz CL11 ram and replaced it with a 16GB corsair 1833MHz cl9 dual-channel kit.