Comment Re:Consumers don't care about upgradeability. (Score 1) 76
Not a surprise there. I bought a laptop in 2004 with the laptop MXM standard graphics that could theoretically be upgraded to another card at a later date. Only problem? Later never came. I couldn't even get reasonable driver updates without going through a third party, much less an entire graphics card update. The kicker? The MXM slot proved troublesome. Eventually, the graphics card heat warped the card ever so slightly, such that the machine wouldn't power up reliably anymore. It was an expensive lesson - don't buy a laptop and expect any level of service one year after you buy it.
Still better than a friends Dell laptop. If you used the laptop on your lap, the access panels would crush important ICs, bricking the machine. Again, this happened about 30 days outside of the 1 year warranty. At least he was able to fix it for under $100 from a third party. The third party fix was better than the Dell fix, because they would replace the ICs and fix the lids from doing it again.
Also, if you update your BIOS in Windows 7 instead of Vista, you have voided your warranty. You'd think that they'd warn you on the BIOS page. Nope! You have to check the support forum for that. Ironically, that model of laptop was NOT allowed to boot FreeDOS, and so was actually safer to use Linux to do the upgrade than Windows. For those wondering, the BIOS update erased the boot block and reprogrammed it; unfortunately, Windows 7 blocked access to the BIOS boot-block area for security purposes. Who is going to update their BIOS from Windows, right?
Even the current laptop I have won't suspend unless you use the exact version of Windows 10 and shipping driver. Nothing else works. No Linux support for suspend, either. As an added bonus, the UEFI system refuses to allow Linux to charge the battery while the machine is running.
TL;DR Don't buy any electronics and expect any level of support after 1 year, even from the high end vendors.