Have you noticed what’s new in new laptops?

“If you’ve gone shopping for a new laptop lately, you may notice something missing in all newer models regardless of make," writes Slashdot reader ikhider:

There’s no removable battery.

(summarizing)

• This impacts the device mobility
• The practical use of having a backup battery if you need one cannot even be applied.
• Having better batteries does not replace popping in a fresh, new one (especially when the “better” battery eventually dies, since it will die)
• This leads to one conclusion, planned obsolescence
• The order from manufacturers is clear: “If you want your laptop to still be mobile when the battery fizzles out, forget about it. Buy new instead”
• Buy used laptops? Yes, that’s doable today. It won’t anymore in about three years, when the new laptops of today become “used”

Consumers, concludes ikhider, “need to make their case to manufacturers, for their own best interest to leverage the life of a machine on their own terms, not the manufacturers: bring back the removable laptop battery."

Seriously, it should be completely illegal…

I completely agree with ikhider, and there is a ton of things that I could write about such a stupid move, but since pablo_max already wrote an excellent synthesis, I’ll just copy that:

“Seriously, it should be completely illegal to produce things like laptops with batteries that cannot be replaced. I understand the rationale behind it is to ensure that in 3 years, when you only get 1 hour between charges that you are forced to replace your entire machine, but let’s face it, it is a massive waste of collective resources. Additionally, it produces a needlessly high amount of e-waste.”

Nothing to add here. Just refuse laptops…

…and smartphones, and everything else battery-powered, portable or not, without:

• removable batteries
• of as few sizes as possible!

Because laptops may still “become obsolete NEXT year”, thanks to smartphones that “at the office or at home, you simply [connect] to a keyboard, a mouse and a flat screen”. But if those smartphones, mouse and keyboard had no replaceable batteries they would still be stupid products, whose production should be illegal in a sensible world.

Ditto for incompatible models of laptop power adapters, of course.

Seriously, it should be completely illegal to produce almost anything with batteries that cannot be replaced these days.

Image sources: snapshots from 123rf.com and “Old Laptop Batteries Could Light Up the Homes of the Less Fortunate”