this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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They'd arguably stopped some time ago. I have a Thinkpad T490s, and a fair chunk of that isn't upgradeable without swapping a fair bit of the body.
The keyboard, for example, is a permanent part of the chassis. Replacing out requires you to swap the entire shell out.
The Ethernet port is some proprietary gubbins, because Lenovo wanted to be funny, and use the same protocols and pinouts as regular Ethernet, but used a special physical connector.
Half the RAM is also permanently soldered into the motherboard as well, so you can't properly upgrade that either.
I got a (very cheap) Thinkpad from my university. It had that proprietary Ethernet port. It came with a ThinkPad-branded USB to Ethernet adapter. The adapter came with the laptop and still didn't use the proprietary port!
Now, there is a chance that the university IT which set stuff up before giving it to me, is responsible for disappearing the proprietary adapter. But because the USB adapter is branded with ThinkPad, I really think it's just what it came with.
Well the newer ones are decent again.