As technology keeps evolving, trends tend to come and go from the industry. For a few years, we'll get something that we think we can't live without, until it's replaced by the next big thing.

But sometimes, trends that used to be a staple of technology live on in our memories for far longer than they last in real life. And for me, there are definitely a few things that I miss from previous years and eras of computers, and especially premium laptops. So let's take a look at some of them.

Meaningful performance improvements

On desktop, at least

Most of this article will focus on laptops, so I'll start by getting something that's a bit more desktop focused out of the way. For the past couple of years, it's felt like things have been progressing at a somewhat glacial pace. On the CPU side, AMD has been making good progress, but mostly with its recent X3D chips such as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, while the latest generation of standard Ryzen processors is somewhat unimpressive. And Intel has been a trainwreck for the past couple of generations.

Meanwhile, on the GPU side, it's been a total slog. Nvidia came out with the RTX 40 series that's almost identical to its predecessors, with most performance improvements being attributed to the addition of frame generation, and no meaningful improvement to raster performance. Plus, some cards just made weird cutbacks compared to previous models. And with Nvidia resting on its laurels, it feels like AMD also hasn't built super compelling products this generation.

Meanwhile, things like DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 SSDs are big upgrades on paper, but it matters so little to most users that it's hard to be excited. I miss seeing these big improvements you can easily observe in daily use.

Thankfully, laptops have been pretty exciting this year with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series, Intel Lunar Lake, and AMD Ryzen AI 300. Hopefully desktops will get some more fun stuff soon.

Actually decent I/O

Why are premium laptops so stingy?

What it means to be a premium product seems to have shifted very significantly in the last few years. Whereas having a lot of ports used to be a good thing, it seems like the industry has more and more favored thin and light designs, which is often used as an excuse to have a limited port selection.

Laptops like the Dell XPS 13 are especially egregious, with just two USB-C ports and nothing else. But even competitors like the HP OmniBook Ultra or the Lenovo Yoga 9i could definitely do with a bit more ports. The same could be said for the MacBook Air.

All of these laptops have started going down the path of expecting users to buy dongles or only have wireless Bluetooth accessories, which is very frustrating. Most monitors don't have a USB-C input. Most wired accessories don't come with USB-C to USB-C cables. Yet all these laptops and even some desktops like the Mac Mini are all-in on USB-C, so dongles are almost mandatory if you want to use wired accessories. And even if they did come with USB-C, so many laptops just have so few ports now. If we're making USB-C the future, then those ports need to be more plentiful.

And yes, wireless is more convenient for some people, but wired accessories can last so much longer because they don't have batteries to worry about. And Bluetooth can be a piece of work on some platforms, including Windows. I want laptops with more ports, and if we're going to keep pushing for USB-C, I hope that push extends to accessory makers too so we don't have to think twice about what we're buying.

Repairable and upgradeable designs

Things keep getting more locked down

As laptops strive to be thinner and lighter every year, many things tend to get sacrificed. Ports are one of them, but another big one in my opinion is the internal space and the ability to make upgrades as a result.

Now, upgradeable processors or GPUs haven't been a thing for laptops for a really long time, but these days, even RAM, storage, or Wi-Fi cards are becoming a commodity for most laptops. Any laptop with Intel lunar Lake processors has the RAM built into the processor package itself, so there's no way to upgrade that. And even if it wasn't, the vast majority of premium laptops has the RAM soldered onto the motherboard now, so upgrades are basically impossible. In some cases, even storage is being soldered down. That's the case for Macs, but some laptops like the 2022 Dell XPS 13 also had soldered storage.

And in general, a lot of laptops aren't easy to get into, so even if something is upgradeable, you need a lot of tools to get inside in the first place. Users should be able to repair their laptops without having to go to an expensive "authorized" repair service.

Bold designs

Everyone wants to be subtle now

This one is a throwback to a fairly recent time, at least to some extent. The latest wave of redesigns from most major laptop companies has been very boring in some ways. Yes, laptops like the HP OmniBook Ultra, or the Dell XPS 13 look good and very sleek, but they're not fun. They're just hunks of metal (and some glass) with very little personality.

We don't have to travel very far back to find more exciting designs. The HP Spectre x360 13.5, which was still available last year, still had a dual-tone look with accented edges. Though the real stars where the previous models from 2021 and early, where the edges had this bold angular look and the accents were much more visible. Those versions also had a Poseidon Blue colorway that look amazing with dark blue surfaces and gold accents. Something similar happened with the Acer Swift 14, which looks totally dull now compared to the green and gold models of previous years.

Dell also used to do something interesting with its XPS laptops, which had a dual-tone design with a white or black interior and different shades of silver on the exterior. The latest models look super sleek and futuristic, but they're just one color. Even LG had a super cool design with the LG Gram Style and its iridescent finish, and that was just replaced by the much more plain LG Gram Pro this year.

I just want laptops to be fun to look at. It feels like the only way to get that now is with concept laptops, but bold designs shouldn't be that hard to achieve. I'm sure they'll come back eventually, but we're definitely in a boring era right now.

PCs will never be perfect, but they can always improve

At the end of the day, I know some of these things probably won't come back, and even if some of them do, no single laptop is likely to check all of these boxes. But there's something to be said about how laptops have lost both functionality and visual appeal in recent years, all the while prices have kept going up.

Hopefully, some of these things do come to fruition and we get to enjoy better products as a result. In the meantime, all we can do is hope and wait for such news to come. CES 2025 isn't that far off, so we might hear some big news sooner rather than later.