[Joeboy]

Tengentially: Since a lot of us are hybrid workers now, can't we have a better solution than having to constantly schlep our laptops to work and back? I want an easily pluggable SSD that doesn't dangle precariously out of the side of my laptop. Something like the old PCMCIA form factor. Then I could have a work laptop and a home laptop.

[perilunar]

Given how powerful phones are nowadays it's a shame that we can't just dock our phones into a keyboard & monitor and run a full desktop OS on them.

[WorldPeas]

or have a keyboard case for them like with the pinephone. Bonus points for enumerating usb-2/usb-4 and a headphone jack

[lylejantzi3rd]

At that point, why not have a home desktop and a work desktop? You've been able to have external hot-swap SSDs in a relatively small form factor for years. They make m.2 hot swappable frames[0].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/j4ilsa/m2_ssd_in_a...

[Joeboy]

I would not be able to move a desktop between offices easily, and also it would not be comfortable on my lap.

[3np]

You mean like the Framework laptop modules?

[Joeboy]

I don't know, maybe! I just did a half-arsed google and got an M.2 adaptor that doesn't look like it's designed for daily swappage? But maybe you're talking about something else.

[lantry]

They have "expansion cards" which fit flush in the body of the laptop. One of the available expansion cards is an SSD (comes in various sizes)

https://frame.work/products/storage-expansion-card-2nd-gen?v...

[Joeboy]

Thank you, that does look interesting! I haven't really considered the Frameworks so far because of my secondhand Thinkpad habit, but I do like the idea so I should probably think more seriously about it.

[3np]

I bet if you're handy it should be possible to repurpose an optical slot in an old Thinkpad for those.

[WorldPeas]

maybe consider a uhs-ii or uhs-iii sd card? they're very fast and will work on any modern macbook