Access to all the internal components is the biggest drawback to laptops vs. desktops these days. Back in the day there wasn't much I couldn't diagnose/fix myself on desktops (took system config courses back in college) and keep it hummin' along nicely. Four screws to take the cover off the CPU and everything was readily identifiable - easy/peasy.
Hell, I was first kid on the block to make a 14.4K USRobotics modem work in a pc-xt (with its 20mb harddrive and 256K ram).
But these days, all I use is a laptop - and I have to admit to knowing very little of their internal config - other than upgrading the RAM myself a few years back. I'd sooner invest in a new state-of-the-art system than nickel-and-dime to coax a few more years from my aging Acer.