Easily swappable batteries do have significant downsides, you either need to compromise on capacity or form factor.

Of course that doesn’t mean they should be hard to replace with some tools and effort.

To be fair back in those days laptops only lasted on battery power for a few hours at most (also old batteries had a very short lifetime compared to modern ones) so being able to swap it was an actually useful feature.

I have an old ThinkPad as my only laptop. It came to me used, with an aftermarket battery.

That battery was great for a couple of years before it started to get wonky, so I replaced it with a different aftermarket battery.

This process took zero tools. It took less time to swap in a new battery than it did for me to write this comment. Anyone can do it; it is not an arduous procedure.

What was the added environmental cost here? Some "single-use" plastics that lasted for years?

> Non-replaceable batteries

Most batteries are replaceable. The difference is the level of effort involved.

> The fact that you "do not miss" a better world, does not mean it is not better.

In the abstract, yeah, it's better. But the extra battery cost me a lot of money, and I did not feel it was money well spent.