SPCR

I want a fanless laptop, netbook, convertible, chromebook or tablet with upgradable/replaceable RAM, HDD and battery. No price limit and I prefer the highest performance I can find.

I want to be able to install a Linux distro on it too.

That's about an impossible quest right now ... currently all the Core M system that I know:

a) They all have soldered on-board RAM, max up to 8GB now, better than last year's fanless
b) None has the user removable battery in the traditional sense, that you can bring spares. Dell Latitude 7130 had it, but it was not fanless. Then Dell changed its mind in Latitude 7140 to no longer use a user removable battery. So far I have seen Dell Latitude 7140 and Asus Zenbook UX305 having reasonably replaceable (with some work) batteries.
c) hp's 15" Core M might have an HDD
d) Core M's are probably the fanless systems with best performance right now.

I hope our luck gets better soon with the fierce revival of fanless laptops. It's about time for some company to step up and say no to all these planned obsolescence nonsense. My guess is that almost all the top executives of all the big brands have figured out that they would rather have you buy a new system than some ram upgrades, a new battery and so on. So far none of them could resist the systemic corruption of minds, the Dells, Lenovos and Toshibas are no exceptions.

Okay, I might have been a little too harsh on them. At least Dell still has an impressive 12" ultraportable upgradables. Currently the fanless design goals are super thin and battery life, so that might partially explain it. But one just simply cannot deny the titanic shift toward disposable computing in the laptop market.

We're sorta on the edge of "performance" when it comes to fanless laptops. The Broadwell Core M has a low enough TDP to allow for fanless laptops...but it's all about the thermal design whether or not the CPU throttles or not with sustained loads. For example, the Asus UX305's metal case does a lot better job than the plastic case on the Dell Venue 11 Pro 7000 tablet.

I haven't seen a fanless laptop yet that provides user replaceable components - they are all racing for thinner PCs and tossing some useabilty aside.

CA_Steve wrote:I haven't seen a fanless laptop yet that provides user replaceable components - they are all racing for thinner PCs and tossing some useabilty aside.

Actually some like the HP 250 or the Lenovo G50 and G40 do that: on the other hand, with their BayTrail CPUs they are less powerful than the new Core M.
Hopefully newer revision could be released with the Broadwell architecture.