To the original question I have to say that I am very much undecided. One of the things I liked about my first Amiga was that everything worked. I'de buy a game, put in the floppy and voila. Awesome. However, as time moved on some stuff required, or at least would benefit from extra hardware. But still, it was a small enough amount of upgrades to understand all of the options in depth. I liked how all of that worked and continues to work.
I used to like my PC having loads of options too. My 486 had so many bays and slots it was silly. As times gone on I find I use less bays and slots, I simply don't need them. The average pc mobo these days has built in everything with the exception of graphics (sometimes). Add a graphics card if you need one and what else do you need? An SSD and an optical drive maybe? I hardly use my optical drive these days, just an SSD and a card reader would do. As for upgrading the CPU and RAM, how often does that end up with a mobo replacement? It's often cheaper to get a newer mobo and CPU than finding a faster CPU for an older socket.
Even that once huge hard disk, or even RAID that a true power might use is probably better inserted into a NAS enclosure for convenient network access.
I guess what I'm saying is that even though the pc platform is very open, market forces for the typical user make a lot of our choices for us. Often to the point that it might as well been a closed platform in the first place.
A extra smothering of irony can be found in the jailbreaking of consoles of course. Closed platform it may be but someone will always find a way of opening up a console.
As to whatever is the best or worse approach, I just don't know. I just look forward to whatever it is memristor will do to the market, that will be fun.
