In theory this sounds good but in practice I'm not convinced there's a lot of value in the extension aspect.
My desktop is 11 years old. It's an i5 3.2ghz quad core, 16 GB of memory, SSD machine that I built from individual parts for ~$850 in 2014. It has been running 24/7 since then. It handles 4k and 1440p dual monitors without issues for all of my programming / video editing needs. The only thing it doesn't do is run modern games.
I only say all of that because I've never upgraded individual parts on it. Every X years I build a new machine that lasts. I've been doing that for around 20 years now. The only thing I replaced once (not this machine) was a PSU that got nuked by lightning and not having a surge protector.
Personally if I were going the laptop route I'd much rather get something 80% as fast as the framework but at half the price (or less). There's a ton of laptops in the $600 range that crush my desktop in specs. Things like a Ryzen 7 7730U (16 threads @ 4.5ghz) with 32 GB of memory, 1 TB+ SSD, reasonable display / ports etc..
I've been using my framework 13 for a while now and it's been a great laptop - part of what pushed me over was their mission of making devices lives longer, my hope is and was that maybe the vote of confidence they survive long enough to build up to a model the Apple fans here would want or at least not complain about.
How has the build quality stood up so far? My concern with these has always been that laptops do generally get banged up a bit when travelling around, and if half of it is snap fit and designed to detach instead of being all glued together like typically, then it has a higher likelihood of falling apart when you really don't want it to.
Might still be worth it if they keep producing spare parts for a decade or more, every single time my laptop's battery goes dead it's a after the manufacturer has stopped production of that model entirely and it becomes impossible to buy a new one lol.
I'm not sure that will ever happen. I own a Framework 16 (and am pretty happy with it), because I value repairability a lot. But the level of repairability and modularity that Framework is targeting comes with tradeoffs. This is simply the reality. Size, build quality/sturdiness, thermals, and more are going to take a hit when you have the extreme level of repairability and modularity. Framework laptops are probably never going to be the right solution for every kind of customer. And Macs are probably close the furthest thing on the opposite of the spectrum. Every choice is designed to tweak the design, aesthetics, battery life, etc. almost always at the expense of repairability. Someone who likes the part of the pareto frontier that Macs operate on is almost definitionally never going to be a Framework fan.
For me, they are great, and I plan to continue to support them. But not everyone is interested in the tradeoffs inherent in their philosophy, and that's also fine.
nickjj|8 months ago
My desktop is 11 years old. It's an i5 3.2ghz quad core, 16 GB of memory, SSD machine that I built from individual parts for ~$850 in 2014. It has been running 24/7 since then. It handles 4k and 1440p dual monitors without issues for all of my programming / video editing needs. The only thing it doesn't do is run modern games.
I only say all of that because I've never upgraded individual parts on it. Every X years I build a new machine that lasts. I've been doing that for around 20 years now. The only thing I replaced once (not this machine) was a PSU that got nuked by lightning and not having a surge protector.
Personally if I were going the laptop route I'd much rather get something 80% as fast as the framework but at half the price (or less). There's a ton of laptops in the $600 range that crush my desktop in specs. Things like a Ryzen 7 7730U (16 threads @ 4.5ghz) with 32 GB of memory, 1 TB+ SSD, reasonable display / ports etc..
GardenLetter27|8 months ago
libraryatnight|8 months ago
moffkalast|8 months ago
Might still be worth it if they keep producing spare parts for a decade or more, every single time my laptop's battery goes dead it's a after the manufacturer has stopped production of that model entirely and it becomes impossible to buy a new one lol.
MostlyStable|8 months ago
For me, they are great, and I plan to continue to support them. But not everyone is interested in the tradeoffs inherent in their philosophy, and that's also fine.