[Numerlor]

Value wise when trying to spec out my personal Lenovo laptop on framework, it'd never get anywhere close to being worth it even if I completely made use of the hardware after a future upgrade.

Framework makes sense if you're going in on the sustainability idea, but other than that it's really just an expensive laptop that's not compelling against its competitors

[arghwhat]

The pricing when I looked was similar. I went with a Lenovo last time because the Framework 16 hadn't quite matured, but premium anything is never going to make financial sense.

Buying and repairing a framework is never going to be cheaper than going through consumable trash laptops, and buying top of the line laptops and trying to use them longer is never going to be cheaper or better than buying medium grade laptops and upgrading more often.

What you're paying for right now is the customization capabilities and the ideology. Upgrading and customizing a single platform with a community, vs. a fixed one-off design that'll be lost next time you upgrade.

If Framework isn't already compelling to you at this time, then you're not the target audience. They might drop in price, but they'll never win a race to the bottom.

[vladvasiliu]

> buying top of the line laptops and trying to use them longer is never going to be cheaper or better than buying medium grade laptops and upgrading more often.

I think this is much less general than you make it out to be and has an extremely strong dependency on how you use the thing and of your preference. It makes me think of the boot theory.

Personally, for the type of work I do, I rarely need the latest ludicrously fast CPU. But I use it a lot and love to do so comfortably. To me, that means a great screen, a quiet fan, and a nice keyboard and touchpad.

Buying a mediocre computer and changing it more often means you'll always have a mediocre experience. A case in point: at work we have HP Elitebooks. The brand-new 2025 models I see people receive have worse screens and trackpads than my 2013 MBP. Sure, that box was quite a bit pricier even in nominal terms, but it had the same amount of RAM (16 GB) and SSD (512 GB) as these new computers. I'll also grant that the new ones have a faster CPU but the SSDs are somehow absurdly slow. I haven't seen a single one of these machines last more than 10 years fully functional. My mom still uses that MBP.

But the experience is sub-par. In the period 2013-2015, we never got to experience a nice laptop. For the office work these people do, that 12-year-old Mac would be an all-around better experience.

The HP screens at the time were truly horrendous. They're leagues better now but still poor and clearly worse than the 2013 mac. They are relatively contrasty, but the colors are all weird.

The trackpads have also improved a lot, but there still is some kind of odd lag when you use them [0]. They're horrible enough that many people still prefer carrying a mouse when using them away from their desks, and the mice we're provided aren't some Rolls-Royce ultra-premium affair, just a crappy, laggy Bluetooth Dell.

They also degrade from daily use: the screen hinge loosens so it moves if you look at it wrong, barrel power connectors from older models somehow become unreliable, and USB ports start to get loose (although when new they tend to be extremely tight). USB-C ports tend to become mushy.

Newer models tend to be quieter, but up until a few models ago, the fan would go wild for no reason (I work with many "non tech" people, so they basically use Outlook and browse a few random websites).

Now, if you only ever use your laptop tethered to a big screen and whatnot, and it's basically a very compact and easy-to-cart-around desktop, then sure, I can understand not caring one bit about all this: you never go out in the rain, so you never get wet feet!

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[0] This is possibly a Windows driver issue, since on my lower-end Elitebook (840 vs 1040) from 2020 running Linux, this doesn't happen.

[casenmgreen]

I can swap out my mobo for a RISC-V mobo, or ARM.

Get away from Intel and management engine.

[adolph]

> I can swap out my mobo for a RISC-V mobo, or ARM.

You can't do that with the 16, only the 13 [0] and you can't upgrade ram on it. Which is kind of the problem in a nutshell. Over time fewer user modifications make sense due to the context of the whole computer as an integrated system.

0. https://frame.work/products/deep-computing-risc-v-mainboard

[kec]

Or you could just buy a MacBook Air for like $900 (or one of the windows snapdragon machines, but it you care about avoiding Intel I’m assuming you want Linux and doubt the support is as good as asahi on Macs)

[_zoltan_]

nobody ever does. maybe 2 people on the planet...

for everybody else, a Mac is perfect ;-)