Looking at the pricing for the Framework 16 (prebuilt with Windows, to benchmark), it’s just under x2 the price of the Acer Nitro 5 my partner bought last year with a 3050. Not the worst proposition assuming most of the laptop’s components make it 10 years and the only upgrades/replacements are to CPU, GPU and battery.
The main concern is longevity since it’s a relatively new company. It needs early adopters to commit that initial investment and pay the extra now for the company to survive and scale, and it needs staying power and time in the market in order to attract more confidence and convert sales.
I would like to see it succeed since my personal goal is to just reduce the e-waste I contribute as a heavy tech user. Laptops are just e-waste walking at the moment so I think any reduction to throwing out the whole thing every time it starts to fall behind current developments is good.
Awareness is growing and there is a demand. We just have to see if the demand is great enough to push user repairability in tech.
I got my Sofle V2 in 2022 as a job change present for myself. I’ve since changed jobs again, but the Sofle V2 continues to be the keyboard I bring into office.
For a long time I was just bringing it into work in the box it came in, but during the job change period, I bought some fabric, an Apple TV (gen 2) travel case and replaced the moulded foam with a fabric base. Had to do a fair bit of sewing but the result has been pretty great.
It gets a lot of curious comments in the office, and I’ve gotten fairly proficient at Colemak DHm. I’m planning on upgrading the microcontrollers so I can enable tapdance soonish.