Technology

What exactly can you upgrade iteratively?

At the price point, being able to upgrade memory, storage, and motherboard is unique. And I know you say that it's the "vast majority" of the cost, but I just bought a Framework 13 last month (I know, great timing) and the mainboard was right around half the total cost. So sure, the most expensive single component, but it means that I can upgrade to a better-performing machine in the future for half the price and not need to junk everything else.

Framework laptops just use USB C dongles for everything.

Correct. But honestly, having the swappable I/O is fantastic; over the last five laptops I've owned, I've only upgraded because I wanted new capabilities once. For the other four, it's because a component failed; and in two of them it was a USB port, while in a third it was a charging port. Being able to replace those would have extended the lives of those machines substantially.

fewer vendors to buy a dongle from

Actually, they're open-source (not proprietary). And since they're USB-C, you could probably just take out the card and plug a dongle right in there if you really needed to (I have not tried this).

Framework: 999 + 399 = 1398 for two generations of a laptop

I'm planning to hold on to this device for a whole lot longer than two generations. If I can, I'd like to hang on to it for 15-20 years. The laptop I upgraded from was five years old or so (and would still be going strong if it didn't have a port that was about to die and un-upgradeable RAM and storage), and my desktop is 13 years old and still going strong, so this isn't terribly unreasonable. I would estimate that I'll end up pouring about $2000, all told, into this laptop over that time period, likely replacing 3-4 laptop purchases and giving me a better machine during that time period.

that assumes that your display and keyboard held up and didn't need replacing,

Both of which would be cheaper than a new device. A new display is $150 and a new keyboard is $30. I don't know about the longevity of each component, but based on the research I did it's definitely not worse than an off-the-shelf machine.

you liked all the default dongles Framework gave you (which is apparently just four USB C ports... to plug into the four USB C ports on the laptop),

There aren't any defaults. When you spec out your kit, you choose which cards to purchase. Replacing them costs about $10. (EDIT: The USB-C ones cost $10. The other ones are variously priced between $10-40, and then there are some storage expansions that cost more because they're basically SSD in the expansion card form factor).

and, most importantly, that Framework didn't change their form factor

They've only done that once since they launched, across six updates to the components. When they made that upgrade, they offered a $90 top cover to bring first gen devices up to second gen specs.

(I am not sure if they did for the 16 inch laptops to support the "modular" keyboards).

There's only been one generation of the 16 inch laptops, and they've always had the modular keyboards. The refresh they announced yesterday is just to components, not to chassis.

Every spare dongle or repaired/upgraded part costs money.

Yep, and I'm fine with that because it means that I can spec it out the way I want; I don't have to pay for I/O that I'll never use. My old laptop had an SD card reader and a DisplayPort output; I literally never used either. The one I had before it had a SATA connector on the external I/O, and a couple of other pieces of nonsense that I didn't want or need. Actually, thinking back, I don't know if I've ever owned a laptop (until this one) where I actually used all of the ports.

And I don't really fault them too much for not letting you actually swap CPUs since that was basically something only the sickest of sickos did

Yeah, I think swappable CPUs on a laptop are a thing of the past. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see it coming back.

I do worry that this just encourages people to hoard parts

I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM

I CAN STOP WHENEVER I WANT TO