What really excites me is the prospect of 3rd party mainboards and other components. This ecosystem is still just getting started though.
It seems like this is the beta product, I'll wait for the finished one.
Ryzen 340 mainboard: $450 https://frame.work/products/mainboard-amd-ai300?v=FRANTE0005
Ryzen 340 laptop: $1100 https://frame.work/products/laptop13-amd-ai300/configuration...
Yeah it's certainly the single most expensive component, but it's still cheaper than a whole new laptop and, more to the point, less waste than a whole new laptop
https://slickdeals.net/f/18984394-hp-omnibook-5-16-fhd-ips-r...
HP OmniBook 5 16 with an Ryzen 350 for 439$.
This is actually less than the framework mainboard for a full laptop with a better processor.
This actually
I brought my friend an HP because their PC wasn't booting for someone reason and it's more than enough.
If we really want to compare, I bet a refurbished Thinkpad would probably be about the same price as the typical Framework mainboard of similar performance.
If you like framework, thats great, but it's not really about saving money.
And a used laptop is cheaper still! Which is all entirely irrelevant to the original point and the goal posts aren't even in view anymore. Finding cheaper products that aren't equivalent isn't exactly hard. If the singular thing you want is CPU performance then a laptop is a bad idea in the first place.
An upgrade like that does mean I need new (DDR5) RAM too though, which tightens the gap a bit (or a byte, at the moment).