https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u01AbiCn_Nw mental outlaw video:
hi everyone, i was planning on getting a new laptop cheaply for about 500ish but then i stumbled upon this near-totally modular laptop rhat starts out at above 1000 bucks. do you think the cheaper laptop in the long run is just a false economy and i should go for the framework or what? if you want to ask questions go ahead but im mainly concerned about the longterm financials (and how well it will keep up over time)
In theory, you’re paying up front for their long-term loss by not driving conspicuous consumption with planned obsolescence. They lose out on at least 4x the cost of selling you entirely new devices every 5 years, and you get a computer that only requires a few hundred in repairs for the next 20 years.
In reality:
new standards take hold all the time. Sorry, your laptop takes DDR7 RAM, everyone’s moved on to DDR10—which won’t cause a noticeable performance improvement, but it will give you FOMO because the numbers are bigger. So we’ve ceased manufacturing those old DDR7s; good luck with used DIMMs on ebay.
Startups with amazing business models go under all the time. Sure, it may be “bad market strategy,” aka not being money-grubbing scrooges, and the resultant investor pull-out. It might be a lack of hype outside a niche market. It might be a hurricane. Too bad, ypur “lifetime” computer now has no one manufacturing parts. See also: what happens to early adopters of robotic prosthetics.
Enshittification, plain and simple. That idealistic company that was going to defeat the ills of capitalism by beating it at its own game? Well now the investors want their money, and the shareholders are upset as their stocks plummet. Time to start cutting costs and fucking over the users! Suddenly we’re okay with child slavery and nonfree firmware because it doesn’t violate our core value of sustainable laptops probably. Have a subscription about it.
And the longer it lasts, the more likely one or more of the above is to happen.
If you don’t mind that and just want to “send a message,” then go ahead. The more viable (profitable) Framework is, the more likely it is others will follow suit.
If you’re really just worried about e-waste and sustainable tech, buy used and fix it up. We’re past the point of Moore’s law where you’re missing out on meaningful performance gains if your device is a few years old, and have you see what people will throw away just because the screen is cracked?
If it’s about ethical business models, support non-profits. They don’t have the same financial incentive to enshittify. (They just have their own ecosystem of ethical issues)
Or get two birds stoned at once by joining/starting a non-profit tech mutual aid network, where you help maintain and upgrade each others’ tech.