@strobe_grill Interesting points!
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I’ve seen a lot of success in using off-the-shelf docks, especially those manufactured by Lenovo and Dell. I’m personally using a Lenovo Thinkpad dock and besides a small issue with the drivers on the linux distro I chose (Lenovo’s support of Fedora is still in beta, so I had to opt into the beta to get the drivers), it has worked flawlessly. I would look at the supported docks list and find one from there that works. We’ve done the experimentation for you. And since you already have a dock, as long as it’s a USB-C/Thunderbolt dock, it should just work.
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I don’t think adding the pointing stick thing would be too difficult to implement - the keyboard is already designed to be swappable. Problem is I think you may have trouble finding others that also want the stick. I still see them occasionally, but everyone I talk to prefers using a mouse over either a trackpad or a stick, though your mileage may vary.
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If you just bought a laptop, definitely save your money. No sense replacing something so soon as it just contributes to e-waste.
@Feynt_Mistral My understanding as far as Framework’s support of Thunderbolt goes is that the laptops are Thunderbolt-compliant but not Thunderbolt-certified. That is, the hardware specs meet or surpass the requirements set out by Thunderbolt and Framework has submitted the laptop for certification, however that they are still waiting on a response, last I heard. I too am waiting on the certification to come through as I think it’d be great for the long-term success of the laptop.
There are a few threads with a request for a 15" and 17" screen with some designs for the layout that’s been getting a lot of traction lately. These models would also allow for a second cooling fan that would allow better CPU/GPUs, and there does seem to be some initial interest from the company.