Wow, completely opposite for me. I don’t really care about expansion cards as long as I have enough USB ports. The expansion cards are just nice as something easily replaceable when a USB port breaks for soem reason.
I also think the input deck stuff of the Framework 16 is stupid. These small panels can bend, stick up, or create other issues and are a gimik in my opinion. I’d be just fine with a good (better than now) keyboard and touchpad.
I really want something that is well supported and repairable. Being able to upgrade is also nice, of course, but I don’t need tons of customization options.
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I think it’s tough to compare some of those machines. Maybe the Legion is the best comparison to anything you can get from Framework right now, but I think you still get your point across. There’s definitely a premium that’s not accounted for in the component list. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s not like you’re getting nothing for that extra cash.
But yeah, whether or not the performance difference actually matters, the 7000 series is old news now. You don’t wanna pay the Framework premium and still only get last year’s components. I think that’s more than fair, though at the speed Framework can move right now, I think they’re going to remain just slightly behind the curve for the near future so I wouldn’t hold out too long.
Though back to your original point, I’d hypothesize that the fact that they can’t keep up with CPU vendors’ releases like the big boys can won’t create sales cycles as much as just prevent a certain population from buying altogether because Framework is just not going to be able to ship the latest combination of numbers and letters while the hype is still high, so those people are just never going to be satisfied. Those customers’ priorities are the latest and greatest, not the unique and at times abstract stuff that the Framework premium gets you. Someday hopefully they’ll be able to deliver both, but until then I think they’re losing those hardcore holdouts altogether right now, not just capturing them only in pre-orders. So maybe you’re in the sweet spot of willing to pay the price as long as you get something relatively recent, but all those people who only want the latest and want it before everyone else, the people who probably create the Osborne effect in the first place, they just aren’t buying Frameworks right now at all. That’s my guess.
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Well… with that you’ll hit a hardware limit even the modularity of the FW16 can’t address…
Only kind of, with the dgpu you should have enough display-controllers (4+4) but you still only got 3 expansion card slots and the one usb-c port on the dgpu as outputs so there would need to be mst hubs somewhere.
There is also always display-link, for a forth or fifth screen that could be ok.
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I have 6 screens with 2x2 Displaylink → Displayport adapters. For browsers and office documents it’s perfect. My main screen is connected to the USB-C port on the AMD 7700S