Is there any official stance or has it even been stated how long a laptop can be guaranteed to be supported for upgrades and/or repairability for sustainability? I see people already upgrading their framework laptop chips/motherboards after 1 year but come on, that’s not gonna be me. I’m thinking 5, 6, 7 years from now as that’s been my general lifetime for laptops and the main thing that eventually becomes an issue is the motherboard/chip. Sometimes everything else is perfectly fine and I would keep the rest of it if all I needed was to swap out the brains of the laptop. So if I buy a framework today, is the framework team planning on allowing me to upgrade the chip & motherboard in 2028 to the intel 18th gen for example, or upgrade the screen, or upgrade the wifi, or continue to replace hinges/bezels/backplates etc that far down the road. That could turn this laptop into a MARATHON lifespan which would be incredible.
The wifi card at least is a standard form factor, so barring the industry moving away from M.2 for those, you should be covered. Aside from that, afaik they’ve basically just said ‘we’re gonna try for a long as possible’
Thats a very relevant point raised by @Stewart_L. I hope that @Framework @nrp replies to it. I know that its a new startup and it can’t predict whether it will exist for how many years but if it is really committed to reducing electronic waste, at least they can commit some timeline given that the company is still functional and not disolved. Ideally I would like to have say, 10 years of commitment.
Thanks @Lamy 
Yes with that caveat of course but with that said, I am very willing to bet on the company surviving/thriving at some point considering it is being championed and continuously spotlighted by big names so it has a good amount of very valuable/cheap marketing for the foreseeable future. But now before I drop $$ on it I just want to make sure there is some type of long timeline I know I can work with as this “upgradability” aspect specifically has me hooked. I’ve had good luck with some laptops repairability for the basic stuff so that part isn’t actually that important to me from years 1-5. For my needs, what has me hooked, is if I’m able to upgrade the most important parts in 6-10 years and give it an easy additional 5+ years of usability. THEN the repairability aspect becomes VERY important for me because many random parts will start needing to be swapped out if the laptop’s lifetime has been extended from 5-7 years to, who knows, 10-14+ years. It would be really interesting if I bought a framework and had a baby at the same time, if I ended up using the same laptop until the baby turned 18 because I was able to upgrade it and then service it for a really long time until technology upgrades really pushed the laptop to just absolutely become obsolete. Then comes the next ENTIRELY new Framework Laptop in year 2040
I understand there can be form factor limitations but I don’t know much about this framework laptop case/chassisor whatever you call it, but I’m just wondering if it’s their evil genius plan to allow customers to possibly upgrade to the latest and greatest chipset for a long time. Even if it means upgrading hard drives/ram sticks too which might have to be changed for a new improved motherboard at some point. Will I be able to keep the same chassis? Or if within 3-4 years the company will have redesigned it’s chassis and none of the next motherboards for Intel 15th gen and over will work in the original Frame Work laptops chassis because it only works in the latest framework laptops.
@Fraoch Your reply has been addressed in my previous post. I am not sure you are an official spokesperson of the company as it is said that you are a community moderator.
Let us wait for @Framework or @nrp to say about it.
I think this is an important topic, and while I think there’s a lot of merit in talking about it and trying to hold the company accountable, I think that it would be hard for anyone to promise that longevity. For one thing, the company only just started, and while they have a strong footing, they cannot know if they will continue to be successful 10-14 years into the future, making it dangerous to promise that they can offer support like that.
“Sure” you say, “then they can at least promise that if the company is around that long, that they will continue to support the laptop”. That would require the original chassis to be majorly future proof. What happens if USB 6 rolls around in 2026 and they change from the USB-C connector to a completely circular connector? Does Framework ignore the new standard to offer old chassis compatibility? Without having complete design control over every aspect of their laptop, they have to conform to the whims of the industry they work within, and promising customers things like long term compatibility removes their ability to handle external design changes with as much grace.
From everything I’ve seen so far, I think that Framework’s goal is to keep compatibility for as long as they can. They have worked to keep every mainboard design to be compatible with the original case, they’ve kept DDR4 on their 12th gen boards so that customers can reuse old RAM, and they continue to champion reuseability and upgradeability as core tenents of their business, but I would bet that they dont want to give any sort of hard line promise without knowing what the future will bring.
One final note. The Framework team has said in the past that this is meant to be a user forum. What I have gathered from that is that if you want to discuss topics like this with other users, this is the place to go, but instead of tagging the Framework team for answers to questions like this, it would be better to go through an official channel like contacting support to answer your question, then posting their response here for further discussion.
(Disclaimer, I can only speculate on Framework as I am not affiliated with the company, merely a fan who has been on their forum for a long time and regularly posts here. All comments and opinions are my own.)
I agree with @Azure. I would not expect any company to make such a commitment. For one, their attorneys likely would not allow it. Would I like to be able to swap in a different board into the existing chassis in a decade? Sure. But that’s a very long time in the world of technology, and it would seem imprudent formally to commit to such.
5-7 years?
In the last 20ish years, I’ve never used a notebook/laptop (even a computer) for that long as my main device.
However, I’m hoping that with Framework I can use some parts for a longer time period (like keyboard, display, all the expansion cards, chassis, …) and upgrade other (mainly CPU and ofc Mainboard) if necessary.
That’s my expectation and currently I think my choice buying a Framework Laptop (btw. still waiting to get mine shipped) was right. I will see how it is in a few years.
I aim for a life span of 5 to 7 years and generally have achieved that life, but when it does come to new laptop time the old machine is in a poor state with the case cracking and very slow performance. From my nearly a years use of a FW laptop I am confident the I can get to 7 years and still have a usable laptop. Beyond 7 years a lot can change in computer technology so we will see how FW can adapted to changes in the industrie.
I know many people have different use cases. Some people change laptop every year, its their choice and requirement, but many people I think who are not wealthy and have different priorities might want to use it for longer period as mentioned by the original post of 10 to 14 years.
May be the mainboard might not be supported for longer than 7 years, but the other parts like keyboard, display etc can be supported for the longer period.
Me too, my previous desktop, a i5-2500k was used for 8 years before the mainboard became faulty and started killing RAM chips along with a failing power supply. At that point, replacing DDR3 RAM wasn’t worth it. It became spare parts for another system at home.
I still have a laptop Z930 from 2012 which was upgraded with more DDR3 RAM and an an i7-3667U. I upgraded to the Framework because the laptop battery kept failing and the hardware isn’t enough to do what I needed it to do. It is now used to let family members try linux while allowing them to print stuff if the network isn’t working for some reason. The battery is long dead and further replacement of internal components isn’t worth it anymore. Once the mSATA drive fails, I will probably hand down my current framework mainboard to replace it or maybe even the whole Framework laptop if a chassis redesign is required by then I guess.
Very common for me and my family and many people I know who use computers for only basic tasks since Windows XP came around.
This is what I aim to avoid and what I understand Framework is trying to help us avoid or at the very least they allow us to reuse the motherboard as its own computer if it cannot be avoided.
Too common of an issue for laptops being replaced too soon from my experience in some laptops. Hope this can be avoided.
What I hope to be able to do in 5-7 years if there are no huge motherboard overhauls which make it incompatible with the current chassis design
Exactly, in the end, once laptop chasis became rather standard in portability/weight, the only thing I actually needed to upgrade for technology sake it was because I needed a newer motherboard/chip/some new additional port (thunderbolt for example), and sometimes new hard drive tech (HDD to SSD).
Heck yes! You gotta shoot for that at least now that you are getting a framework 
Exactly, ultimately my keyboard experience on my current laptop (ThinkPad) is identical to the one my mother had 20 years ago. Heck the chasis isn’t even that different. At least on the surface, I assume things have changed in wiring underneath but then again I might be surprised. Anyway, the point is, I’ve rarely needed to upgrade a laptop under 5 years because I needed a better chip. Only once when I was a cheap idiot and bought something that only lasted 1 year before it was way too dang slow and it’s impossible to upgrade that laptop’s chip. Had it been a framework I could have fixed that simply. But now I try to futureproof as much as I can and generally it has worked out and I’ve gotten 5-7 years out of a few laptops (my own or laptops I bought for others). My current laptop is a 5 year old workstation, and if the motherboard doesn’t go bad, I could easily get another 2 out of it. I future proofed this thing so hard that I could probably get up to 10 years out of it which was actually what I intended because I hate the stress of laptop shopping (paralysis by analysis). But it will go bad, like all things. If it was a framework, theoretically if the chasis stayed the same, I’d be able to swap out the board in 5 years and then I could get indefinite more time out of it. For now I’m looking at a framework for my wife because of the previously mentioned dumb purchase and if I can avoid dealing with laptop shopping for her again for 10-14 years, Hallelujah.
Yea, my dad’s PC usually is an older PC from a previous system from someone else in the family, he doesn’t require a lot of processing power so that works fine.
I actually replaced the battery 4 times from various vendors and each only lasted 1-2 years, with aging hardware, SODIMMS and mSATA will be more expensive to replace due to the rarity and kinda not worth it.
I would think for now the USB standards will improve but no idea after 5-7 years, is there a different connector is up to anyone’s guess though.
I kinda wished they have a Magnesium Alloy chassis like the previous laptop but it really feels like plastic and less premium. If Framework continues to go with Intel, I hope by Meteor Lake we get a nicer iGPU (either a new generation of Iris XE or even Arc mobile GPUs) for some GPU intensive tasks (Intel Quicksync with AV1) would be really nice.
That being said, going against the longevity, I am waiting for some custom designs/newer parts for the Framework such as the Chromebook speakers, maybe hopefully a KVM expansion card, trackpoint and even Cherry MX switches.
Like any laptop I’ve had to look after for myself or customers.
You rarely bother going to the manufacturer for spare parts. They don’t want you fixing it or the cost of a new top plate. touch screen assembly is more than the laptop is worth. I know the Framework is a slightly different case here but the norm is don’t bother going back to the maker.
After a while, Ebay is your friend.