Exactly. The good ones stopped being commercially available sometime last decade. This is why I keep an eye on possible alternatives.
While I mostly criticize the points that ruin the laptops for me, and they have a few downsides I would be willing to accept, there is also a lot of positives, like Linux support, CPU vendor options, the whole expansion card thing is revolutionary for a laptop (and next to meaningless for a desktop), privacy switches, also while I cannot speak that well to the quality of the display, I have only used in indoors and I suck at judging how well the picture quality is, I like how well it fills the available space. There are also a few points in the category “great idea, not so great execution”, like the spacers in front of the keyboard. They bend rather easily, and have some wiggle room, so it is possible to feel the edges between them, and others have even reported having hair being stuck in the gap. This is very much an idea that I would like to see improved, not abandoned.
All this is very enticing. I know my way around OpenSCAD, but I am not an engineer, so I expect a lot of frustrating surprises in getting a draft built. So I would very much prefer the professionals do it, rather than myself. The result would most likely be better and cheaper. This is what I am lobbying for. Eventually I need to get it done, otherwise … the thought of giving up laptops altogether has indeed crossed my mind recently, but it is not an option in the short term, I use it too much when not at home. When I (and I am willing to bet it will be me) get around it, I will post in the creators forum, because I am sure I will very much need the feedback from those with actual experience.
There is also the possibility that I develop a use case which involves graphics, then the Framework 12 becomes an option because I think of it not as a laptop, but as a tablet that can run my favorite distro and all the software I need. And then there is
which begins with the claim that Framework want to offer “all of consumer electronics” eventually. Who knows what comes out of that. Printers were suggested there, I gave up on those years ago because of the high ratio of effort to benefit, and I also learned the hard way about DRM in cartridges. A Framework printer is something I would seriously consider for myself and definitely would recommend to anyone. Anything without a keyboard, if I have use for it, is worth a look.
I hope that answers why I am still around. I am not hating on Framework, I am just frustrated.
If they built cars, it is kind of like they had a sedan with all the Framework features and an exceptional Cw and instead of adding a station wagon based on it to their lineup, they concentrate their engineering efforts into building the most powerful engine into the smallest cabrio possible that is more monolithic than most of its competition and call it a desktop. If there were more comparable companies, maybe one of them would even offer some sort of keyboard kit.
Thank you for your recommendation, I am always interested in innovative HID devices, and ZSA looks like they support values similar to Framework. Too deep of a rabbit hole for now, but I saved the link for later.