At least the framwork has windows support - I couldn’t bear the thought of forcing linux onto people and have them missing out.

You are doing it wrong. Framework is easy to DIY, use that option and bring your own memory and storage. Only get what you need right now, you can always upgrade later when prices come down. Instead of the included charger, get a high quality third party 65W GAN charger. All that gets the cost down to about 1600 with barely any downside. Don’t buy a modular device without using the modularity to your advantage.

lol. Look at the current state and trend of tech and tell me with a straight face that it’s you who will be getting the innovation. What amazing feature was introduced in the last 10 years you couldn’t live without? How much garbage was introduced just because companies could get away with it because the average consumers PC is powerful enough to not notice the spyware/adware/bloatware running in the background?

Yes, buy the new thing. Consume. Trash. Buy new.

I don’t even value repairability to save a buck long term. I value it because I know I can get my system up and running again ways before I finish setup on a new device.

They have no build-in ports besides audio on the framework 13. The framework 16 only has 6 expansion bays, nothing else.

Electrically? Yes.

Mechanically the expansion card has higher durability because the force on the USBC is minimized. It’s also convinient to have build in “carry slots”, so for your standard loadout you don’t need to bring a bag with accessories. Compare it to the dongle storage in a wireless mouse.

Agreed. If you buy the minimum spec bare bones version and get RAM and NVME from a third party, the price is somewhat comparative to other MRSPs. If you go for a higher spec or compare to sales prices instead of MSRP you pay up to 50% premium according to my research.

If you however factor in downtime of a broken and non-repairable device, plus the time spend on setting up a replacement, the framework can easily compete if your setup is complex.

The SD expansion card is “comming soon” according to their store page, and they showed prototypes that looked close to production on their youtube channel. My best guess is release in Q4