I feel like a lot of the "moral superiority" of buying a Framework laptop is not really grounded in reality. I highly question how buying a Framework is morally better than let's say a Lenovo or HP laptop.

If it's about the environmental impact then I feel like Framework might even be worse, because a lot of the discussions I see are about how people will buy new parts for it even though their laptop is just a few years old. New parts, new modules, keeping the laptop current. But in "reduce, reuse, recycle", the most important word is "reduce". From an environmental perspective, the best thing is usually to avoid buying more hardware at all and just keep using the same machine for as long as possible.

People often say the old parts can be reused or resold, but I rarely see much proof that this happens in practice. And even if it can happen, that does not mean those parts have much real value.

For example, someone in the 13 Pro announcement thread talked about getting the newer, larger battery, and when they were told it would also require a new chassis, their response was basically, "Then I'll buy the new chassis too". But what exactly is the reuse or resale value of an old-generation chassis that does not properly support newer parts? That seems like the kind of thing that is far more likely to become waste than to find a meaningful second life.

That is why Framework sometimes feels a bit like greenwashing to me. The real appeal seems to be upgradeability for people who want the latest hardware, while the environmental angle helps make that consumption feel more justified.

According to some articles I found, the average laptop is expected to be used for around 4 to 5 years. I usually do not like leaning too much on anecdotal evidence, but most of my friends and family who are not "into tech" have kept their laptops for longer than that. I also suspect enterprise customers pull that average down quite a bit, since a lot of companies replace laptops on a 3 to 4 year cycle. The average private user may well be keeping theirs longer.

Plenty of people bought M1 MacBooks around 2020, and many of them are still perfectly happy with them today. My point here is that if an average consumer already keeps a laptop for 5 or 6 years, I am not sure how much practical environmental value upgradeability of the Framework laptops really adds.

After 5 or 6 years, it is not necessarily just one component that feels dated. The battery may be worn, the screen may be worse than what is standard now (or scratched up), the webcam may be bad, the speakers may be mediocre or blown, the wireless card may be an old standard, the chassis may be beaten up, and the CPU/GPU efficiency may have moved on quite a bit. At that point, many people may simply feel that replacing the whole laptop makes more sense than upgrading one or two parts and keeping the rest.

And while Framework parts can technically be reused or resold, I am skeptical of how much that helps the average consumer in practice. Reusing an old mainboard as a server, or reselling old modules, is cool, but it requires knowledge, time, interest, and a market for those parts. Most average users probably will not do that. They will just have old laptop parts lying around instead of an old laptop lying around.