- having a second machine (even an old one) can be nice for redundancy

- the desktop can have more internal storage

- desktops don’t (usually) get dropped, lost, or stolen, since they mostly stay in one place

- desktops normally support more external monitors than laptops

- you can use the desktop as a backup target for your laptop (and vice-versa)

- desktops have PCIe slots, which are useful for more than just GPUs

That said, if your needs are limited, it’s probably fine. But a high-end laptop is usually more expensive and less performant than a high-end desktop plus a basic laptop.

Not to speak for the previous poster, but I use these all the time in my web browser and in PDF-viewing software (evince). They’re pretty useful.

As a non-Framework-owner, but one who supports the concept and the company, the deal-breaker for me has been the lack of physical touchpad buttons. I’d love a pointing stick, too, instead of a touchpad, but I can live without that. Physical buttons (preferably three of them) are a must-have for me, however.

You pretty much got it. The selling points are repairability, upgradability, a company that isn’t consumer hostile, and Linux support/compatibility. Not everyone needs these things and not everyone wants to pay what they cost. Framework also doesn’t really provide the sort of warranty and support services that most companies would require (although they are less necessary in a device that can be repaired easily).

Buy what you need and can afford. Be glad that we have choices as consumers and that Framework is contributing to that.

SMB only (There is/was a way to make Windows do NFS, but it sucked.)

License cost. The desktop versions of windows (used to?) have a limit on concurrent SMB sessions in order to force users to buy the server version and pay for CALs. No idea how any of that works now.

NTFS is kind of a shitty filesystem.

Limited (native) backup options. No tape support, for example.

Management effectively requires GUI access.

No native way to mirror the OS drive in software. You need either a hardware RAID card (LSI, etc.) or that stupid Intel BIOS RAID thing.

These may or may not be issues for OP, but they are issues for many.

Yes, it works fine. There is a very slight performance penalty, but not one that most will notice.

Nice deal! I have no use case for it, but have been tempted just because the price is so damn good.

You will likely hit the RAM limit (64GB) before you run out of processing power for most “normal” VM use cases. You should easily be able to run a dozen or so VMs.

I don’t see how ARM will catch on for mainstream laptops until/unless there is a desktop version that is at least as powerful as the 14900k (etc.) x64 chips.

I can see it catching on for servers (due to power/cooling issues) and small/cheap laptops (for cost and battery life reasons), but I would think that most business users would want to be able to run the same software on both desktop and laptop machines, and have access to the most powerful processors that are currently available. For now, moving to Windows on ARM for laptops means giving up compatibility and/or the ability to run on fast processors.

This will also be an easier move for Linux than for Windows, since Windows ARM is still largely an experimental thing. (Do they even sell retail licenses of it yet?)