Technology

No way. People like me purchase a steady supply of standardized machines at a fair cost. Bigger companies than I've worked for want a lease agreement. We pay $X for Y units, you come in and swap them in 3, 4, or 5 years, rinse and repeat. We also need robust tech support, both from the manufacturer and wide user base. No way I'd suggest management purchase Frameworks.

Framework is awesome for individuals as you can upgrade! No one in their right mind wants to hassle with upgrading a fleet of hundreds, thousands, or 10's of thousands of machine. You talking about pets when business requires cattle.

https://www.hava.io/blog/cattle-vs-pets-devops-explained

Great question! And BTW, thousands upon thousands of those "old" cattle are available on eBay from sellers who make a living moving off-lease machines. I'd never buy new. LOL, I bought servers that way from savemyserver! Boss came by while I was setting up a new server. "Is that new?!" "Nope."

I've never, ever met someone outside of a tech role that even knows they exist.

If someone isn't happy with a lenovo, it's because they want that coveted apple logo on the lid.

The primary concerns in the enterprise environment are around standardization. I only want a couple of models to manage per year so that the support guys don't have to worry too much about some willy wonka bullshit that doesn't work because that one system is an oddball. The nice thing too about lenovo (or dell) has traditionally been support services. If you know the words to say you can get them to ship out anything with a tech to replace anything after a single call and not running all the silly diagnostics. I know dell has been on the decline for support services and I honestly don't handle any of the warranty repairs myself, but my impression is that it still works.

Framework Corp is massively frustrating because their secret sauce tech makes absolutely no sense for individuals (seriously, run the actual numbers. It is almost always cheaper to just buy two laptops AND you have less ewaste because there is no box of spare parts) but is PERFECT for enterprise/fleet deployments.

But Framework Corp has no interest in fulfilling that role. To my knowledge, there are no bulk ordering programs and their software/OEM support is fairly mediocre.

As far as enterprise laptops go? There is a full industry around macs for obvious reasons. On the PC side? The only vendors I really "trust" are Dell and Lenovo with MAYBE HP if the middleman org is confident. And... I LOVE a Thinkpad for my personal use (the nub is love. the nub is life) but there are very serious supply chain concerns for professional purposes.

But if Framework could cut the bullshit and either branch out or work with a middleman? Rapid repairs for keyboards and drives as well as tricking people into using USB C dongles would go a long way for many (most?) midsize companies.

A LOT of people complained when Thinkpad transferred from IBM to Lenovo. Like almost all things, it was progress conflated with racism.

The big "meaningful" complaint is that Lenovo used more plastics than aluminum. On the one hand, I get it: my T41 was a god damned beast that felt like it could stop a bullet (an important consideration in the US). It also apparently weighted 2.22 kg and I 100% noticed that on trips and even walking around town/campus.

And Lenovo bought the brand around the time that a LOT of people were noticing the weight of their laptops and there was a huge push for "ultrabook" form factors and the realization that it makes more sense to protect your device with a sleeve and a padded compartment rather than "military grade" construction. And... Asian factories were (and still are) much more agile and able to pivot. Whereas US factories still tend to take years (or decades...) to catch up to the rest of the world.

So we got the same xenophobic nonsense we've had in every other industry. These thin and light laptops with plastic shells ARE CHEAP PIECES OF SHIT THAT NOBODY CAN EVER REPAIR AND ARE ALL A SCAM SO BUY AMERICAN!!!! Even though the shell has almost nothing to do with it and those still had screw based constructions. The real problem was the rapid shift towards soldering/gluing hardware in place. Some of that was to support ultrabook designs and some are just pure bullshit to prevent upgrades.

These days? Aluminum is king again because it "feels premium" but those shells are so ridiculously thin that they are arguably worse than polymer (still feels great though). I blame Apple.

But build quality wise? Lenovo straight up bought IBM's laptop (and consumer PC?) divisions. It was the exact same factories and designers and capabilities.

All that said: Lenovo is also a REALLY Chinese company. For a personal device? I have zero qualms and literally bought a new laptop for the first time in like 9 years and it is a Thinkpad. From a professional standpoint? A competent IT department can vet devices. I... think I worked with a competent IT department once in my life. But, more importantly, if we are trying to do business with a government org or a high value company/target? They are fundamentally concerned about Supply Chain Hardening (and for good reason) and that just reeks of "We, personally, don't care about that". Which generally won't outright kill a deal but it does put you on a back footing.

In some weird way it does feel like things flipped overnight. Maybe it was the pandemic? Definitely went from ~2019 all dell to ~2023 ultramajority lenovo. None of this is scientific though lol

Now everybody is fleeing vmware to nutanix and hyper v. We live in strange times.