[heavyset_go]

On the other hand, every college student ever needs a computer in order to do their school work. College students and new grads with a ton of student debt are not exactly demographics that can afford to drop several thousands of dollars on new laptops each time they break or become too slow.

[zepto]

I’m using a 7 year old Mac for software development and it’s not ‘too slow’. Cheap computers are readily available on the used market.

[heavyset_go]

Software development, in general, doesn't require much resources. You're just editing text most of the time. Most of my development is done remotely via a Raspberry Pi.

But that also depends on the development you're doing. There's a night and day difference between compiling Rust projects on my 2015 MBP versus the Ryzen desktop I just built. Same thing goes for development that requires VMs or modern IDEs. Sure, I can run a single VM on an old MBP, but I can't run much else. I can run a modern IDE, but it will be slow and I won't be able to open more than one browser tab at the same time.

Students in certain fields also rely on heavy applications to do CAD, special effects, 3D modeling/rendering, graphic design, video and photo editing, etc. It would be a shame for them to have to buy additional machines because the ones they already own have 4/8GB of soldered memory and they need 2 to 4 times that, or because their processors are too slow or don't have enough cores. The Framework laptop would allow them to upgrade their memory and CPU without having to buy a whole other machine.

[zepto]

Ok so there are a narrow range of students who require a high end machine, and for them a framework laptop might be a good choice, assuming they can’t get a similar benefit by simply selling their existing laptop and buying a new one.

[felistoria]

Yeah, I daily drive a 6 year old Macbook Pro and it feels just as fast as when I first got it. I'm sure you can pick one up on eBay for a few hundred bucks.