I'm thinking about buying the 16 as I want a new Linux-compatible laptop and I like the whole idea behind Framework. I do a little bit of gaming but honestly just what my Steam Deck is capable of, so I was planning on buying it without the GPU for the moment.
Looking at the two processor choices, they seem very similar on performance. I'm not sure I can justify the $200 price difference, especially with the hope of a future upgrade to a newer generation.
I'm in the same boat. I want a neat laptop for on-the-go productivity. At home I have a very powerful/overkill gaming setup which handles all my gaming. I personally stuck with the cheaper CPU as I don't see any advantages the $200 is gonna get me as it is upgradable and very similar in performance anyway. GPU you can always get later, if in need of one, which is great!
Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that I can "leapfrog" upgrades. Buy a GPU when the next gen comes out, then a new main board in a generation or two after that, etc...
I could see why IT guys would say that, because it's WAY less of a hassle to repair them. Something IT guys will have to do a lot with 400 end users to support.
They're certainly not the fastest/most performant laptops out there though.
Most people dont need the kost performant. Theres a reason why in the leasing world, the most common laptops are thinkpads, lattitudes and macbooks at essentially their base SKU.
Source, i work e-waste in the bay area so I know exactly what companies are giving workers/schools
I ended up going with the base CPU since it seemed identical. Now I'm trying to figure out what sort of eGPU setup to go with to minimize bottlenecking (setup will be replacing my desktop).
Portability, mainly, and I want to leave the slot available in case they add other uses for it, like an extended battery. I may regret that choice and end up getting the GPU anyway, but for my use case it seems like it might be perfect.
From what I can see both the integrated and dedicated cards are the same no matter the processor. That said, I know Intel used to call every iGPU for a generation the same thing and they would have significantly different GPU performance across different professors, so I don't know.
If they're the same, then I'd get the cheaper one. There are likely specs somewhere that list the number of compute units in each for you to double check.