You are right... I personally own a T480s and it is a remarkable device, which can be repaired just like the framework (although most parts are no longer available new). I added a glass trackpad (which is way better than the original) and ordered a WQHD Display + Cable to upgrade from FullHD to WQHD (2560x1440?). Batteries can be replaced, RAM can be upgraded (in a way, part of it is soldered) and everything has a unique part number that can be easily researched.

However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability.

Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again.

I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.

BTW: Dell has great repairable business notebooks (I recently switched to a cheap Latitude 5420 - the T480s was getting to slow for some tasks), but there are caveats I immediately noticed and most people don't think of:

- Keyboard Backlight is way too bright in the lowest setting

- Keyboard layout is a bit off

- It cannot be opened with one hand

- Display Brightness steps are to low (using the ALT key could increase / decrease the step size, like in MacBooks)

- Display Brightness cannot be set to "off" / black screen (this only works on macbooks)

- The Dell 5520 Trackpad is horrible

- Nobody except Apple supports AudioJack-Headphones remotes for controlling audio playback and volume (with USB-C to audiojack Adapters this works out of the box on Linux)