Are we at the point where buying and assembling a laptop, like building a desktop PC, can be done by any enthusiast?
If you're not an EE, the only things you can buy 3rd party are RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi modules. Which you can do the same for Thinkpads.
That said -- I do appreciate that partial upgrades are possible with Frame.work. I own one and when I upgrade the motherboard, even though I can only buy a motherboard upgrade from them, I won't be upgrading the case, display, and other things that don't need upgrades.
I'm glad framework is trying this out. I'm not surprised about the battery life, but pretty much anything not made by Apple will have that issue lol.