Interesting niche, but with laptops IME the chassis and or screen are the fail point.Yes, the motherboard is modular. New versions are in the works. Now I can't promise that an AMD board will be for this chassis in the future. This is a productivity notebook for the DIYer.
Have you opened a modern notebook? It used to be that they had access ports for RAM, HDD, and removable batteries. Almost none do anymore. This thing, you undo 5 screws, the keyboard pops off with magnets and anything can be replaced. Speakers, Screen hinges, you name it. Watch any of the videos on youtube for it. It's not a "value" laptop. Can't be, too small a company. They don't have the economies of scale that Dell and HP do. This is about supporting a company that hopefully will change the game.
As it is, the base model, which is the one I ordered, is only down a couple hundred MHz and 4megs of L3 from the $700 additional top of the line model. Perfect for my non-gaming needs. When I game, I turn to my desktop.
I remember when OCZ made a modular laptop and it was just not very good.
This looks like a better product for sure, but I think I'd still take the run of the mill ThinkPad over this. Maybe after a year or two history will prove my position wrong.
Still exciting when people get projects like this across the finish line, and much respect to the developers.