I'm very hopeful for the general idea they're going for. I don't know that they will succeed much themselves. But it would be great if this can help to push other larger companies from at least implementing some of this themselves. I have been very happy with our ThinkPad laptops for the most part. Many of them are extremely similar in the general layout and size of the laptops. But yet they all use completely different parts and how they fit together. If they could just standardize more of their parts, then it could be possible to have more standard parts that could be replaced and/or upgraded similar to this. But there seems to be no desire in the business to do so. Laptops are generally viewed as an appliance that is used and then done. Even if the general public isn't doing these things themselves, a system where parts are more compatible means you could have individuals and companies that could take that on. As it is, you would have to have a huge inventory of parts for all the different systems that are out there. So instead, things get trashed because it's not worth it.
And while a socketed CPU would be nice, that can be difficult to fit in the now normal slim ultrabook style of laptops. And for me, I have almost always upgraded both my CPU and motherboard together. And usually memory as well. But since memory does fail, more so than CPUs, soldered memory to me seems a much larger issue that soldered CPUs. Doing what they are doing here with a standard motherboard means that at least there is an upgrade/repair option even if it does mean doing both CPU and motherboard.