As a Linux laptop user, I used Thinkpads for years. The pinnacle was the T460s/T490s models from around 2016, because they:
- Ran Linux without much tinkering or major compromises
- small (14")
- affordable (around $1300 for my config)
- lightweight and thin
- powerful (I had a Core i5)
- upgrade-able (I had 48gb of RAM)
They started going downhill after that, primarily in that I could no longer find a Thinkpad model that was at the intersection of upgrade-able and Linux compatibility.
Around 2021 I started looking for an alternative. Looked at made-for-Linux laptops like System76 and the various Linux-certified Dells. Couldn't find anything that checked all my boxes and the Dells were particularly crippled: 8GB of soldered on RAM? Only certified to work if you use their custom hacked Ubuntu image? No thanks.
The Framework (gen11, DIY edition) was exactly what I was looking for. My configuration at the time was $1032 and I've been running Manjaro Linux on it continuously for the past year on it with zero problems. It's just good solid generic hardware at a fair price. It's cheap enough that I don't worry about it getting lost or stolen. It's repairable so I don't worry about something physically breaking.
I have since bought another one for an employee and over the next few years I plan on deploying them to my whole team.
Basically I should be a testimonial on their website.
I have a T14s Gen 1 for work, and it runs flawlessly Linux without major tinkering using Arch. Everything from sleep, display output, fingerprint reader, wifi, bluetooth, trackpad works out of the box and pretty darn well.
And I'm rocking a Dell XPS 9570 for personal use, still on arch, no real issue there neither. Well except the Nvidia gpu using prime that needed a truckload of work to get to work, but that's not Dell's fault.
So yeah, in my experience, a quick google search for systemic problems (bios related) of the laptop, its wifi chip support, etc, is enough to tell whether a laptop is fit for linux.
I really wanted to get a framework as this new one was announced. But… the glossy screen was a no-go (also the lack of dedicated home/end keys). I went with an x1 carbon gen 9 instead (replacing my thinkpad t440s). Flawless so far with Linux. I’m sure it will last me 5+ years.
Stinks that such little (yet significant) things kept me from the framework!
Tangentially, the non-100% DCI-P3 gamut (or better) display made it a no-go for me. Color gamut and accuracy is a must for any visual or visual-adjacent work.
I do visual work, as well. And I think by the end I just got a little worn out by the overall "which laptop is right for me" research process and said, "well, I'm sure the monitor on this laptop will be much better than my T440s click"
Maybe it sounds better if you look at it this way: if every Framework laptop you buy gets stolen halfway through its useful lifetime, it's still cheaper than owning Macbook Pros.
A MacBook Pro starts at $1299 with a significantly faster processor. You can’t upgrade a MacBook Pro, but if your laptop is getting stolen half way through it’s lifetime, you’re probably not upgrading it. So not really.
In the US maybe. In other countries Macs are quite a bit more expensive. And your customer support and service experience could be worse than in the US.
You might not be able to get a Framework here (yet), but ebay is FULL of ex-business Thinkpads that are almost as easy to refurb and cost <$500. Hell a lot of them are new enough that you can still get genuine parts for them direct from Lenovo.
Not sure if by Gen 2 you mean Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - if you did, as an owner of the said machine, everything generally works but that is the best I can say about it. Battery life isn't exactly stellar, graphics issues with NVIDIA drivers all the time, fans start blowing full-tilt at the earliest opportunity and can get pretty hot.
Practically being a life-long Linux user, I've never owned a Macbook so not sure if things are better on that side.
And they are not exactly cheap either - practically same as P-series.
I have said this before but Framework are leaving the opportunity to create a Thinkpad-killer series on the table that would be perfect to target all the folks unhappy with the decline of the Thinkpad. Heck, these people would probably pay more than they did for Thinkpads just to get those features back and make up for years of pent-up disappointments. Such a device has a good chance to become the "de-facto" developer's choice for Linux folks.
It'd cost about $250-300 to ship to Australia, based on the last time I bought a laptop from the US. Then you pay customs & import taxes on the combined purchase+shipping costs, which would be about another $200-250.
Wow. A person could perhaps not cover, but at least nicely subsidize, the cost of a trip to Australia by hand-carrying a couple of laptops with them... wonder how many you can bring through Customs before they start to get suspicious?
It reminds me of my family from the UK when they used to travel to the US decades ago. They'd go home with half a dozen pairs of jeans each, and nearly pay for their tickets.
Even if you exclude the cost of shipping to purchase it, it becomes a significant risk if something were to go wrong and you needed to ship it back for repair.
Shipping it to the US and then back might involve not only stupid expensive shipping, but also having to figure out paperwork for both Australian and US Customs, unless you want to potentially pay double import-duties on each side.
I did it with Lenovo laptops years ago, because buying from the US and with shipping it still worked out to be around 1/3 the price of buying it from the AU Lenovo store, and Lenovo had a Global warranty program on their Thinkpad line. Smaller OEMs without that, I wouldn't risk it.
Base model is 1700 Can$, which is about 1300 USD. But take with a grain of salt as those numbers are from apple canada's website. Inevitably, cellphones and consumer laptops, something makes them cost more than advertised.
I was debating between the MBA and Framework. For me the deal breakers were:
* The MBA comes with 256GB which is not enough storage, especially since when you run out of space you have to buy a whole new laptop to get more. That's compounded by the high prices that Apple charges for storage upgrades. The cost of upgrading to a 2TB SSD and 16GB of RAM (just the upgrade, NOT including the base price of the laptop) is more than an entire Framework laptop with a 2TB SSD and 16GB of RAM
* IIRC the MBA only supports 1 external monitor. The Framework supports 4 external monitor at 4k144hz (I'd only ever need 2, but it's nice to have extra headroom).
How does your Framework perform with dual 4k144hz monitors? My 16” 2019 intel macbook pro really struggled even at its max output of 60hz. My new M1 Max doesn’t miss a beat.
The Framework product has a much bigger value: it demonstrates that it is possible to deliver a consumer product with less builtin obsolescence. If they can stay profitable long-term they will be an important POC that we do not need to maximize obsolescence for a company to survive.
It's unfortunate the modern Macbooks are such sealed boxes. The M1 compares surprisingly favorably against even the i7-1165G7 that you get in the Framework "Performance" series. About the only advantage you get with Intel right now is the higher maximum addressable memory (64GB vs 24). And Windows, of course, if you consider that an advantage.
There is a world out there where people pay 15~20% of their annual income to buy a computer
seen under a different lens: you think that an effort a person does over 3.65 days to afford a computer is expensive, while many people would have to accumulate the effort of 73 days to afford it.
You're buying a tool for your work, it will last at least 2 years, and as a developer you have almost no ongoing costs or required consumables. Comparing to many other kinds of jobs, 1% per year for equipment is nothing. If it makes your job more comfortable or faster, thinking too much to decide between 0-2% of your annual salary seems counterproductive.
I think of a laptop in the same way as a chef's knife: it needs to be an extension of your being when you are in the zone, and good tools do that. Ive had near-religious experiences woodworking with good tools and other craft types tell me they have too.
It depends where you live! I've lost laptops to guys with knives, guys with guns, mysterious cat burglars... hence my preference for easily replaceable ~$500 used Thinkpads.
The Dell XPS Developer Edition ones have always worked well for me with Linux, I never used the stock Ubuntu, and the hardware works really well and they actually do deliver firmware updates through fwupd for many years - I won’t defend the landfill future of the hardware and lack of user upgrade/ replacement, but I’ve had great success with Elementary OS and Arch on them.
Also I have had to use a Mac more recently for work, and I miss my XPS running well with Docker, and I find it hilarious that with MacBooks you need the new M processor models to be able to run Docker workloads without the fans blasting!
These are fair points. It's probably more accurate to say that I didn't give the Dells a completely fair shake on their "works with Linux" cred because I couldn't get past the lack of user upgrade and/or the cost to actually buy one. At one point I did buy a Precision 7000 series that wasn't certified for Linux, hoping I'd be able to get it running anyway, and it was a nightmare that ended in a return/refund: the whole machine would literally lock up hard upon waking from s2 sleep. It was upon researching the problem that I discovered the nature of Dell's "we won't actually support Linux on any laptop unless it's a specific model and you're running our specific build of Ubuntu, beyond that you're on your own, YMMV" and gave up. Framework still says "you're on your own" but they're also working furiously behind the scenes to make Linux as close to first-class-citizen as possible. Framework knows their customer.
I use a mac and a thinkpad for two clients. Great machines.
I had an XPS for 1.5 years, with terrible chassis issues that got worse and worse until typing would cause it to freeze.
I use a Framework for my daily driver and I couldn't be happier! I do have the occasional issue with a WD-SN850 that causes freezing, but that isn't due to Framework specifically.
I completely agree in nearly every respect. Especially notable is the fact that they sell replacement hinges. Considering that every one of my preceding non-Apple laptops has failed at the hinge, this is huge.
Support for suspend in linux is definitely shaky, but a (eventually fixable) firmware issue. On the other hand, I am concerned with the company's commitment to upgradability. Since they announced the 2nd generation motherboard some months back, the only way to get one has been with a brand new laptop around it.
Yeah I mean, even on the Framework I basically gave up on suspend. It wasn't freezing on the Framework like it was on the Dell, but there were definitely instances of things not working correctly upon wake, or with the machine never going to sleep, or with the machine waking itself, or with the battery draining too fast even in s2/deep. Switched to hibernate and I've been very happy.
OK, I re-read the thread and in this case you are right - if it works flawless at least on one specific laptop, it can not "never work at all". Sorry for the disturbance.
Nah you’re fine - I try to avoid saying things like “never actually work” because there’s always someone on HN who will point to one working example as if that absolves my point, but sometimes I forget.
I’ve had thinkpads that don’t work either. The issue is suspend still doesn’t work reliably going on twenty years - even in the case where the laptop is explicitly a Linux laptop made for this purpose.
It means my default assumption has to remain that it probably won’t work (or at least I shouldn't expect that it will). I’m tempted by the framework because I like what they’re trying to do, but if suspend is still an issue it’s imo not worth it (even ignoring the bad battery tradeoff). That’s even ignoring the continued distance apple keeps putting between themselves and everyone else with their custom hardware.
Also the modular ports are essentially built in usb-c dongles. It’s not obvious to me why this is better than just having adapters. It takes up internal space and may be partly why the battery life is bad. Instead of adapters you have modules - is this a win?
This seems like a general problem, not specifically Linux-related. On my particular HP Laptop, I have the reverse issue.
On Windows sleep is a shitshow. It sometimes wakes up if I leave it alone during the night, it sometimes doesn't sleep at all (the screen stays on), it sometimes completely breaks (fans go full tilt, screen backlight comes on, but that's it) and I need to do a full reboot to make it work.
On Linux: press sleep, and it sleeps. Press power, it wakes up. If it sleeps, it stays asleep. When it turns on, the computer is actually usable, no forced reboot required.
This despite the fact that "HP recommends Windows 11", and the support page has no idea Linux even exists.
This is also my experience on a HP ZBook from 2014, with an Nvidia Quadro that is about to become unsupported. The two minor problems I have are: shut down (very rare operation) results in a reboot so I have to press the power button when it starts rebooting; sometimes it resumes to a blank screen so I have to ALT F3 to console and ALT F2 to X11 to reset something. My session is preserved.
> It sometimes wakes up if I leave it alone during the night,
This is most likely wake timers. Some program or windows itself is waking your machine to do updates. Disabling wake timers will prevent anything from waking the machine while sleeping.
I don't think it's the timers. I have disabled them (though maybe not all / they've been reset by some update).
And this also happens during the day, say if I put it to sleep while going for a walk. It sometimes wakes up a few moments later, sometimes it'll sleep all the way.
My schedule is fairly regular, too, so unless the timers have large jitter, I'd expect them to trigger roughly at the same time (either after X time, or at Y hour).
This used to happen on Linux initially, too, and there were no timers there. I could stop it by disabling EC wake up. I've never found anything similar on Windows, so I just turn it off. At least it boots quickly...
I'm really curious about this failing at the hinges. Do you have thought about why this happens to you with all laptops. Is your use case to carry it around at the screen a lot? I never has such a damage or failure.
I frequently carry my laptops by the body one handed, which probably doesn't help. I also (used to) travel a bunch, so the laptops end up getting stuffed into and out of densely packed bags. In most cases though, the hinges are just badly designed. In one extreme case, the hinge's mount points on the case were all in a straight line in line with the hinge's line of rotation. As a peer post pointed out, just the stress of the lid's friction lock + 1-2 years of constant use tore the hinge right off the case.
The Framework has a proper cross-brace on the hinge, the hinge mounting points are metal, and I can inexpensively replace the case or hinge if either breaks after the warranty expires.
One frustration with Lenovo laptops is failing hinges. Well, not really the hinges, its the plastic around them that cracks. Neither of these was abused like you described, just occasionally opened and closed, probably not even on a daily basis.
Timing! (To my credit, I had checked the upgrade kits page and they were still on "notify me" status when I posted)
Obviously I'm being a bit greedy here, but much of Framework's value proposition is built around upgradability. Servicing the crowd that actually buys into that proposition first seems like it would be more valuable from a customer loyalty standpoint, even relative to new customer acquisition. These are repeat customers clearly committed to your company's product.
I bough a high-end X1 carbon because I wanted to keep it for a long time and I trusted Lenovo. While I loved it and was very satisfied, it turns out that the main board suddenly died after 2 years, and it was not repairable.
They do not provide any post-warranty support (even paid) and do not sell spare parts.
Now I'm back to a desktop PC that I built myself and can repair or upgrade however I want.
Other people with these requirements may want to look at HP Pro and EliteBooks, if they're willing to put up with dubious screens (they're fairly OK for coding work, I guess).
They're repairable in that HP has repair manuals on their public site, complete with disassembly instructions and part numbers. Never had to replace anything, so I don't know how easy it would be to actually source the parts.
Most importantly, they are also one of the few to have AMD models without any soldered RAM, and they don't insist on HP branded RAM either.
Linux works great on these. The worst I had was an older ProBook whose fingerprint sensor was unsupported. On my current one, it works 100% under Linux, while on Windows I can't get the webcam to work.
I just bought a current ProBook (445 G8) and the fingerprint sensor also seems to be unsupported. Great laptop otherwise though so far!
I'll probably get rid of it in favor of a framework once they sort out their battery troubles either by getting ryzens or intel stepping up their efficiency game though.
They certainly have continued to take away nice features, stability, and build quality over the years. The "last good ThinkPad" is different for many. As you said the T42 or around there for pre-Lenovo, T400 for libreboot support, T420 for old keyboard, T430 for old charger/body design, T440p for last gen with socketed CPU and for coreboot support, T480 for last gen with a removable battery I think... But at the same time they've removed indicator lights, certain ports, I'm not even sure if there's a magnesium rollcage anymore.
I have a P15s for work and my initial model would hard freeze when putting pressure in certain spots. I used an external keyboard/mouse mostly, but it'd still happen occasionally. Eventually got a tech sent out and he swapped the motherboard. I think it's fixed, but I still touch it as little as possible and use external peripherals.
Some people defend modern ThinkPads saying they still beat the competition. I'd like to think the bar is higher than that considering some of what's out there.
My take on all this is that x86 is on its way out anyway, so I'm trying to make my T440p last and will try to go with ARM or RISC-V for my next machine. Likely just an M2 Max MacBook Pro when available. Hopefully Asahi support is pretty good by then.
The Framework is sort of cool, but it's just another modern Intel machine at the same time. Guts aside, they're doing a good job, but the guts are pretty important, and in this case, boring. The MNT Reform is a lot more interesting, although I don't know if any particularly performant SoMs are available for it yet. I'd like something with better performance than my Pinebook Pro if possible. The RK3399 is not quite Main Machine material.
I never really liked Thinkpads to begin with. The texture on their plastics makes my skin crawl. When I was working IT at the end of the '00s, I found Latitudes were a lot easier to repair and more durable.
My personal story is that I'll never use Lenovo, because of their crap website and customer service.
I tried ordering one of their laptops back around 2015 on their website. The cart just straight up broke during checkout. Tried contacting support - no response.
2 weeks later they emailed me asking how my purchasing experience was (hilarious that they couldn't tell the purchase actually didn't go through, because the card wasn't charged)
Was literally throwing money at them trying to buy their product, but I guess they didn't want it. So I'm never giving them a cent of it again.
I like that someone else is still using a T420. I'm using the one I bought for college back in 2011. I've been running fedora on it since fedora 17 I believe. I preordered a framework a couple months ago though and it's suppose to ship in August. It'll be a sad day when I shut down my thinkpad for the last time.
I've had my framework for about six months, and it's been an incredibly mixed bag. This isn't a bad laptop by any means, but it's not been a panacea either.
The battery life, as other have mentioned, is poor.
The Linux support is "OK", and improved greatly when I upgraded to the latest Ubuntu and what I assume is a host of updated proprietary drivers.
But the system also got regularly stuck in a mode where it wouldn't wake up from sleep, for weeks, until one day it simply couldn't be woken up, even after having no power. Tech support was competent, but slow, with replies every next business day.
Resetting the sleep situation also required taking the unit apart, which seems silly.
And one of the dongles that it comes with, the USB-A one, totally flaked out on me.
And at the end of the day, while repairability is lovely, so is a tech support line you can call and talk to a human being, so is a depot you can send the laptop to, and so is being able to pay for a repair person to come and fix my work machine.
These are premium asks, the repair person in particular, and I know that big companies like Dell and Lenovo can only offer them based on bulk sales, but I'd be willing to pay for this, but it's not offered.
Right now, the laptop is good, but I wouldn't buy one. They say their next model will have better Linux support, and be better in other ways. I'd wait for that and hope that Framework also works out a better tech support system.
"I bought this user repairable laptop and they don't offer an on-site repair service. Also one of the USB ports burned out and it cost me $9 for a replacement. Absolutely terrible"
I ran into a similar issue. It took a Google search plus following a nicely documented guide to reset, and I was back at it. Way easier fix process than dealing with <PC Laptop Manufacturing Company> support.
Not a framework owner, buty money would be on the reset being a cmos reset, which means it's most likely some toggle in firmware being set incorrectly.
This is a guess based on a couple years in a repair shop, I could be completely wrong.
That's a lovely idea, but I simply don't have the ability to do that.
I think it's great that we're able to fix our own machines, and I think it's wonderful to teach people to fix their own machines, but it's ablist to assume everyone has the ability to do so. I don't.
Moreover, there are lots of people who support Right to Repair but don't want to have to repair their own equipment. Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to take your computer down to a repair shop or have someone come over and fix it?
Absolutely. Of course no one is saying you cannot or should not send it to a local repair shop. The point is just that it seems misdirected to fault Framework the company for not offering these kinds of services when anyone with a job at a repair shop should be expected to be able to repair this model if they have competency in other less repairable models.
You are right my reply was framed in ableist language. I apologize for that -- I appreciate your feedback and will try to do better going forward.
It cost more than a macbook ARM, and you get less perf, worse battery, worse cooling, and less support, yes you get to repair it yourself and more easily, but i never had to repair my macbooks (other than changing the battery, and that was easy to do myself, and looks like it is still easy on the ARM ones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l_Dw_5_JJk)
This isn't a Macbook Air, though. This is a workstation laptop with serious IO, serious repairability considerations and serious x86 performance. If you're the sort of person who doesn't know/care about that stuff, you'd probably be better off with an iPad anyways.
In any case, these machines are not even remotely as close as people paint them to be. That Macbook Air won't have a 32-gig (or 64 gig) option for memory, much less a fully replaceable and upgradable mainboard with swappable NVMe drives. Plus, it's only got a paltry 2 ports of IO, one of which will be occupied by the charger (the other presumably plugged into the SINGLE DISPLAY that the Air supports).
They're different devices for different people. I think the Framework is surprisingly cheap for what it offers, and I'll happily pick one up when the Alder Lake models get stocked.
It's likely limitations of the drivers for the underlying hardware they were able to source in quantity and at the right price. Some of the highest-volume manufacturers have traditionally also been bad about Linux drivers (looking at you, Broadcom).
Understanding that this company wants to change a whole industry with the idea that laptops are not disposable products and is competing against giants, I am reading your list of very minor complains about one of their first results as an attestation of an incredible success.
It is time to choose, brothers and sister - do you want to be the problem or do you want to be the solution?
The battery life of my Linux Framework is ~6 hours after tuning, but it has required real time to tune it and a little bit of attention to crack down on runaway processes (mostly web threads)
Been using a Framework laptop for close to a year and loving every minute of it!
Installed 64GB of RAM and a high-performance 2TB NVMe for less than half of a comparable Macbook Pro. Plus, I get to run Linux! It worked right out of the box with almost zero configuration.
To be completely fair, the battery that it comes with is a bit on the small side, so that's the main criticism I have (battery life).
All told, I can't see myself ever going back to using an Apple laptop (voluntarily). I do get jealous of the M1/M2 processor specifically at times, but MacOS is a dumpster fire and I refuse to use it. Plus, having used a proper tiling window manager on a laptop now (i3), I can't imagine going back.
I'm with you, I have two Macbooks I deeply regret buying because at this point they just sit in a pile unused because they are just so annoying to use.
I'm in the market now for a replacement for my old 15" thinkpad that I've been using but just haven't really found anything. I seem to be in some weird middle ground that nobody caters too because everything is either 13" or 16".
i3 really is the killer feature for me. I'm on an M1 Mac for work, and I wouldn't say MacOS is a dumpster fire, but I'm really missing i3. There are things I've tried that get close but it's not the same.
For what it's worth, my "dumpster fire" comment encompassed far more than just window management (and admittedly extended to Apple hardware and Apple the company). See my comments elsewhere in the thread if you're curious!
Re window management specifically: your "it's not the same" comment are my exact sentiments!
Even if you can hack together some other MacOS-specific window management solution, what I'm finding game-changing is my laptop and my desktop behaving in the exact same way (same OS, same dotfiles, same programs/bins/utils).
Not only "behaving" in the same way, but also configured in the same way (meaning I don't have to maintain two separate configurations for two entirely different managers).
I don't know, I realize my perspective isn't shared by everyone (and even the HN audience specifically), but I'll probably never go back to using a laptop without Linux on it. For a long time, I avoided going down that path because I knew how big of a PITA getting laptop device/drivers to work was (whereas it's generally far simpler on desktop), but that's become less and less the case over the years, to the point that I spend less time configuring Linux than I do overriding all of MacOS's default settings/configuration.
I have, as well as Amethyst. Yabai is what I've settled with, and it's absolutely usable for my work flow. I probably need to fiddle with it some more, but the thing with i3 is that most of the the default set up works great for me. Trying to emulate that in something else has been a pain.
absolutely love amethyst! i wish I could long press a hotkey to remind me of my own hotkeys sometimes but as far as a non-linux tiling wm goes, this is the way.
Not OP but my biggest issue is: windowing system is extremely basic (no window snapping/tiling) and smooth scrolling doesn't work with 3rd party mice. I need smooth scrolling due to visual impairment and have to use the stupid Magic Mouse instead of my MX Master 3 when I'm on MacOS.
I tried MacOS recently for about a month and was shocked at how bad scrolling was with my Logitech MX Vertical mouse. The third-party app Mos solved it pretty much perfectly. Every once in a while scrolling would stop working altogether until I rebooted. Never figured it out, but it was maddening. https://mos.caldis.me/
EDIT: I should point out that, although I don't like MacOS, I ditched Apple-related products first and foremost because of both the hardware itself and the company.
Every Apple product I've owned has failed in some spectacular way, and Apple's response is typically something along the lines of "You're SoL dude, you can either recycle it and buy a new product, or you can pay us something close to the value of the device to repair it" (because they solder everything unnecessarily).
Framework finally came along and showed that you can have a sleek, elegant (and modular!) design without soldering everything together in the name of reducing weight by 0.01kg or whatever (or making it a hair-width thinner).
Most recently, I had a 2019 Macbook Pro ($3K) that would frequently give me a "red screen of death" under load and crap out completely.
Before that, a brand new 2018 Macbook Pro I bought (for nearly $3K mind you) became unusable within an hour after taking it out of the box because of the faulty keyboard (several keys either didn't register key presses, or they would turn one key press into multiple occurrences of the same letter).
Before that, I had a Thunderbolt Display ($1K) that would fail intermittently, and it took 5 trips to the Apple store before they finally gave me a new one.
Before that, I had a 2014 Macbook Pro for which the screen started peeling off -- I had to buy a matte screen protector to even be able to see the screen.
I have several more examples as I go back in time further, but you get the gist! In all cases, they're widely known problems that Apple refuses to acknowledge, and assuming they're even willing to do anything about it, they want you to hand over your laptop to them for ~2 weeks in the meantime.
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Original response:
I'll eventually get around to writing a blog post about this (tm) and HN isn't really the place to fully brain dump, but off of the top of my head, here's a few examples:
- My ".osx" dotfiles (then, now ".macos") would break with every OS upgrade. As an example, I preferred to set a very fast key repeat with a very short delay, and I remember one version of OSX/MacOS that just decided to start ignoring that completely (or resetting it every restart or something, I forget).
- As a TL;DR point that summarizes many frustrations, I'd end up changing almost all of the default settings, to the point that I realized that I wasn't their target customer. For instance, I'd promptly disable all of their elaborate transitions and animations (which effectively added a latency to interacting with the system), hide the dock in perpetuity, etc etc... I haven't used MacOS in a few years, so I'm unable to refresh myself on what else I would change.
- Their window management is SO stupid (IMHO), especially once you start incorporating monitors.
- At least historically (unsure now), there was no way to differentiate the scroll behavior with the trackpad vs an external mouse. I did like the "natural" scrolling or whatever, as it felt very intuitive having used smartphones for many years. However, any time I connected a wireless mouse (primarily for gaming), it'd behave the same way (completely unintuitive), and there was no way to change it to be different. So I'd then have to either design for the least common denominator ("scrollwheel behavior"), or change that setting every single time I used an external mouse and remember to revert it when I'm done. A small nit, but one of tens of examples of annoyances.
I could go on, but like I mentioned, this isn't really the place! Just a few examples as a taste :)
I had many hardware issues with Macbooks as well. The final straw for me was when I bought an expensive Apple-made monitor, and 50% of the time when unplugging my MBP from it, the MBP screen would stay off/blank rather than receiving the handoff. The only way to recover was to hold the power button. On a $4,000 setup. Where the same company controls the entire stack, on both devices. Absolutely inexcusable to buy a product set so expensive and so unreliable. The insult to the injury though was people telling me I must be doing something wrong because Apple stuff "just works." (I literally just plugged and unplugged a cable)
Yep, the prevalance of broken things and asinine limitations is what ultimately pushed me back towards Linux/Android. If I'm going to have to install extra software to make my experience tolerable, I may at least use the platform where those extensions don't cost me extra money on top of the hardware premium I'm already settling...
Apple made my wife pay $500 when we were tight on cash to fix the keyboard on her butterfly-edition macbook pro when two keys failed.. for the second time ( the first they did it for free under warranty)
I'm never touching one of their products if I don't have to again.. years later they had some class-action settlement where we could have I guess got money back but seriously screw that company where it matters they hang you out to dry
What kind of expertise is needed for you guys to have a trackpoint in the keyboard?
There's a vocal minority of people (I count myself in) that really, really like trackpoints and would love to have a Framework laptop with this kind of pointing device. I think it would be more productive (or perhaps its wishful thinking on my part) for you people to say something like "we need to shave x mm from the Thinkpad one to match or requirement" or "we need x dollar to hire someone / to let our product engineer spend y amount of time on this project.
(and I'm of course ignoring the dozen or so patents that probably prevent you to implement this... but I really really like trackpoints)
The barrier is primarily tooling costs. We'd have to have high enough confidence in the incremental sales of it to cover what would likely be in the mid six digits of custom tooling (Input Cover plastic and aluminum tooling, tooling for a three button trackpad, tooling for a new version of the keyboard with a cutout for a pointing stick, and a small amount of tooling for a semicustom pointing stick to fit that cutout).
Well, I'm using a ThinkPad right now and I don't own a Framework. Even though I tend to like each successive model less and less, I'm kind of resigned to my next laptop being a ThinkPad too :-P.
Whether the market justifies the investment is not a question I can answer, but the Framework looks pretty decent otherwise and if it had a pointing stick keyboard I would buy one and give it a go.
I think I paid about £300 for my TeX Shinobi, so I guess I'd be prepared to pay a similar premium on a laptop.
I agree with the sibling comment. There's no real alternative to the trackpoint. Nothing comes close, but the initial hour or so of using it is weird ; frankly, I don't remember it because I did it about 20 years or so ago, but everywhere I've worked, I've made sure to buy a keyboard with a trackpoint.
Currently I'm using the Tex shinobi keyboard, and before that I used the IBM USB keyboard with the X220 layout.
When navigating with the mouse on the web, I currently have my thumb for the mouse buttons, my index finger on the trackpoint, and middle, ring, and index for movement on the HJKL keys. Nothing beats that for speed and hand movement a mouse is a little more accurate, but I'm willing to trade that for not moving my hand all the time. (I also just realized I switch hands a lot for moving the mouse - not something you can do with a mouse.)
Do you think the Tex Shinobi is worth its price? I'm familiar with the Thinkpad X200 keyboard and interested in the Tex Shinobi, but find it a bit hard to justify spending that much on a keyboard. (I am a software engineer and do spend a lot of time on keyboards and I do value a good keyboard.)
I had my first TrackPoint contact when I joined IBM. They gave me a ThinkPad 755CD. They still owned the PC Division. There was no touchpad, so it took me about 30~60 minutes to get used to the trackpoint (maybe less). Since them I have had countless ThinkPads, personal and at work, an I always disable the touchpad entirely. I am sure that if most people had to use the trackpoint, they won't want to go back.
I was really into using my trackpoint until suddenly my index finger literally started trembling uncontrollably whenever I tried using it. I think its because it requires too much force to move the cursor or I guess my ligaments are that weak although Im still young. Sadly had to give up using it since it was quite convenient
You can / should change the sensitivity so it doesn't require so much force. I like it to move all the way across the screen with very little effort ; if you're getting finger strain, you should look into its settings.
Get a fresh cap! The caps only last about a year of heavy use. You can find replacements on amazon and elsewhere. It doesn't even matter if it's really oem, a fresh third party one will still be much better than a worn oem one.
Trackpoint was so vastly superior to touchpads for the majority of the existence of the laptop that it's only natural that people that were computing when that was the case just completely eschew the touchpad on their laptop, even to this day. That plus the fact that there's little impetus to change (unless you force yourself by purchasing a laptop without a nub).
With that being said, I think Apple finally nailed the trackpad. It's far better than those original trackpads that came on ThinkPads that was so comically small you couldn't really use it on top of absolutely horrendous drivers. I think for the most part trackpads on Windows laptops are pretty competent as well, at least on the higher end models. Windows precision drivers went a long way to matching the experience of using a trackpad on the Mac. On Linux the basics are mostly fine though it's still kind of a mixed bag.
I thought I preferred trackpoint; turns out I don't.
How do you scroll with the trackpoint? I have a ThinkPad and the trackpoint is nice, but I always end up back on the touchpad for two finger scrolling. I used to use scroll bars, but they are so small these days that they’re really only useful as an indication of where you are in a document.
A proper trackpoint is supposed to have three buttons. The middle button works the same as on a desktop mouse: while holding the button, moving the cursor scrolls the page.
Among the few laptops that still include a trackpoint at all, I'm seeing more and more omit the third button, rendering the nub a vestigial ornament, requiring a fallback, as you've said, to the touchpad. I'm very disappointed; should I ever need to buy a new laptop, I expect to find myself up the proverbial creek.
But today trackpads are really good, especially the ones that ship on MacBooks. I can't imagine going back to the trackpoint any more than I can imagine going back to the trackpads of the '00s. Good multitouch gestures in particular make a trackpad way more versatile and improve my productivity a lot.
non-ironically, this is the last thing that is giving me doubts between going for the frame.work for my next laptop or sticking to old-trustworthy thinkpads.
Just to add support to this sentiment, I am also pretty on the fence but I think a trackpoint would push me over. I've used Thinkpads for the last 7 years and I'm looking to buy a new laptop soon (in the next 1-2 years). If framework adds a trackpoint, I will buy it.
Since you can buy seperate keyboard parts... and if you don't mind a bit of drilling / replacing some keys with custom keys / manual fixing of damaged traces on the pcbs...
Just drill a hole in the keyboard, file it off, and buy a trackpoint module from ebay, It'd probably work well enough!
- - -
that aside, making an expansion card which has a trackpoint on it, or notching it into just above the keyboard area, would probably be the most doable options, without needing the company to catch up
I don’t use my thinkpad’s trackpoint all the time, but it’s excellent for cramped situations where you don’t have the space for the arm movements required to use a trackpad effectively. If nothing else it’s an extremely good feature for a mobility-focused machine.
I've had my 11th gen Framework for ~ 5 months now and I really want to love it but I've stopped recommending it to others because of the battery issues.
The biggest problem is that it drains 1-2% per hour in deep sleep on Linux. That means if you leave it asleep in your bag after work it will be between 15-30% lower when you go to use it the next morning. People on the forums[0] are even seeing up to a 4% per hour drain. I don't know what is common with other laptops but I can't say I've ever had to think about sleep drain before.
I've just ordered the 12th gen board upgrade with fingers crossed it helps but really consider going back to a ThinkPad X1 Carbon.
We've been able to reach <0.5%/hour on Linux with 12th Gen and recent kernels. There are also some additional firmware optimizations we're working on to resolve higher s0ix drain with different combinations of Expansion Cards inserted that keep the retimers from going into a suspend state.
On 11th Gen and 12th Gen, one of the other major drivers of s0ix drain we have seen is SSDs with firmware issues that keep them in higher power states in suspend. Updating SSD firmware is challenging on Linux, so if you are unable to do that, there is also a workaround to change a kernel parameter which we have seen result in <1%/hour drain on 11th Gen: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Ubuntu+22.04+LTS+Installatio...
FWIW, my sleep drain issue (on 11th gen) got noticeably better once I replaced my USB-A and HDMI modules with USB-C. Now I just have 4 USB-C modules. I did try updating SSD firmware before that, but I don't believe that had an impact. I'm not sure whether it was HDMI or USB-A or both that was the issue.
I run the latest kernel (5.16.16 currently) on Arch.
I've turned just about every knob and kernel parameter I can, only use the USB C expansion cards, kernel is 5.18.12, and my Samsung 980 Pro is on the latest firmware (5B2QGXA7) so I look forward to what the 12th Gen board can do.
Have you tried configuring suspend-then-hibernate with a very short timer (e.g., 10 or 30 minutes)? The configuration for it is shipped with systemd these days, so all you have to do is turn it on and set the timer length. With fast SSDs, resume from hibernate is not very painful.
That should let you close your laptop and open it in a few days without any big issue, even if S0ix continues to suck.
Configuring suspend-then-hibernate is a pain on both Fedora and Ubuntu for different reasons: Fedora uses zswap by default and Ubuntu's swap partition is too small.
Last I installed it, Ubuntu actually used a swap file, so configuring hibernation required adding a kernel parameter to your boot arguments specifying what file to resume from.
The deep sleep power drain is really annoying, but on the bright side those power tuning tips let me go through an entire 8 hour workday from a full charge. At least until I need to test things on an Android emulator.
I have this issue with a Dell XPS 13 (2021) with Ubuntu, I read in several places this is common problem among modern Intel based laptops, even in Windows.
I've been using a Framework (11 gen, DIY edition) for the last year. I love the company, the idea, the repairability, almost all of it. But I've had 4 major issues:
- Installing the WiFi card was crazy difficult. The antenna connectors are tiny, fragile, and require significant pressure to snap on. I had to use a pair of pliers to get it on and I was very concerned about breaking or bending something
- The screen hinge is weak and not adjustable. It'll stay in position when it's on a table, but picking the laptop up and walking anywhere with it inevitably ends up with the screen open to 180 degrees.
- The space bar is inconsistent. Especially with my right hand. I've had to develop a typing habit where I type spaces with my left hand or hard with my right hand to get it to register. Otherwisemywritingendsuplookinglikethis.
- The touchpad isn't great. My work machines have been MacBooks, so maybe I'm spoiled. But I disable touch to click. And clicking to click is also inconsistent. I ended up having to click extra hard.
These are annoyances really, and I don't use it often enough for these to matter. But if it was my daily driver I'd have done something about it by now.
On the WiFi, we switched to pre-installing the card with antennas attached when we launched in Europe last year, and are continuing that for all configurations of 12th Gen. We agree it is too finicky.
On the hinges, could you reach out to our support team? We had a set of out of spec hinges come from our supplier, and it is possible that is what you are seeing. The team can also help you out on any issues you're seeing on your keyboard or trackpad.
Yeah, I'll try to get to it. Like I said it hasn't been a huge issue. I did read up on the forums about the hinges, since someone had the same complaint as me. IIRC the response was along the lines of "Adjustable tension on the hinges? Huh. That's a good idea. Maybe one day we'll do it."
> we switched to pre-installing the card with antennas attached
That's really good to hear. I assumed I had to do it because I got the DIY edition and that I essentially got what I asked for.
> Installing the WiFi card was crazy difficult. The antenna connectors are tiny, fragile, and require significant pressure to snap on. I had to use a pair of pliers to get it on and I was very concerned about breaking or bending something
I don't have a Framework, but that's how installing mobile WiFi cards has always felt to me. IME those connectors are sturdier than you'd think, but I never use tweezers or apply pressure on the wire other than at the joint, from directly above, with a finger.
I've been running a DIY model for about a year as well. My only complaint was likewise that installing the wifi antenna was _very_ tricky. I briefly thought I had broken it before it finally came together for me. (It sounds like they've mitigated this issue by now, so that's great.)
I also had a few of the Linux issues that others have mentioned, but upgrading to the newest Ubuntu solved them.
Overall a fantastic machine, and probably my favorite laptop I've ever owned.
> The touchpad isn't great. My work machines have been MacBooks, so maybe I'm spoiled. But I disable touch to click. And clicking to click is also inconsistent. I ended up having to click extra hard.
pressing on a touch pad has always annoyed me.
on my laptops i always remap capslock -> (ctrl|cmd), and (ctrl|cmd) -> mouse click.
I'm looking forward to the product maturing a little. If they can fix annoyances like this, improve port density and provide a better Ethernet port (that doesn't stick out) I'll start buying 'em.
I got the DIY edition of this a few months ago and have been using it continuously since then. Nice piece of hardware and I'm glad I bought it. Only big thing missing for me is user-modifiable firmware. Combine this thing with the Coreboot and neutralized Intel ME of Purism's products, and I would have no reason to use anything else. Currently this has a typical proprietary EFI firmware and no legacy BIOS support, which I wouldn't expect most people to care about but I find it a bit annoying.
I've also had some issues with the CPU temperature consistently pushing into the 90s when running big multicore workloads. Not sure why. Rather than look into applying new thermal paste or whatever, I just turned off Intel turbo boost, this is of course a performance hit but it keeps the whole thing very cool and improves battery life.
Glad to hear that you're enjoying it! On the CPU temperatures, Boost will deliberately and safely let the CPU run up to a maximum of 60W and 100C for a short period of time at the start of heavy load before dropping back to 28W (11th Gen) or 30W (12th Gen).
On an open UEFI solution, that is on our long term roadmap, and we're currently hiring for firmware positions to speed up kicking off this work. Edit: Also, our Embedded Controller firmware is open, though that is somewhat orthogonal to UEFI: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController
What doesn't get mentioned is the amazing support provided by the Framework team. From their community board [1] to their customer support, these folks love their customers. From the CEO (Nirav), to their system engineer (Kieran) and all in-between, drop in to answer questions and help solve issues. The community forum is akin to Arch Wiki. You find some gems of replies to technical issues that are unparalleled across the net.
Best laptop support experience ever. Best laptop ever. Verge, "Generic looking" as a con? AYFKM?
In that case, I will continue to believe that you have an ultra-secret pointing stick keyboard in development that could be announced at any moment ;-).
1. There is a funnel in hardware (or really any product) development, where we research and investigate a pretty broad range of new features, modules, and even products, of which only a few make it out the other end as a mass produced item. Even relatively late in the development process, compliance, reliability, functionality, supplier, and cost issues can mean scope or schedule changes to something or even shutting it down entirely. Because of that, we don't announce hardware until we have 100% confidence both that we can ship it and 95% confidence in the price and launch date for it.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect - We don't deliberately hold announcements for this reason, but it compounds with reason #1. We don't want to have someone wait for something that may or may not ever appear. Because our products are upgradeable, we want people to evaluate them based on what currently exists, but still be able to benefit from improvements we make in the future.
The second sentence belies the exact reason they wouldn't release a roadmap - they want you to buy now since it's the present, not possibly later if you know more information.
That’d be true if there wasn’t robust market with competing alternatives. I may be okay with waiting another 6-12 months for Framework to supply a high res OLED screen or AMD, but without that clarity, might as well jump into Dell or Lenovo now.
Is there any plan to add AMD CPUs to the Framework laptop?
The 12th gen Intel chips are a huge improvement over previous generations, but my understanding is that AMD chips are of similar performance with better power usage and thermals.
Edit: This may not be true anymore, anyone is free to correct me on this.
Hey nrp, I recently saw this video [1] which showed some major battery life differences between the i5 and i7 for Alder Lake which really took me by surprise. (22% battery on the i5 vs 38% on the i7 after a couple of hours of playing video)
Is the difference similar on the framework laptop, and if so, is this a driver problem for the i5 / better under Linux and expected to improve as big.little utilization gets more robust or just a case where race-to-idle really hits?
Would love to hear professional input on this since you've probably worked pretty closely with these cpus in the last few months!
We've seen battery life be roughly the same for the same workload (MobileMark) on i5-1240P, i7-1260P, and i7-1280P. It's unclear where the major difference comes from in that video, but I would guess the laptop maker has other hardware or software differences between the two laptop SKUs.
I'm seeing that some people are upgrading the motherboard and re-purposing the old one as a stand-alone desktop computer... Have you considered selling cases to be used with old revisions of the motherboard?
I mean, I could buy the new motherboard and the case of the old one at the same time, it would make sense.
We've also seen some great community developed cases. We can't share any plans around commercial cases of our own, but we'd love to see third party ones come around.
The Upgrade Kit is available as of this morning on the Framework Marketplace, and is the complete set of hardware to bring an 11th Gen system up to what the new 12th Gen systems have.
If you ever make a larger model, will you please consider adding one more column of navigation keys (Home, End, Pg Up/Dn) and full-sized arrows? I find the split ones really uncomfortable to use.
If you look at the 16" MBP, there's a bunch of empty space, but it still has the tiny arrows. I'm pretty disappointed in how most of the manufacturers followed Apple on this one.
Thank you for creating a very nice looking laptop that I am very confident at recommending to the average person.
No need for screw-drivers for the basic of replaceable components, ports, etc. It is a genius swappable plug and play modules system and is as simple as plugging in a USB.
I'm looking forward to the next iteration of the Framework Laptop.
My killer device through covid wfh, and in general for software work has been the surface book, thanks to the touxh screen and great pen input to make quick diagrams.
Touchscreen option, pretty please. I live with the fixed RAM and general lack of repairability of my Surface Laptop 3 for that sweet, sweet 3:2 display w/ a touchscreen.
This review reads like someone complaining a tractor isn't good at racing on a track. The points are missed entirely when talking about finding replacement parts, not having half of it end up in a garbage dump and of course, running in whatever hardware and software setup you want.
I also am not a huge fan how Verge (and a few other reviewers) complained by saying "well, what if they are gone next year?". Then you'd have a laptop similar to all the other laptops you can't buy parts for, except that you can still pick up ram/storage (which you can't for a lot of the other laptops out there.)
Great on Framework for delivering, great to see the upgraded specs and I am still planning on picking up a mainboard for a personal NAS build I've been thinking about for sure!
This is it. Moving to Framework. MB-Air is great, but the soldered in SSD / memory is a deal killer for me (.. except for the occasional need to build iOS apps, which even a used MBP can take care !)
.. will put my /home in the expandable drive so I can simple unplug it and move it to my desktop .. 1513.00 with 1x16GB + 500GB Nvme + 1TB expandable .. can easily add another 16GB to it later ..
With the battery life being one of the primary complaints people have, and with the modularity being one of the main selling points of the Framework, I'm surprised they don't have different battery options.
There used to be (maybe still are) laptops aimed at business travelers with an option for swappable batteries or larger batteries that stuck out that back. It seems like a thicker case that would fit a larger battery would be an easy way to address a prominent weakness.
I don't understand why the physical appearance of personal electronics is so important. You don't look at the back of the laptop, most people cover theirs in stickers.
I'm looking forward to Framework 2. Version 1 just has too many limitations and poor decisions. You shouldn't have to give up a port to charge the laptop or read microsd cards, those should get dedicated hardware. Modules should have options for two type C or two type A ports side by side even if they're limited to low speeds. You should have the option for a non-chiclet keyboard and a mousepad with real buttons.
I adore the idea of the Framework, but for me to buy one it has to options I actually want to use. There's no point in a modular laptop if a conventional one has the functionality of all the module options at the same time.
They're becoming optional in most models and dropping completely in some (like T14s). Meanwhile, older lines with the port are being replaced with new models sans. While some models do come with it, they are by now in a minority.
My only problem with my Framework Laptop is (apart from the battery being drained to death on sleep in only a few hours) is that when I hold it with one hand from one of the sides, the weight of the rest of the laptop makes the frame bend enough to force a click on the trackpad.
It's strange to explain, but yeah, the aluminum frame is too soft and bends easily, causing this issue.
Everyone is comparing it to the M series Macbooks, but modern Macbooks really can't run Linux well, if at all. (It was comedy trying to install Linux on my touchbar mac, obviously the touchbar wasn't working and without that you don't have function keys, which many linux installers use!) You should compare it to other Windows/generic laptops.
I switched away from a macbook after the 3rd time my OS decided to "relocate" all my desktop files without asking me, and after all the fans would turn on after a reboot for 5 minutes.
There's a joke about the "year of the Linux desktop", but honestly I don't know what everyone's waiting for. Unless you're using software that doesn't run on Linux (which is getting more and more rare every year), it's ready! And I've run gnome-shell, i3, sway, and pantheon on a Framework laptop without issue. Well, the battery life doesn't compare to a new Macbook. I'm still working on that.
I love my framework.
I've also got a DIY edition 11th gen, i5, really hoping for the news that AMD is on the near ish horizon but understand the difficulties.
I have run successfully arch, and now fedora 36 for most of my work and the machine is just great. Hell I am typing this post on it.
I find the ability to swap cards and for the ports is quite handy, I regularly carry hdmi, displayport, extra usb a and c, sd card and I just purchased and am awaiting the arrival of a 1 TB extension, primarily to hold all the many vms I use on a regular basis.
Might be a bit much but I bought a d-brand skin for it too, I didn't want the wrist rests to get all scuffed like on most of my other laptops so that should help.
Really looking forward to having this thing for many years.
Fingers crossed for that AMD upgrade. And the ethernet card/dongle soon.
Got my wife one of these after a dell became dropped and cracked the screen. No way to repair affordably. Had it about a year, and it has been flawless. Super easy to upgrade ram/ssd/etc, if we crack this screen its like $150 part and easy to install yourself.
I’ve never understood the nitpicky Linux complaints I hear about ThinkPads. I’ve owned and used four different models, and all ran Linux well with no compatibility problems. I’ve recently got a T480 and Ubuntu works flawlessly.
Coming from a ThinkPad X1 Yoga. I really love where the Framework Laptop is headed and I really want to get one... But, I have a few blockers right now. The blockers are features that I do use on my Yoga and I will need to make the switch:
* Convertible mode. Tent and tablet modes, I do use to watch things or read longer articles in portrait mode and scroll with my thumb, from the side.
* Touchscreen, I use this quite a bit actually, if I see a button I can just press it vs, move my hand to the TouchStick and move the mouse to it. I also use the touchscreen for bulk operations where there is none. Sometimes, repetitive tasks like maybe adding a new list item or editing things or copy pasting multiple data entries can be done, sometimes in combination w/keyboard, very fast with this feature. It is not something I want to regress on now that I have moved into flowing with it really nicely.
* TouchStick - I don't use the trackpad, I disable it and solely use the TouchStick. It is faster when I need to use a mouse input. I guess I lose out on some gestures, but the TouchStick has been my flow for over 10 years, I'm used to it, I'm efficient with it. I hope to see a keyboard mod in the marketplace with a touchstick. There are a couple threads in the forums with a large amount of activity from others looking for the same.
I really like my framework. I don't mind that it is not the fastest in the benchmarks, because faster computers will be released in the future anyway. I don't want to chase the newest and fastest when what I currently have is perfectly adequate for what I want to use my laptop for.
My biggest complaint at this point is that the battery connector is not designed to be disconnected on a regular basis[1]. I personally would prefer to remove the battery much more frequently, because I'm only occasionally disconnected from the grid and keeping the battery unused would be better for its lifetime.
I know that the UEFI has a cool option to disconnect the battery. But this option only stays until the next reboot. I guess that this option is also the reason why the battery connector is so fragile.
On newer firmware versions, we've added the ability to set a charge limit on the battery. By setting the limit to 60-80%, you can also keep the battery healthier for longer. We don't recommend keeping the battery unplugged both to avoid cycling the connector too often and because it'll limit peak performance. Unless you plug in a 100W power adapter, hitting peak Boost power requires briefly drawing off of the battery in addition to the power adapter.
I was so hyped up to buy this as my next laptop, but then I saw the HP Dev one and it's a really tough choice. The HP wins basically every metric except for repairability (and display aspect ratio, but the trackpoint makes up for it)...although the HP does have upgradeable RAM and SSD, so it's not as bad as a Macbook. Also, apparently, Linux support is way better on the HP then the framework.
There are also some other interesting laptops, like the Slimbook Executive (amazing screen), Starlabs Starbook, the System 76 lineup, and probably more I'm missing.
I could also wait a (long?) while and Asahi Linux might reach a point where I would actually consider buying a M1/M2 macbook.
...not sure what I'm buying next, but I do know that this is a really good time to be in the market for a Linux laptop :D
Torx screws are a big plus for me. They don't skip like Phillips screws so you don't ruin the head over time. I'm always scared to put too much downforce on a laptop.
Hate the glossy screen though. There should be a matte option on a laptop this customisable.
Am I the only one bothered by the "agree to continue" box at the bottom of the article? It implies that it is telling us something about this laptop, but as far as I can tell, it's just a generic complaint about windows.
This is a feature the Verge has been doing for a while now where every product they review includes a section specifically for how many screens of EULAs you have to click through. If you don't follow them regularly you won't be familiar with it, but if you do, you recognize this as a standard feature of their reviews.
What you are saying makes sense, but it feels a little weird in this context. Aren't these just the windows EULAs? This section would only be useful to me if it differentiated between EULAs that come with windows no matter what and vendor-added ones. My first reaction was, "What? Framework has licenses to click through?"
This is as good a place as any to say:
For the right price, I'm looking to by a used (intel 11th gen) framework mainboard.
Presumably, some people are upgrading. So it would be a good time to pick up an old board and an empty chassis. Apart from e-bay (no obvious hits) I can't think how to connect with any sellers.
Building a consumer to consumer resale market is on our Marketplace roadmap. In the meantime though, we expect there will be people in the Framework Community posting about extra Mainboards: https://community.frame.work/
I love the idea behind this project. I was considering getting one but I simply needed better battery life out of a laptop. I ended up getting a MacBook Pro instead but I’ll definitely look to see if that’s improved the next time I need an upgrade.
What's the use in repairability if the keyboard is basically broken from the get-go? We need long-travel non-chicklet keys, like the Thinkpads used to have.
i'm a hardcore macbook loyalist but I've gotta give kudos to Framework for finally creating a sexy and reasonably performant modular laptop. i've wanted one for a long long time when i was younger; this is literally the dream.
Seems the sales pitch here is dependent on the product failing before it has provided reasonable service for the cost. I've yet to have 1 of more than 50 laptops have a single component fail. And if it takes more than 5 years so what? Who wants to run 5+ year old hardware as their daily driver?
Integrated graphics is just not really an option anymore for anything but a cheap web browsing device. Practically every other laptop at this price point has a 3060 or 3070.
IMHO the market is enterprise and professional, not consumer.
If we could buy enough of them I'd advocate for moving my entire team over to Frameworks. That's not tenable for a few reasons right now, but I can see the day where bulk ordering them and support is better than what you get from Dell, HP, and Lenovo right now.
If you had to buy new machines for new hires in 2020-2021 then you know the pain of finding good and reasonably priced machines. It was a nightmare, and the options are frankly not that great for developers. Especially if you have an aversion to Lenovo products, because they seemed to be the only company with stock available to ship last year.
We've recently started piloting a business program for SMB and teams within enterprises because of the amount of inbound interest we were getting. We're using the learnings from this to scale up business sales. We agree the incentives are aligned for a modular, upgradeable product to be a good solution. As you build up a fleet of systems that all have easily interchangeable parts, you can reduce downtime and manage upgrades at a granular level.
1. While category growth likely won't hold over the next couple of years, there were ~350M PCs sold in 2021, most of which were notebooks. Apple has <10% share, and ASP is >$700, even including ultra-cheap Chromebooks for Edu. [0]
2. The Framework Laptop is our first product, but not our last one. We see the same problems across consumer electronics, and we're excited about our product roadmap to address them!
I bought a gen1 laptop as an early adopter in part because I wanted to "vote with my dollars" and support their mission. A lot of people I know did the same.
As someone who has used Apple products in various capacities since like 2007 (MacBooks, MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, etc...), I'm just so completely done giving that company any of my hard-earned dollars.
Setting aside the M1/M2 processor specifically, they haven't put out a good laptop in the better part of a decade.
I realized a long time ago that I'm not Apple's target audience! They're more fashion/status these days than they are a technology company.
Conversely, I think Apple Silicon has drawn the line exactly where it needs to be. It's a fine laptop, but I'm not paying more than $300 for an ARM computer until the software support isn't treated like an afterthought. By the time people actually get multi-arch builds on most of their software, I reckon we'll have moved on to RISC-V anyways.
One advantage this model has is that once someone has bought a framework (and is happy with it) they are even more likely to stay brand loyal for their next laptop purchase than they would be with other brands, since it'll be cheaper to upgrade their existing framework rather than buying an all new laptop.
As software continues to eat the world, and a lot of that software is SaaS, much of that software will be developed to run on either Windows or some variety of Unix. While the Unix market share remains lower than Windows[0], it's enough to support a market.
Apple captured a large share of the hardware market both for developers who wanted to develop for iOS, but also developers who wanted quality hardware that ran a Unix variant that worked out of the box. After shipping quality hardware for years, they made a sequence of missteps that they are still recovering from:
* Thermal issues that killed performance - I use 2019 Core i7 and M1 MBPs daily, and still find the thermal performance differences amazing a year after I bought the M1
* Designs that aren't upgradeable/repairable - I upgraded the RAM and drive on my 2008 MBP, and replaced the battery.
I've been reading The Setup blog for a few years now. I noticed a clear trend where developers moved to the MBP for developing on a reliable Unix platform, and a clear trend more recently (pre-M1) where developers moved away from the MBP because of the above issues.
I chose the Dell XPS Developer Edition years ago at a startup where we were developing on Linux because I wanted to develop and test on the same OS we were using for our product. Coming from a MBP, it was a let down, in both the hardware quality (trackpad, coil whine), and OS compatibility (not great power management out of the box, etc.). Maybe it's better these days, I haven't used recent versions of the laptop.
I think there's a market for Framework to succeed and take marketshare from Apple for devs who are looking to work on Unix using an upgradeable/repairable laptop of high quality.
- Ran Linux without much tinkering or major compromises
- small (14")
- affordable (around $1300 for my config)
- lightweight and thin
- powerful (I had a Core i5)
- upgrade-able (I had 48gb of RAM)
They started going downhill after that, primarily in that I could no longer find a Thinkpad model that was at the intersection of upgrade-able and Linux compatibility.
Around 2021 I started looking for an alternative. Looked at made-for-Linux laptops like System76 and the various Linux-certified Dells. Couldn't find anything that checked all my boxes and the Dells were particularly crippled: 8GB of soldered on RAM? Only certified to work if you use their custom hacked Ubuntu image? No thanks.
The Framework (gen11, DIY edition) was exactly what I was looking for. My configuration at the time was $1032 and I've been running Manjaro Linux on it continuously for the past year on it with zero problems. It's just good solid generic hardware at a fair price. It's cheap enough that I don't worry about it getting lost or stolen. It's repairable so I don't worry about something physically breaking.
I have since bought another one for an employee and over the next few years I plan on deploying them to my whole team.
Basically I should be a testimonial on their website.