Preparing for Pre-Orders! (Framework modular laptop) | Hacker News Reader

Preparing for Pre-Orders! (Framework modular laptop)

frame.work

137 pointsluke2m79 comments

HN discussion from Framework's initial announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508

Theres some negativity in the comments, but honestly from the images this looks like a very well executed design. This is the first modular laptop I've ever seen that appears to be competitive from a design and realistic usability standpoint with a modern packaged laptop.

I really hope this works out. This concept could have real influence on design choices made by large manufacturers.

Thanks! Having a great looking and great feeling product was tablestakes for us. We didn't want people to have to choose between usability and modularity.

One of the terrible parts of these kind of "modular" laptops is all about the size of the different modules.

If you built a laptop even 10 years ago with modular parts, the ratios would be all out of whack compared to modern laptops. The battery would be half the size it should be, and the storage and ram sections would probably 2x too large.

The only laptop that came close to true modules was novena[0], as the ratio between parts could be changed. However, it was a beast.

If anyone has more info on what it means to be able to "change the motherboard" and if it includes different sizes/shapes, it's much more interesting.

[0]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

> The battery would be half the size it should be, and the storage and ram sections would probably 2x too large.

Maybe. But a module that used to fit a 2.5 HD, might fit up to two(?) m2 drives - but it depends on what kind of connection was used (eg: does the HD box come with a disk controller card, and connect via pcie?).

The IBM thinkpad line used to be able to swap the CD rom drive for an extra battery - or an empty slot (save on weight). I don't see why you couldn't have more modular batteries (say 4 to 6 batteries that each lasts about 60 or 90 minutes) - and a connector (proprietary for batteries + thunderbolt?) in each slot, so you could fit something else in there, like a gpu, fpga or whatnot?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_UltraBay

Is the IBM thinkpad possibly proves the point...

Across 13 years it looks like there was over 10 different types of UltraBay. Your laptop from 1995 couldn't have an accessory from 2005, and your 2005 laptop can't handle accessories from 1995.

I'm not so sure. There's a difference between a big line of laptops that were transferred to a new company - and designing with a goal of keeping compatability. Eg:

https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/solutions/pd024289-thinkpad...

Is a lot better than most alternatives - were you probably couldn't swap anything between different models/generations.

But yes, sure - thinkpad might just have been least bad in this regard - not great.

The ultrabay could even be switched for more ports as well.

There is a bit of a Ship of Theseus question going on here; but if you built your modular laptop 10 years ago, then you have a 10 year old laptop.

A modular design offers more opportunities to maintain and upgrade your laptop (potentially with modules more advanced then what was available at the time you built it), but at the end of the day, you are maintaining and upgrading a 10 year old laptop, not constructing a new one.

Of course, even the ability to meet this promise depends on the continued availability of parts in the old form factor.

If a sealed laptop lasts 4-5 years then a modular one should last 8-10 years to be worth bothering. Future-proofing generally isn't compatible with rapidly advancing tech but maybe the slowdown of Moore's Law will make modularity more worthwhile.

My HP ZBook 15 from 2014 is still good. I upgraded it to 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD starting from 8 GB and 750 GB HDD. I replaced several keyboards (usually because I worn out the most used keys) and a defective screen when it was under the original guarantee. I hope it won't break. I can see me using it for many years, no need to buy something else. If only HP would offer an option without the number pad.

Why does it need to last twice as long? If a sealed laptop lasts 4-5 years then a modular one only needs to last a bit more than 4-5 years to be worth bothering?

My X200 is very performant on Ubuntu 20.04, and for my mother, her X230 is a good daily driver.

The e-mail announcing pre-orders had a phishing site linked [0], which my browser extensions blocked, instead of frame.work.

I notice Carta (a stock options management outsource) notifications do this too.

When did it become normal to allow bulk e-mail senders to substitute a phishing site for the customer's? What would lead me to think it more likely to have been permitted than that the emailing service had simply been cracked and suborned? What are the security practices probably like at an emailing service that does not know such links indicate a phishing attempt?

[0] http://trk.klclick1.com

Gotta say I was ready to call BS on this. Then I opened my email, copied the link and noticed it was hundreds of characters long.

It was also blocked for me by unlock Origin. I assume my pihole would have caught it if the browser plugin didn't.

We did have an error on one of the email links, but it's worth noting that we (and perhaps also Carta, among others) use Klaviyo for these emails, and klclick is one of their domains.

Even if you don't personally understand that such link substitutions indicate a phishing attempt, and so check links in emails before clicking them, any competent emailing service would know. Even my browser knew.

Not to put too fine a point on it: get a better service; don't allow them to substitute a link to a domain that people who allowed you to use their address do not expect to see.

Definitely a fair concern, and thanks for reporting the issue. We're now working on moving to only using links on domains we control.

So both Klaviyo (on behalf of Framework) and Mailchimp (on behalf of Carta) are aggressively oblivious about security. The latter is more immediately worrisome, because they are entrusted with information about Carta customers' stock transactions.

Am I missing pricing info? Can’t find it... looks very interesting!

We'll be announcing pricing at the time we open pre-orders.

This really is a pre-pre-order blog post that we very much did not expect to see on HN! It's more a heads up to folks who are currently on our email list that they can register an account before the upcoming pre-orders.

It doesn't actually appear that it's ready, this seems to be more of a pre-pre-order. You signup to signup to the pre-order when it's released.

Yet it says "the final batch of pre-production Framework Laptop development units just came off of our manufacturing line in Taiwan".

If they don't have any idea of the price at that point...

Edit: a quick search on their forum seems to show that they don't want to give any hint about the price there either.

They are hiding the pricing info for a reason.

Everything over 1000$ is not acceptable.

Why would over 1000$ not be acceptable for a niche product which is manufactured in small quantities?

Hell, even if it wasn't, $1,000 is mid-range in the laptop world (e.g. a bottom end Dell XPS 13 or Envy clocks in around that price point), and anything below that starts to get pretty hit-and-miss.

Eh, it’s the price of a M1 MacBook Air which isn’t exactly a slouch of a machine.

The base m1 air is often $900 at places like costco and is always available via the educational discount which anybody can get. Granted, it needs a RAM and HD upgrade for most HN users which quickly becomes highway robbery with apple's upgrade pricing, but still the base is under $1K.

Anything can go wrong until September, then you can say goodbye to the $.

Somehow I'm more impressed by the MNT Reform DIY laptop

https://mnt.re

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

Very cool as well, but a completely different product in my eyes. The Reform is something I’d tinker and play with, the Framework is what I’d put in my backpack and take to work every day.

Cool, I hadn't seen the MNT, thanks for posting. Frame Work appears to be 70% thinner and about 30% lighter so probably appeals to a different buyer.

I’ve signed up - Nirav, lmk if you want more beta testers - happy to pay full price for testing. If somehow you can convince large tech companies to switch from MacBook Pro, I’d be in your debt forever.

I was disappointed to find they have no plans to offer an AMD CPU.

No longer interested. But I cannot unsubscribe from email notifications, because a phishing link is substituted in place of a proper "unsubscribe" link in the email notification.

I don't have much fluidity in my savings but have been saving some for this a while. Looks so great on paper so far, can't wait!

Very cool project! I hope you can make this form factor through future iterations!

Given this is meant to be repairable and maintainable, I am disappointed that there is only a one year warranty.

If this Laptop is really built to last, offer a longer warranty that proves the company making it truly believes it will be high quality for years. At the very least certain components like the shell or main board should have a long warranty otherwise what’s the point of servicing a laptop where the case/board isn’t worthy of being reused.

Being repairable means a longer warranty isn’t necessary. 1 year is pretty standard on laptops. I’m not sure why you are focusing on the chassis or motherboard when they both are user replaceable.

Windows only.

Untrue. The DIY-edition can be bought with no operating system, and they explicitly mention they’re testing for compatibility with popular linux distros.

This title is utterly useless for anyone who has never heard of the project and therefore doesn't recognize the domain. Honestly, even after browsing around the site for a bit, I'm not really sure what this project is about. What does "Upgradeable, repairable, and 100% yours" actually mean?

We tell the detailed story on the product pages: https://frame.work/products/laptop

We've built a 13.5" notebook where every part of the hardware is replaceable or upgradeable by the end user. That includes memory and storage, which are increasingly soldered down on new laptops, but also the entire mainboard to be able to move to new CPU generations. We've done this without sacrificing performance or form factor. We use 11th Gen Intel CPUs and the product is approximately the thickness and weight of a MacBook Pro 13-inch.

> That includes memory and storage, which are increasingly soldered down on new laptops

This is a sad day, when replaceable memory and storage has to be highlighted in a product.

I applaud the initiative. Getting future motherboards in the same form factor would definitely be a novelty in the laptop market, AFAIK. I wish I could just buy an upgraded motherboard for my 13-year n130, for instance.

The next step would be to adopt the EOMA68 form-factor, but that laptop is a more progressive approach. Have you tried to get closer to fairphone?

> We use 11th Gen Intel CPUs and the product is approximately the thickness and weight of a MacBook Pro 13-inch.

Does it dissipate heat efficiently or will it nearly melt down the second I type make into the terminal like every other laptop I've ever owned including gamer laptops with at least 3 noisy fans?

Linux support?

They highlight an oversized thermal solution to reduce thermal throttling, and say that they’re working on support of popular distros on their product page.

/products/laptop

Any plan for other products?

Definitely, though nothing we're announcing yet!

The /products/ is in part because we also offer the DIY Edition: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-edition

It's upgradable (you can get more storage or more ram), repairable (you can take it apart and add more storage or more ram and not void a warranty or need a masters degree in electrical engineering), and it's 100% yours (you can do what ever you want to it).

Also theoretically a standardized mainboard design that will allow you to upgrade the CPU + chipset at some point down the road, but of course this is contingent on Framework following through.

Something like "ATX for laptops" is long overdue IMHO. Specify the exact dimensions of the board, mounting holes, power hookup, location of the CPU (for cooling configuration), video connector spec, even a side panel that fits into a cutout on the case.

You could separate the screen and keyboard purchase from the motherboard purchase. And honestly, I have a lot of old laptops with perfectly usable screens and keyboards that are gathering dust because the CPU is hopelessly obsolete. Had they been built like this I could have significantly cut back on e-waste and saved money on the upgrade. You could even have enterprising people building thin clients or dumb terminals out of them. Having a unified spec would enable a lot of niche products. Imagine a Raspberry Pi board that you stuff the Pi into that has the right hookups for a standard laptop case for example. There would be a whole industry for cheapo SBCs that you can stuff in a used laptop case to make an ultra-cheap web browsing machine.

> And honestly, I have a lot of old laptops with perfectly usable screens and keyboards that are gathering dust because the CPU is hopelessly obsolete.

Yep. I have a ~2008 15.4" Dell laptop with a 1920x1200 screen that's pretty decent even by modern standards and tons of ports that'd be a perfectly serviceable (if a bit bulky) if it could be outfitted with a modern 15-30W TDP CPU to cut down on heat and boost battery life to something more reasonable.

That is right! We're committed to offering upgrade mainboards. We follow CPU roadmaps closely and keep in contact with the companies you would expect to be necessary for that.

Are there really not laptops anymore with SODIMM memory and discrete M.2 ports for both storage and WiFi? That seems like pretty basic features for anything that isn't trying to be ultra-thin and light?

AFAIK no notebook class CPU comes in a socketable form so I don't know how they plan to let the users upgrade it without a heat gun. Being able to swap out the battery is nice I guess. For that they mostly just have to go easy on the glue, in most laptops you can swap the battery as long as the glue isn't too difficult. It's something you might do once in a laptop's lifetime though.

Can you swap the screen? That is one job that will always give you a headache. How about the keyboard? Maybe the power jack for that time you trip over the cable and rip the jack off of the board?

None of this should be all that hard unless you're trying to make the whole thing less than 0.5cm thick.

It's surprisingly, but there are exceedingly few 13-14" notebooks still in the market with socketed memory, and especially not with both channels socketed. The same goes for WiFi, though at least storage is still socketed on most notebooks other than Apple's.

We enable CPU upgradeability through mainboard replacement. Since everything of value on the mainboard except for the CPU is socketed, the vast majority of the cost of the mainboard is the CPU itself. That makes the mainboard upgrade path pretty sensible.

We have designed the panel to be replaceable without needing to replace the full lid assembly. It is fastened in behind a magnet-attach bezel (which is also color customizable). The keyboard is held in with fasteners to be replaceable as well.

For the power jack, we actually do one better, and have made all of the ports Expansion Cards which can be hot swapped. This means you can choose the ports you want on the system and which side you want them on, and if you ever manage to damage a receptacle, you only need to replace the card instead of the mainboard!

I agree that what we're doing shouldn't be that unusual, but it is!

I like to buy repairable and upgradeable laptops as a matter of principle (system76). But realistically I replace my laptop every 2 years anyways for the extra CPU performance. Being able to upgrade just that part without replacing the whole thing sounds perfect for me.

I really hope this is able to take off. As do you I'm sure, heh.

The Dell Precision laptops still have sodimms and M.2 storage, not sure about WiFi.

The idea for upgrading the CPU is that you replace the whole motherboard, but keep everything else.

Yes, the screen is easily swappable. The bezel is held in by magnets and the screen is held in with just four screws. Keyboard is replaceable and quite modular as well as the shell, keys and PCB are separate parts. The power jack is also replaceable. Actually, the whole I/O consist of four modules that you can swap out as desired (and a dedicated headphone jack), so you can decide how many USB-C, USB-A, DP and HDMI ports you want. A dedicated microSD slot is also available.

And no, it doesn’t look hard at all, the whole design is very straight forward. Which makes it all the more surprising why it took this long, but I’m glad someone finally makes it happen.

> Are there really not laptops anymore with SODIMM memory and discrete M.2 ports for both storage and WiFi?

Here is one: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 (battery is replaceable without involving a glue).

Every socket pin is a hit to reliability. That’s a Mother Nature problem there is no getting around. A soldered joint will always have better reliability than a pin-and-socket joint. The MTBF math is easy.

So the right way to look at this is you are spending MTBF to get MTTR wins and also upgradability. This may or may not be the right choice for every user, and for most manufacturers its a losing proposition.

Personally, I like the upgradability and understand that real-world shock-and-vibe issues may show up and need me to dig out a screwdriver. Not everyone may share those expectations.

And how is that different from my Thinkpad?

The difference is that the Framework laptop is repairable.

https://community.frame.work/t/the-myth-of-the-repairable-th...

Having worked at a computer repair shop, I can say this will be, by a very large margin, the most repairable laptop in the market. Most defects experienced by laptop users (especially the non-Apple gang) will render the PC a total loss.

X1 carbons aren't exactly known for being the most repairable thinkpads.

My new P15 still has a modular gpu and, IIRC, has easy access to most components by removing the back cover.

And Thinkpads are a) pretty unique in how repairable they are, and b) seen by the public as enterprise workhorses and not sexy or exciting.

I personally have an X1C5. I absolutely love it. Best laptop I've ever owned.

But I'm still very curious about this thing as it feels like a whole next level in terms of how modular and easy it is to repair while still being lightweight, powerful, and capable.

I agree that it's an unfair comparison. X1 Carbon (really, the whole X-series) is the line designed to appeal to those that want thinness and weight reduction at all costs. My T- and P-series machines are very repairable.

Really, how recent is your newest one?

The T-series (I’ve owned roughly every other generation since T420) have gotten increasingly less repairable with each release since at least the T430.

I was always a fan/happy user, but after the T480(s) I won’t be buying a new Thinkpad anymore.

The DRM in the batteries, only one RAM slot, the removal of some port in every new generation... Even the non-carbon ones have the writing on the wall.

My T-480 with integrated graphics has two SODIMM sockets. My biggest complaint is there's room in the case for a 2.5" SATA drive, but no way to connect one. Wasn't aware of the battery DRM that's unfortunate.

The t4x0s series used to have two as well, now it’s down to one.

Earlier models of T series did have space and connectors for both M2 and 2.5” drives.

It started off all right, but every release in every series gets incrementally worse in some way.

I’d go for Clevo/system76 if it weren’t for the lack of hi-res screen options.

I’m stoked about Framework.

Thinkpads are pretty repairable, all things considered. Probably not as much as this Framework laptop, but much more than most laptops.

To be honest, nothing. I guess this target audience is more of the "nice looking (looks like a macbook), portable, slim, lightweight, upgradable" target audience. Then the "I already have a upgradable/repairable" laptop audience.

Apparently it's modular, but all desktops are "modular", and a fair amount of laptops are "modular" so it's a fairly meaningless word.

We really did build this in part as a reaction to the historically modular and repairable notebooks becoming decreasingly so. Even the former standard-bearer for upgradeability, the ThinkPad T4xx (now T14) series no longer has two SO-DIMM sockets.

We then took that a few steps further by making the mainboard upgradeable, adding an Expansion Card system for port customization, and enabling personalization through color-customizable bezels and keyboard language selection.

Well for one, you can swap out the port configuration, though I don't see myself using that.

I much prefer connecting one Type C hub than plugging in like six cables to my laptop directly, so I don't really mind laptops with a small amount of I/Os.

Your ThinkPad from 10 years ago or a modern ThinkPad that has soldered on RAM and WiFi chip and an ever-decreasing profile that makes it harder to replace individual components?

> and it's 100% yours (you can do what ever you want to it)

Does it run 100% free software? Will it be certified with "Respects Your Freedom" certification by the FSF?

Funny they say it's 100% yours and the only OS they provide is... Windows! It would be better to at least provide a Linux default image as well.

The Framework Laptop DIY Edition comes with no OS installed, so you can bring your own. We're working with a couple of popular distributions on compatibility checks and updates. The pre-built Framework Laptops do come with Windows 10, though you can install anything you'd like too.

Is this going to happen before the preorders open? I love the concept and if it had anything approaching System76's first-class support of linux that would make a strong offering that much better. I don't mean going so far as to bankroll a whole new distro, "just" things actually working right.

While you're here, are there any new answers to your conversation with Luis Rossmann[1] WRT availability of schematics?

I love what you guys are trying to do and hope you succeed in a big way!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMZp8ErTTuk

AFAIK it's impossible for any recent x86 system to meet RYF.

So it's not "100% mine".

At least it's possible to run an FSF-certified OS [0], and disable and neutralize the Intel ME [1].

[0] https://puri.sm/posts/why-fsf-endorsing-pureos-matters/

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/purism-disables-intel-m...

Will it be possible on Framework?

Fixed.

It's more D2C crap the world doesn't need being marketed under the guise of social/environmental responsibility.

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