The Framework Laptop is now shipping
frame.work
frame.work
Apple's? And Dell's? And Lenovo's? And every other electronics manufacturare who benefits form planned obsolescence and selling more hardware.
Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry.
>It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires.
Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?
If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
And where did I say that reparability must be forbidden?
I was saying hat operations like transplanting a more powerful engine into your car is rare and difficult nowadays since grandparent made a reference to cars being easier to upgrade than laptops when that's not always true.
Anyway, swapping an LS into a modern miata is pretty simple and it integrates well due to everything being CANBUS compatible, after a sufficient amount of adapters is applied.
Is this a regional thing? In Germany changing a tire is part of the "theory" classes. It's also fairly straightforward.
Changing oil on the other hand is illegal except in places with special drainage systems (like gas stations) because of the risk of environmental damage from spills, so it's not generally something you can do yourself. This restriction also goes for washing your car I think but some gas stations have places where you can wash your car if you don't want to use a car wash.
That goes for everything though, most people don't know how a car works, yet you can replace every single component. The same goes for desktop computers and household appliances.
This has been the norm across many technical devices that have become part of everyday life. How many regular users know how a radio works? The point is that regardless of how technical they are, these devices have remained repairable by anyone who is so inclined.
The movement to proprietize basic maintenance on the part of manufacturers is purely profit driven, and is carried out at the expense of consumers, the environment, and overall innovation.
> Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry.
While that's true, that doesn't mean it should be that way. Having everyone buy a new device whenever they need to upgrade makes business sense for device vendors but IMO we definitely shouldn't encourage regularly tossing out good hardware. Not with the ecological costs of new electronics.
We don't need to turn everyone into a tech enthusiast or a computer service person. But if part replacements and upgrades were possible and people knew about it, a local shop or someone else could do the job for them.
> Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle.
The original comparison to cars might have been unfortunate (as usual), and you may be right that things aren't that different with cars. But again, things being in a certain way with cars doesn't mean that's how they should be with other devices. Or with cars, necessarily, but I don't know much about those so I'm not going to argue about that.
I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist.
For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.
It's like a thoughtless race to make the thinnest laptop as if that is something that is useful. I bit like the megapixel race a few years ago. "We do it because it's difficult, but we can" kind of thing.
And then we have the aluminum body used on higher end laptops. Is that really better than high-end well designed plastic? When using my wife's Macbook Air M1 I suffer from the razor sharp edges while typing. (Maybe not related to it's thinness or aluminum body, but a big design issue). Has anyone noticed on the Macbook Air M1 the small vibrations it causes in the hands/palms when you slide them over the palmrest ever so slightly? Extremely annoying.
The sharp edges are still there though.
We actually use a 3-prong AC cable to prevent this from occurring.
THIS is nonsense. Dell, HP, Lenovo, even Fujitsu-Siemens have been making thin laptops with upgradable RAM for years now (XPS, X1 Carbon and LIFEBOOK series come to mind). Just recently they abandoned this and moved to soldering everything. The Framework Laptop also has upgradable everything and it's not super thick now, is it?
Sure, if you want to set a world record for thinness just because, then sure, soldering everything saves you a couple of mm but it's not why they do it in most cases, but to force planned obsolescence.
I would usually go for a smaller, lighter laptop (13"). But within that form factor, given choice over trade offs, I would put performance last (any modern system will usually do), size and weight somewhere in the middle, battery life and repairability at the top.
You're just throwing names out there without even knowing what you're talking about. The very first generation X1 Carbon came with soldered RAM and no upgrade path, and that hasn't changed yet. I know this because I've owned several generations of that laptop. I just checked Wikipedia to back up my memory before posting and yes, every X1 Carbon has had soldered RAM going all the way back to the first generation with Ivy Bridge.
I'd make the trade off for more mm of thickness anyway.
I actually prefer laptops with upgradeable components and I'm definitely weighing replacing my two aging Thinkpad laptops (running OpenBSD and Void Linux respectively) with the Framework Laptop. I had briefly considered a M1 MacBook Air but I already have a M1 Mac mini and I try to stay diverse between form factors. The specs on the Framework are fantastic; even the i5 is a powerhouse, comparable to i7 desktops from just two years ago[1]. With the modular bays I could easily have Void on the main storage and OpenBSD on a module and choose between the two. I already have compatible RAM and M.2 storage laying about so the DIY SKU is a no-brainer.
As for keyboards I'm right there with you; the higher travel on the Framework's keyboard is another selling point in my opinion.
[1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-8700-vs-Intel-...
What I don't understand is why you felt the need to get aggressive and diss me in 2 different posts saying I have no clue what I'm talking about or that I'm making stuff up and calling for my embarrassment, only for a small mistake, when you could have made the same arguments without the personal dissing.
I feel like being kind to others, even if they're wrong, goes a longer way in productive discussions. I definitely will not be replying to you again. Have a good day sir.
That's great, then you can buy this modular laptop or one of many laptops that still has user upgradeable ram. Turns out you don't have to make this compromise if you don't want to and people that do can also make their own choice!
My point is that maybe there needs to be an organised pushback against this instead of pretending like customers have perfect knowledge of the drawbacks and benefits associated with a particular design decision and are not at all affected by marketing.
> Seems I have less and less choices in that department these days, especially at the flagship tier
You're making a conscious decision about what sort of compromises you're willing to make with regards to your devices, just as everyone else is that buys electronic devices. There are plenty of phones with headphone jacks that have premium hardware specs. Sure, Apple doesn't have it. Samsung doesn't. But plenty of other manufacturers do, and people aren't buying them. Sony's top of the line smart phones have a headphone jack. LG's Vx0 line had headphone jacks and a fancy DAC built into them. ASUS's RoG phones have a headphone jack too. There's plenty of choice if it's actually that important to you. Buy those devices and hope that you can convince enough other people that the feature is as important to them as it is to you.
You don't need to shit on other people's choices nor assume that they aren't informed about the choices they make to want for the things that you do.
The "free market" is controlled by a very small set of conglomerates.
They get caught red handed deploying anticompetitive strategies every other week.
The fact that there are some that have been persuaded through years of concentrated marketing that bad engineering decisions are desirable is more of an example of manufacturing consent than the "free market of ideas".
Your entire argument seems to be that "not every manufacturer's top of the line devices matches my vision for what is an ideal device, so I want to force them all to change to match that." Not everyone wants the same device as you and no, it's not just because they're all ignorant morons that've been manipulated into thinking differently from you.
Why are you so vehemently against allowing other people to make their own decisions?
However, it's honestly pretty ridiculous to pretend like marketing does not have an immense influence on the trajectory towards consumer desires or that it cannot lead to worse choices by many objective measures. See cigarettes, fast food, hell, even the stupid obsession with buying bank bustingly expensive diamonds for marriage proposals. There would definitely still be a market for all of the above (and personally I am against any regulations limiting the freedom of purchasing even cigarettes for legal adults) but it was marketing that turned it into a cultural norm, not organic consumer demand.
It also does not need to be something that starts off as a bad thing. Thinner devices are better up to a certain point, no argument there. However, it does start leading to usability and maintainability problems past a certain threshold. We have definitely reached and passed that threshold for many devices.
Customers don't exist in isolation, if you are locked in to the Apple ecosystem, you're stuck with their decision to ditch the headphone jack unless if you want to stick to phones before iPhone 7. If your family have been purchasing Samsung devices predominately, chances are you will just assume that it's best to just get one of the latest one because it's reassuring to get a familiar brand and surely the latest automatically means better, right? Feel free to strawman this as me claiming people are morons but for most normal people not preoccupied with tech, these assumptions are reasonable.
Also, pretending like blatantly unpopular decisions like removing the headphone jack and expandable storage are somehow in demand based purely on continued sales figures is stupidly reductive. Humans don't have perfect knowledge of the market and the leaders of that market will not only dominate airtime, they can afford to absorb bad PR if they deem that an unpopular decision will lead to better profits long term.
This is entirely subjective and I disagree. As do many other people. Some people want chonky 17 inch gaming laptops and other people want 12 inch macbooks and some people want something inbetween. Some people want products in form factors that don't even exist. I personally want a macbook with an ergonomic keyboard built in! But that's just me talking about what I want. The market for laptops is large enough to sustain a huge degree of choice, but you are insisting that there is an absolute limit on form factors as decided by... you? If not by you, then by what? The government? A standards committee?
> Customers don't exist in isolation, if you are locked in to the Apple ecosystem, you're stuck with their decision to ditch the headphone jack unless if you want to stick to phones before iPhone 7.
No one is "locked" into the Apple ecosystem. Not even remotely. You're right, if you want a headphone jack on an iPhone you'll have to live with using an iPhone 6s or earlier. It's fine to want a headphone jack on your modern iPhone, but that is entirely different from you not having a choice. There are markets where people don't realistically have a choice, but smartphones and laptops definitely aren't those markets.
> Feel free to strawman this as me claiming people are morons but for most normal people not preoccupied with tech, these assumptions are reasonable.
The entire premise of your argument is that consumers need to be protected from manufacturers. Sometimes, I would absolutely agree with that. But with laptop form factors? Or not having a headphone jack on every single smart phone that's out there? That's absurd. If someone buys a Samsung phone and finds out only after buying it that it doesn't have a headphone jack, there's plenty of actions they can take post-purchase if they find that aspect of their new device untenable.
> Also, pretending like blatantly unpopular decisions like removing the headphone jack and expandable storage are somehow in demand based purely on continued sales figures is stupidly reductive.
Is it actually blatantly unpopular? Are you sure this isn't just the false consensus effect coming into play for you? As I previously mentioned, for things like the headphone jack there are a ton of options with top of the line specs out there. Purchasing decisions are always about compromise and not every niche is always going to be accommodated by the market. My ergonomic keyboard laptop still doesn't exist, despite me very much wanting it to. I have plenty of fancy headphones I can't use with my phone without an additional external DAC. I guess that sucks, but given how I use my phone, it has had almost zero impact on my life. For people that find that feature indispensable though, then they will probably also have to think about their purchase and will rightly be upset that one of the features they valued in the lineup of phones they've been buying isn't there anymore. I encourage those people to be loud about it, just as you are. That's part of this whole market thing, and there's plenty of cases where people's voices have absolutely made a big impact on the decisions made by shortsighted companies. Just don't expect everyone to fall in line with you.
I ended up going with the below because I wanted a 360 degree touchscreen Ryzen laptop that I could upgrade the HD and RAM...and I felt like I was searching for a needle in a haystack. Shame on you Dell for never offering Ryzen in your convertibles. Shame on you HP for soldering RAM in your new Elitebook line.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ProBook-x360-435-G7-laptop-...
In a universe where you want high-performance energy efficient RAM. Premium ultracompact laptops have long moved to LPDDR which is both faster and consumes significantly less energy than regular modular DDR. And LPDDR does not come in DIMMs. And then you have Apple who are using custom package technology with custom RAM chips to cut down RAM power consumption to under one watt active, delivering close to 20 hours battery. You simply can’t have this with socketed RAM. Modularity is not a free lunch, as much as some people like to pretend.
The only thing that really changes between DIMM and soldered on is a somewhat increased trace length. That accounts only for a very small increase in power.
What are you basing this statement on?
And even if the DIMM design (it's more than just a slot) doesn't make sense anymore, we could easily make a new "dumb" memory slot standard that would allow us to swap out the chips directly - like we have for CPUs.
You could, but it would take up a lot of space, given the higher pin count, and would most likely increase power consumption.
There is certainly some impact to using DDR4 instead of LPDDR4, but we believe it is still the better choice for most consumers by allowing for greater product longevity at lower cost.
I don't think this is the driver of these decisions per se, but it is undeniably a bonus for the manufacturer; non-upgradable devices become obsolete faster, necessitating new replacements.
But it wasn't an artificial limitation. In practice, once larger capacity memory became available with the same technology and form factor, it would work fine. I have upgraded several ThinkPads with memory beyond what the original datasheets said was possible.
The same CPUs that have a socket equivalent for desktops. It's a travesty.
It's not physically impossible to make DIMMs with LPDDR4, just nobody really wanted to come with a standard.
That said, manufacturers have huge ambition to not allow for modular design.
- Socketed RAM is limited by the number of pins, DDR SO-DIMM for example has 2-3x fewer pins than your average LPDDR4X module. Having more pins helps running the chips on lower power as it was explained to me by an engineer (something to do with grounding and lower voltage, I am not really sure how it works but I trust the guy)
- Socketed RAM is a least common denominator, there will inevitably be some variance between different modules, which leaves you with less possibilities for optimizing the electrical connection
- Current LPDDR is much more sophisticated than regular DDR, the protocol is different etc. So you can't just stick LPDDR chips on a DDR SO-DIMM and expect it to work
I am sure one could design a modular system based on LPDDR, but the question is whether such system would be feasible. It would be limited to premium laptops only (as modular system would take too much space in a smartphone), it would probably need a higher pinout (which would mean a complex mounting bracket of some sort) and it would require laptop manufacturers to agree on a certain standard.
There are other considerations as well, especially if one wants to break the current performance boundaries. For example, Intel has announced that they will integrate HBM with their upcoming Xeons. How do you intend to make that socketable, that's 2048-bit memory bus. Or consider Apple's new in-house SoCs. By mounting RAM directly onto the package substrate they can potentially deliver high-bandwidth RAM in an energy efficient package without increasing the cost and the complexity of the mainboard. E.g. their upcoming hardware is widely expected to use 256-bit RAM, something that has so far been reserved for workstations. As you make the interface wider and wider, modularity becomes more and more expensive. Why don't GPU's offer modular RAM for example?
a hand grenade typically releases 250kJ, or about 70Wh
you're asking for the equivalent of 1.5 grenades in your lap :)
Hopefully your laptop and hand grenade have radically different power discharge profiles.
Li battery fires are not unheard of, unfortunately, so the profiles may start to resemble sometimes.
Next, let's calculate the energy input required to heat a small cup of coffee and compare that to a hand grenade. (Hint: The coffee wins easily.) I wonder how many hand grenade equivalents a 10 minute lukewarm shower equates to?
Preferably yelling 'fire in the hole!' each time.
No. If it starts to smoke, you commit & push --force, then you throw it away.
vs
A grenade releasing that as KINETIC energy into YOUR FACE over the span of LESS THAN A MILLISECOND and protected by a spring and a keychain ring.
Even if a lithium battery of that size experienced a critical failure right in your lap, you'd get away with a few scars and some serious but treatable burns. And I've only heard of one commercial product in the last 15 years that had serial critical battery failures...
And don't get me started on flour, not only it stores a ton of energy (50 grenades per kg) but it's also highly explosive! [1]
[1]: (only with the right air to flour ratio of course, but accident happen every once in a while: https://www.grupa-wolff.com/a-tragic-flour-explosion/)
The flour conditions of exploding are far more difficult to achieve than a LiIon battery conditions - orders of magnitude difference.
Neither does a NiMH battery. There's no link between vulnerability to external damage and ability to power a laptop.
In fact, there's no fundamental reason why we couldn't run our laptop on chocolate[1], just that it's very far away from current technology.
Literally - 100Wh batteries are maximum you can take on planes
Strangely, the rule comes from ICAO.
Some countries too follow the 160wh standard, but most airlines simply don't bother enforcing anything, but the lowest common denominator.
Or, instead of soldering chips, make little LGA slots for the individual chips. I can't imagine the tiny added resistance from an extra millimeter of wire and pin surface contact would impact much of anything and even if it does, I'd rather take that than have no options when the next Windows update makes my machine a paperweight (obviously exaggerating, but it's getting there).
But the majority of people couldn't give a toss about how much of their laptop ends up in a landfill. They're using paper/glass straws, you see.
Perhaps electronics landfills should be local again.
You make it sound like a prerequisite. I'm pretty sure the reason LPDDR is Low Power is not due to (currently) being unavailable in socketed modules - that would seem to be a side-effect of the original target market (smart phones).
They are just some BGA packages, I see no reason they couldn't be soldered onto a board with a socket. If you scan through the features that make LPDDR LP, they have nothing to do with sockets, or anything affecting sockets: lower operating voltage, more power states, partial refreshing etc:
DDR5 has more roots in the LPDDR4 than in the regular DDR4.
I think the number of pins is a practical limitation. Current DDR DIMMs use 260-280 pins if I remember correctly, while an average LPDDR4X BGA package is 400 balls or higher. Apple uses chips with 877 balls. It is definitely possible to design modular RAM with high-pinout, but would it be economically feasible?
One possible other compromise could be soldered LPDDR RAM, but with a DIMM expansion slot for DDR as well. I wonder whether the DDR could be switched off and the baseline power draw eliminated if the RAM usage was below needing it.
The desktop version of LPDDR4 is there, it's just called DDR5.
As an example, even moving away from edge-connectors (which are just a non-starter for 800+ pins) Samtec's highest-density high-speed connector, the NovaRay line [0] advertises 224 signals per square inch, so an 800 pin module would require 4 square inches of connector space alone, not to mention making the system PCB assembly thicker and compromising on speed, power and thermals.
[0] https://www.samtec.com/connectors/high-speed-board-to-board/...
Not to mention that socketting parts reduces your production yield over SMT, increases your assembly cost, and cuts reliability (it's fine on a desktop because you almost never move your desktop, and there's usually a big thermal assembly bolted on top).
Like it or not, repairable/upgradable laptops are a thing of the past. There’s just not component support or sufficient market demand to make the parts removable anymore.
Laptops also make up a major component of that still very alive market so no, I disagree that there is not enough market demand for having laptops that can be repaired or upgraded. It's the industry themselves that have worked to hamper the right of repair while giving nebulous pseudo-technical rationalizations for it.
Given the option between thicker w/ a bit more battery life or thinner and lighter, consumers are choosing thinner and lighter.
> ...consumers are choosing thinner and lighter.
A) I'm guessing actually lighter more than thinner.
B) Are consumers really clamouring all that intensely for "Thinner! Thinner!", or is that a) because that's all that's offered, and b) the relentless hype from manufacturers -- above all, bendy phone maker Apple -- amplified by rarely-critical media?
For instance, in a iPhone 11, the battery occupies less than half of the surface of the phone[1]. On a Macbook pro, it's about the same.[2] [1] see this ifixit video if you want to see it by yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feyqwf3cYtw&t=161s
[2] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/noPvQ2CLs1jptX2p.hug... You can see that the motherboard is much, much bigger than a smartphone.
It doesn't matter that the rest of the form factor is larger: there's not a lot of empty space in these, so a larger main board will still mean a larger and heavier device.
Still bigger than a smartphone (it occupies the entire width of the laptop (when counting the heatsink, 2/3 of the width otherwise), and around one quarter of the whole area).
Also, your original sentence was
> Modern laptop motherboards can easily be about the size of a cell phone.
Here we see that the one and only best laptop in this regard comes close to the cell-phone-sized motherboard. That's far from what “modern laptop can easily be” means. Most laptops sold today have a much bigger motherboard than this.
(BTW, as much as I'd like to see non x86 laptops going mainstream, software compatibility is huge issue for an ecosystem as diverse as the Windows one (and Roseta 2 being too much of a coinflip isn't encouraging…), we might get there at some point, put it's gonna be slow and painful.)
That said, I don't know that RAM chips are the hill I want to die on, anyway. Could we get to a better place if we dispensed with the whole, "just the one big motherboard," design, and looked to the old backplane-style physical layouts? Then you could have a module that contains the CPU and RAM and suchlike all in a single package, and move other things that may not want to be quite as tightly integrated off to another package.
I definitely remember ordering a replacement headphone socket board for an old MacBook and just putting it in myself, and I've done similar with, eg, the connector port board on a PS4 controller.
But I guess this is one of the hazards of Apple having their AppleCare programme— they can do the math and calculate that saving a dollar on the cost of making and mounting and connecting that extra component still makes them money even if they have to eat the occasional full motherboard in the first three years of ownership.
You can see the ports still in place after the motherboard has been removed.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Logic+Board...
If you design to a socketed DIMM package, you actually have two trace domains, the CPU to the socket, and the socket to the RAM chips. For that to be reliable, you have to adhere to standards for DIMM (or SODIMM) so that multiple manufacturers can build compliant interchangeable parts.
If you solder the chips down to the main board directly, you only have once domain for the traces, CPU directly to RAM. At that point you can tweak the design for several goals, speed, power, etc.. And you can tune the drive strength on the signalling the same.
That is how you end up with more efficient soldered designs over socketed designs.
Edit: I guess to clarify, the plausibility challenge is that whether or not it is theoretically possible, the platform owner (Intel, AMD, etc) or the memory vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) are unlikely to support the lark.
It only somewhat matters for power consumption in sleep mode when the RAM is the only component being powered, but at least on Windows that’s solvable with a fast SSD and hibernation.
VRAM consumes substantial power to deliver that performance. On many GPUs, VRAM chips are actively cooled. System RAM doesn’t even need passive heatsinks, uses too little electricity to care.
Just really blew my mind how much heat the VRAM contributed.
[Citation needed], there is no real electrical engineering reason why you couldn't.
Modular laptops, phones, etc.. will be always penalized in terms of either performance or battery life for a given size.
"Typical Power Consumption of PC Components - Power Draw in Watts" https://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compo...
FWIW, the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity systematically explores the tradeoffs.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/...
Written by two economists, it's the only prescriptive definition of architecture that I've managed to find. Influenced me deeply.
Their core contribution is modeling the options with net present value (NPV) to remove the guess work.
--
Tangentially...
They also explain the dependency structure matrix (DSM), a tool for modeling and visualizing architectures.
One big takeaway for me was their explanation of "complexity catastrophe". The crossover point when the cost of change exceeds the benefit. A metaphor superior to most interpretations of "technical debt", IMHO.
So when you have a DSM, these kinds of problems pop out, can't be ignored.
Where there's a will there's a way. The problem is there's no will.
Hold on. This is true for excessive modularity.
Yet, most of the time, lack of modularity (e.g. bundling) creates lock-in reducing customer's choice and ultimately increasing prices.
When PCs became standardized ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible ) prices dropped incredibly.
In the DDR5 timeframe, there is less of a power delta as well between DDR5 and LPDDR5.
You are cherry-picking an example that fits only a specific category of laptops.
Even so, CPU and RAM could be bundled together into a socketed cartridge that is easy to upgrade.
The real reason is all about planned obsolescence and profit margins.
Another point is stuff that is soldered in is a lot more reliable as a whole. Amazing how many old machines can be resurrected by reseating the RAM.
Really I'm on the fence. I'm sitting here on a 16Gb M1 MBA also.
Now what I really want to see is replaceable USB-C ports. Those have a massive repair and replacement risk over the normal lifetime of a laptop. Lenovo / Dell etc solder them directly to the motherboard. One bad knock and the whole thing goes in the trash. At least Apple stick them on a daughterboard.
If the internal USB C ports get damaged, presumably the device can be opened and repaired.
For transparency I actually love the idea behind the Framework laptop, I've been hyped since January!
I don't need a top-of-the-line i7 CPU (the improvement when going from e.g. an i5 usually isn't enough to really matter), and the premium you pay isn't negligible. On the other hand, the lower-end models that don't splurge on an i7 and come with a mid-range CPU such as an i5 instead still often have only 8 GB of RAM. That's definitely not future-proof or even present-proof for a laptop that otherwise has mid-range specs in terms of performance.
It seems ridiculous that you have to either pay for a top-of-the-line model or be stuck with sub-par RAM for the entire lifetime of the device.
Corporations will of course happily buy the higher-end model for their developers, so this probably isn't a problem in an actual corporate environment.
In Apple's case, it simply seems like an upsell. They must have enough volume to sell lower spec, large storage capacity Macbook Airs at stores, or online.
I'm not even asking for upgradeable CPUs or GPUs. Those could be a bit complicated on laptops due to chipset compatibility, power and thermal design issues, etc. But RAM is relatively cheap, can be made relatively easy to replace, and is a common thing to run low on. The same pretty much goes for storage. It seems weird and counter-productive to have components like that be soldered in and non-replaceable even by a professional.
There are four low-power single thread cores. They do grunt work at high efficiency but low capability.
There are three medium-power single thread cores. They suck up more electricity when in use but can get tasks that the user cares about accomplished, and sleep all the time that the phone is not running the UI.
Then there is one high-power single thread core, which is just a turbo-speed variant of the medium cores. That's the one that wakes up for user interaction.
Of course, if you can scale power-consumption and computing together, you would just make an 8-core high-power chip and sleep and throttle on demand -- or, in-between, Apple's M1, which has four low and four high cores.
https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-teases-alder-lake-cpus-...
This is the least Appley thing I’ve heard recently. Making everything as small as possible with every single trade off that entails is their style. I say that as a hardline Mac user.
My next phone was the Fairphone 2. I replaced the battery a few times over it's lifetime and upgraded the camera. I bought the Fairphone 3 as soon as it came out (and I'm still using it happily). My wife switched to the FP3 shortly afterwards. We both bought the camera upgrade and spare battery.
It's a pleasant nice to have if it is waterproof.
1: https://www.ifixit.com/News/30845/your-phone-is-never-waterp...
What we can hope for is that SSD acts more like RAM. Maybe it could have a decent sized RAM chip that the OS can dedicate as cache for virtual memory. There’s a chance that at least some hardware manufacturers will continue to allow for replaceable SSDs.
BGA soldering is possible with more expensive IR or convection-based stations and a bit of skill too.
But yes, parts are often not available at all or from unreliable sources with dubious quality.
At least give some FAQ with reasons or ETA when you will be shipping outside the US
I understand your frustration. I'm from the Caribbean, we get nothing, ever :`)
I thought shipping was mostly handled by postal companies anyway?
broken keyboards / trackpads is why i keep having to throw out laptops and get new ones. so I am very interested in this laptop if they are actually going to make working keyboards / keys / trackpad replacements available.
We'll be making the replacement modules themselves available later this summer.
I can see the advantage of fully serviceable if you're on more of a 7-to-10 year cycle, but then you have parts availability. I trust that Dell will still have service parts four years from now. I don't really have any reason to trust that this company will still exist four years from now, let alone still make a full line of upgrades.
(Ironically, I've found that an old, out-of-warranty Dell is actually affordable to do major component repair on - because there are cheap screens, keyboards, even motherboards readily available. That sweet spot where a bunch of business machines are coming off-lease is when you can get a new screen for $35.)
I just hope that they release the next gen motherboard when it launches. Intel 12th gen, DDR5 RAM. I'm waiting for that big generational jump before making a purchase, and I really hope I can get a Framework.
I hope this is the Tesla moment for the consumer electronics industry where the incumbents are forced, through the hubris yet popularity of an upstart, to start innovating again and doing what is good for humanity rather than peddling incrementally changed products each year that are designed to become obsolete within an ever-shortening timeframe because....it appears to be good for the bottom line.
Good on you
https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/phones...
https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-...
I think the next major OS innovation will come from a company focused on architecture, design, and software efficiency over computing resources and device size.
Repairability won’t be enough to get it there. But whatever company culture forms around this repairability thing could lead them to design a killer feature that Apple and Microsoft would never think of.
And repairability might be a moat for some feature like that.
It’s not inevitable, most new electronics companies don’t hit it big. But don’t write them off before they start!
They’re in the right place: they pulled together a group of contributors with a different way of thinking, a product is on the market, getting good reviews, and a cult following is behind them. That’s exactly where new big ideas come from. Give them a chance to seek it out.
Make sense to buy a fleet of these since they can be pretty easily repaired/cannibalized for parts.
Thank you. This is one of my chief annoyances with Lenovo's connector, and it smacks of planned obsolescence, since there is no other conceivable reason for it. I think every brick I've had has failed in the same spot: between the connector and cord at the laptop, which, of course, is the non-replaceable cable.
Framework Laptop – How ALL laptops should be made - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27925405 - July 2021 (5 comments)
Framework Laptop – pre-orders are now open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27143545 - May 2021 (16 comments)
Framework Laptop pre-orders are open, starting at $999 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27143076 - May 2021 (203 comments)
Preparing for Pre-Orders! (Framework modular laptop) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27052468 - May 2021 (79 comments)
The Framework Laptop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508 - Feb 2021 (991 comments)
Key highlights I'd like to point out is that you nailed the screen specs (3:2 and brightness) as well as the 1080p camera which is something that has always annoyed me.
Do you have a timeline of how long you expect to keep the mainboard design replaceable with this frame?
I'd personally love to see an AMD chip in there over Intel but this is right up there for my next laptop purchase (when i need!) - I expect people might wish to swap out the motherboard/cpu combo.
Also, can we expect a bigger version?
We aren't able to announce anything yet, but we have certainly designed for being able to support different CPU platforms, and for folks to switch between them by upgrading just the mainboard or the mainboard+memory.
It would depend on your meaning. If you mean taking a device like a Dasung or a Onyx and connecting to the laptop and using it as another screen, then sure, that should work fine. If you mean taking out the LCD and popping in a raw eink panel, then no because they have different interfaces. Speaking of which, I don't see any clear specification on frame.work for the LCD connector or power specs.
I see they wrote on their blog.
" We don’t currently have plans for alternate displays, but we’ve designed the display to be easy to replace and the display connector on the mainboard to be able to support a broader range of possible displays. It’s unlikely we would go lower resolution in this form factor, but I agree there could be an interesting case for a display resolution that works at 2x scaling (at the tradeoff of battery life). "
But I couldn't easily find on their website the info for what type of connector and what type of power is delivered to it.
On OLED, nothing we can share yet, but there are certainly benefits to OLED panels.
Sounds good. Thanks for the answer.
Hence why i originally asked about how long the motherboard design would stay with the current frame
EDIT: would also add that the open source design USB-C based side modules are amazing - looking forward to designing my own modules.
I don't want to use an Apple laptop, but I do want a fanless design with M1-type performance and battery life. Can you do that with anything from Intel or AMD?
Exactly. Good luck to anyone upgrading the RAM or storage on that thing yourself. It is beyond risky to do this [0] (The article title is also misleading and ignores the extreme risk).
I don't think that [0] is remotely an option to the end user.
[0] https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ssd-and-ram-upgrade/
Edit: To be clear, I'm not just trying to dunk on the idea. That would be the reason for me not to buy one if it looks like the vendor can fold because Apple dragged them to court.
and I mean this sincerely...
Get your eyes checked.
I'm curious because while I've also thought "yeah, these are increasingly overdue for an updated look," it's hard in practice for me to think of changes that I'd really want. I'm typing this on an M1 MacBook Air, and...I'm not saying it's somehow reached the apex of perfection, but other than a wider range of colors there's nothing that immediately comes to mind as an answer to "I wish the Air had [thing]". Smaller bezels? Maybe, but it's not like they're a glaring huge problem. A different shape? Maybe, but again, this is just such a nice one. They could bring in more of the current iPad/iPhone design language, especially on the MacBook Pro rather than the Air, I guess -- which is widely expected for the next refresh, so you'll probably get your wish in that regard.
I have a G14 with anime matrix led display and it's pretty slick looking (so cool how it lights up) [1]. I understand it's not as minimalist as a macbook but I've been blown away by the amount of comments I get on it's looks.
It completely goes against Apple's design DNA but maybe it's just the super minimalist approach itself I am finding tired. I like spice & variety.
[1] https://dlcdnimgs.asus.com/websites/global/Products/xccq31kw...
It has chiclet keys and a black bezel sure, but nothing about this screams carbon copied MacBook anymore than contemporary ultra book.
We’re pretty much in the modern equivalent of beige boxes and CRTs. Consumer computers aren’t very interesting to begin with. This one is a laptop that lets you swap out parts, that’s pretty unique.
And of course there's the suspiciously named Huawei Matebook Pro.
If Apple was inclined to sue people for making MBP lookalikes, it has far more interesting targets to go after.
If at all, a script to automatically download/compile deps will be more than adequate (not necessary).
Hopefully on release we can get some confirmations about how well it runs.
https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760...
(personally id love to see linux supported well haha, bjt seriously good luck)
I wish you guys to succeed.
It’s been my experience that when only sRGB is mentioned, only sRGB is supported. Adobe RGB is relatively rare these days, and any amount of P3 or HDR support is common only in higher end laptops with either very bright backlights or OLED. You might be interested in a new standard, DisplayHDR, which commonly focuses on how bright and technically accurate a screen can be. At this point there are often trade offs between screen technologies, but OLED tends to produce the “nicest” picture. https://displayhdr.org/
Also, as a correction, as long as you’re not performing colour grading on footage, you don’t need 10-bit input or output for HDR. It helps, obviously, but technically you can use dithered 8-bit RGB over HDMI 2.0 at 60 fps and still view HDR content with no perceptible difference between the 8-bit and 10-bit or 12-bit formats. For example: https://2020.smpte.org/home/session/325093/perceptually-dith...
That said, especially when using a computer, I really like the way scrolling feels at 120 fps, so I encourage looking for HDMI 2.1 outputs and inputs for that reason alone. Don’t forget you’ll likely also need a new HDMI cable. As an aside, I’ve tried adapters from DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 and they are so far rather unreliable and prone to overheat.
I suspect this as well, especially at the price point the Framework laptop is being offered, but that's why I'm asking. I feel that manufacturers providing a approximate gamut coverage plot would be an enormous improvement to the status quo.
> any amount of P3 or HDR support is common only in higher end laptops
I disagree with this point. The MacBook Air (at $1000) is advertised to have P3 coverage. That's the exact same price (for a shipped laptop) as Framework. It also has HDR support.
> Also, as a correction, as long as you’re not performing colour grading on footage, you don’t need 10-bit input or output for HDR.
I'm aware - that's why I asked about HDR and 10 bit support separately. Worth mentioning that a bunch of cheap panels only really support 6 bits which then gets dithered, though. You're right that 8 bits in probably sufficient at the 400 nits brightness of the Framework screen.
True. But then it only outputs to one extra display, runs a chip Apple made from last year and hasn’t yet updated, and the rest of the industry isn’t Apple and can’t find a way to sell the same product in an iPad, mid-range desktop, entry-level all-in-one, entry-level laptop and entry-level pro laptop while manufacturing in quantity during the middle of a chip shortage. I mean, some things only Apple can do.
The closest comparison I can make to the Air in terms of price might be the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro for $999 which has an AMOLED screen, but that’s presumably because Samsung makes their own displays and wants a laptop to show them off. Everything else about the laptop is low- to mid-range and you need to pay extra for 16GB of RAM. Frankly most laptops with fancy displays end up being like the Dell XPS 9710, they ship with dedicated graphics cores and cost upwards of 2-3 grand. The exceptions with nice displays stand out as exceptions. To date, Microsoft’s entire Surface line has yet to go P3 HDR (iirc) with the exception of the Surface Studio, their giant (and outdated) all-in-one PC.
Frankly, if a third-party repairable MacBook Air with Apple silicon existed, I’d be over the moon, and more so if Apple came out with an OLED display, but in a way even OLED panels aren’t very repairable as if you get the tiniest of scratches the entire panel might need to be tossed, etc. And you might consider repairability from the perspective of “how inexpensive is it to replace?” If so, you wouldn’t want a part that’s only affordable if you buy in bulk, you’d want a screen that’s common and easy to get instead. Probably 16:9 aspect ratio too. So… a repairable laptop might not be the laptop to get if you also want the best of everything… for now, at least…
I did find a review of one laptop that used this panel, and it looks like it's a designed-to-standard 8 bit panel with pretty much no coverage beyond sRGB, similar to the panels Apple was putting in MBPs around 2014 or 2015. Support for HDR (e.g. PQ) shouldn't be expected.
For what it's worth I'd be very interested in future upgrades for the screen quality. I'm fine with the current density (~200 DPI or so), although I know some have requested 4K screens. The real selling point would be a 10 bit panel with ST.2084 HDR support and full coverage for the P3 gamut. Something in line with base model laptops from Apple. (Obviously, such an upgrade would carry an understandable price premium.)
What's a bit unclear to me is that it seems the Framework Laptop is not be under an Open Source license, unlike the Pinebook Pro, the Librem 14 or the MNT Reform- the MNT being the most "user serviceable" as well as most repairable.
Is your laptop fully open source, or if not, what makes it special or different from these other products?
The "right to repair" tells me that I would be able to get replacement parts from 3rd party suppliers. Once upon a time, Television units also came with the circuit diagrams that helped third-party repair shops troubleshoot and fix TV issues. I am not sure if such circuit diagrams would help with the kind of wave-soldered multi-layered circuit boards that we have, but it'd be nice to have, I suppose.
Back in the day you're talking about, components were often discreet enough that they could be replaced. Today even something as simple as a capacitor is often difficult to replace on a modern circuit board due to a variety of factors.
Certainly the large companies (Apple in particular) creates legal barriers to buying chips and other components. I think the distinction between availability and open source will be an interesting one to see how it plays out when hardware is involved.
I like open source. I CARE that I have to trash a thousand dollar laptop because I can't source a replacement keyboard when the "S" popped off.
All examples I gave are real life examples which I've encountered.
My old (8 years) Thinkpad has had: a new battery, a new keyboard (orange juice!), a new screen (upgrade!), new RAM, new HDD and a new charging plug.
All of the above were very simple with just a couple of screws to get the back cover off. No adhesive or force needed. Even the screen simply clipped off. The manual also comes with instructions on how to dismantle the laptop for repairs.
I sourced the OEM parts from eBay.
The only thing I was not able to change was the Wifi card. Apparently it's hard-locked to a specific model in the bios firmware, which I find a bit odd.
I buy lots of "gadgets"- a Pinephone, LibreM phone, a PiTop, 2 MNT Reform laptops, several OLPC XO-1 laptops- and that's just my current collection (rather than my older collection of even more obscure hardware of the past), but you're not offering much in terms of either being interesting from a social good perspective, nor from a purely practical perspective ala my Dell XPS13 and System 76 Lemur.
I wish you luck, but based just on your HN interactions, you're occupying a market niche that doesn't really interest me- that of people who care a little bit about self-actualization and repair, but not a lot.
Thr problem with oss is its fanatics.
(not associated, fake username)
No. Single channel configuration is slower, unnoticeably on laptops, that’s it.
> One is on the bottom side of the motherboard that requires 16 screws be removed and a pry tool to get the bottom case off.
Wrong choice of laptop brand.
> The second stick is under the keyboard that requires multiple levels of plastic pieces to be pried off and disconnecting the keyboard cable which can barely be reached. Want to swap the battery? That's 16 screws and enough force to break the adhesion that you are bending the case. Plus the system will complain about the battery
Again, wrong choice of laptop brand. Panasonic? Theirs are good as long as you only repair and don’t fiddle with it.
But it's not a powerhouse CPU like this. A rock64 is no competition for a current generation Intel I5/7 AFAIK.
> All examples I gave are real life examples which I've encountered.
Real life for me, too. The S key on my laptop no longer works. I took apart the keyboard to clean it one day, put everything back together, it all worked, except one key - S. Is there something about that specific key or is this just a weird coincidence?
>Every module has a QR code on it that you can scan for step-by-step instructions, support information, and a link to order a replacement from the Framework Marketplace
So its a dealer "repair" where you, the dealer, sell me a repair without the labour part in a form of black box to replace?
What about the schematics? the Board files? Firmware?
Who is the ODM? Compal? Pegatron? Quanta? Clevo? Wistron? Inventec? Flextronics?
Did you pay for fully tailor made design? Who else sells a laptop with the exact same design (ignoring form factor)? You dont have a single EE listed on staff. What part of the electrical design do you own? Do you own any part of it at all? This sure looks like tweaked Acer Swift 3 SF313-53, same ODM?
Do you own any part of the firmware that goes into the laptop? Will you be able to patch it?
"Great Webcam in a Laptop" Thinkpad X1 tablet 2nd gen uses same OV2740, isnt exactly known for great camera. Optics and ISP tuning are the important bits. Can you post a demonstration video instead of one 1mpix picture of a laptop screen at an angle?
I didn't see anything about this company claiming 100% open source and private consciousness. I thought that was a different company that never really did anything because of issues you've asked about. If I'm wrong in that, please correct me. Certain chips just couldn't use custom open firmware, so no device was ever going to be 100% open.
Just seems your questions might be a bit off target. No wonder you never got a response "the last time around".
End users have the ability to order replacement parts for every part of the laptop, down to the granularity of things like individual flex cables. We've also released reference CAD under open source licenses for the Expansion Card system for people to be able to develop their own (https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/expansioncards). Our embedded controller firmware is also open source, and we'll be posting the repository shortly. Full schematics for the rest of the system are available to independent repair shops that get Framework hardware in for repair.
Our main manufacturing partner is Compal, who makes laptops for many other large US notebook makers.
Apart from off the shelf modules like the SSD, RAM, WiFi, and LCD, the Framework Laptop is entirely custom to us, and we own all of the design and tooling. We don't have an EE on the team page, but I am actually an electrical engineer by training (or at least that's what it says on my degree from Carnegie Mellon), and our systems lead Kieran is an EE by background as well.
We own the embedded controller firmware, which is based on Chromium EC, and we'll be releasing the source soon. We use a licensed BIOS that we've customized for this go-around, but we would like to move to an open BIOS in the future.
Some of the reviewers have positive comments on their hands-on experience with the webcam. While it won't be at the level of a standalone plug-in webcam, it is substantially better than what is available in other notebooks.
Wow, does look almost identical, except renders/photos are showing keyboard for this laptop removed than bottom case for Acer version. To be fair they don’t seem like a huge ripoff in terms of price though, only ~$300 which is more of a simple reality of low volume products.
- topside (primary servicing end)
...and then there's:
- frontside (replaceable bezel, magnetic retention)
- underside (venting pattern, 6 less securing screws)
- keyboard layout (escape, arrows, tilde, backslash, left ctrl, delete)
- power button (location, fingerprint reader integration)
- peripheral support (modular af, reconfigurable, select your charger side)
- camera, mic (integrated lockout)
- lid opening extruded cut (narrower span)
- internals (design for maintainability of the highest order; so different it's not even worth enumerating)
- documentation (digital first approach, baked onto every sub-assembly)
Wish I could get a closer look at the bezel electronics. What other details did I miss?
The main opening being on topside as opposed to bottom means the enclosure is custom made. So what.
Overall it’s not something that we are smoking, it’s basic understanding in laptops and modern electronics.
The internals of that Acer: https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/e/0/csm_...
The internals of the Framework Laptop: https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/df9863d8-4512...
Merely speculating that FFC interconnect is "probably just a USB-C" says absolutely nothing of the fact that Acer's system is neither truly modular (because it's fundamentally constrained to specific I/O interface by its own case) nor externally reconfigurable by the user. Nevermind that Framework's design appears to sensibly apply what was intended to be floating interconnect (USB-C male) to a fixed peripheral module interface on both sides, which is a huge value add from a user configuration perspective on the merits of being able to choose what side your charger port is installed on alone.
So what about the enclosure being custom made?? Oh I don't know, nevermind completely disrespecting mechanical design considerations and effort applied towards targeted maintainability which have a direct impact on internal layout, user ease-of-self-service considerations that quite frankly the rest of the consumer laptop market clearly hasn't given an ounce of attention. That Framework completely own their tooling alone tells me substantial work was done.
Without even critiquing layout, Acer didn't even so much as give its prospective customers the courtesy of a fuckin' reach-around by soldering memory directly onto its motherboard and left a substantial amount of internal volume on the table. I suspect comparing display maintainability would be a complete joke of an exercise.
Basic understanding in laptops and modern electronics...yeah, sure.
This practicing hardware EE is far from convinced.
51nb X210 system planar exists, but it also costs $800.
I think Framework has put together something that they believe has the potential to be profitable and I believe has the potential to be sustainable.
Nothing---especially with respect to obsolescence of consumer electronics---is without lifecycle risk to both a business and its customers. I choose to put my money where my mouth is now because I believe the problem is nevertheless worth trying to solve and the offering is good enough for my objective usecase.
Whether Framework can truly make their long term vision happen in a way that doesn't disillusion the community is obviously yet to be demonstrated. If the idea ultimately fails in the market, then such an outcome is hardly any worse than what I perceive to be an already regressive state of productivity laptops being overshadowed by consumption-centric mobile in at least the past decade, none of which ever focused on maintainability as critical design paradigm. Where I think the Framework meta truly differs is it lays a notebook form factor foundation that openly invites the hacker community to fill in at their leisure. Such a brazen "go fuck yourself" message to every other laptop vendor on the market earns my respect any day of the week.
Is it the best of all possible worlds? Probably not and there's surely room for improvement, but unlike most entitled consumers who want the future now for pennies on the dollar, that's not what I'm paying for either. I'm paying to support a sensible start towards something that the marketing and design of big companies intentionally ignore, have interim utility during a period of transitory company growth with hardware features and software (non-)options that I actually want, and hoping the rest of the market follows through with qualifying the movement's worth in the long run.
Please don't be a jerk in HN comments. Note this site guideline: "Assume good faith."
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
2. Is there anything hardware wise that would prevent someone from making an arm based motherboard for this device, or even a RISCV based motherboard?
Nope, it is entirely doable from a technical perspective to build an ARM SoC-based mainboard for the Framework Laptop! I haven't seen a RISC-V SoC that has the necessary interfaces for it to work well in a laptop yet, but I strongly suspect that isn't far away.
1. Have you sent review copies to any independent review channels like LTT, Gamers Nexus, etc etc? I've seen the Tested video but that was in a very controlled environment and I'm mainly waiting on independent reviews before buying one.
2. More of a business question that I'll understand if you don't want to answer, without sharing any actual numbers, has the preorder volume been more or less than you expected?
The pre-order volume has been roughly in line with our expectations. The one big surprise for us was just how much more popular the Framework Laptop DIY Edition is than the pre-built Framework Laptop. We expected some preference from early adopters, but it's actually multiples of volume.
I'd suggest the reason is primarily that it's a lot more configurable -- people can get closer to their ideal feature set for the least spend (if only by not paying for Windows if they just want Linux).
Everyone loves to hate Intel (and rightfully so) but Tiger Lake has better IPC and implicitly better single threaded performance than Ryzen. In real world tasks (web browsing, opening an IDE) it often comes on top of AMD.
It only loses to AMD in multi threaded benchmarks because of the lower core count (everyone loves to flex Cinebench scores online, but I buy my laptop to use, not run benchmarks).
Also, the iGPU in Tiger Lake is more modern and more powerful than the outdated Vega iGPU in Ryzen and it also has AV1 codec hardware decoding unlike Ryzen which is stuck at VP9.
Add in Thunderbolt support and using Tiger Lake makes perfect sense for this form factor. Ryzen shines best in gaming laptops with discrete GPUs.
My real-world task is not opening an IDE, it’s using that IDE. Modern C++ compilers are using all available CPU cores just fine.
> It only loses to AMD in multi threaded benchmarks
These are the only workloads I care about. Not just compilation, many other things as well.
You only need single-threaded performance for 2 things, for the stuff that’s inherently serial like gzip, or to run programs made more than 5-10 years ago.
I don’t normally play games on a laptop, but even videogames use multiple cores for decades now, since the Xbox 360 / PS3 generation.
Firefox and Chrome both have gpu hardware acceleration, and different threads/processes for UI and webpages.
Once you start having several tas open, or web pages with different iframes, modern browsers put those in different processes.
I used to want high single core performance for my python code. I've since switched to using VSCode with devcontainers which run remotely on my 5950x. That makes it fast enough ;-).
You must not be grand strategy game players. Any titles from Paradox and some other popular games are all limited by single core IPC. They are a great example of the limits of multi-threading, some processes and problems cannot be adapted to take advantage of it. If I get such a laptop I'd spend 50% of the time I use it playing such games.
These are examples of lazy programmers and PC-only games. Consoles have many cores for decades and these cores are slower than PCs, developers of cross-platform titles have embraced multithreading for quite some time now.
Multithreading does have limits. Some things are borderline impossible to parallelize, examples include gzip, streaming encryption algorithms, or parsing long streams of HTML and JavaScript. However, vast majority of the CPU-bound stuff found in videogames scales just fine with CPU cores.
Oh neat, I wasn't aware there were any AV1 decoders in hardware yet, that was always something somebody was complaining about on HN threads (probably MPEG employees HA). Tiger lake was released late last year and AV1 was finalized in 2018; that's got to be a record turnaround time from new codec to hardware decoders in top-selling chips.
A single browser tab is single threaded, but you REGUARLY are forced to run several electron apps, and have many tabs open. Each requiring processes and threads and ryzen blows it out of the water in responsiveness. It was not uncommon for some language-server running to lag out because some chrome shit was blowing up my cpu/memory, which drove me away from vscode again.
The intel is maybe better for gaming or other inherently single program stuff. But at the cost of using WAY more energy and sucking for everything else I do regularly.
Further the m1 macs make them both look fairly power hungry and laggy.
2) Are dGPUs expected in the this or an upcoming version?
3) Color options other than white?
4a) Does the keyboard use low-profile Cherry switches or something else? (Edited)
4b) Are the keys backlit? (Edited)
5) ETA on TB4 ports?
6) Is there a 99Wh battery for the laptop?
2) See question 1.
3) We've designed the bezel to be color customizable, and there are some photos of orange and white ones on our website. We'll be adding more colors as we go. For the chassis itself, it is anodized aluminum. We don't currently have plans for additional aluminum colors though.
4) We have a custom keyboard with 1.5mm key travel scissor switches, which is longer key travel than most other <16mm notebooks.
5) We can't announce anything on Thunderbolt compatibility until we complete certifications, so keep a look out for that.
6) The internal battery is 55Wh.
1) I'd like a 15.6" version
2) Without a keypad...don't throw off the symmetry of keyboard and touchpad
3) bigger battery
Keep up the good work! I'd love to be using these laptops 15 years from now.
We can't say anything about future product plans yet, but our current laptop is not the last product we'll build!
Somewhat obnoxious that you need additional certification to actually call it what it obviously is.
To hear it has a generous 1.5mm is awesome, i'll definitely be keeping an eye on it in the near future for the 15" version.
I now use a lenovo X1 thinkpad and use an external GPU to drive 2 4K monitors. The internal Intel UHD 620 just can't handle.
Is the intel Xe graphics enough to handle this? If so, thunderbolt would be a nice to have, but not a requirement.
That said, there are times when numpads are useful. That’s why on my desktop, I have a discrete numpad sitting to the left of my keyboard, which allows the most used keys to remain centered.
It would be neat if someone made a numpad module for these laptops that can plug into either side of the laptop, and then be tucked away when not in use. The little rails in the module bays should make typing on the numpad almost as solid as typing on the main keyboard.
A lot of us, addicted to the trackpoint, are not liking some directions Lenovo have taken in the recent years.
1) 3 buttons at the top of the mousepad, ideally contoured to be comfortable and easily differentiated.
2) A 3+ year warranty, rather than just 1 year.
The screen and the high-end internals are really grabbing me.
I'm not expecting Next Business On Site warranty from a new company (though that would be nice...), but an option for at least 3 years is the very minimum for me.
For longer warranties in general, that is something we would like to do. We're giving ourselves some time in market in order to price it appropriately, but since our product is easy to repair, we believe our costs for supporting warranties will be lower than it would be for less repairable products.
Absolutely. In particular, I wouldn't expect an "at-home service" warranty this early in the life of your company, for such an easily repaired laptop. Rather, I'd expect a warranty in which you cross-ship a replacement part, provide instructions to replace it, and say "just put the old part back in the box we shipped you the replacement in and drop it in your outgoing mail".
This community is not represented on youtube etc. so I guess that's why we don't hear about the interest in trackspoints that much.
As a predominantly windows based user every time I use a mac touchpad I'm blown away the fluidity and features like the psuedo-click. I've been eagerly awaiting windows compatible hardware of the same quality and functionality.
Everything else about this laptop looks great, especially the 3:2 screen aspect ratio.
If it's a TI BQ20Z451, will you keep the default unseal code?
I paid exactly $288 SGD to get my battery replaced at the Apple Store here in Singapore.
It's not possible to replace only the battery - an AASP will replace the whole top case. I also think it's more expensive for older models, because the parts are not easy to find for a 2014 computer.
Yeah, this is true for Apple's battery service as well. I got a new keyboard and trackpad for the $288 SGD I paid.
> I also think it's more expensive for older models, because the parts are not easy to find for a 2014 computer.
This would only make sense if parts weren't ordered from Apple directly. I would imagine that they are able to as an AASP. Apple products only enter their vintage list after 5 years, and their obsolete list after 7 years: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
In this case, it looks like the AASP would still be able to order parts for your 2014 MacBook without extra cost.
Apple Support confirmed the order number is a genuine Apple part. Makes me worry about Apple's own supply chain quality.
The AASP also did a pretty shoddy job at repairing: the case screws were in the wrong positions, and the logic board was seated badly so I couldn't plug in USB. I just spent an hour this morning reseating the logic board myself.
2. Coreboot: whats the status on that?
3. When I violently yank my laptop in any random direction, the military-grade type-c cables that I forgot were plugged into all 4 ports on my framework laptop will naturally put significant strain on the type-c ports on the modules. My question is: how possible is it that I manage to also damage the interior usb type-c port on the laptop body?
4. What run-time loaded closed source binary blobs are needed for the full use of the hardware in one of your pre-built configurations?
5. Repair shops can get access to your schematics after signing some forms (presumably involving a NDA). Can I sign the same forms to get the same access?
6. If you cease to exist, everyone essentially just bought a bunch of proprietary dongles that are unlikely to be reused due to their size/shape. This would lead to the exact opposite of your goals by directly causing e-waste. Why won't that happen?
7. Is the fan, in any way, a standard form factor / are there models from competing brands that would work in that spot? I don't know how loud your fan is, but if I was unhappy with the noise from the fan it would be good to know that I could consider other competing models.
2) Also on our (long term) firmware roadmap!
3) It would be extremely difficult to damage the internal USB-C ports from force on the USB-C Expansion Card. You'd destroy the USB-C Expansion Card first, which is inexpensive to replace.
4) This is a great question, and actually on our list of blog posts we want to write. I don't have the answer off-hand, but it shouldn't be different than other recent Intel-based notebooks.
5) Currently we're limited to offering it to repair shops, but we're looking at ways to expand that in the future.
6) For the Expansion Cards, since they are standard USB-C devices, you can plug them into other USB-C hosts (though as you note, they are somewhat oddly shaped for that). We've also released open source CAD and documentation for people to develop their own Expansion Cards.
7) The heatsink and fan is custom to the system by form factor necessity.
We've designed the mainboard to be end-user replaceable for upgrades, and we'll be developing new ones for future CPU platforms as we go.
A touchpad with buttons is something we believe could fit in the existing cover though, and something we want to explore more when we have time.
i.e. on the US/ANSI layout photographed on the site - L Shift is using both L Shift and Backslash holes; Enter is also occupying Octothorpe, but not covering the hole above it where Backslash is in that layout? So you have a fixed, what I think the mechanical keyboard enthusiasts call 'switch plate', and then different sized key caps for the relevant keys making them occupy multiple spaces with dummy switches or whatever?
The current keyboard is not really fit to be used as a primary keyboard. A proper 7-row keyboard with full-sized arrows is really a must for people who use laptop keyboards as their main daily driver. Here's a picture of what one looks like: https://imgur.com/Epo5kBw
Please make something like that possible!
Also provide Mac style keyboard if possible with a command key. I use mac keyboard because it is safer on wrists and thumbs.
All the best.
Full-size arrow keys: by adding another column of keys to the right side of the keyboard. That way you get dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys as well. See [1].
Grouping function keys: also put a wider gap between Esc and F1, F12 and Delete.
Mac keyboard: that'd be nice! How compatible are they to hackintosh BTW?
[1] https://img.business.com/o/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnVzaW5lc3NuZXdzZ...
Do you have information about how the pci-e lanes are routed? I’m wondering because it would be interesting to see how EGPUs perform with this laptop.
Do you have plans to release different types of key caps ( such as U-shaped keys? )
There's some more information about the PCI-e lanes here: https://community.frame.work/t/iommu-groups-for-thunderbolt-...
We don't currently have plans for other keycap geometries, but we do have a range of different languages in progress.
For how many years can consumers expect to receive these updates?
We don't currently have anyone on the team in Canada, but we are definitely open to it for the right candidate. Please do mention HN so we know where people are coming from!
For many of the other modules, we've partnered with other manufacturers specialized in different areas. We have a series of technical deep dive blog posts where we go into each: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-deep-divethe-touchp...
I see the cable from the keyboard in the upper lid not going directly to the main PCB, but first to the same board as the touchpad. Is there some IC scanning the keyboard right in the keyboard module, and turning it to something like usb or i2c?
It's totally understandable that the first product from a rather small company would demand some sort of higher price, your initial investment into R&D and product design & manufacturing must've been huge! But is this something we can expect to get a bit better in the future?
We don't want anyone to put an old Framework Laptop that they are not using into a drawer and forget about it. We want to get them to list it on the Framework Marketplace to find another happy user.
Any plans to sell in Europe (Italy)?
Apple/Lenovo let you spec an “English International” (ISO) keyboard even if you're shipping to Germany/Austria, for example, so that you're not forced to buy QWERTZ.
Yeah, but I’d rather not pay for that Windows license.
Edit: Oh, I see that you have to DIY the entire laptop in order to NOT select a Windows OS.
We’ve made the setup process for the DIY Edition really straightforward, and we think kind of fun too: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Framework+Laptop+DIY+Edition...
Do you anticipate that (if this goes as well as I hope and assume it will/is) a v2 model would have an upgrade path from 'v1' (as it were, that for pre-order/sale now) - i.e. buy new case, new motherboard (or whatever) and it's effectively the same as if you bought the new one? Or have you accepted/do you think that not all parts can be fully modular and independently saleable?
We plan to keep compatible within the current chassis for the foreseeable future. This means that as we support new CPU platforms, existing users can upgrade to them by replacing their mainboard (and in some cases memory).
Do you plan on offering it in Scandinavia with Scandinavian keyboard layouts?
I really wish there was a way to remove the camera as well as microphone (if there's any built in). Is that possible?
If you put 11hs on your site but the average reviewed time is 4hs, it’s not going to look great.
I know you guys are super busy launching this and there are a million things to look at, just sharing my opinion as a consumer.
The other thing that would be useful to know is a clear return and warranty policy. The items I buy from Amazon without much worry are the ones I know I can return easily, for a product as new and unknown like yours, I’ll probably stand back if I don’t know what the return process works like.
Thanks for responding!
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T490 which struggles to drive two 4k displays at reasonable refresh rates. 4k60 + 4k30 is the best I was able to achieve so far (via Thunderbolt and an additional HDMI cable).
:facepalm:
Even if, heaven forbid, this company is no longer around in five years when I need new parts, just the ability to upgrade RAM, SSD, etc is so valuable.
I might get one, but I'd want 100% Linux support, notably wrt. power management.
EDIT: language
Thunderbolt is very hard to implement.
Ryzens have higher thread-counts and Vega Graphics outperforms Iris graphics.
If this can be paired with Thunderbolt, I'd be super happy to purchase this laptop.
The idea of swappable ports is great! Why not make a large 17" model with desktop components and even more ports?
Buying Intel makes no sense now.
That was a showstopper for me for the older macbooks and still a showstopper now. It was so bad that Apple walked it back on the newer designs (though their newer magic keyboards still have this problem for some reason...)
- What kind of BIOS does it have?
- Does it support coreboot?
- Can Intel Management Engine be disabled?
It supports coreboot and has most of Intel Management Engine voided.
It's repairability looks good too:
> Open warranty. Laptops designed for open-source software need open warranties. Our 1-year limited warranty allows you to take your laptop apart, replace parts, install an upgrade, use any operating system and even your own firmware, all without voiding the warranty.I believe that the the reason right to repair isn't adopted by more companies is simple... it's way better for the bottom line to control everything and increase profits. How do you guys plan on dealing with this in the long run, without becoming an Apple yourself?
If I'm being honest, there's very little chance of me leaving my M1 MBA for anything other than another Apple Silicon machine any time soon. That being said, a modular laptop that was also fully open would be very tempting, particularly if it were otherwise competitive (in terms of portability, performance, battery life, display quality, etc.).
All of that would probably also require supporting next-gen desktop ARM SOCs (like the 8cx, but from the future), or waiting for x86 to catch up and then copying Purism in neutralizing Intel ME / AMD PSP.
I also hate having machines with that one piece of hardware that doesn't work on *BSD, because getting it to work is such a pain. It would be much easier to swap out the offending hardware for something more compatible.
As someone with zero problems finding the correct orientation (it's both tactile and visual) who is in the market for a new phone, makes me wonder if I should look for one with micro-USB again. Replacing that port sounds like hell, and I use devices at least 4 years so if C is prone to wearing I'd definitely have to.
For context: I am someone who still has a 9 years old smartphone in use (not exclusively). So for the normal 24 months usage the connectors might suffice, but I prefer solutions which are either easily replaceable or hold longer like wireless charging for example.
I would love to purchase an extra clamshell for aesthetic customizations, like laser engraving, spray coating, repainting, etc.
Seriously guys [some commentators], what the hell. They did a good job, I mean I’d consider it independent of the modularity benefit which I don’t care overly much about - if only because it’s bloat free, sports a very pragmatic design without being obtuse and frankly it’s high time PC oem’s had more pressure. With this being their only product there’s a chance QC ends up proving superior to premium laptops from HP, Dell, etc. Certainly these guys’s track record so far doesn’t instill any doubt!
Great job, @ the Framework founders. I love to see any innovative angles or iterations possible in the PC space these days.
> Display
> 13.5” 3:2
> 2256x1504, 100% sRGB color gamut, and >400 nit
I approve.
Gizmodo's review was mixed.
https://gizmodo.com/i-wanted-to-love-framework-s-modular-lap...
> The Framework laptop offers an awkward port selection to make way for its expansion slots, and it doesn’t have the best battery life. It’s also concerning that the computer runs so hot.
Then it mentions that the fn keys area was at 96f. That's body temp. A phone taken out of a pocket will probably be around the same temp and we are not complaining it's too hot.
Little details like that make me think they had some kind of negative bias towards the device and it is not clear why.
I am not defending the device since I haven't used it, but that review reads like "yeah whatever I guess I'll review it, but if it's not perfect I'll trash it".
I guess we'll have to wait for these first batches to go out to see what problems are actually a nuisance
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rob-A-B-Oostendorp/publ...
(E-Ink differs notably in characteristics, but simply on density, 200+ DPI is amazing to look at.)
The rest of the specs and design intent also look impressive. Very nicely done.
Still, if I can find some free disposable cash anytime soon, I might order one anyway, just to support the concept and to have a spare machine. I'm sure I could use an extra machine for something-or-other.
“This product can expose you to chemicals including Nickel (Metallic), which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, and Bisphenol A (BPA), which is known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov“
The warnings are required by a 1986 statewide proposition, numbered 65, for chemicals posing chancer, birth defect, or other reproductive harm, and though they're obligatory only if the risk is greater than 1:100,000 over a 70 year lifespan, many companies feel it's safer to include the warnings regardless to avoid nondisclusure actions.
https://askthescientists.com/qa/california-prop-65-warning/
You can find a similar listing for, say, Apple, Inc.'s products, running to 25 pages:
https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Regulated_Substa... (PDF)
Is that because these warnings are so ubiquitous they've lost all meaning?
Plus, considering the complexity of the hardware, it would look amazing with a transparent case. It'd be almost like swiss watch.
This laptop looks like it offers both.
But, then again, I would also consider the ability to change a faulty part as part of the build quality equation, and as such rank apple products much further down than most.
https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/cca31de3-3b75...
Edit: This is actually one of the guides we published recently: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Display+Replacement+Guide/86...
If enough people want the device, they will buy it, and support the effort.
Time will tell. I wish them luck. This has been a true labor of love.
But still, knowing the physical dimensions of the slot and having the USB-C port itself providing retention, it should be straightforward for 3rd parties to design more peripherals.
A few questions:
Why are the higher end cpu options so much more when the price difference is only about $100 according to intel and they all have the same core count? Do you plan to offer 6 core or more versions? AMD zen 3 or 4? Im guessing you will release a version with 12th cpus in the future?
Will you have a version with two m.2 storage slots and maybe a bigger battery? A version with lpddr5 in the board?
Are the usbc slots also thunderbolt 3 or 4 slots like a macbook pro? How is egpu support?
The reviews seem to be finding concerns with thermals while battery life and overall performance seems pretty so-so.
I expect that battery life and performance could be improved through upgrading in the future, but it seems like thermals might be a difficult problem to fix.
But marketed directly to the people that buy all the "normal" laptops out there, it could be a great success.
We'll be offering extended warranties in the future, but we're allowing for time in market for us to be able to price that appropriately.
I'm super thrilled to see this design, it's really cool. Particularly the adapter thing, I can't believe I've never seen or thought of that solution before, it's so much better than loose dongles. Personally 13" isn't for me though, but I saw the reply to people asking for a larger version elsewhere in the thread. For now I've linked it to some friends, perhaps they're interested in the 13" version :)
All the best, I would love to get a Framework laptop in the future!
These exchangeable port look so big not giving the choice to have 2 USB C, 1 USB a and 1 Hdmi. That would be my min configuration.
Cheers from switzerland (swiss german keyboard necessary;))
What I don't really like is the price. I think a good laptop should cost somewhere around $400. It is not necessary to install the most expensive CPUs because they usually have lower performance to cost ratio than cheaper models. Webcam, fingerprint reader and Wifi 6 are not necessary.
The laptop doesn't have space for a HDD which means that user has to buy an expensive SSD storage. 13 inch screen is too small to work with code or texts. Also, modern websites have gigantic font size so only several lines of text would fit on such a small screen.
64 Gb RAM limit is higher than most of laptops which is good. But why not 128 or 256 Gb? It it difficult to add several more address lines?
They have written that they would love to hear a feedback on keyboards. Well, here you go.
Sadly the keyboard is a Latin-oriented 26-letter model. Russian language has 33 letters so I would prefer a 33-letter keyboard with two dedicated keys for switching layouts. This means that 9 new keys should be added. Currently nobody makes such keyboards, even Apple. Manufacturers seem to have no interest in adapting keyboards to needs of Russian users and instead use inconvenient 26-letter western keyboards. Adding more keys for me seems more important than unnecessary back light. Also, I think it would be better to make up/down keys larger and make Home/End/PageUp/PageDown as separate keys. These keys are useful for browsing or editing texts. On the other hand, CapsLock is useless and can be removed.
The touchpad doesn't have buttons. How does one do a right or middle button click?
> A high resolution 3:2 aspect ratio display lets you fit more code and creativity on-screen at once.
I doubt one can edit code on a 13 inch screen. Even 15 inch screen is too small for IDEs.
I think I'll hang on to it however, I don't think I could use a 13" laptop.
- 3:2 screen makes the laptop bigger and adds space thats pretty much useless except for video editing I guess
- No option without camera, mic and fingerprint reader
- Intel CPU
- Thin instead of robust
- American company
Why don't you like that they are American?
I guess that depends on font scaling but if there is code that long there is usually something wrong with it :D
I like to have views side by side but the 3:2 doesn't really help with that either (at least for code on 13")
> Why don't you like that they are American?
That usually complicates payment and shipping (at least with smaller companies) plus I don't really like (indirectly) supporting a government that thinks human rights are for citizens only.
We've been testing with Ubuntu 21.04 and Fedora 34 so far. The latest Fedora 34 respins actually have full functionality out of the box, including the fingerprint reader: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins/
Any specs in the case? Is it fully aluminium?
Too Bad I just baught a Thinkpad with the same price tag :(
- USB C Module should have two ports at least.
- Ports in the back, who wants a monitor cable sticking out the side? No one does this anymore.
- Waiting for larger screen.
Props for 3:2 screen and modules.
Seems like a surprising proposition given how customizable everything else about this product is.
Also, would like to see this reviewed by someone from the linux community (e.g., phoronix).
I wonder how many sales they are losing
Easy to say. Hard to do.
That fuzzy wavering line is where we all argue.
My current laptop is Samsung ATIV Book 9, which is more than 5 years old. The 13" screen is 3200x1800. The best screen ever made. Possibly the best laptop ever made. The industrial design, the backlit keyboard, touchpad, everything is perfect. Sadly even Samsung does not make laptops like this anymore.
Fingers crossed that Apple still releases Intel MacBooks this year with their 11th generation chips.
Unfortunately one also needs to swap the firmware for the top row of the keyboard to function. I wouln't dare to do all this, out of fear of thrashing the laptop.
I suspect that these new fangled butterfly and chicklet style keyboards were especially designed as means to extract more money on inevitable keyboard repairs. (and don't dare to eat any potato chips in front of the keyboard).
Your company's statement that you won't accept crypto because it is "bad for environment" seems more political than operational/technical.
If this is a popular idea you can even monetize pre-built touchpads
We don't currently have any plans for a new version of that module, but it would be upgradeable if we did in the future.
Thanks for taking the risk and creating this.
These responses to anyone pointing out how similar the design is are so disingenuous. Very strange!
Check out HP’s current line up. They seem to come in two flavors: “MacBook clone” and “MacBook clone, but in black”.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/slp/optane/2-in-1-laptops?jump...
Do MacBooks come with a windows key?
Edit: so not a dedicated power button, but an integrated finger print reader. uh-oh, case is getting weaker ;-)
It's both a dedicated power button and a finger print reader.
(For the record I'm not bothered by the similarities; I honestly think that if you go minimalist with your design language you kind of converge on this look. I would offer the gentlest of criticisms, though, in the way the up and down arrow keys are half-height but the left and right are full. That's another trend Apple started and it is bad. Ironically, Apple's current laptops are moving away from it again!)
...and you thought it was a Mac?