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Comment by BaseballPhysics | Hacker News Reader

As a long time ThinkPad/Lenovo fan, suggesting that Lenovo's repairability is in the same league as the Framework suggests to me you've never actually worked with a Framework. It really is on a whole other level.

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Are you joking? Thinkpads for decades have had all the parts replaceable with off the shelf components. Framework is barely caught up with my 2008 thinkpad lol.

Have you looked at any more recent thinkpads?

Framework's hardware is nice because it takes advantage of CPUs, ports, RAM, screens etc that are more recent than 2008

I know for some old ThinkPads (edit: The IBM branded T60 from 2006) you can get a custom motherboard that works with modern CPUs, but the price for the mobo alone is more than a Framework laptop

I also have a 2008 and a 2009 Thinkpad. I've looked at some recent ones and we've lost so much since then.

Can you custom design parts with pinouts for your 2008 thinkpad?

If not, I'm not sure I believe you know what you are talking about - its nice lenovo (in past) has been so rugged, repairable, but using reverse engineered parts is a very different thing to a set of components that can be extended.

Put it like this - can you put a lenovo part on a framework laptop? No? Why?

Until you can, Framework is in a whole different category....

2008 ThinkPads are machines from a different era. Lenovo doesn't build them the same anymore.

It's hard to talk about Thinkpads as a monolith because there have been so many different devices sold over the decades and their format has changed quite a bit in that time as well. As a thinkpad enjoyer I do appreciate them still but they have become less repairable in recent time. Personally I have done things like completely swap screens, motherboards, etc. to create franken thinkpads in SKUs that never existed and I would still say the Framework is more "repairable" if you define repairable as ease of removing and replace components as well as gaining access to replacement components. Framework's marketplace lists individual components that I can buy today presumably at OEM quality to fix things like hinges or keyboards and that is something Lenovo never really had (or I was not aware of it or was not able to engage with it a la some special preferred repair program).

good luck finding cheap parts for your framework laptop. Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops. But Framework goes even further by making their parts store and repair guides accessible to everyone:

- https://frame.work/marketplace

- https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop

The prices of the parts are very reasonable, and each part is labeled with a QR code that can be scanned to access repair instructions.

Dell Vostro laptops are not as sleek as their consumer models, but they are tanks, and they are a breeze to repair.

I do like what Framework is doing, and my next laptop will likely be from them.

I would not trust a company with no history with providing parts forever. If anything, I'd like them to license the manufacturing of replacement parts so that other companies can make their own if they ever go bankrupt.

> Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops

I can confirm HP isn't too shabby. Very easy to take apart, and they even put out maintenance and service manuals, at least for their Pro/Elite Desk/Book lines. They show how to disassemble them, the possible part-numbers (for example the different available keyboards with or without backlight).

I've never had to actually source any parts so don't know how easy it is, especially once they get old.

But, in general, I would personally not recommend the laptops. They're cheap junk with ridiculously bad screens.

The desktops are quite OK, though.

FWIW I just look up 6 parts for the Thinkpad (battery, keyboard, webcam, speakers, audio board), and all the prices were within $5 of the framework equivalent. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean the prices will still be comparable a decade from now.

One of my Lenovo laptops has firmware to prevent me from upgrading its WiFi card using off the shelf components.

If it's successful one would expect availability to increase.

Is it a Lenovo ThinkPad, or one of their other models?

Some thinkpads have a whitelist for wireless chips in the firmware, that's known - but I am not sure how widespread it is.

That one was a yoga 2 pro. An unfortunate choice to stray from the T and X series on my part. Or, they could have chosen not to add software limitations and Superfish or at least made it clear before I bought it.

It was reported recently that they are also doing the same thing with the CPU in some of their machines. As someone who has bought older Xeon CPUs to upgrade older PCs (often giving them years more useful life) that is frustrating.

> Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

The Framework uses standard parts for wifi, storage, and display. The "proprietary" bits are the mainboard, the battery, and the keyboard/mouse assembly (in the case of the Framework, mainly because of the custom connector).

This is precisely the same situation as with Lenovo, save that the Framework is far more modular and thus easy to repair.

I'm not sure why you think there's any difference.

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