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Comment by cristoperb | Hacker News Reader

I'm naive about the industry, but that's pretty shocking to me considering how much of the Framework marketing copy touts its repairability.

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Their repair-ability is better than basically any other commercial laptop: https://frame.work/marketplace/parts

You can upgrade your mainboard/cpu, RAM, SSD, wifi card. Swap in a new speaker, display, hinge, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, fingerprint reader, antenna, headphone jack, etc.

And complete schematics are available to repair shops under an NDA if you would like to have your mainboard or similar repaired at the component level.

For other laptops, complete schematics are available to everyone if you know where to look.

> RAM, SSD, wifi card. Swap in a new speaker, display, hinge, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, fingerprint reader, antenna, headphone jack

I can do all that with every Lenovo laptop I’ve owned. All parts can be purchased.

I looked up a couple currently sold Lenovo laptops and there aren't parts available according to browsing to the model in the Support section and clicking the Parts icon.

Why do you need original parts when there are millions of options. If there is no Lenovo RAM I'd buy crucial ram or Samsung ram. If there's no ssd I'd buy an Intel ssd or whatever else. For a display replacement of course you won't be able to do it on your own and anyways it's not a phone and displays rarely break in laptops so Lenovo center will do it for you if you can't find any displays.

I'm replying to the parent comment that stated that "RAM, SSD, wifi card. Swap in a new speaker, display, hinge, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, fingerprint reader, antenna, headphone jack" were something they can get for every Lenovo they've ever owned. RAM, SSD and WiFi are easy in just about every laptop outside of Macbooks, but touchpads, display hinges, webcams, speakers and mounts, etc are definitely unusual and not something you can easily get from Lenovo.

Displays definitely break in laptops. I replaced one in an old Acer after it cracked in a backback under a seat on a plane. It took some work to find compatible ones and some details on the disassembly. The little plastic clips that often break made it fussy and annoying. Compare that to framework which has a magnetic bezel around the display and easy disassembly, sells the panel directly, and makes available a guide for something that will only take you 5 to 15 minutes: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Display+Replacement+Guide/86...

I bought my Legion 7 in singapore and ordered a new keyboard in Taiwan for the Taiwan keyboard for typing Chinese.

I replace the ram/ssd/wifi in my X1 Extreme Gen 1. And ordered a speaker from Lenovo to replace it.

Yes it’s more complicated to repair. But look at the hardware you get in the form factor compared to the framework.

Having done repairs/replacements on both a Thinkpad X1 and a Framework, all I can say is that the process is not remotely comparable.

Framework is easier but the hardware isn’t comparable.

Doesn’t change the fact you can order parts on Lenovo laptops and fix them.

Exactly I don't understand a fuss about it. If someone wants an open source laptop companies like system 76 exist. I don't understand what part of the market is being targeted by framework and even then there are better alternatives for framework if you want to replace the ram ssd battery etc.

From experience, modern Lenovo laptops are significantly more annoying to take apart than the Framework, because the Framework uses magnets instead of plastic clips like Lenovo does. Lenovo has also moved towards soldered memory in their Thinkpads, with the X series having entirely soldered RAM and the T series having one slot available (so the user has to choose between having dual-channel RAM and having more RAM), while the Framework has two slots so this isn't an issue. Lenovo's parts site often has parts back-ordered for at least a month, and I have received counterfeit parts from buying off of eBay.

X carbon and nano is soldered but extreme is not.

I've stripped my old Dell Precision laptop down to barebones a few times now, too. It's over 10 years old and still works great as my daily driver after several repairs and upgrades.

I've done the same multiple times with my trusty Toshiba. Stripped down to the motherboard and back. People seem to over estimate how difficult it is to take a standard laptop apart.

Not everything is as hostile as a macbook.

They also start at $1049 and go up to $2049 without the functional expansions. I have a $150 Chromebook that has 70% of the features and more ports, and an $850 M1 MacBook Air that outperforms the top end Framework.

I don't see why someone would spend $1000 for a laptop, then spend as much as an entire laptop to swap a single component that provides less utility than another laptop at the same or lower price.

If Framework had a killer warranty or even a buy-back / trade in option in their marketplace, I would reconsider, but any upgrade leftovers aren't useful to other Framework owners barring hardware failures, which shouldn't be a barrier because they are marketed as being repairable.

As it stands, they've just externalized the costs of responsibility in an attempt to create a market for premium modularity.

Also, I was excited to be able to buy a laptop without wifi, but that option has been removed. I would have to sell or discard a perfectly functional wireless chipset to get the laptop I want.

You also cannot buy a Framework chassis without a mainboard. Why not, if they aim to be eco friendly? Why create a barrier to buying second hand components?

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