Framework Laptops now have 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports
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The general question: Why do you make laptop keyboards with the up and down buttons smooshed together?
The up and down buttons are the two most used buttons on my keyboards. I cannot use a regular laptop for more than 30 seconds without becoming incredibly frustrated and I'm certain that I'm not alone.
I'm entirely convinced that half of all ThinkPad laptop sales are because they allow space for their arrow keys to not be smooshed together.
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And a question for you: What would it take for Framework laptops to go the ThinkPad approach with their keyboards?
It would be nice if you guys manage to take a shot at a laptop more inspired by the Thinkpads/Latitudes rather than the Apple devices.
I assume it's not self-certification (like CE) from the phrasing, so you sent some units off somewhere? Was there much back and forth with changes required, or was it purely administrative and from a technical standpoint the earlier units are just as compliant?
Thunderbolt is basically a superset of that.
I've often see graphics people doing this when inspecting their works though. Maybe they're up to something here.
Other vendors offer this, but with H series CPUs which seem to throttle quite a bit.
Setting aside power, how many independent full bandwidth TB4 devices can run at once?
From a HW I/O perspective, they're not much different than a Macbook Pro with all its USB-C ports. But but recessing them and creating a form-factor that gives you the dongle's feature within the laptop's bounding-box, they've effectively solved the problem.
Brilliant.
We've seen both community developed Expansion Cards and other device makers starting to adopt Expansion Cards.
I'm trying to conceive of what other possible solution there could be?
Is there even such a thing as a standard dongle? Pretty sure there isn’t. And as you say you can just use the USBC module and continue using your USBC dongle. I bet you could even 3D print an enclosure to make sure that your existing dongle fits nicely into the module port so you don’t need the module.
I can't imagine what other existing form factor would have been suitable and more useful than them just creating their own and open sourcing the design.
And I don't think of or treat them like dongles - I don't carry spares around, I just have the configuration that makes sense for me. (I don't even have spares to change it, but with a holiday coming up I did think I'd swap one for an SD card reader if I had one.)
- quality is extremely high; I expected something to suffer for the cost, but it strikes me as a nicely manufactured laptop in every respect
- initial configuration, adding in external ports, memory and nvme drive, took all of 10 minutes from laptop opening to closing again ... amazing job they've done
- every bit of the insides of the laptop is labeled, it's clear and clean and there are 2d barcodes you can scan for all components to get instant documentation
- bios is legit, modern, nicely laid out, simple to configure
- from order to delivery took a few weeks, nothing extreme. Came direct from Taiwan
- the keyboard has nice raised keys, and I'm super comfortable typing on it. Only issue for me coming from a Mac, the function and control keys are swapped on the left side, but that's easy to fix up... overall, one of the nicest keyboards I've seen on a laptop
- weight feels like a current Macbook Air, just a little larger dimensions overall
- switches to hard turn off camera and microphone on the top ... nice!
Overall I'm extremely pleased with this laptop, and I'm thinking there is zero reason I'm spending so much money with Dell (our current standard). I was thinking of using Lenovo, but screw that.. if my testing pans out, this is our new standard.
Note that from a support/warranty perspective, this still uses the normal consumer paths. This is something we're exploring business-focused versions of for the future.
Maybe it isn't a necessity, but it is extremely nice to be able to go into the office without having to worry about having to charge the device at any point throughout the day at all. I legitimately stopped carrying a charger in my backpack. Sounds like a trivial non-issue, but it makes a difference to me.
I once had a day filled with 5 hours of interviews through videocalls on Google Meet, and my Macbook Pro (M1 Max) battery dipped only from 100% to 70%.
It is hard to overstate how freeing, at least personally to me, it feels. Maybe I don't need all the M1 power on a daily basis. But not having to worry about charging my laptop at any point during the day, regardless of the workload, is always welcome. Add the fact that I've never even heard the fans on my MBP (and neither have I felt it heating up much at all), and you got a pretty solid proposition to switch.
Also, if you are trying to build any large Node project on Windows, you are going to have a bad time. Node is just straight up not as efficient on Windows and takes multiples of time it takes to build on macOS/Linux.
Most people are deskbound and use their provided external monitor via the also provided TB3 dock. So charging is a non issue.
With our industry currently being extremely strained (industrial manufacturer in Germany), I think it’s fairly worrying that people spend money on a 2500€ upgrade that’s not justified by any productivity gains, but that’s also approved by the supervisor.
The part about the industry-specific situation is something I legitimately haven't even considered. That upgrade is indeed a very "nice-to-have", but feels pretty moronic if the company finances are strained.
Out of curiosity, did they have any explanation for their reasoning? Is it just due to some accounting magic, where the upgrade budget was allocated a long time ago, and it was more like "use it or lose it" (without a chance to just "save" that upgrade budget money regardless)?
In your case though that definitely sounds like a huge waste of money. For that reason, we order from the following matrix to not waste too much.
Engineering/Developer Advocacy/Product: Macbook Air - M2, 16GB RAM, 500GB Disk or Linux/Windows, Framework 14", 16 GB RAM, 1 TB Disk
People/GTM/Facilities: Macbook Air - M2, 8GB RAM, 250GB Disk
Granted there's probably money to be saved on the non engineering side but those folks tend to be comfortable with macs already and those purchases will last a very long time.
The other note I'll make is IME macbooks are significantly easier to maintain via MDM tools.
Macbooks provide best in class displays, keyboard, touchpad, and battery life.
Not to mention many non-macbook laptops apparently not sleeping properly. No idea how widespread that one is but I see it in like every laptop thread including this one.
Apparently HP also makes an easy to disassemble laptop these days.
> To get notified when we open ordering in your region, you can navigate to the locales page and select your region from the dropdown box.
You may want to let them know you're interested, maybe that'll push them to open up: https://frame.work/fr/en/locale/edit?waitlist_country_code=E...
Wikipedia suggests it was released in July 2021, so almost a year and half now, actually.
Call me crazy, in this world of constant technological treadmills, but I'd be ecstatic if I had a laptop that I could ship-of-theseus for the next two decades or more.
Personally I tried the System76 but I found the keyboard layout obnoxious. I'm not sure it was all models, but the one I picked up was unusable for me, coming from a mac. They tried to shove everything on the keyboard, like num pad, which wasn't necessary IMHO. Not sure if it was just a bad pick, or every model.
I do wish, however, they took the time they used to release a Chromebook and focused it into other product releases (Ryzen, better screen.) The Chromebook play has also left me wondering if they've lost their way on core strategy.
The days of 14nm+++++++ are over.
edit: sorry meant Raptor Lake.
edit: found them: https://www.club386.com/intel-core-i9-13900k-vs-amd-ryzen-9-...
M1 ultra Cinebench is 21700 or so.
The ability to upgrade hardware incrementally is a big part of it for me.
Also just seeing updates like this one, where Framework is intentionally trying their best to future-proof devices.
Basically any other vendor would have said "Upgrade to the Framework 3.0 with the new Thunderbolt chipset!" forcing you to buy a whole new machine for thousands of USD, and then soldered in a single thunderbolt port so only the other 3 were modular going forward.
I've been using my Framework all year for intensive engineering work and love it. Will likely be a customer for a very long time.
- The USB-C modules are a bit of a gimmick right now, but being able to swap things around is really nice, and it seems like there's a good possibility of there being a healthy module ecosystem in the coming years.
- The sheer number of Type-C ports is itself really handy as more and more devices use Type-C. I don't need a hub to run my Type-C microphone and Type-C webcam at the same time while charging over Type-C.
- The repairability is unmatched, and I'm increasingly confident that I can keep upgrading the internals for a long while to come (in fact, I might very well do that in the near future and swap out my current 11th Gen motherboard for a 12th Gen or maybe even whatever comes after that).
- Framework has been relatively open when it comes to things like firmware and hardware design files, making it easier to use Framework parts beyond the intended laptop use case (related to the above-mentioned planned upgrade, I can see myself 3D-printing an enclosure to turn the old motherboard into a SFF desktop or home server).
- Linux works great, and with recent releases OpenBSD works great.
- The 3:2 screen ratio is a godsend, and I'm quite frankly amazed that so few laptops offer it. I had previously bought a Pixelbook just for that alone.
I’d love to support your mission and recommend this laptop to others, but you need to get the fundamentals working!
See my comment history for other similar reports from other (former) Framework owners.
That's nice in concept, but it rarely if ever works as it's supposed to, especially under Linux. I had to set my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano up so after being closed while unplugged for an hour or so it automatically hibernates, because otherwise it'll never properly sleep and Windows will drain its battery.
It's stupid but the only machines that reliably sleep these days are MacBooks.
Is printing a few different keycaps that hard? Just grab the German keyboard and swap Z and Y and It'd be good enough for a Nordic layout :D
Also do you realise that sadly the UK (where the you can actually purchase a Framework) is no longer a member state of the EU due to the moronic Brexit disaster. So is that five or four?
I guess (as a relatively new entrant) they're hitting up the obvious EU targets, Germany, France, Italy and Spain to provide in-country support. And then working out how to provide the logistics for the rest of the EU.
I was surprised I could order one in the UK to be honest.
The most popular choices seem to be Razer Core X or DIYing it with an ADT-Link R43SG (https://community.frame.work/t/my-portable-egpu-setup-adt-li...)
I'll skip a few intel generations and upgrade later then :), the only downside for framework is still the battery life, even with all the tweaking.
I love it.
It mostly worked with minimal fuss. From what I remember, most of the headaches were getting sway and my multi monitor support configured to my liking.
edit: fix gpu name
There's a lot of supporting circuitry, and quite a lot of power to dissipate.
In fact, the SFP itself is long, but does the housing for it need to be?
Btw does anyone know of any good replacement for powerbi on Linux?
I would like to move fully to Linux on this laptop, but a project I've been tinkering on is heavily dependent on powerbi, which is windows only AFAIK.
Ideally something free, open source and fully local (no web applications) would be great.
While it is not exactly PowerBI the only thing I have found that is similar and is on Linux is metabase[0]. It's open source and free to run locally (or self-hosted) without user limits. It can connect to multiple dbs, and allows for visual query editing as well as SQL. You can build dashboards, save SQL snippets, etc. You can even send automated emails based on query results. I hope it works for you. My company and I are very happy users.
[0] https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/installation-and-operat...
I definitely understand prioritizing repairability and supporting a small company doing cool things as well... but maybe not well enough to pay the same money for what feels like a much worse CPU architecture for MacOS and mobile devices at this point. shrug.
Out of curiosity, what parts of the hardware do you find rubbish?
The hardware seems fantastic to me. The M1/M2 chips, trackpad, keyboard, fingerprint reader, Liquid Retina screens, audio, etc. are all great compared to other laptops I've had. Wifi and Bluetooth are also more reliable on my MBP than any other laptop I've owned. The only thing I can think of is that it's not upgradable like a Framework laptop or the old butterfly keyboards.
edit: plus there’s limited support for other os’.
I can't disagree with the historical build issues, the pricing, or limited OS support, although the latter two doesn't seem to make the hardware rubbish.
if your expectation is to use the macbook pro as a text editor (ide) and video chat then yes its powerful. but if you want games and the ability to install other os’ then its not really that cool, for the money.
apple’s marketing sounds a bit like “it’s got electrolytes”. unified memory is fast but not new and definitely not that fast.
do people actually think that apple’s ram runs at 400 gb/s?
Care to explain what you think "cpu bandwidth" means?
Also, I recommend looking at some real measurements: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
I'm happy calling the butterfly keys rubbish: they were. But now? What?
In other words, do any of the common repairs. To spend top dollar for a laptop and not be able to do repairs is rubbish: intentional planned obsolescence and vendor lock-in IMO.
Can you answer without moving the goal posts?
The narcissistic tendency to conflate consumer preference with quality (or moral weight) is drearily common on HN these days.
We get it, you have a fetish for replacing RAM (but seem to have forgotten that CPUs can also be replaced, oops your computer can't do that? soldered it to the mainboard? rubbish).
but i really really like the os.
Meanwhile, macOS frustrates me more and more each update. Back in 2015, I would never have considered switching to Linux. At my last job, I spent an entire year on Manjaro and only switched back to macOS to do iOS dev.
I actually like Apple's hardware a good bit - but I absolutely despise the OS. It's a bloated hog of a thing.
I still wouldn't ever buy an Apple product, but the work issued macbooks are generally decent hardware, just avoid the 16 inch intels they put out, those are rubbish.
The software is annoying as all get out though, and they're only becoming more and more tight with control around it.
Kexts going away is painful
documentation is bad
scripting is much harder than it should be
FS is... obnoxious at best, utterly bug ridden at worst
The apps they put out are fine I guess (I really don't use basically any of them) but the base system feels like a tire fire right now.
that def is an unpopular opinion.
They usually forward the shipment for about US$ 15, and keep the German VAT. They pay the Swiss VAT from those earnings.
But: there was a problem with the commercial invoice by Framework (it was missing the VAT rate iirc) and I had to pay some penalty fee to the importers.
There is no reason to stay limited to M2 2280.
It just takes an extra half-inch and a screw.
They do address it in the post:
> For 11th Gen systems, we also have a firmware update in progress to bring in the security updates and power consumption improvements, but not retroactively certify Thunderbolt (there are some test cases we don’t believe we can resolve on that generation, unfortunately).
Sounds like a hardware thing, which again you can upgrade
No matter what new camera I buy, the manufacturer going to ship something newer and better soon. So it is with most things in the modern era.
The blog post made it clear they're shipping all the Thunderbolt firmware improvements to the 11th gen as well, it's just minor hardware differences that are blocking a few test cases and official certification. It sounds like you can enable Thunderbolt relatively easily if you're okay with that caveat.