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Comment by pveierland | Hacker News Reader

Framework is doing brilliant work. They create reusable computer formats that anyone can hack against. Strongly considering a Framework 13 as my next computer.

- Expansion cards: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards

- Expansion bay: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay

- Input modules: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/inputmodule-rs

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Can anyone report if the battery life issues have been fixed, and to what degree. This is what kept me from switching...

They improved it as part of the latest refresh: https://frame.work/blog/whats-new-in-this-years-framework-la...

Battery life better than my apple device for sure - though it's an old MacBook air

The new Apple benchmark will be their M1 / M2 laptops, I don't think anything tops that at this point.

Dunno, I'm less and less interested in apple devices these days, I've got one on the shelf, I guess we can test it in a year or two

Running Fedora and doing web browsing + light coding, I get around 5 hours of battery. That doesn't feel great, but it's rarely an actual problem for my use patterns.

Besides that, I love the laptop.

The new AMD models that are coming out later this year seem very promising in that regard, but no reviews are out as of yet.

They are offering larger batteries than before, probably time to revisit

On Linux this was solved for me by using `tlp` and I check usage once in a while with powertop. It's going to be not so great out of the box (~5-6 hours) but after some basic tweaks I can pull 10. Mostly the fixes are about getting the CPU to scale down into a low power state.

I've never managed to get sleep or hibernate to work correctly, so aside from the fact that I have to shut the thing all the way down if I want to leave it unplugged overnight, or just always leave it plugged in, it's fine.

I think it might have to do with my using full-disk encryption, but I've been unwilling to go all the way through attempting a fresh install to fix.

So it’s like a desktop with a hinge. I recently moved to a MacBook after being a win/Linux user my whole life and the thing I love the most is the feeling that if I close the lid, all is going to be ok and I can immediately open it back up and it won’t freak out or I won’t find it’s still working on sleeping.

Being at an airport and closing it, putting it in the bag, boarding, resuming work. Or relocating at home from table to desk to couch, things you do with a laptop cost you battery and heat with a framework?

YMMV but both my macbooks occasionally display evidence that they were awake while they were asleep (e.g. if i close the hing at 10pm and open it at 8am, it might show 2:14am for a few seconds before catching up, but also they show new unread messages even before connecting to wifi). Weirdly my 2013 macbook is much much better at going to sleep and waking up with nearly the same battery capacity, whereas my 2019 (work laptop) will often run down 15-40% of its battery over the weekend while completely closed.

That's intentional and what Windows Modern Standby is trying to copy, badly.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-power-nap-m...

Have you check your settings? There is one that allows the Mac to wake up to update

Ironically my company issued Macbook is also annoying about this, in the sense that it regularly makes noises or wakes up my monitor when it should be sound asleep.

But my Framework never actually goes all the way to sleep, even when it looks like it has, and I've given up trying to figure out why.

Keep in mind that the 13 doesn't have the expension bay, nor the input modules. I really do want those 2 features, so U am strongly considering the 16", even if it is a little big for my taste.

Same, I would like a Framework 13 with input modules (an ortholinear layout may finally be possible? Also with QMK).

Also, I would rather take a r5 and have increased battery life (I bet the r7 are binned for higher perf and have higher leakage), but they only offered the bigger battery with the r7, last time I looked.

16" is definitely big (I have a desktop and docking station anyway), so I've refrained from ordering for now, hile I decide :|

Well you can't hack the firmware :( A baffling decision considering the brilliant work they're doing otherwise. I do not see a reason why they absolutely need to have Intel Boot Guard enabled.

I'm at the point where I'm not even looking for laptops with coreboot OOTB, I just want a good laptop that is not fused to the vendor's keys. I'll port coreboot to it myself.

As much as I like the idea, they don't address their main weakness - low resolution display. They are like a 720p phone - 2256x1504 is somewhat precise but one can clearly see the pixels and switching to 2x mode makes everything huge. Older ASUS ZenBook could do 3300x2200 at the same size for about the same money.

Sure there are manufacturers with higher resolution displays out there, but there is even more that still just run 1080p on these. Its not easy finding an AMD device with more than 1080p or maybe 1920x1200 even today, even on larger screen (15"). So yeah, its not 4k, but its not shabby either.

That seems more like Intel gatekeeping high-end for themselves via some shady background deals with laptop manufacturers. There is no reason why an 8-core Ryzen with Radeon GPU would be limited to these crappy 1080p resolutions.

I had a 720p phone, and it was perfectly fine (I also have a 720p Steam Deck). I guess it depends on what you use it for, as it could be useful for graphics work. On the other hand, I value battery life, and increasing pixel count always had a negative impact.

That's fine, for folks like you Framework should offer the current display. For folks like me they could offer the 3300x2200 option. They offer options on everything but display for some reason.

They would have to buy and stock the panels. Maybe they aren't getting enough requests for a higher res display.

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