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This is what Framework set out to do (and is pulling it off so far...I'm typing this out on my 12th gen framework). They have an entire marketplace of replacement parts you can buy, including screens.

They've even got battery upgrades (increased capacity), better speakers, new screen type (matte) that you can retrofit into your existing Framework.

They support upgrading from their first gen laptop (admittedly they are a very young company, but their promise has held up thus far).

Hopefully more folks that are interested in upgradability and repairability are purchasing frameworks to show other companies that it's worth it to do (I'm unaffiliated with Framework, just a customer).

I wish something like Framework could be more popular so it could be easily available on other countries. As is, the impact something like it is small. Hopefully this changes at some point.

It's still very new and working out the kinks in the concept. I wouldn't expect it to take off in the current state. The videos they've done on Linus Tech Tips (Linus is an investor) keep me optimistic about their prospects.

I just upgraded RAM(4 -> 12 GB) and HDD to SSD of a 8 years old laptop and it became a lot more responsive. Laptops now a days are not upgradable and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops but framework is proving all of them wrong

> and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops

A framework 13" is 15.9mm thick and weighs 2.9 lbs. A macbook air M1 is 16.1mm thick and weights 2.8 lbs. So it's pretty darn close.

I'm sure that thinner and lighter laptops exist, but yeah, the framework is pretty thin. And at a certain point, it stops mattering. Being thinner wouldn't really provide much utility at this point.

The fact is that repairability is just not profitable for companies like Apple or Dell. They would rather you replace your entire computer when your screen cracks. But I very much hope that enough people do care about repairability to keep Framework afloat (and profitable). As an owner, I was astonished how easy it is to take this thing apart and replace things; I would guess that most of my non-technical friends can probably replace a monitor or a touchpad on one of these laptops with very little difficulty.

The tradeoff is that the Framework's battery life is garbage. I had laptops a decade ago with 2x the battery life. I'm lucky to get 3 hours of battery doing web browsing, and standby/hibernate on the Intel processor in it is so bad that it'll fully discharge in less than 12 hours doing literally nothing.

I really want to like it, but my Framework is literally a worse user experience than my old 2016 Macbook Air and it's probably 3x the price at this point. Playing even a lightweight game makes the fans ramp to a frustratingly loud level and I essentially have to keep it plugged in at all times.

It's also hard to express how oddly problematic having a 4x3 display in 2023 is. Almost literally nothing expects that.

A cursory search shows that various testing websites have measured battery life to be 7–8h on the framework which is decent I’d think?

I have no firsthand experience but 3h in comparison seems low.

Also, web browsing can be intensive if you use js heavy sites like linked in or even the GitHub homepage (when not logged in)

We’re seeing other thin&lights get double that nowadays.

Yeah, I'm with you on the battery life. Though I don't understand where you get the 12-hour figure for a full discharge while in suspend. In that time period I lose about 20%. (If you're running Linux, try changing from 's2idle' to 'deep' sleep; not sure if it's possible to change this on Windows.)

The thermals are indeed terrible. My 12th-gen has this issue where it will sometimes overheat, and the firmware will lock all CPU cores at 400MHz (yes, MHz) for anywhere between 1 and 20 minutes, even though temperatures drop down to reasonable levels within seconds. Support has been completely unhelpful, and Framework doesn't even seem to be acknowledging the problem (which has been reported by quite a few people on their community forum).

The display is actually 3:2, which is just bonkers. At least 4:3 would be somewhat reasonable (if very mid-00s), but who has ever had a 3:2 display for anything? I kinda get why they decided against a widescreen display: the mainboard needs to be 'taller' to accommodate the RAM and storage slots and the spacing for the expansion ports, and a 16:9 or 16:10 screen would mean a 'shorter' chassis, which would lead us to a much smaller battery. But man, the screen is just weird.

3:2 is used by microsoft on the surface.

16:9 is plain disgusting for a computer.

Also the original pixelbook: https://www.google.com/chromebook/device/google-pixelbook/

Are you experiencing degraded performance when running on battery or is it happening at all times?

You might want to look into BDProcHot throttling.

https://pastebin.com/JB3R2CdM

I returned a HP laptop because of this crap.

The Framework 13's screen is not 4:3, it's 3:2 (2256x1504), just like a Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (and others). 3:2 is widescreen-ier than 4:3. I had a Surface from work and found no issues with using a 3:2 aspect ratio, so I'd be baffled if the user experience with the Framework differs. Most (all? I kinda stopped caring) iPads, incidentally, are 4:3.

I’ve got a framework 13, and am in the “I wish I just bought the MacBook Air” camp.

The battery life is terrible, the speakers are terrible, the thermals are terrible. It may be thin and light, but the different levels of R&D really show.

It’s scale, too, isn’t it? At Apple scale you get better materials, better engineering at every level, and better testing processes—for the same or less money.

I admire Framework for achieving what they’ve done, modest though the success is in absolute terms. That said, they’re also probably still burning venture funding. Hardware disruption is hard.

FWIW, I'm a recent owner of a Framework Laptop 13, 13th gen 1370p. I am extremely happy with it. w/regards to battery life, I'm doing ~4.5watts idling/text-editing, screen on, wifi on. That is more efficient that I got out of my 5850u I had before this. I get about 9ish hours of battery life. You do need to run things like thermald, tlp and set the lower tdp setting in the bios (max battery setting lowers the tdp afaik). Fan barely turns on. I could probably take it further with ectool tweaks. Edit: to add, powertop is your friend! measure. Anything above 6watts usually means something is doing something (this ball-park 6watts comes from experience, last 3ish devices - anything lower than that whilst doing things == great. I do about 8ish watts when using VA-API to play video for example, which I find very reasonable + similar to my previous 5850u).

We’re talking about 9 hours with a lot of faffing here. The M2 MBA hits 15-18 hours real world. The FW feels like a laptop from 7 years ago to me.

Is it running windows?

It is currently - tried a couple of distros (arch, Ubuntu) with different combinations of the recommended (and other) tweaks. Windows seems to sip battery compared to both.

> They would rather you replace your entire computer when your screen cracks.

The fact that a company dictates things to the customer is proof in itaelf that the market is not competitive

Yes, Frameworks are amazing on paper, and yet I still can't purchase one in New Zealand but I can easily purchase Apple hardware.

It’s straightforward to use a shipping forwarder, just adds a bit to the cost.

NZ Post’s forwarder - YouShop - has worked well for me in the past.

https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/youshop

It adds a lot to the cost, and I am not protected by the New Zealand consumer laws in case something isn't right with the product. Way too risky for my liking.

I'm a Kiwi (now in the UK) and you're absolutely right. I always avoided forwarders because: no company warranty, no consumer protection, etc.

Forwarders are just grey market. Good for cheap items, but not so much for devices.

I miss the Kiwi attitude & the paradise on Earth environment, but I certainly don't miss being left out of the rest of the world, no easy access to products & services and long shipping times besides.

Have an L&P for me bra.

What I really appreciate with Framework is that they have little kits that let you repurpose the old insides of your laptop when you upgrade the processor or SSD.

That's a nice touch that means you're not just throwing that stuff away.

How does it compare cost-wise to just buying normal used or even new laptops?

Some of the laptop issues are a chain of dependencies that en up with mechanical and power envelope. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but say you want to go from 720p to 2k, that also requires more power, a bit for the panel and a bit for the backlight. The mainboard might not have a TCON and eDP or LVDS transceiver to drive such a panel, and the GPU might not be able to handle it either. So now that new panel needs three more things:

  - Power supply
  - Display transmission
  - GPU

And those things in turn need more (or well, 'different') space, which in turn might not fit in the existing chassis. And if it does, you might still have the thermal envelope issue where the chassis can't support the right airflow in the right places, or the cooling solution might not.

None of those are impossible to solve, but they also aren't as simple as "just give me a different panel", because it's not really just about the single component, it almost never is.

We have had a lot of luck in the past with a single 'family' of computers (usually largely designed by compal, Foxconn etc.) having interchangeable parts, and the base models essentially being downgraded versions of the top-tier model, which means that as long as you stay within that family, you get to upgrade parts along the way.

Framework does an excellent job of keeping everything that still fits within the same envelope going. But if at any point the current eDP interface needs to be replaced to support higher bandwidth, that means that the possible combinations between panels, cables and mainboards is now a whole lot more complicated. Some panels might only work with some mainboards, which might mean you have to replace both at the same time, greatly reducing the usefulness of what remains. Currently we don't have a huge gap between previous generations and current generations, but I'm very curious what's going to happen when we do make another significant jump. Only time will tell.

I imagine by that time you've used their market place often enough. Their used parts shop might be more awesome than the laptops. I can only imagine what it will look like in a few decades. Should be awesome.

In contrast, I'm the 4th owner of a "free" asus laptop that broke shortly after it was purchased (by the first owner) They never bothered to return it. I have a pretty good idea what is wrong with it but there is about 4 cm of space when I open it. I need some long strong pliers to pull some distant plugs. In a repair video from someone who really knows what they are doing, he reaches deep inside, pulls the plug with great force then smashes the pliers against the pcb making the laptop jump on his desk. "this is normal" he said and proceeded to pull the rest the same way. I've been gathering the courage to do it for about a year now.

> And those things in turn need more (or well, 'different') space

But this is the source of the problem. The lack of modularity and standardization.

The first generation mobile Core i7 from 2008 had a TDP up to 55W. The base TDP of the current generation is the same, Ryzen is even less. It shouldn't need a different cooling solution to dissipate the same amount of power. The same is true of mobile GPUs.

Don't layout the new board in a different configuration. Don't change the chassis. Just put the newer chips in it, in the same places they were before. Which means the newer boards and chips will be compatible with the older chassis.

> say you want to go from 720p to 2k, that also requires more power

If the new screen uses 20W instead of 15W, that shouldn't really matter. Screens typically aren't actively cooled and are also hinged into their own section of the chassis, so if the newer screen needs different passive cooling, it can come with that and still slot into the same base chassis.

And if the new screen uses 20W instead of 15W, you should still have enough power unless the entire rest of the laptop is at max spec. If you have a battery and power supply that could support a 55W CPU and a 55W GPU, but you actually have a 25W CPU and a 30W GPU, the screen using an extra 5W should be irrelevant.

> The mainboard might not have a TCON and eDP or LVDS transceiver to drive such a panel

On the other hand, it might, because 2k displays have been around for more than a decade. And if it doesn't, you should be able to upgrade the GPU to one that does, and plug the display directly into the new GPU, which in turn plugs into a standard slot using PCIe that doesn't require anything else to be changed.

>For both my Dell and Supermicro workstations, they basically last 10+ years, and I've got a lot of options to keep them going; I wish I could say the same about laptops. I really wish I could get a new 2k screen for the old Dell Latitude E6530 I have -- it's built a lot more robustly than my newer latitude.

Agreed. When I was checking out new laptops to buy one, in shops, about a year ago, I was shocked to see the lower quality and sturdiness of the cases and keyboards. For no apparent gain except possible lightness.

I think laptop makers have started doing an auto industry in terms of built in or planned obsolescence.

Edit: just like mobile phone makers.

It's been like this for at least 2 decades now.

I swore off those Chinese manufacturers (Lenovo, Asus, Acer, etc) many years ago for similar reasons and haven't looked back. I just don't buy any products from them, laptops included. Surprised people are still having to learn the hard way that their products are crap.

Asus and Acer are Taiwanese, not Chinese, and none of them actually manufacture their own laptops in house, that is outsourced to manufacturing partners.

Nearly all laptops on the market, regardless of brand, are manufactured by 6 Taiwanese companies: Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron, and Foxconn.

And yes, that includes Framework, who use Compal as their manufacturing partner.

Is there any way to link up which designer works with which contract manufacturer (or at least the models)? And are there any exceptions? I seem to recall Alienware stuff was made in Florida at some point.

Search for schematics, or look for identifying clues on the motherboard. All the OEMs have more-or-less distinguishable styles and part numbering schemes. E.g. a part number beginning with "LA-" followed by a few digits, then possibly another character, indicates Compal (LA-8331P, LA-4921P, LA-A994P.) Inventec likes to use 6050Annnnnnn (6050A2266501, 6050A2493101.) Quanta uses a few characters/digits code (e.g. ZHY, LX89, ZE6.)

Alienware is just owned by Dell now and seems to put out overpriced poorly built chunky machines that target gamers with too much money. Razer and Falcon NW might be better from the chassis design side, or Sager and Clevo from the OEM value side.

The Alienware laptop I had for a week or two a few years ago was the worst laptop I've ever used. Noisy and hot and expensive and poor ergonomics and just all around unimpressive, poor hardware masked by a once respected brand name.

To be fair, Wistron actually used to be the manufacturing division of Acer, until it was spun out ~25 years ago.

My first job out of college was at a US-based networking hardware company, and I was really surprised to learn that, even though most of the manufacturing & assembly is done in China, most of the electronics OEMs & ODMs are actually Taiwanese.

TSMC gets a lot of attention being as prominent as they are, but most people don't realize that the entire computing supply chain is Taiwanese. It's not just the silicon, that's just the tip of the Taiwanese iceberg.

Combine that with China having some manufacturing capacity of its own, China stands to lose far less than the west in a hypothetical war over Taiwan as far as computers go.

Also Pegatron was spun out from Asus.

This response does not actually address the thrust of my comment. How is Apple able to put out very high quality hardware, even as it uses the same few factories that others use?

It is the customers of these factories that provide the designs and dictate the quality of manufacturing and tolerances that they want, no?

Isn't that because (modern Apple Silicon) Macs are vertically integrated? The Wintel stack is a Frankenstein and nobody has particularly good quality. Dell, HP, Alienware, Razer, Samsung, Sony etc. are generally all crap these days too. The Lenovo X series is quite a bit better than most American lines, but still not particularly impressive in terms of build. Microsoft's Surface Book line looks well designed but had a bunch of heating and power problems. Even my Intel Mac frequently has problems. My M1 one, on the other hand, is amazing, so far ahead of every other computer I've ever had.

On the Wintel side, I've had better luck with small biz machines (ThinkPad, not Lenovo, or Latitude) plus upgrades in home warranty, but honestly those break down too. They're just easier to fix.

Common American L.

My T420 is still running strong 12 years later. I don't use it for much since I'm not on Linux anymore, but I occasionally open it up and play with it. I'm using a Dell Inspiron now and I'm hoping it lasts a while.

Yup. I have two working t420s (t420s is thinner than t420 and I think puts it in the realm of "acceptable" in modern standards. T420 I find is mostly a stationary laptop). They run upgraded ssd drives and ram.

I also recently stocked up on 3 used t480 as it's the last generation with easily removable battery as well as drive and memory. Those should last me a while! My primary daily driver is the 6 year old t25 - basically t470 but with good keyboard.

But I think... That's kinda the point. These laptops were upgradeable but modern ones are not. T490 and onward don't have external replaceable battery. A lot of modern thinkpads have soldered ram. And none of them have the elegance of ultrabay of yore.

Most of the newer business class laptops I've seen just have a few screws to pull the back panel and replace the battery. It takes about 5-10 minutes.

Right but that's a) compared to 5 seconds with external battery and b) requires certain comfort and skill level and c) as you point only for specific laptops

Regarding c), I personally never get anything but business laptops. The consumer ones are just too crappy, plastic everywhere, won’t last more than 3–4 years, underspecced hinges, and plastic clips.

The business ones are the same price or cheaper past the three years mark when IT departments all get rid of them at the same time and spare parts are plentiful for the next decade.

The T480 and older have two batteries; one fixed internal and one removable external. It transparently switches between them, so you can hot-swap the external with out any interruption. Fantastic feature!

My Inspiron made it 7 years before a chip in the battery that identifies the battery as dell authentic died. The battery itself was still 95% good (I mostly used it plugged in, and set the bios so)

Still, a laptop without a battery lost many convenience factors, like moving to another room without shutting down.

Now I bought a M2 max and am mostly pleased. Still can’t say I’m a huge fan of macOS, but it’s serviceable.

I try to get 10 years out of my devices. Fingers crossed.