Comment by commandersaki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by commandersaki | Hacker News Reader

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Bought a Framework 13" in 2022 (Intel 13th gen). It's equipped with 32GB ram and a 1TB drive.

It has good intentions but falls short. I would say overall it is a mediocre laptop in terms of quality.

Will it last longer than any other laptop? I would think so, it has a strong story of available parts and upgrades. Similarly I believe it would last longer than any other laptop, since you can essentially do a Ship of Theseus with it.

Pain points:

  - display hinge problem, picking up the laptop would make the screen lie flat 180 degrees, which is really annoying - this has been fixed in newer versions of framework, but to get a new hinge kit costs $39 AUD plus $30 AUD in shipping, so I'm not willing to make that purchase due to the ridiculous shipping price.

  - the modular ports are nice, but I'd rather just have fixed ports and more of them, of course that'd obstruct the repair/modularity story.

  - sometimes the modular ports do not work after resuming from a hibernate, I have to eject and reseat it.

  - the display is okay, I notice mine has a small granular line of off coloured pixels - i don't think this is due to any physical damage but rather a defect in the screen as I've never had this kind of issue with any other laptop and I've handled the framework fairly carefully; but this line of off coloured pixels is very faint and virtually unnoticeable at bright colours, so it's not a huge deal as I make it out to be.

  - the keyboard works great, but I was hoping for an upgrade to something along the lines of an apple style layout with half height inverted-t arrow keys and fn/ctrl swapped; the idea of a marketplace for custom parts doesn't seem to really exist.

  - Battery life of about 3-4 hours of very average usage.

  - Speakers are trash.

The webcam / mic are good enough.

I run Linux on it, and seems to run pretty stable.

I needed this laptop because I needed 32GB of ram for compile jobs. I have since got a macbook pro 16" with >32GB of ram and it can compile what I need using Rosetta 2 for Linux (so amd64 compiles). Since my mac can now do everything I need, I very rarely touch my Framework. I loathe the idea of having to use it over a mac laptop.

First off, thanks for the fair-minded review. It answered pretty much every significant question I had about the Frame.

Second, I would like you to rethink a decision. You didn’t ask for my advice, and I’m sorry to be so rude as to give it to you. But I’m hoping it will save you a bunch of pain.

When I read this, I really felt for you:

    a new hinge kit costs $39 AUD plus $30 AUD in shipping

If you are a programmer or use your laptop a lot during the day, I would like you to consider making the purchase anyway. That sounds pretty annoying to me, and it seems to me that $70 AUD might very well be worth the investment to preserve your sanity and your flow.

Sometimes we just buy the wrong tool and have to replace it. If $70 AUD is, say, 2-4 hours of your labor after taxes, I bet having that constant drag on the edges of your consciousness removed would be worthwhile.

For me it is almost always worth the replacement if it makes my working day easier and helps yield more billable hours. Plus, I bet if your significant other were that bothered by it, you would be only too happy to get the upgrade.

Again, apologies for thinking you need my help in this matter.

Yeah, the laptop is in reserve mode, as in it's a spare that I can use if I need it. What will likely happen though is I'll find someone to donate the laptop to, and when that times comes I'll buy the hinge kit because I wouldn't wish this annoyance upon anyone.

The hinge issue is egregiously bad, and I don't know how Framework could even ship these laptops in the first place without first addressing it.

The parts are nowhere near as inexpensive as a popular ThinkPad model, and the quality issues (rare UEFI updates compared to the competition, poor speakers that rattle, weak hinges, etc) are notable.

I had to buy a friends Framework 13 to get parts to keep mine going, as spending $240 for just the top and bottom case and plastic screen bezel seemed excessive.

More users have put their Framework 13's on a shelf to languish than I expected. The alternatives all seem better polished.

The way I see the modular ports story is that the use-case is less being able to switch them, more getting the ports you want. I've got a usb c on either side, which I don't have with my work ThinkPad. I still have a usb a yubikey, so I can make sure to have that port. etc

Agreed on the battery unfortunately, on my first gen 13" it's just mediocre.

Agree on the modular port reasoning. My most commonly used non-charging port is the micro SD card, which I imagine is rare.

Yeah most people don't have a lot of things connected to their laptop, or else they more likely would have bought a desktop. But the things that different people have connected to their laptop is often quite different from each other.

So most people don't need a lot of ports, they just might need different ports.

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