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Comment by exitb | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting concept, but perhaps a bit financially and environmentally wasteful, when you can get a 10 year old ThinkPad for 10% of the price that will perform roughly as well as this one. We don't need to bring more low-powered laptops into this world.

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Maybe https://www.ifixit.com/News/94927/how-open-hardware-empowers... helps to get how it's different than "just" getting older hardware that had good repairability scores (indeed like ThinkPabs,cf https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc... ) namely that the idea isn't to "hijack" a locked-down supply chain and get cheap parts assembled anywhere. Rather it's to challenge that supply chain and open it up, which is indeed going to be expensive, maybe even environmentally wasteful (to clarify IMHO) at first but then long term will radically improve the situation.

How are they better than framework? Looks a worse product for much higher prices.

MNT is entirely open hardware and much more free-software-friendly, right? If you care about stuff like freedom and autonomy in computing, and you have the money to spend, the Reform seems like a far better product to me.

What part of framework is less open than MNT?

MNT publishes everything: source code, schematics, complete BOMs, mechanical design files. You could produce one of their laptops, or any part of it, yourself through normal PCB suppliers like JLC and 3d print a case.

Reproducing what they have aside, you can also modify any aspect of it by remixing their designs. The most common example of this has been custom keyboard layouts (ergo, split, etc).

Framework is perhaps well-documented, but it's not open. There are only pinouts, partial schematics and some MCAD stuff published for extension development but no ECAD designs.

Lots of components from third parties, starting with the processors they use (Intel/AMD vs ARM processors).

Framwork is usability and performance first, openness second. MNT is the other way around.

framework doesn't open source their firmware. despite major demand from their community [0]. they're the only ones among major manufacturers of linux-ready laptops (novacustom, starbook, system76) who haven't bothered to do it. i consider framework to be driven by marketing more than values or honesty

[0] https://community.frame.work/t/responded-coreboot-on-the-fra...

I can rebuild my Pocket reform as I choose in full. I can't with the framework I have.

It took me a while and a few regrettable purchases to come to terms with this, but you hit the nail on the head here. I tried to replace an old ThinkPad T440p with a Pinebook Pro at one point. It wasn't even a sidegrade, struggled with video playback, had a very small amount of soldered RAM that made web browsing difficult. I'd love to move away from x86 but maybe it'll be another decade before any of the affordable stuff is worth using. It really is hard to beat a ThinkPad from eBay. Even 4 years old or newer you can get quite performant machines for under $1000. On the less low-end there are the Apple Silicon machines, but Asahi needs a bit more time to bake as well. I'm still hopeful for the future, but will be more cautious in actually embracing it from now on.

On the other hand, since all the design files are available, anyone can design an upgraded motherboard for this machine and keep all the other parts out of the landfill.

That’s true. It doesn’t even have to be just „anyone” as they sell compute module upgrades themselves. The thing it though, the old ThinkPads are already here, readily available. It’s still more environmentally conscious to get one every few years instead of buying a new compute module.

I'm not sure it's so clear. On one hand, businesses will continue to purchase computers and sell them in lots every few years. On the other, every computer purchased from some other supplier is one less made by someone else. What's important about a computer is it's suitability for purpose, which is not necessarily the same thing as fastest / latest / cheapest / whatever. If my purpose requires modular expansion, my choices are this thing and Framework. Neither of which I'm going to find inexpensive used. I can think of a lot of scientific and engineering data logging applications that would be great for. And a machine like that might serve 20 years if it works well at the task. I've seen a lot of machine controls still running Windows 98.

https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole is another great example of a machine I've seen people mod into all manner of special-purpose device that wouldn't work as well with a used business laptop.

I think it’s very important to have someone making new, open, upgradeable computers. Getting an old computer might be more environmentally conscious now, but it doesn’t feel sustainable in the long term. New computers will (need to) continue being made, and the Reform by far seems like the best way to go about that.

A few nerds like us getting all wrapped up in environmental impact is going to be overshadowed by 1 day's worth of laptops bought at a single Costco. Unless you're able to affect a large group of people (ie: what Framework is doing), I wouldn't get too worked up about the impact of custom PCBs vs old ThinkPads - on any reasonably scale, it just doesn't matter.

I agree, it's probably a better idea to stick to something that was sold in high volume - if only for replacement parts down the road. If one really needs low power, an older M series Mac would also suit the bill (sacrificing many of the other benefits of course).

> you can get a 10 year old ThinkPad for 10% of the price that will perform roughly as well as this one.

Eventually those Thinkpads will run/wear out. The hardware designs for a [pretty much a Thinkpad] will be a good thing to have then. Let rich nerds looking for bragging rights support development for the future; call them patrons.

Also, they will sell 6 of these, it's not an environmental concern in any way.

Fully free documentation and modding from scratch makes it possible to fix problems that go unsolved im commercial devices.

for instance, some intel cpus with ME could be hacked from both built in ethernet and wireless OUT OF BAND. The ME was accessible in commercial laptops, but since it was not "supported" the end user had no way of even disabling it.

Agree, being weaker than an N100 I would argue by large it is already ewaste compared to just getting an old thinkpad or similar.

Its over engineered in some ways and woefully under engineered in others. Any real effort in making it more performant or trying to extend it's life will just generate more additional ewaste than it will save by just reusing existing hardware.

I read this as "never buy new electronics because someones old used one is less e-waste".

The motherboard is modular and the compute part of this is replaceable, it's sort of the whole point.

The modules are mostly compatible between all of their products: MNT Reform, MNT Pocket Reform that are available now and the future MNT Reform Next (a more streamlined laptop) and the MNT Station (mini desktop pc).

Good luck reusing that existing hardware when the bespoke battery is no longer available. As far as I know this is the only laptop maker with an open-access (open source?) charging circuit, no reverse-engineering needed.

Also there's a user story out there where a laptop is a mobile terminal and the actual processing power happens remotely in the cloud. With modern agentic workflows and how fast they're changing it makes sense to optimize for longevity on the client hardware.

Depending on the model though, aftermarket (or even new old stock) is readily available. If you buy used business class laptops like I do, you’re all but guaranteed to be in good shape regarding at least batteries.

One day we will actually run out of "old" ThinkPads. They are already quite pricey in a lot of places in the world - especially the ones with libreboot support.

If you want this but more powerful then you're probably looking for https://novacustom.com/

It's like framework laptops, but EU based and without the drama of funding a fascist developer.

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