Was seriously considering getting a Framework to replace my aging ASUS. Upgrade- and repair-ability were my main motivations.
But now I'm reconsidering. Not standing behind their own BIOS update is pretty horrible.
But now I'm reconsidering. Not standing behind their own BIOS update is pretty horrible.
Used thinkpads and the glut of EBay parts for them reach about 85% of what Framework does for me, and at half the price. But it's a different experience.
Framework does seem like better build quality than most laptops I've had, but I'm used to cheap crappy ones.
On the other hand, you do seem to find more cases of multiple people doing things like the linked bios update procedure on framework.
Very satisfied with my Framework laptop and the customer support. I can't imagine buying another laptop.
That being said, I think the particular bios-chip is a design flaw that they should communicate about and fix for future boards... Probably a teething issue thing, but they should fix it. Either a usable replaceable chip so they can just send out a fix, or the fallback bios chip....
Not "terrible" obviously, but a slight negative that the battery failed under warranty and a slight positive that they honored their published warranty.
As for BIOS updates outside warranty, I think it's always been risky for all brands. Maybe I'm wrong.
I don't think "non-sequitor" applies here.
That said, I agree with the article that a company like Framework with an ostensible mission of maximal repairability can and should at minimum provide header pins to reflash the firmware instead of requiring a bunch of adapters. Ideal would be an internal USB-C port that presents the flashed firmware as a file on a FAT filesystem that you can copy to backup or overwrite to restore/upgrade, like what the Raspberry Pi Pico does. Either approach would entail pennies of added cost per board, at most; it wouldn't take very many prevented warranty claims for that investment to pay off.
What I found from my research while writing the post is that both Dell and HP have BIOS recovery options without having to open the laptop at all, so that's not quite true. I think there's more Framework could have done here to make this a much less painful experience.
But yes, Dell is the outlier that has me saying “likely” instead of “definitely” above; they've had orders of magnitude more time and money than Framework has to throw at BIOS development, and it shows. I agree with you that Framework should be making a priority of getting their BIOSes to that level; I'm also willing to extend them some grace given the company's age and resources.