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Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

I agree with their conclusion.

I somewhat regret buying my framework laptop at this stage, because the answer to every fault is "buy a new component, from framework".

I'm not sure I blame them for this really, but there is no competitive market of parts (or really any market at all), which means that the reality is that you're just locking your money to them. They also often have stock issues, so woe betide you if your component fails at the wrong time.

It's very hard to predict costs here, but framework laptops do seem to fail more than other brands, and their laptops do tend to be more expensive. In comparison to MacBooks I've used over the years, which other than screen delaminating, have been faultless, at least.

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We bulk bought a lot of Framework Intel 12th gen laptops to kit out our engineering team.

Within a year many of these (>20%) started experiencing the "400 MHz bug" where the CPU is either intermittently or constantly stuck at 400 MHz, and the laptop starts to heat up like an oven. As far as I know there has never been any conclusive fix for this issue from Framework, or even an official debugging guide.

It really soured me on the idea of repairable laptops - what's the point of it being "repairable" if you have huge fundamental flaws in the hardware that go unfixed?

I had a similar issue on AMD 7040, where it would lock too I think 800Mhz or something. It didn't get hot, it would just obviously be very sluggish until I restarted. The issue popped up a few times, but I think was ultimately fixed with a Linux change.

Have you seen any of the fixes people talked about in that thread? Apparently some fixed it, hopefully something works for you https://community.frame.work/t/framework-400mhz-issue/83910/

I actually got bit by this particular bug (I think) just a few days ago.

At least in my case, a proper cold shutdown was the remedy. (Many normal reboots were attempted in vain)

I've had this sort of thing happen with a Dell XPS, and their response was "purchase a new laptop". While it would be great if we had stronger consumer protection, for both economic and environmental reasons I prefer the Framework approach.

When you purchase a new laptop, you can choose a different manufacturer who may have a more durable product. When you have a framework, you're forced to buy the same component from the same company that made it poorly in the first place, if it's even in stock.

You're always free to purchase a new laptop, though.

When you buy a framework, you are not forced to buy the same component from framework. You are free to buy a new laptop like you would if your laptop from Dell failed.

While that's true, I'd still rather replace a single component rather than turn a whole laptop into e-waste.

You didn't mention what the problem was, but Dell laptops are so ubiquitous that buying replacement parts on eBay is both very easy and highly affordable. This is one of the reasons I'm partial to Dell, even in the face of all the objectively better-designed alternatives.

having 2 fw 13s this is my experience as well (and also friends who bought into FW); i was willing to give the 13 pro a try until they downgraded my order. I inevitably cancelled and went with a dell xps14 and its a fantastic laptop. I am unsure bout any future fw purchases. also my m1 macbook pro is made so well I've abused this to the cows come home and i feel like it still has another 3+ years to it..

everytime someone brings up the e-waste aspects of fw, i don't know if its that simple...because i've definitely already generated much more e-waste with my frameworks than any other laptop i've bought in the last decade

that being said, i do like the fw vision, but they might be trying to do TOO much that their quality is suffering for it

> because i've definitely already generated much more e-waste with my frameworks than any other laptop i've bought in the last decade

How so? Most FW parts seem quite resellable, did you just throw them away after upgrading or something?

A couple years ago, my personal laptop died and that was all the excuse I needed to finally get one of these Framework laptops that everyone was raving about. I was all set to part with roughly $1700. Pulled my credit card out of my wallet and everything. Until I started filling out the order information and they said it was backordered for 6 months! Yeah, I couldn't wait that long.

I started looking at refurbished Dell Precisions and came across one that was $800 with specs not _too_ far off from the Framework 16. Not exactly what a wanted, but it ticked all the boxes and was a very decent deal. I procrastinated a bit by accident and then happened to be checking back on the morning of Black Friday and saw that they had cut the price to $400. I've never clicked "Add to Cart" so fast in my life.

Now, to be fair, when it arrived the battery was pretty much toast and the webcam didn't work, so after sourcing replacements and fixing those myself, it ended up being more like a $500 laptop. Still a bargain for a pretty damn good machine. It has done everything I asked of it. I'm very happy that I wasn't able to order a Framework and walked away from the experience $1000 richer.

> In comparison to MacBooks ...

I can buy 3rd party: RAM, SSD, WI-FI,random Expansion cards from the marketplace. I can open and clean and change thermal paste, etc. I've heard the display can be bought from alibaba, etc.

I can't even open my Mac.

The expansion cards always seemed a gimmick to me: it's just a USB-C port, loaded down with the extra plastic necessary to claim it's an expansion port. I guess some folks find it more convenient than a dongle, but when I'm using a laptop for portability it's rare I want anything other than USB-C. (When the laptop is sitting at home or in the office on a desk, just plug in a Thunderbolt dock and get all the ports I could want.)

The tech is not news, but the execution is also matter.

Like Airpod after all is just a bluetooth earphone, but it is way more successful than traditional one.

> change thermal paste

You know what’s even better than easily changed thermal paste?

A laptop that doesn’t need it changed.

Land Rover guys love to say how easy they are to repair, and forget to mention they need ten times as many repairs as other vehicles.

This exactly.

My post was not a fiery indictment of framework, more that I am musing that perhaps I have been duped. Not because they aren't repairable (they are), but because I didn't consider that the quality would be so much lower than other options.

I genuinely don't know which is cheaper or better for the environment: buying a macbook that I change out every 8-10 years (this is how long they would last, based on prior experience), or I buy a framework and change out parts as they fail.

ALL thermal paste ages. There is no thermal paste that never needs to be changed.

Thats like BMW saying their transmission fluid never needs to be refilled. It absolutely does, its just financially more lucrative for them if the transmission explodes and you have to buy a new one or a whole new car.

My conspiracy theory is that selling parts is pretty much their main business case.

A modular gpu using a new standard that is form-factor specific for only a specific model? Matte panel released a few months after the first 13.5 model was released with glossy panel as only option?

It sounds a bit fishy to me. But maybe I'm just a bit too cynical .

> My conspiracy theory is that selling parts is pretty much their main business case.

I think this is absolutely what you sell to investors. For it to be attractive to consumers though (and thus attractive to investors, since people actually need to buy the thing), there has to be a balance. They haven't even managed to conjure up a market for third party expansion cards, which feels like the lowest of hanging fruit.

At the moment they are living on borrowed time and good will from the tech / hippie community who want to be more sustainable and customizable. I think they have likely lost me at this point. I don't know how close they are to losing everybody else.

I think what expansion cards third parties are extremely niche (SDR) or have much better alternatives (to me, and I suspect most others If they thought about it, the 10gbE cards. Get a dock or two for the presumably limited locations you have 10gb infra and the need for it).

What most others have realised is that devices fit the 99% with USB-C, A and HDMI. Or, increasingly, just USB-C as everyone who needs one has a fleet of cheap dongles to provide just the right IO.

Manufacturer forces you to throw away previous device and buy a new one: it's a conspiracy to make money

Manufacturer lets you replace each part separately: it's a conspiracy to make money

Every day I show up to work is a conspiracy between me and my mortgage lender to make money.

I see your point, but what i'm talking about is the company generating a strong incentive to people to buy upgrades or replacements.

This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one.

Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't have a bias against it. But those suspicious "features" pulled me away from the 16" model for example.

> a perfectly functioning main board

If I understand correctly, the problem was that the board was the exact opposite of that. The post title uses the phrase “bricked”.

I agree that FWs handling was pretty bad, but then again, what exactly is the proposed ideal-but-realistic solution they should have offered here?

Seriously?

ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 utility. That's from a 10-year-old MB. Probably a few other examples.

"Bricked" is a bad term for system without a proper software/firmware update path. A LOT could have been done here to improve "repairability" (with quotes, because this is a software issue on a perfectly fine mainboard).

A/B updates automatically recovering the bios is case of failed update, recovery from usb in case that somehow fails as well (InsydeH2O call it "crisis mode" I think). Lenovo support both. Dell too afaik. This is very much realistic to have, and I would expect it from a decent product. A computer without this feature is pretty much designed to fail more easily.

If for some very weird reason framework was unable to offer this, then at very least they could have placed a header on the board with flashing instructions on the website, instead of advising to buy new hardware.

I mean, sure, I agree it would be ideal if BIOS updates literally couldn’t fail - I meant to ask what they could have done to resolve this situation now.

But yes, lack of an USB bios recovery path is a pretty terrible design fault, and I’m surprised that they haven’t improved this by now.

ah, you mean after the accident. Well for starter I would acknowledge the issue (thing that according to the liked thread did not happen, maybe it did not affect enough customers?). Then they should either provide an official recovery guide instead of letting customers figure it out themself on the forum (I can see various pictures of people hooking clips to the flash chip and wondering want to flash exactly), or repair it pro-bono since it's a job that probably take ~10 mins for affected customer and it's an issue caused by a design flaw.

Tons of motherboards for other computers have dual BIOS update processes so it can roll back to the old version if the upgrade is unsuccessful.

They could have also had the BIOS chip be socketable and sold it individually pre-programmed.

I agree not everyone does this, but its not like some incredibly out there idea.

I mean, sure? Every other laptop company's main business is to sell laptops, so if you want those features or often time even a repair, you have to buy a whole new laptop. If you're Apple, you might need to buy a new laptop for a memory upgrade.

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