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What conclusion, I'm not asserting they are going to fail. Startup failure rates are close to 90%, being concerned that this startup might also fail isn't unreasonable.
My intuition is that hardware based startup failure rates are significantly higher, still.
A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3 years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby programming while visiting parents. My only other laptops were a work machine (X1 Carbon, I want to say from 2019) that I didn't want to travel with and a Surface Go that I didn't want to wrangle into having a decent dev environment. When I booted it up, I checked the most recent entry in pacma…
I used an x220 as my primary machine for a long time. The low resolution screen and the unusually crappy touchpad are what got me to upgrade. The touchpad in particular was horrible because it had different resolutions in X and Y. In one of those (I don't remember which) it was lower than the screen. So I found myself frequently unable to get to the 1 pixel wide handles to resize windows without the wigglestick.
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Try one out before you start with that conclusion
That's the thing, their USP is long-term maintainability and upgradeability, but if they call it quits in a year, you're stuck with a niche product that nobody else is willing to make parts for.
They seem to have too much invested to not make it a year.
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That's the thing, their USP is long-term maintainability and upgradeability, but if they call it quits in a year, you're stuck with a niche product that nobody else is willing to make parts for.
To be fair, once you hit 5 years (or if you’re unlucky 3 years) it becomes just about impossible to get OEM parts from Dell or Lenovo and you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if you’re in enterprise. So either way you could end up in the same boat, except if framework comes up with a gen 2 it’s possible with enough consumer pressure they’ll make the parts cross compatible.
They will just buy, while a repairable laptop could create beginners who can learn to maintain well designed equipment.
It might not give the iPhone 23 feels.
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> the value propositions of 2021/2022 hardware doesn't look better I'm glad you managed to distill my feelings so clearly. Most new things are just gimmicks, it's pretty rare that good innovations come into the laptop area. Think of stuff like non-16:9 displays: older thinkpads had beautiful displays that were amazing for doing actual work. Now we're seeing 16:10 displays coming back, and it's awesome. The ThinkPad T…
Getting off-topic, but you know that ribbon bar is collapsible, right? Also Windows up until 10 supported slim task bar, 11 unfortunately doesn't, probably as a compensation for the better displays available :(.
Yes but it was really meant as an example. Take for example another program like a web browser: between the title bar, the menu bar, the tab bar and the bookmark bar and you're losing a lot of vertical screen real estate.
Yeah the bookmark bar is collapsible and nowadays firefox and other browsers hide the menu bar, but those are useful features (particularly the bookmark bar) and I just want them around.
The problem is not that I should be hiding useful stuff like the ribbon bar or the bookmarks bar, the problem is that 16:9 displays are moronic and should not have been pushed onto everybody forcefully.
They might be okay for content-consumption-oriented laptops, but they're awful for real-work-oriented laptops (readl work raning from editing a spreadsheet, editing a document in word and even editing code of course).
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No wonder that high-end external display vendors like Dell/HP (and others) kept selling 16:10 external displays for professional use.
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What conclusion, I'm not asserting they are going to fail. Startup failure rates are close to 90%, being concerned that this startup might also fail isn't unreasonable.
Let’s not skim the surface. The Framework seems to be a modern Thinkpad with a similar USP of how they were built in 2012 before manufacturers tried to introduce and convince consumers of disposable laptops for the past 10 years. The reason I suggested handling one is the build quality for a first gen device is hard to believe until you hold one and use it for a few days or weeks. The framework is well beyond the qua…
I find it funny how people seem to fixate so much on the fact that the author upgraded various components to say the title is misleading. As someone with apparently similar requirements, the take-away from this should be this: Even though significant work is required to keep these old machines working, some people prefer to do so. Crucially, they prefer it not because they love tinkering, but simply because the value…
I've been using my Thinkpad T420 since 2011 just fine and I haven't needed to do anything to it.
I have T460. I like the fact that it has two batteries, good casing, great touchpad (unlike the one that I've had on T440s), holes for liquid drainage... When you put SSD into it, and have 16GB of RAM I don't see it lagging behind more modern ThinkPads. In my opinion, new is not always batter :) The only thing that I miss on my T460 is better graphic adapter. I have Intel HD but even with it I can play games up to Fr…
Overall I get great performance even for stuff like running IDEA and a spring web app in a docker container, and I get 13h+ of battery life out of it (+10h if I switch the external battery to the second one I keep in my laptop bag).
I'd wish the 30th anniversary thinkpad (coming this year) will be just an upgraded T25 with a modern ryzen processor but in every other way identical (I know, an unrealistic dream)
On a post about ThinkPads, this makes me happy.
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I love frame.work as a concept, but it's definitely not a "proven" concept at the moment. The company could very well go under or choose not to support upgrading the laptop.
Even assuming Framework shuts down tomorrow and destroys their existing stock of replacement parts and the specs for making new ones, I would argue that you can at the very least assume permanent availability of RAM, SSD, Display (it uses a commodity panel), fan, and battery (there are knockoff batteries for much more obscure laptops). I would assume that keyboards, trackpads, etc. will also be available as some lapt…
I mean, you can buy a new-ish Thinkpad where you can replace/upgrade all of those things. You get great compatibility and most hw/sw compatibility bugs are already known and have workarounds. Framework has to have some other value propositions as well besides being able to replace things you mentioned.