121–130 of 476 posts
I'm happy to answer questions anyone has on this product!
What is the battery life when running Chrome OS?
If I wanted to, could I later put a full Linux or Windows in some sort of dual boot?
I'm having a hard time imagining the audience for this product. EDU most likely isn't going to go with this product due to cost (and can get easily complex, imagine trying to juggle all the expansion ports being lost by students), and typical audiences for ChromeOS devices don't always overlap with audiences who want easy repairability (and most likely are purchasing the device for the lack of nuances that other OSes…
And somehow, this thing got my attention. I don't have any interest in their traditional PC laptop line, but I've been waffling over buying a Pixelbook for years because dealing with Google Support is worse than entering a contract with a devil.
If it helps you reconcile it, Framework doesn't do bulk or business orders right now, anyway, so the target demographic is only individuals.
Hopefully someone can take that fear away.
I'm having a hard time imagining the audience for this product. EDU most likely isn't going to go with this product due to cost (and can get easily complex, imagine trying to juggle all the expansion ports being lost by students), and typical audiences for ChromeOS devices don't always overlap with audiences who want easy repairability (and most likely are purchasing the device for the lack of nuances that other OSes…
I fricken lost my titanium SPORKS from my kitchen, one of which was a "businuss card" gift from JD Blair... and I know that nobody stole my sporks... but for the life of me I have no idea where my sporks are, my THREE pairs of $500 glasses that costo made for me and so many other stupid things...(FFS I literally just bought a pair of $150 BT headset, and left it behind within two days of purchase (i was able to get them back - but, yeah...))
I cant imagine if my laptop had removable parts (I leave shit in Ubers all the time)
I'm not sure if HN is a representative audience regarding interest in ChromeOS, but personally all I hope is the money Framework makes from this allows them to release a larger model on which I can slap Linux on. Lightweight 15" laptops with great Linux compatibility aren't so easy to find.
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Googler, opinions are my own. Google definitely has not lost interest. The Chromebook team at Google is actually involved in almost (all?) Chromebooks made. Since Google is responsible for all firmware/software updates for the life of that Chromebook, they are involved in that way. As well, the hardware/firmware teams here do a lot of the core engineering to getting the core parts of the hardware working (motherboard…
Sorry, I'm not sure I believe this. I have a Pixelbook that still gets ChromeOS updates regularly- the Android and "Linux on ChromeOS" features are still half baked. After wakeup - Android apps hang or show empty windows, Terminal takes minutes to work, and a reboot usually fixes everything. (This is after a powerwash and being on the stable channel)
I will say, the Pixelbook was super underpowered. They use the ultra-portable Intel CPUs that have a TDP of 7W, which makes them super slow with anything CPU intensive. The Dragonfly chrombook has a 15W base power usage, and can boost up to 55W, which allows for way more CPU intensive operations.
Yeah, they are half-baked in that they are trying to be a VM for Android and Linux apps, and neither are perfect yet. As far as I can tell, both are still receiving attention.
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We bought refurb HP and Lenovo laptops for less than $400. >$900 for student laptops is a big no-go. I guess if you were a bigger University, but I cannot see it for the average school.
Though in theory, upgrading/repairing these over time would be cheaper than spending $400 every few years or each time a kid breaks one.
Buying parts for a Framework will cost more than parts for a $400 laptop of which there are thousands on ebay of every single part. For example let's assume the screen is broken and we have a $400 laptop which can be replaced on. A new screen is about $100-150 (based on a quick ebay look of $400 laptops). A new screen for a frame.work is $180.
Your ONLY option with a frame.work is to buy through them at the moment, there is no other part providers. You are at the mercy of frame.work to provide support for parts and supply.
With a $400 Lenovo a quick ebay search can provide you every single part from all over the world at a variety of costs. As well as the normal companies that provide parts for them (and Lenovo themselves).
This is awesome! I still use my Pixelbook, and I love it, and was always dismayed that it seemed to be yet another great product that Google lost interest in. For folks wondering "who's the market in this?", the Linux container support in ChromeOS is awesome - my Pixelbook was actually a great dev laptop (I ran postgres, VSCode, Node, etc on it), just with age it's lack of upgrades is starting to show. So for me, on…
I think the question is, why ChromeOS instead of a Linux?
I love Linux and I would consider myself a power user (understanding HW arch, working with kernel sources).
Basic Chromebook apps (+ Play Store) are something that "just work" for 80% of time for my use-cases (which is, browser and ssh-ing into a power machine in ze cloud/DC). I also have rather good understanding of threat models here, and the quality of the sandboxes and HW roots-of-trust, hardening and software isolation on a typical Chromebook, so it gives me a relative piece of mind for specific use-cases (personal/family files etc.). Supporting an extended family, if they can get used to Chromebooks (it covers 99% of their needs, esp. that Android apps can be installed here) is a bliss.
Customizing Linux is mental fun, but on a road you probably something that just works, and typical Linux is rough at edges - GFX support, hibernation, esp. if you don't want to stick to some LTS distro, b/c you always need this newer package for dev purposes or tinkering.
The remaining 15% is covered by a VM, which seems really nicely integrated (X11 proxy etc). The remaining remaining 5% cannot be covered - custom kernels, custom USB drivers, occasional need to use Windows, but that's fine, I can do that on a desktop or on some random, cheap, low-power laptop.
In essence, it's just a thin client on steroids, which almost always works in its basic form. But if you want something more interesting, there's always a VM with some Linux distro, or Android apps via the Play Store. But these are optional and don't affect stability of the core system, if you don't use them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the difference from original?
ChromeOS! Specifically, the Mainboard is custom-designed for ChromeOS. This means it uses coreboot instead of a proprietary BIOS and has Google's Titan C security chip. There are some other smaller differences. To keep the cost down, the top cover is aluminum-formed instead of CNCed, for compatibility reasons we weren't able to bring our fingerprint module in, and we were able to improve both audio quality and speake…
In the Markeplace I can see the new speakers but not the new audio board (or is the codec actually on the motherboard?).
I'm having a hard time imagining the audience for this product. EDU most likely isn't going to go with this product due to cost (and can get easily complex, imagine trying to juggle all the expansion ports being lost by students), and typical audiences for ChromeOS devices don't always overlap with audiences who want easy repairability (and most likely are purchasing the device for the lack of nuances that other OSes…