Live data from Hacker News

Framework Laptop 12 review

arstechnica.com

101–110 of 398 posts

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#101
post #27

What do you all use for a modern web development machine. 16GB of ram is no longer enough, I will soon upgrade to a new MBA with 32GB, but I still fear that won't be enough. I was looking at the latest framework and you can get it with 96GB of ram for $2k, that's $3600-$3800 for a mac and it's a much larger mac than I want. A quick scan of Dell and Lenovo non workstation class laptops didn't show any with more than 3…

I've never got upvotes reciting this but won't stop doing: there's right amount of sluggishness that the majority wants, and both software bloat and debloat happens until it hits honey-like sublime-to-some lagging is achieved. Only software and technologies that are _buttery_ smooth, not ethanoly smooth, will survive, and nothing will ever solve the software sluggishness that frustrates some, which unfortunately include myself.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#102

it’s really hard not to just buy a MacBook Air at this price level.

Linux support

The market doesn't profitably support running desktop Linux on a laptop outside of a business/development setting, in which case it's the IT department buying the laptop and I don't get to choose. Which means "this Dell or this Thinkpad". Chromebooks don't count because they are just Google data-hoovering appliances not real laptops.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#103
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need an 8gb docker image as part of your local web development stack, that’s a toolchain problem.

One of our vendors publishes a 70GB docker image as their SDK. It's awful.

That is horrendous. I'm assuming it contains some kind of giant dataset in its entirety?

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#104
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case. What you're asking are the things I'm…

It isn't the chip which determines whether it's fanless. Basically every modern chip supports power capping and then the power cap is determined by how much heat the machine can dissipate. What that really determines is multi-thread performance. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of one core? No problem. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of all the cores? For that you have to lower the clock speed…

Doesn't this miss differences between CPUs in their per-core efficiency?

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that’s just the cost you have to pay for repairability and extension.

I've been using my framework 13 for a while now and it's been a great laptop - part of what pushed me over was their mission of making devices lives longer, my hope is and was that maybe the vote of confidence they survive long enough to build up to a model the Apple fans here would want or at least not complain about.

I'm not sure that will ever happen. I own a Framework 16 (and am pretty happy with it), because I value repairability a lot. But the level of repairability and modularity that Framework is targeting comes with tradeoffs. This is simply the reality. Size, build quality/sturdiness, thermals, and more are going to take a hit when you have the extreme level of repairability and modularity. Framework laptops are probably never going to be the right solution for every kind of customer. And Macs are probably close the furthest thing on the opposite of the spectrum. Every choice is designed to tweak the design, aesthetics, battery life, etc. almost always at the expense of repairability. Someone who likes the part of the pareto frontier that Macs operate on is almost definitionally never going to be a Framework fan.

For me, they are great, and I plan to continue to support them. But not everyone is interested in the tradeoffs inherent in their philosophy, and that's also fine.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#106

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I…

> Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops?

Does the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition not meet these requirements? (It does have a fan but runs fairly cool according to reviews.)

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#107
post #37

I really love the lavender — VAIO-core! I do wish I could get the other modules in lavender too, but I understand why they wouldn't want to fractally-complicate their stock keeping for those items. > the Laptop 12 can only fit a single DDR5 RAM slot, which reduces memory bandwidth and limits your RAM capacity to 48GB According to this post from a Framework team member, a single 64GB SODIMM will work too and just didn…

> a single 64GB SODIMM will work too

Wait, are 64GB DDR5 SODIMMs finally out? I’ve been monitoring that for ages but almost lost hope.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#108
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're working with MCUs etc. and want the GPIO pins, you'd get far more value out of a reasonable ASUS or Lenovo model. The SD card is a big bottleneck on the Pi.

There is an M.2 hat for the Pi 5 that allows using an NVMe SSD instead of the SD card.

Like dropping a racing engine into a Hindustan Ambassador. Makes no sense.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#109
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of our vendors publishes a 70GB docker image as their SDK. It's awful.

That is horrendous. I'm assuming it contains some kind of giant dataset in its entirety?

No datasets. Most of the size is just apt packages and tools bundled into the layers. Around 5GB are "useful" things, and another 15GB are a couple of arguably justified tarballs (only one of which is needed).

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#110

> modular, repairable, upgradeable laptops In terms of phones, I largely disagree with the conventional wisdom that repairable, upgradeable, Androids are better for the environment, more cost effective for the user, etc than iPhones. It's true you can't upgrade the battery yourself , but that's a different quality from whether the battery can be upgraded. And iPhones have a much higher resale value, so they're going…

> It's true you can't upgrade the battery yourself, but that's a different quality from whether the battery can be upgraded. And how many people end up upgrading the battery is yet another quality. I would suspect a small fraction of phones with upgradeable batteries actually gets battery upgrades. Having upgradeable internal components generally correlate strongly with recyclability... however once again, in my pess…

I don't know, my guess would be that the majority of iPhones have their batteries upgraded. Apple currently still gives you money for trading in back to an iPhone 8! They probably upgrade the battery and put it up for sale in the developing world, I would guess.

I only paid $250 for my used iPhone 11, and that's not even as old as they go.

I imagine most of HN is shielded from the flourishing secondary market of old phones because they can easily afford the latest and greatest (counting even a couple years back). But at least where I live in Indiana, there's a pretty thriving ecosystem of yard sales and reuse, and people are not just going to simply throw away a functioning phone. An iPhone that's almost a decade old still has value, and there are repair shops that could put a new battery in it to keep it going for a little while yet.

If you don't think batteries get upgraded, what do you think happens? Do people really just throw their phones in the garbage?

Post reply on HN