Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Framework Laptop 12 review

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 398 posts

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#161

Post by econ »

nucleardog wrote: post #130

> A good laptop, but not a good value Where "value" is purely monetary, I think that pretty succinctly sums up my experience/views on the Framework product line. They make good laptops, but you can generally get more for fewer dollars. If you're shopping on price, you can probably just skip right over their entire product line. That doesn't mean that their offering doesn't have value. It has value has a vote with you…

I think monetary value can be accomplished by streamlining a second hand marketplace. If you've purchased a device the vendor can keep track of what and when. It should be relatively simple to put the known device or part back in the shop. Depending on the part and age they can also buy back and refurbish parts. A standard discount on an upgrade if you return the old part. Etc

One could even allow other manufacturers to offer parts and do certification for a fee.

It should be possible to push down prices and make update paths more appealing.

https://community.frame.work/t/community-market-category/522...

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#162

Post by e12e »

throw0101d wrote: post #67
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux support

Depending on the features you need, you can probably pick up an M1/M2 for a decent price nowadays that could work well enough: * https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overvie...

No external display support under Linux.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#163

Post by benrutter »

atrus wrote: post #148
nucleardog wrote: post #130

> A good laptop, but not a good value Where "value" is purely monetary, I think that pretty succinctly sums up my experience/views on the Framework product line. They make good laptops, but you can generally get more for fewer dollars. If you're shopping on price, you can probably just skip right over their entire product line. That doesn't mean that their offering doesn't have value. It has value has a vote with you…

I think the repairabilty makes it hard to even compare monetary value, since in theory, you'd be keeping the same body, while swapping out the mainboard. Is it cheaper to buy two other laptops compared to one laptop + mainboard? That's what, a 3-5 year timeline? Who knows what prices/capabilities/etc will be like then.

Yeah, this is my experience with a Fairphone 4. It seemed pricey initially, but I have saved sooo much by being able to carry out simple repairs.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#164

Post by Dylan16807 »

perching_aix wrote: post #135
Dylan16807 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPI doesn't generalize across different types of display but it works pretty well within a category of monitor, laptop, tablet, phone. For TV you probably just assume it's 4K and figure out the size you like. It's wrong but it's wrong in a way that causes minimal trouble and there's no better option. And if you add viewing distance explicitly, PPI+distance isn't meaningfully worse than PPD+distance, and people will u…

Eh, I suppose. Just the criteria of "is it hidpi? yes/no" readily mislead GP for example (i.e. it definitely is, just still "not hidpi enough "), so I felt it would be helpful if the mechanism at play was clarified. Maybe I came off too strong though. Felt it would be clearer to use the correct variable at least, than to try and relativize PPI.

I guess, but even without measuring pixel inches/degrees it feels clearly wrong to me to say that proper 1x on a 12 inch laptop screen is only 960x600. 1280x720 or 1280x800 makes more sense to me, and then there's no confusion because 1920 is a clear 1.5x resolution.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#165

Post by kej »

mhitza wrote: post #22
criddell wrote: post #14

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…

> 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…

> thermal, fan noise issues

Anecdotal, obviously, but disabling Turbo-Core [0] on my AMD Framework 13 stopped all of my fan noise and heat complaints, with no noticeable performance impacts. It went from being so loud that my wife on the other side of the room would ask if my computer was okay to quieter than my ThinkPad, and from noticeably hot to just slightly warm.

Kind of ridiculous that it takes messing with an obscure system file to resolve it, but not any more ridiculous than issues I've had with other brands.

[0] It's `echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost` or something like that, and `echo 1` to turn it back on when you want that extra performance.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#167

Post by nickjj »

adityamwagh wrote: post #25
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #20

The pricing is crazy, they need to halve the prices to be competitive with Apple and Lenovo on the high-end and ASUS on the low-end.

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

In theory this sounds good but in practice I'm not convinced there's a lot of value in the extension aspect.

My desktop is 11 years old. It's an i5 3.2ghz quad core, 16 GB of memory, SSD machine that I built from individual parts for ~$850 in 2014. It has been running 24/7 since then. It handles 4k and 1440p dual monitors without issues for all of my programming / video editing needs. The only thing it doesn't do is run modern games.

I only say all of that because I've never upgraded individual parts on it. Every X years I build a new machine that lasts. I've been doing that for around 20 years now. The only thing I replaced once (not this machine) was a PSU that got nuked by lightning and not having a surge protector.

Personally if I were going the laptop route I'd much rather get something 80% as fast as the framework but at half the price (or less). There's a ton of laptops in the $600 range that crush my desktop in specs. Things like a Ryzen 7 7730U (16 threads @ 4.5ghz) with 32 GB of memory, 1 TB+ SSD, reasonable display / ports etc..

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#168

Post by perching_aix »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #164
perching_aix wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I suppose. Just the criteria of "is it hidpi? yes/no" readily mislead GP for example (i.e. it definitely is, just still "not hidpi enough "), so I felt it would be helpful if the mechanism at play was clarified. Maybe I came off too strong though. Felt it would be clearer to use the correct variable at least, than to try and relativize PPI.

I guess, but even without measuring pixel inches/degrees it feels clearly wrong to me to say that proper 1x on a 12 inch laptop screen is only 960x600. 1280x720 or 1280x800 makes more sense to me, and then there's no confusion because 1920 is a clear 1.5x resolution.

For what it's worth, it's a pretty small diagonal size. Netbooks used to be about this size, and those had exactly such low resolutions on them. Conversely, you'd see 1280x720, but especially 1366x786, more on regular variety laptops (~15"), and if you crunch the numbers for these (using standard ppi), it maps pretty much exactly right. So we've come a long way on Windows/Linux/BSD land, even if there's much more to go.

3840x2160@15.3" for example would be a nice even 3.0x display scale, at 287.96 PPI, and 128 PPD at 30° hfov to match the line pair resolving capability of the human eye [0] rather than the light dot resolving of 60 PPD, although of course still far from the 10x improvement over it via hyperacuity that you linked to earlier.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity#Physiology

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#170

Post by ncallaway »

dale_huevo wrote: post #111
stavros wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far more likely to buy a RAM stick off the shelf and install it in a Framework than I am to desolder the RAM from a Macbook. Similarly, if I spill orange juice on a Framework, I can just buy a new keyboard and install it in a minute. If it were a Macbook, I'd probably throw away the whole thing, since I'd have to disassemble all of it to get to the keyboard, and it would take me hours, if I even managed to not br…

But are you really going to repair it? Or, upon spilling the juice, realize you can get a Surface Go on sale at Walmart (which this seems to be a clone of) for a bit more than a replacement keyboard and your time (which is way more than a minute) and toss it in the trash anyway.

> But are you really going to repair it?

Yes.

I've upgraded and repaired my framework laptop several times over the years. I've very familiar with opening it up and disassembling it.

Replacing the keyboard if I damaged it would absolutely be something I would do.

Post reply on HN