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

Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

quantum5.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 311 posts

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#201

Post by testing22321 »

alt227 wrote: post #135
cschep wrote: post #124

The lack of support from Framework is so damning. Nirav has been a fun CEO to watch, but this feels like a huge, huge miss. Can anyone defend this? Why would anyone purchase anything from this company ever again?

When your laptop dies what would you prefer, to be able to buy the specific broken part easily and replace it yourself or be forced to buy an entire new laptop?

> When your laptop dies

I assume you have when in italics to show this is a “when, not if” scenario.

Some anecdotal evidence for you:

I’ve been buying used laptops of a certain brand for almost 20 years. I buy when they are 2-3-4 years old, keep them for 3-4-5 and then sell. Usual buy price is around $1000, sell around $300.

I tote them around the world. Writing, light dev, photo and video editing. Thousands of hours of use, plenty at +40C in the dust.

I’ve never had a single failure of any part, selling the laptops 100% functional. I’ll let you figure out the brand.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#202

Post by rstat1 »

akho wrote: post #196
anthonj wrote: post #12

I really don't understand how in 2025 a competent company can't implement a trival A/B flash update. Do they depend on some obscure contractor for the firmware and have no power here?

I own the "original" gen11 Intel Framework 13. This is a company that wasn't able to ship a working RTC battery, a touchpad that would register a click when a physical click happened, a screen hinge that would reliably hold the screen in an upright position, or a USB-A port that wouldn't consume a watt of power when unused. You expect way too much engineering from them.

I also had one of this 11th Gen Intel FW13s, and the RTC battery on mine worked for a short time because they for some reason used some garbage rechargeable one with a 2 yr lifespan instead of the more common not-rechargeable battery that every other PC vendor uses with seemingly 10x the lifespan

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#203

Post by thin_carapace »

testing22321 wrote: post #201
alt227 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your laptop dies what would you prefer, to be able to buy the specific broken part easily and replace it yourself or be forced to buy an entire new laptop?

> When your laptop dies I assume you have when in italics to show this is a “when, not if” scenario. Some anecdotal evidence for you: I’ve been buying used laptops of a certain brand for almost 20 years. I buy when they are 2-3-4 years old, keep them for 3-4-5 and then sell. Usual buy price is around $1000, sell around $300. I tote them around the world. Writing, light dev, photo and video editing. Thousands of hours…

after a decade of buying that same laptop for a hundred bucks 10 years after retail release ... I have a similar experience where so far none have died of their own accord ...

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#204

Post by bityard »

beanjuiceII wrote: post #32
SCdF wrote: post #17

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 yo…

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 so…

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.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#205

Post by gonzalohm »

bsimpson wrote: post #175
gonzalohm wrote: post #2

A bit off-topic, but kind of relevant. I firmly believe that if installing custom firmware voids the warranty of a device, installing official updates should extend the warranty. I'm tired of sloppy updates or change of behavior that mess with how I use MY device. At this point, I'm convinced Google is doing this on purpose. My Google TV has become slow since the Gemini update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted it. My…

> installing official updates should extend the warranty. That sounds like a big incentive to never ship updates.

That's better than bricking devices

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#206

Post by bityard »

The non-zero chance of a BIOS update bricking my computer is why I NEVER do them to a machine that's out of warranty, unless I'm experiencing some problem that a BIOS update is _well documented_ to actually fix.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#207

Post by shibapuppie »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #35

I think cases like this should be brought before a small claims court. It seems unfair. The company (Framework Computer) provided the software, but the software is faulty and broke ("bricked") the laptop. Can you imagine if a GPU driver caused the card to get bricked? Even if out of warranty, surely the manuf would be legally liable in many jurisdictions for this faulty driver. The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells…

"talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps"

Or, if you need legal advice, go to a lawyer, not an LLM.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#208

Post by shibapuppie »

gonzalohm wrote: post #205
bsimpson wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> installing official updates should extend the warranty. That sounds like a big incentive to never ship updates.

That's better than bricking devices

Yeah we should go back to Windows XP or some other OS that no longer receives updates. Now they can't break it!

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#209

Post by LeBit »

shibapuppie wrote: post #207
throwaway2037 wrote: post #35

I think cases like this should be brought before a small claims court. It seems unfair. The company (Framework Computer) provided the software, but the software is faulty and broke ("bricked") the laptop. Can you imagine if a GPU driver caused the card to get bricked? Even if out of warranty, surely the manuf would be legally liable in many jurisdictions for this faulty driver. The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells…

"talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps" Or, if you need legal advice, go to a lawyer, not an LLM.

In Canada , there are cases where people self represent in court because they think a LLM replaces an expensive lawyer.

The last one that tried that was fined 5,000$ for wasting the court’s time.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#210

Post by anamexis »

shibapuppie wrote: post #207
throwaway2037 wrote: post #35

I think cases like this should be brought before a small claims court. It seems unfair. The company (Framework Computer) provided the software, but the software is faulty and broke ("bricked") the laptop. Can you imagine if a GPU driver caused the card to get bricked? Even if out of warranty, surely the manuf would be legally liable in many jurisdictions for this faulty driver. The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells…

"talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps" Or, if you need legal advice, go to a lawyer, not an LLM.

Consulting a lawyer would most likely be more expensive than whatever small claims compensation one would potentially be entitled to.
Post reply on HN