291–300 of 398 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a laptop context the advent of soldered on RAM and SSDs has made this a more significant issue though. That 1TB I thought was enough might not be, and suddenly I need to buy a whole new machine to upgrade.
Are the SSDs often soldered? I thought that was only the RAM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why would I care when I can get at least 4 years worth of AppleCare from Apple?
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? 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…
The Apple M-series laptops get a performance boost by putting the RAM inside the CPU, which makes it completely impossible to upgrade RAM. That is the antithesis of what Framework is doing. Apple are the kings of disposable hardware that costs way more than the competition for no good reason. You want 32GB? You're going to pay a lot for it . Oh, now you need 64GB? Too bad, throw out that old laptop and get a new one.
Our company bought about 4-5 Framework 13s, and boy were they a bad experience. All sorts of driver issues, random crashes, USB ports not working right, etc. Just about all of them had some kind of issue, which is really fun when your PM has a USB port not work randomly. Ended up going back to HP laptops, 30% cheaper for the same specs and they just work consistently. Would love to hear a hobbyist perspective, Framew…
After nearly two years (two years!) of back and forth with support, including a mainboard replacement that didn't fix the problem, they finally upgraded me to the 13th-gen Intel mainboard, and the problems immediately went away.
Right now I'm struggling with a keyboard issue; a few of the keys intermittently don't register presses. I have a new keyboard that I ordered that I hope will fix the problem, and need to install, just haven't gotten to it. (I'm not sure if this is a result of a defect, or of one of my cats walking on the keyboard and possibly damaging it, so I'm not ready to blame Framework for this one.)
Aside from that, I haven't had driver issues, random crashes, or any problems with the USB ports. But I assume you're talking about Windows; I use Linux, so that's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
> My gut feeling is that something that can't be replaced easily in the Frameworks will die and it'll just end up being cheaper to replace the whole laptop.
The mainboard is of course the most expensive part, but it's still gong to be cheaper to replace it than the entire laptop. I don't believe there are any available replacement parts to the laptop that cost more than the full cost of the laptop.
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.
We need more 10"-12" sized laptops. I regret selling my netbook in hopes a device with a bit better specs would come.
Then again, you end up with underpowered hardware; I don't think something in an 11" MBA form factor would have the beefiness I require these days.
> 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…
Beyond practical repairability and sustainability, I appreciate the possibility of swapping out a mainboard for another with a completely different arch
[0] https://frame.work/products/deep-computing-risc-v-mainboard
[1] https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/dc-roma-risc-v-mainb...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counter argument is that Apple could, and should make their devices just as repairable and upgradable and we’d have the best of both worlds. I don’t entirely buy it, I think architectures like the Framework are a trade off, not a pure win. Google tried to build a modular phone but the project seems to have fallen apart (Ho, ho).
Sure they could but they have an edge like framework has an edge. If you value the idea that you can theoretically repair your laptop one day (which is an assumption that it will break) more than everyday usability and features… then that’s your choice. Outside of breaking a screen I’ve never one had a laptop just “break”. And for anything else well… there’s AppleCare.
> 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…
Here is the “ugly” part of the Ars summary (as in good/bad/ugly):
It's just too expensive for what it is. It looks and feels like a lower-cost laptop, but without a dramatically lower price than the nicer, faster Framework 13.