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The Framework Laptop

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Re: The Framework Laptop

#351

Post by JustSomeNobody »

nrp wrote: post #183
samizdis wrote: post #103

Ars Technica has a sceptical but optimistic/hopeful take on it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/framework-startup-de... Edit to add quote from Ars article: Framework is promising an awful lot in its very first product—"thin as an XPS 13, repairable as a custom-built gaming PC" is a pretty tall order to live up to. We very much want to believe, but it's going to take a full Ars Technica teardown before we're c…

"thin as an XPS 13, repairable as a custom-built gaming PC" was not actually a direct quote from us, but it's nice that the folks at Ars think of our design that way!

Good luck! I really hope this works out. So excited.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#352

Post by wishinghand »

jblow wrote: post #153

Hi, When I saw this announcement I was hoping that I could finally buy a laptop with a good trackpad, with buttons, and a good keyboard again. But looking at the announcement, it seems like trackpad and keyboard quality are far from anyone's mind, and it just looks like the laptop is copying Apple stylistically like everyone else, which means it is going to be kind-of unusable and I won't want to use it. (Especially…

It's strange to see a complaint about the Apple trackpad, because whenever I use a non-Apple laptop, I despair at the trackpad. The current design is too large, but the pre-USB-C models had a perfect size and UX. I haven't ever experienced an equal.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#353

Post by jonplackett »

arcturus17 wrote: post #150
samizdis wrote: post #103

Ars Technica has a sceptical but optimistic/hopeful take on it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/framework-startup-de... Edit to add quote from Ars article: Framework is promising an awful lot in its very first product—"thin as an XPS 13, repairable as a custom-built gaming PC" is a pretty tall order to live up to. We very much want to believe, but it's going to take a full Ars Technica teardown before we're c…

They've got the street cred but producing and marketing hardware is so damn hard. Ouya and the Essential phone are two cases that immediately spring to mind where the founding teams were credible, but the products ended up being massive flops. Good luck to them anyway. The idea is cool and I think if I were on the lookout for a Linux laptop and they delivered on their quality promise, I'd consider them.

Laptops seems a very different situation to this though.

There isn’t a huge amount of ready to use phone hardware from multiple competitive consumer suppliers I feel like integrating into a phone myself.

But there are those things for a laptop.

If they can make this work at a reasonable price it would be appealing even to me as an ardent Mac user.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#354

Post by dorfsmay »

Add:

* An option for a good quality trackpoint and 3 buttons

* A possibility to order a fully assembled model without an OS

And you will quickly get a significant share of buyers from the ThinkPad/Linux crowd.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#355

Post by addicted »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #71
sho_hn wrote: post #60

I don't see any information on the licensing of the adapter card / inter-module interfaces. Can others build a Framework laptop without approval? Can others build cards without approval? Will it be a platform? Tell me how this isn't a Nespresso machine for silicon pods. :-) Edit: To be clear, even a "we have a generic base laptop and you can pick your I/O" concept is potentially a nice value prop, but it'd be good if…

They're just USB-C dongles that snap into the chassis.. You can see better shots here: https://frame.work This is an unpopular opinion, but I think this proves that Apple was right to dump legacy ports. This solution is sort of clever but it sacrifices a ton of internal space that could have been spent on a bigger battery. USB-C, and the correct cables, are all anyone needs. (the Nespresso analogy is ridiculous, a la…

What Apple did was gave people a solution that looks good on the retail floor, but in practice involved carrying a bunch of dongles, which take up more space, can break more easily, can be easily forgotten and are more finicky while using.

In practice it leads to a significantly worse product for the vast majority of users, for the benefit of the minority that falls in the pro crowd and is able to get all their work done solely through USB-C ports.

But the Apple Pro crowd users tend to include a lot of audio/video professionals who have a lot of expensive devices they tend to connect through USB-A, HDMI, etc, Photographers who were big fans of the SD card readers, and business people who didn’t really need pro devices but could afford them, and were fan of the video outputs for connecting to projectors and monitors, and maybe even LAN inputs because many offices tend to discourage WiFi networks.

I think Apples big mistake was a category mistake. If they had made the MacBook or MacBook Air all USB-C, for example, there wouldn’t have been too much of an outcry. But the MacBook Pro line is the same one that carried a FW 400 port years after FW800 had been released and even after FW itself was kinda dead besides certain niche applications (which tended to be popular with Apple pro users).

Re: The Framework Laptop

#358

Post by abrowne »

nrp wrote: post #299
ploxiln wrote: post #237

I don't see any mention of the firmware and drivers efforts for this. Firmware and drivers always end up more difficult to deal with than expected. The Fairphone company was surprised by difficulties upgrading and patching android without support from their BSP vendor, causing many months delays of updates _and_ years shorter support life than they were planning for their earlier models. I purchased the Purism Librem…

Our Embedded Controller firmware is based on chromium ec, and we're using a mature off the shelf BIOS solution shipping in other notebooks today. We chose our key components with driver stability across both Windows and Linux in mind. We know this is something we have to get right to deliver a credible competitor to all the great notebooks already in the market, so it is something we focused on from the start.

Please support the Linux Vendor Firmware Service https://fwupd.org/ :-)

Re: The Framework Laptop

#359

Post by zorrolovsky »

jdormit wrote: post #340
aidenn0 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only if you order the kit, not if you get it preassembled I believe.

Nothing stopping just installing linux on the preassembled one when you get I though, I assume. Although I guess you may have to pay for a Windows license in that case...

Yes, and that's the issue with most computers today: there's no way to opt out to Windows. Whether you like it or not, licensing cost is blended into the computer and even if you don't use Windows you're somehow supporting a company that you might not want to support.

I undertand in 99.9% of cases people just want to buy a laptop, turn it on and have it working. But I also think there should be an easy way to opt out of Windows enforced by law so that MS don't bang up numbers due to shady commercial practices.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#360

Post by pimeys »

robotnikman wrote: post #243
samizdis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I remember being particularly disappointed when Google's Project Ara [1] to create a modular mobile phone was shelved. It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I truly thought that Alphabet/Google had the cash/clout - and will - to deliver. Still, I haven't lost my optimism just yet. As you say, good luck to Framework with the laptop project. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara

I feel like building a modular laptop is much easier than a modular phone. You don't have to deal with the hardware enumeration problems on x86 as you do with ARM Already many laptops you can easily swap parts like the HDD/SSD, Battery and RAM, and even the GPU (to an extent) if its using a standard like MXM. Building a laptop with more modular parts using existing standards (looks like from the images the modular pa…

It wasn't that long ago when manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo had models where you could basically replace almost everything. I guess still models like the T14 allows you to replace RAM, SSD, Wi-Fi card, keyboard, touchpad and even the screen.

For the older models, even screen replacements are quite common in the ThinkPad community...

Good luck for this project though, we really need more companies like this!

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