Live data from Hacker News

The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

community.frame.work

411–420 of 753 posts

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Everytime I get excited about Framework, Syste7m6, etc... and then get sad. I fully understand I'm a vanishing minority, But trackpoint is such a productivity booster for me, and makes such amazing use of space in a laptop format, that it's a must-have (and again, I fully understand that those who don't use Trackpoint will have no comprehension of what am I going on about; I'm a grouchy quirky old man :). Then…

I taught myself just last year to use the trackpoint because I was curious. I turned it off at the BIOS, etc. just to make me use it exclusively. Once I got over the hump, I was surprised. I don't want keyboards anymore without it. I developed a strong muscle memory for it over the year. I'm a grouchy quirky old man, but when it comes to trackpoints, I am new to this quirk :D

Having had a trackpoint laptop since the 90's, the only thing that I found I could switch to when moving to a job that gave all engineers Mac's was the MBP track pad - the gestures and precision/feel just about made up for the loss of not having to move hands from the home row.

But yeah, sad that more laptops don't have trackpoints.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of those things that once you invest into the learning curve, you're a cultish convert (I certainly am one:)

What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse? I think they were competitive with old touchpads (and probably the ones you still get on cheap laptops) but I expect all the people above praising them have just never used a modern Apple touchpad. Far superior. It's not even close. There's a good reason nobody makes them anymore.

> What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse?

They don't have a learning curve in the sense that it's difficult to make one functional, but when I did try a trackpoint I felt it terribly awkward and imprecise. I'm not at all surprised that there would be a transition period after which trackpoints at least felt better to use.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time Linux user, every time I hear Realtek or see a rtlxxxx driver the blood drains from my head. Just a constant nightmare of crashy firmware and dkms hell. Maybe things have gotten better in the last couple years, but I've steered clear every time I've had the chance.

My ASUS lappy with rtl8xxx WiFi started having issues on newer kernel 5.10.x spewing bugchecks in the dmesg and is locked till reboot. Apparently it's a frequent issue, cause my searches showed it's been happening to others since at least 2018. It's 2022 and not much better. However! Frame.work is Ina position to be an agent of change!

Realtek RTL8822 WiFi kills cheap soapbox routers, typical for AirBnB and cheap/small hotels. Known problems, no fixes.

I mean, it blocks such routers, not brick them permanently, but result is the same: you and your companion doesn't have internet. At all.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#414
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for an OS to support fractional scaling properly; just tell applications to render their windows 1.5 times larger, map the inputs properly, and turn off font anti-aliasing. The problem is that it requires every app to be updated, which hasn't happened everywhere yet. Android and iOS, for example, do it perfectly. So does ChromeOS.

> (...) just tell applications to render their windows 1.5 times larger, map the inputs properly, and turn off font anti-aliasing. Doesn't disabling anti-aliasing make things look worse? Unintentional and random jagged lines never look right.

Is it possible GP was talking about sub-pixel font anti-aliasing, which would look wrong when scaled?

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#415
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can existing customers "trade in" their old motherboards for the newer models, with credit applied to make it cheaper?

We don't do trade-ins, but we have released projects to enable re-use of old Mainboards: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard We're seeing some interesting outputs of that: https://github.com/brickbots/framedeck/ https://github.com/penk/MainboardTerminal

I know this is a hard ask, but consider the Apple or Lenovo model of long support contracts. Not only does this help a lot of buyers to get your product, but you can start refurbishing trade-ins to get parts to service support cases.

In the Frame.work style you might be able to do it via a more DIY approach.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at IBM I had a mouse with a trackpoint for scrolling. It was pretty great. I miss being able to move and scroll at variable speeds. https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=12... and a paper: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Zhai%20scro...

It's not the same, but the Logitech MX Master is basically the current version of this. It has two scrollwheels, one for vertical and one for horizontal. They have some interesting tech in them. When moved slowly they click with detents, like normal scrollwheels. But when you move the wheels more quickly they "unlock" to spin freely, you can scroll at a pretty high speed and with good accuracy.

I looooooove this feature of the MX Master mice, but I went through 2 of them in two years. They do not seem particularly well-built.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anti-aliasing matters a lot less when you have a high resolution display.

> anti-aliasing matters a lot less when you have a high resolution display. The original claim is that turning off anti-aliasing would make things look better, and not that it looks bad but not that bad. Even in high res displays, isn't it true that anti-aliasing makes things look better?

Anti-aliasing at the wrong resolution looks worse than not anti-aliasing at all. As such, if you tell your applications to render things larger than 1x scaling, anti-aliasing starts to hurt more than it helps.

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-toxic approach to business. Unfortunately it seems the pendulum swings on this one at least a bit. Unless you want a flagship CPU, you'll wait a good half year to a year to get half as much choice of budget CPUs with rather extreme handicap (cache). Also half of them are OEM only. Try to find a good current gen CPU for a small to mid sized NAS in their lineup, it's not easy.

> Unless you want a flagship CPU Even if you want a flagship CPU; e.g. see the newest 5xxx series Threadrippers which were only released after a year and half and even then they are only available in overpriced e-waste systems from Lenovo where the CPU is locked down to the motherboard and won't work anywhere else. AMD is not your friend. Just like every other huge corporation.

It's relative. AMD is "your friend" as long as it's on the back foot, so to speak. Their GPU pricing remains much better than Nvidia's, even with the extreme availability issues over the past two years, and some of their actions on the GPU side are more consumer-friendly (such as offering open-source Linux drivers). But when in a more favorable position with respect to their competitor their behavior can and does change.

> where the CPU is locked down to the motherboard

Don't quote me on this, but I think I heard that this wasn't on by default?

Re: The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Everytime I get excited about Framework, Syste7m6, etc... and then get sad. I fully understand I'm a vanishing minority, But trackpoint is such a productivity booster for me, and makes such amazing use of space in a laptop format, that it's a must-have (and again, I fully understand that those who don't use Trackpoint will have no comprehension of what am I going on about; I'm a grouchy quirky old man :). Then…

When I was at IBM I had a mouse with a trackpoint for scrolling. It was pretty great. I miss being able to move and scroll at variable speeds. https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=12... and a paper: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Zhai%20scro...

Back in the late '90s, I worked for an inventor dealing with analog dome switches. We took a mouse that had a rocker for scrolling instead of a wheel and I reprogrammed it to "fake" scroll clicks faster or slower depending on how hard you pressed. You could scroll slow enough to read, or zoom to the end of a doc with really good control. Man I miss that mouse.
Post reply on HN