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The Framework Laptop

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Re: The Framework Laptop

#551

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

SeanLuke wrote: post #510
reaperducer wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my point is that most tasks are either ① best done in a good text editing / development environment Your point is only correct if you replace the word "most" with "my." The fact that trackpads are hugely popular indicates that your needs are not typical, and you should not impose your choices upon others with different needs. would be better done with a specialized non-keyboard, non-trackpad input device Show me a be…

> Show me a better multi-purpose input device that I can use to rotate objects on a screen. Or zoom into a specific object without affecting other objects on a screen. I agree with you in general, but a trackpad is in fact really, truly horrible for these tasks. As humans we are designed to rotate objects precisely, and that design does not involve using two fingers to slide about arbitrary locations on a flat plane.…

I think you missed the goal of the multi-purpose requirement. Proselytizing custom input controls for every possible task on a portable device is...weird.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#553

Post by agumonkey »

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…

who else here had napkin design of just this ?

now let's have a pocket variant that revives the old google modular project

Re: The Framework Laptop

#554

Post by Silhouette »

not2b wrote: post #507
zorrolovsky wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In many cases, the cost of the license to the OEM is negative. That's because the cost of the Windows license is more than outweighed by the payments they get for crapware, adware, and 30-day trials, they get paid to pre-install (and the crapware requires Windows). It would actually cost them more to ship with no OS.

That's been true historically in a lot of cases, but isn't the whole point of the Framework to do things in a different and better way? It would be very disappointing if a laptop like this was shipping with that kind of junkware installed as standard even on a Windows pre-install. In fact, it would instantly reverse my position having just heard about these guys from something like "I wish you luck, this is a much healthier direction to push the industry in, and by the way let me know when it's available in the UK because I am definitely a potential customer" to something I won't repeat here that involves not wanting anything to do with them or their products.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#555

Post by messo »

nrp wrote: post #162
messo wrote: post #151

I was dreaming about such a laptop only a few days ago (admittedly with an IBM/Lenovo-like keyboard). Do you offer ANSI keyboards for European countries? It would be great if a nordic keyboard layout was an option and easily swapable.

We have both ANSI and ISO layouts, and we've designed the keyboard to be end-user replaceable. We'll be adding more keyboard languages as we expand into more countries. The clear keyboard shown in our product photos is actually real too! We'll be offering clear and blank for the people who want that.

Great! The clear keyboard also sounds interesting as I could hack together my own Norwegian Colemak layout.

* I meant ISO, not ANSI in my parent comment :)

Re: The Framework Laptop

#556

Post by boogies »

losvedir wrote: post #511
dublinben wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean a trackpoint? How can you type and move the mouse without moving your hands with a trackpad?

Use your thumbs. The track pad is right below the space bar. Or, it's close enough that with hovering hands you can move back and forth between keys without looking. It's much faster to navigate a code base that way, I think, than trying to jump in vim lines at a time. A smooth, continuous scroll at easily controllable, different speeds does wonders for keeping continuity of a file in mind.

> easily controllable, different speeds

This is why I like having not just ^f/b full page, {}() paragraph and sentence, and of course j/k line scrolling but also ^u/d half-page scrolling so much that I mapped them it U and D in Zathura and Pentadactyl just for the centimeter of finger movement that saves.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#557

Post by layer8 »

wishinghand wrote: post #362
Liskni_si wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key travel isn't everything. The layout is important as well. This is the best layout humanity ever invented: https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/c/0/csm_... Classic arrow keys, separate volume buttons, separate back/forward/pageup/pagedown, F1-F12 as the primary functions, …

At this point I'd prefer few keys, just 18 per side for my fingers and a row of 4-6 for each of my thumbs. I'd handle numbers, function keys, volume, and whatever else you mentioned with layers.

Those keys already have their own layers in a lot of software. Having to press yet another additional modifier key destroys usability and muscle memory.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#558

Post by CoolGuySteve »

sjs382 wrote: post #263
sleepybrett wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm down to exactly one adapter in my bag. One usb-c male to usb-a female stubby little guy. If I'm heading to someplace where I think I might need more than 1 usb-a port or a situation where I might need a bit of a usb hub I just pack this little 'dock dongle' that's about three inches long and an inch wide that has three usb-a ports (2x3.0 1x2.0), an hdmi port, a sd and tf card slot, an ethernet port, an audio jack…

I'm down to one, too. And for what it's worth, I've used it about 5 times since I got my M1 in December: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B085ZQZXFX If "using it on your lap, without something hanging" matters to you (like the parent) and you wanted something more 'rigid', things like this exist: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/product/B07PCP5J4Z

Yeah I'm in complete agreement. A single "dock" dongle with all the ports you could possibly want are cheap, light, and have smooth designs that won't snag on anything.

I have one buried in my bag that I almost never use. It's surprisingly rare that I need an Ethernet or HDMI port but they're there if I need them. In the meantime, there's more room inside my laptop for battery.

Even an extra 5Wh of capacity is about an extra hour of use.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#559

Post by stephen »

bxparks wrote: post #188
stephen wrote: post #107

I know trackpads won, but would love a trackpoint. I keep buying Thinkpads solely for that feature.

How do I scroll a page up and down with a trackpoint (on Windows and Linux)? I've tried using a trackpoint, but the two-finger swipe up and down on a trackpad is a convenience that I cannot seem to live without.

Sure! I'm typing on this USB keyboard:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Compact-Keyboard-Trac...

And to scroll I press the middle blue button (below space bar), and then push the trackpoint stick up/down. The mouse cursor doesn't move, and instead the OS just scrolls the window.

(Fwiw I'm on Linux and this behavior just worked out of the box, for both my generic desktop w/this keyboard & Thinkpad laptop.)

Obligatory fanboy note, while performing this scroll action, I only have to move my thumb ~0.5" off the space bar, and my pointer finger ~1" off "j". So there is very little physical movement required to scroll (or click), vs. moving your whole palm up & down ~6" to the trackpad.

Re: The Framework Laptop

#560

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

boogies wrote: post #407
throwaway894345 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've still never seen a PC with a sane touchpad. That's the first issue in a long tail of grievances with the PC laptop ecosystem. EDIT: This isn't a generic "pro-Mac" dig, I want a nice PC laptop because I like dabbling with Linux; however, even the high end trackpads are clunky, even with the pre-installed Windows (never mind the eternal sadness that is Linux trackpad configuration).

I’ve never understood why people⁰ care so much about trackpads. For working with text (including code) keyboards are better, and for gaming mice are better. Where I'm less sure is graphics and video, but it seems to me like specialized mice, graphics tablets, and other tools (eg. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/key... and https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/pan... ) are b…

> I’ve never understood why people⁰ care so much about trackpads. ... would be better done with a specialized non-keyboard, non-trackpad input device

So you want a specialized input devices for every task on a mobile device. That's an interesting choice. And I guess you also want to carry all these specialized devices around with you?

> browsing¹, which IMO should be a slightly glorified text task where Pentadacyl/luakit/qutebrowser/etc.² vi-style keybindings³ are best

Ok. Say you see a headline on HN that looks interesting, and you go to click on it. Wait, no, you...uhh...tab tab tab tab tab over to it and press enter to go to the comments page (like we all do) and start reading the comments. And, oh look, you want to respond to one of them. So you...uhh...tab tab...uhh...tab...tab tab tab tab tab tab tab...tab tab? Or you could just point and click.

Your proposed critical tasks of shifting the viewport and appending text to the current cursor location meet approximately 0% of computing user needs. The vast majority of all computer interaction is putting the cursor in the right place in the first place. The keyboard is terrible for that, external devices encumber portability, vertical touch screens require significant muscle control and effort, and trackpoints drift and do fewer things while being worse at all of them.

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