1. Are you able to limit the min/max charge of the battery to reduce wear / increase longevity? For example, if I'm usually plugged into an outlet then I would want to limit my max charge to 80% or 60% since high charge levels degrade the battery faster, but I wouldn't want to disconnect the charger because then I'd be pointlessly burning through battery cycles.
2. Coreboot: whats the status on that?
3. When I violently yank my laptop in any random direction, the military-grade type-c cables that I forgot were plugged into all 4 ports on my framework laptop will naturally put significant strain on the type-c ports on the modules. My question is: how possible is it that I manage to also damage the interior usb type-c port on the laptop body?
4. What run-time loaded closed source binary blobs are needed for the full use of the hardware in one of your pre-built configurations?
5. Repair shops can get access to your schematics after signing some forms (presumably involving a NDA). Can I sign the same forms to get the same access?
6. If you cease to exist, everyone essentially just bought a bunch of proprietary dongles that are unlikely to be reused due to their size/shape. This would lead to the exact opposite of your goals by directly causing e-waste. Why won't that happen?
7. Is the fan, in any way, a standard form factor / are there models from competing brands that would work in that spot? I don't know how loud your fan is, but if I was unhappy with the noise from the fan it would be good to know that I could consider other competing models.
1) We don't have this yet, but it is on our firmware roadmap.
2) Also on our (long term) firmware roadmap!
3) It would be extremely difficult to damage the internal USB-C ports from force on the USB-C Expansion Card. You'd destroy the USB-C Expansion Card first, which is inexpensive to replace.
4) This is a great question, and actually on our list of blog posts we want to write. I don't have the answer off-hand, but it shouldn't be different than other recent Intel-based notebooks.
5) Currently we're limited to offering it to repair shops, but we're looking at ways to expand that in the future.
6) For the Expansion Cards, since they are standard USB-C devices, you can plug them into other USB-C hosts (though as you note, they are somewhat oddly shaped for that). We've also released open source CAD and documentation for people to develop their own Expansion Cards.
7) The heatsink and fan is custom to the system by form factor necessity.
Thanks! I'm particularly excited about #3 since I am a forgetful clutz, so having a sacrificial layer that ensures the ports attached to the mainboard stay safe is going to be great peace of mind.
I love it when company representatives reply meaningfully to all questions of a thoughtful request instead of just cherry-picking the convenient ones. Thank you for setting a great example.
1. Have you sent review copies to any independent review channels like LTT, Gamers Nexus, etc etc? I've seen the Tested video but that was in a very controlled environment and I'm mainly waiting on independent reviews before buying one.
2. More of a business question that I'll understand if you don't want to answer, without sharing any actual numbers, has the preorder volume been more or less than you expected?
Yes! We can't pre-announce anyone's reviews, but we have sent review units out to a few of the big tech review YouTube channels.
The pre-order volume has been roughly in line with our expectations. The one big surprise for us was just how much more popular the Framework Laptop DIY Edition is than the pre-built Framework Laptop. We expected some preference from early adopters, but it's actually multiples of volume.
> The one big surprise for us was just how much more popular the Framework Laptop DIY Edition is than the pre-built Framework Laptop.
I'd suggest the reason is primarily that it's a lot more configurable -- people can get closer to their ideal feature set for the least spend (if only by not paying for Windows if they just want Linux).
Full-size arrow keys: by adding another column of keys to the right side of the keyboard. That way you get dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys as well. See [1].
Grouping function keys: also put a wider gap between Esc and F1, F12 and Delete.
Mac keyboard: that'd be nice! How compatible are they to hackintosh BTW?
Hackintosh on this thing would be the ultimate hackbook. Same display ratio (not sure if resolution is exactly the same though), pretty much same form factor, and you can upgrade the ram. While they support intel at least.
Fingers crossed that Apple releases new MacBooks with Intel's 11th generation chips, since it looks like macOS currently doesn't support hardware acceleration for Intel's new Xe Graphics.
Can you give the roughest of indications for European orders (UK for me, if it's going to be that granular)? I've been signed up to the mailing list to be notified since first post here, really looking forward to it; I've been tempted to use Canadian pre-order via a favour ever since that opened up, but should I just be patient, will it be 'soon'?
Do you anticipate that (if this goes as well as I hope and assume it will/is) a v2 model would have an upgrade path from 'v1' (as it were, that for pre-order/sale now) - i.e. buy new case, new motherboard (or whatever) and it's effectively the same as if you bought the new one? Or have you accepted/do you think that not all parts can be fully modular and independently saleable?
We’re aiming to be in the UK, parts of Europe, and parts of Asia by year’s end.
We plan to keep compatible within the current chassis for the foreseeable future. This means that as we support new CPU platforms, existing users can upgrade to them by replacing their mainboard (and in some cases memory).
From the web site, the selling point seems to be around this being a "right to repair" laptop.
What's a bit unclear to me is that it seems the Framework Laptop is not be under an Open Source license, unlike the Pinebook Pro, the Librem 14 or the MNT Reform- the MNT being the most "user serviceable" as well as most repairable.
Is your laptop fully open source, or if not, what makes it special or different from these other products?
I'm guessing you haven't worked on many laptops. They aren't meant to be repaired easily in many cases. Want to upgrade the RAM, you need to upgrade both sticks. One is on the bottom side of the motherboard that requires 16 screws be removed and a pry tool to get the bottom case off. The second stick is under the keyboard that requires multiple levels of plastic pieces to be pried off and disconnecting the keyboard cable which can barely be reached. Want to swap the battery? That's 16 screws and enough force to break the adhesion that you are bending the case. Plus the system will complain about the battery if you buy it from the wrong vendor.
I like open source. I CARE that I have to trash a thousand dollar laptop because I can't source a replacement keyboard when the "S" popped off.
All examples I gave are real life examples which I've encountered.
So this would put the Framework laptop into the same category as a Thinkpad?
My old (8 years) Thinkpad has had: a new battery, a new keyboard (orange juice!), a new screen (upgrade!), new RAM, new HDD and a new charging plug.
All of the above were very simple with just a couple of screws to get the back cover off. No adhesive or force needed. Even the screen simply clipped off. The manual also comes with instructions on how to dismantle the laptop for repairs.
I sourced the OEM parts from eBay.
The only thing I was not able to change was the Wifi card. Apparently it's hard-locked to a specific model in the bios firmware, which I find a bit odd.
It actually would put us in a similar category to Thinkpads from the 2000's and early 2010's, but with modern hardware, a thin and light form factor, an upgradeable mainboard, and customizable ports with Expansion Cards!
I've noticed that you said you're here to answer all questions, but then you've been selectively not answering a lot of questions, like mine, and others who ask pointed, specific questions rather than mostly fluff.
I buy lots of "gadgets"- a Pinephone, LibreM phone, a PiTop, 2 MNT Reform laptops, several OLPC XO-1 laptops- and that's just my current collection (rather than my older collection of even more obscure hardware of the past), but you're not offering much in terms of either being interesting from a social good perspective, nor from a purely practical perspective ala my Dell XPS13 and System 76 Lemur.
I wish you luck, but based just on your HN interactions, you're occupying a market niche that doesn't really interest me- that of people who care a little bit about self-actualization and repair, but not a lot.
LPDDR4 is always soldered. There are Thinkpad with DDR4 if you prefer. They are usually heavier, thicker and/or more expensive (pick two). This includes the X1 Extreme Gen2 or the T14.
> I can't source a replacement keyboard when the "S" popped off.
> All examples I gave are real life examples which I've encountered.
Real life for me, too. The S key on my laptop no longer works. I took apart the keyboard to clean it one day, put everything back together, it all worked, except one key - S. Is there something about that specific key or is this just a weird coincidence?
sure, but the examples he gave are all designed to be easy to service AFAIK. I only have personal experience with a Pinebook, but it is fantastic. Just one bottom panel for most access, and one keyboard to remove for the rest. It is extremely hacker friendly.
But it's not a powerhouse CPU like this. A rock64 is no competition for a current generation Intel I5/7 AFAIK.
> Want to upgrade the RAM, you need to upgrade both sticks.
No. Single channel configuration is slower, unnoticeably on laptops, that’s it.
> One is on the bottom side of the motherboard that requires 16 screws be removed and a pry tool to get the bottom case off.
Wrong choice of laptop brand.
> The second stick is under the keyboard that requires multiple levels of plastic pieces to be pried off and disconnecting the keyboard cable which can barely be reached. Want to swap the battery? That's 16 screws and enough force to break the adhesion that you are bending the case. Plus the system will complain about the battery
Again, wrong choice of laptop brand. Panasonic? Theirs are good as long as you only repair and don’t fiddle with it.
For me, "open source" with respect to hardware would imply getting the PCB layouts and other such info that would enable me to modify the electronics and/or produce my own - like a software "fork".
The "right to repair" tells me that I would be able to get replacement parts from 3rd party suppliers. Once upon a time, Television units also came with the circuit diagrams that helped third-party repair shops troubleshoot and fix TV issues. I am not sure if such circuit diagrams would help with the kind of wave-soldered multi-layered circuit boards that we have, but it'd be nice to have, I suppose.
That's a good distinction to draw, and certainly clarifies things in some ways. The line between the two is somewhat blurry.
Back in the day you're talking about, components were often discreet enough that they could be replaced. Today even something as simple as a capacitor is often difficult to replace on a modern circuit board due to a variety of factors.
Certainly the large companies (Apple in particular) creates legal barriers to buying chips and other components. I think the distinction between availability and open source will be an interesting one to see how it plays out when hardware is involved.
1) We can't announce anything yet, but our current 13.5" Framework Laptop will certainly not be the last product we ever build!
2) See question 1.
3) We've designed the bezel to be color customizable, and there are some photos of orange and white ones on our website. We'll be adding more colors as we go. For the chassis itself, it is anodized aluminum. We don't currently have plans for additional aluminum colors though.
4) We have a custom keyboard with 1.5mm key travel scissor switches, which is longer key travel than most other <16mm notebooks.
5) We can't announce anything on Thunderbolt compatibility until we complete certifications, so keep a look out for that.
I love how you are actually mentioning the 1.5mm key travel.... on so many other laptop review sites, and manufacturer sites, they don't list the key travel. It is infuriating when shopping for laptops.
To hear it has a generous 1.5mm is awesome, i'll definitely be keeping an eye on it in the near future for the 15" version.
I edited the 4th question. Hopefully you see and answer 4b! Thanks for answering my other questions. I'll certainly be looking forward to your product as more information and metrics materialize.
I suppose what this really means is that you have USB4 with support for the optional PCIE tunneling, and support for the slightly higher frequency alternative mode, which is generally enough to function with peripherals labeled as Thunderbolt, since it is literally exactly the same protocol.
Somewhat obnoxious that you need additional certification to actually call it what it obviously is.
I find numpad throws off the alignment of the keyboard relative to the touchpad and to the weight of the device. You clearly want a numpad, but I would suggest most users should avoid them, particularly if the will use the laptop on their lap.
Fully agreed, for me, with any size of laptop the presence of an integrated numpad is a real nuisance due to how it awkward it makes typing and trackpad usage.
That said, there are times when numpads are useful. That’s why on my desktop, I have a discrete numpad sitting to the left of my keyboard, which allows the most used keys to remain centered.
It would be neat if someone made a numpad module for these laptops that can plug into either side of the laptop, and then be tucked away when not in use. The little rails in the module bays should make typing on the numpad almost as solid as typing on the main keyboard.
I would love to have a 10-key option, and to that end I have attempted using a wireless option. That device however won't even pair to my laptop. I would even be willing to use a wired one, but not enough of me to make it viable for someone to make. So many shortcut keys in my software are missing for a laptop keyboard. Instead, I have to use a full sized external keyboard and carry it around with me instead of just a useful smaller external 10-key.
This is so important. I bought a laptop with a numpad thinking it would be a huge win for spreadsheet jockying, ended up never using the laptop due to how much of a nightmare it is to type on due to the keyboard being offcenter. Numpads on laptops are just failure.
Any plans for AMD or ARM processor options? The amd ryzen stuff has nearly good performance per watt that the M1 does. I really can’t see myself buying another intel processor for at least a few generations.
Everyone loves to hate Intel (and rightfully so) but Tiger Lake has better IPC and implicitly better single threaded performance than Ryzen. In real world tasks (web browsing, opening an IDE) it often comes on top of AMD.
It only loses to AMD in multi threaded benchmarks because of the lower core count (everyone loves to flex Cinebench scores online, but I buy my laptop to use, not run benchmarks).
Also, the iGPU in Tiger Lake is more modern and more powerful than the outdated Vega iGPU in Ryzen and it also has AV1 codec hardware decoding unlike Ryzen which is stuck at VP9.
Add in Thunderbolt support and using Tiger Lake makes perfect sense for this form factor. Ryzen shines best in gaming laptops with discrete GPUs.
> In real world tasks (web browsing, opening an IDE)
My real-world task is not opening an IDE, it’s using that IDE. Modern C++ compilers are using all available CPU cores just fine.
> It only loses to AMD in multi threaded benchmarks
These are the only workloads I care about. Not just compilation, many other things as well.
You only need single-threaded performance for 2 things, for the stuff that’s inherently serial like gzip, or to run programs made more than 5-10 years ago.
I don’t normally play games on a laptop, but even videogames use multiple cores for decades now, since the Xbox 360 / PS3 generation.
> You only need single-threaded performance for 2 things, for the stuff that’s inherently serial like gzip, or to run programs made more than 5-10 years ago.
You must not be grand strategy game players. Any titles from Paradox and some other popular games are all limited by single core IPC. They are a great example of the limits of multi-threading, some processes and problems cannot be adapted to take advantage of it. If I get such a laptop I'd spend 50% of the time I use it playing such games.
> They are a great example of the limits of multi-threading
These are examples of lazy programmers and PC-only games. Consoles have many cores for decades and these cores are slower than PCs, developers of cross-platform titles have embraced multithreading for quite some time now.
Multithreading does have limits. Some things are borderline impossible to parallelize, examples include gzip, streaming encryption algorithms, or parsing long streams of HTML and JavaScript. However, vast majority of the CPU-bound stuff found in videogames scales just fine with CPU cores.
For gzip, try pigz. It's the parallel version of it.
I used to want high single core performance for my python code. I've since switched to using VSCode with devcontainers which run remotely on my 5950x. That makes it fast enough ;-).
I am informed by my personal experiences. I had an core i5 laptop from 2019 vs r4800 from 2020 and the experience was night and day running arch linux. Just smoother running everything on the AMD. And my power usage was objectively less and my fans turned on way less subjectively.
A single browser tab is single threaded, but you REGUARLY are forced to run several electron apps, and have many tabs open. Each requiring processes and threads and ryzen blows it out of the water in responsiveness. It was not uncommon for some language-server running to lag out because some chrome shit was blowing up my cpu/memory, which drove me away from vscode again.
The intel is maybe better for gaming or other inherently single program stuff. But at the cost of using WAY more energy and sucking for everything else I do regularly.
Further the m1 macs make them both look fairly power hungry and laggy.
> the iGPU in Tiger Lake ... has AV1 codec hardware decoding
Oh neat, I wasn't aware there were any AV1 decoders in hardware yet, that was always something somebody was complaining about on HN threads (probably MPEG employees HA). Tiger lake was released late last year and AV1 was finalized in 2018; that's got to be a record turnaround time from new codec to hardware decoders in top-selling chips.
Noted in other comments, but we have designed the mainboard to be replaceable and upgradeable by the end user to new CPU platforms. We haven't announced anything yet, but this is a core part of the design and architecture of the product.
One of the biggest causes of (un)planned obsolescence, if not the biggest cause, is an end to firmware and microcode updates. Once they stop coming in, vulnerabilities start piling up.
For how many years can consumers expect to receive these updates?
For the firmware we control, there is relatively little surface area and it is easy for us to continue to maintain. For the firmware that is delivered or embedded by Intel, we're in the same boat as everyone else using the same CPUs.
We've been testing with Ubuntu 21.04 and Fedora 34. We'll be releasing guides around both of these soon and other distros in the future. On Fedora 34 respins that are going live soon, everything works out of the box, including the fingerprint reader. On Ubuntu 21.04, everything works out of the box except the fingerprint reader, which requires manually upgrading libfprint.
Are you considering shipping your own distribution (for instance a modified Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever) and guaranteeing compatibility for that, or do you plan only to issue guides for other distributions?
Yes, we would very much like to rely on the great distros that are already out there for now, working with them as needed to ensure compatibility (which we have already done with a handful).
We haven't tested those internally, but we hope to see folks in the community try them! We are absolutely happy to help anyone who gets stuck, and as we see which distros are popular we can plan out more official support for them.
The Framework Laptop DIY Edition ships without an OS license of any kind. If you want a pre-built Framework Laptop, that does include the cost of a Windows license. The DIY Edition is super easy to set up though: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Framework+Laptop+DIY+Edition...
We'll be posting up step by step installation and use guides for a few popular distros soon. We sent pre-release hardware out to developers and maintainers at a few distros and have been working with them on this. In the meantime, we also have a Linux sub-forum in our community where we expect folks will post their experiences with more obscure distros: https://community.frame.work/c/diy-edition/linux/91
The Debian wiki has a section for hardware-specific install guides, that would be a good place to put one for installing Debian on the Framework Laptop:
Very humbly from a full time linux user of 16 years- Id recommend you avoid their crowd- they are entitled and toxic. (as perhaps urself have noticed in this threas)
I am out of question-answering time for the day, but will respond tomorrow to anything new that comes up. Thanks everyone for the thoughtful questions, interest in what we're building, and belief in our mission!
From what I can find, the documentation on the screen just says it covers 100% of the sRGB gamut. That's nice, but do you have an example of a calibration profile that shows the full gamut coverage? It would be nice to compare it to Adobe RGB and P3 gamuts. Is the screen HDR or 10 bit input capable?
Not affiliated with Framework Laptop, but I’ll reply anyway.
It’s been my experience that when only sRGB is mentioned, only sRGB is supported. Adobe RGB is relatively rare these days, and any amount of P3 or HDR support is common only in higher end laptops with either very bright backlights or OLED. You might be interested in a new standard, DisplayHDR, which commonly focuses on how bright and technically accurate a screen can be. At this point there are often trade offs between screen technologies, but OLED tends to produce the “nicest” picture. https://displayhdr.org/
Also, as a correction, as long as you’re not performing colour grading on footage, you don’t need 10-bit input or output for HDR. It helps, obviously, but technically you can use dithered 8-bit RGB over HDMI 2.0 at 60 fps and still view HDR content with no perceptible difference between the 8-bit and 10-bit or 12-bit formats. For example: https://2020.smpte.org/home/session/325093/perceptually-dith...
That said, especially when using a computer, I really like the way scrolling feels at 120 fps, so I encourage looking for HDMI 2.1 outputs and inputs for that reason alone. Don’t forget you’ll likely also need a new HDMI cable. As an aside, I’ve tried adapters from DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 and they are so far rather unreliable and prone to overheat.
> It’s been my experience that when only sRGB is mentioned, only sRGB is supported.
I suspect this as well, especially at the price point the Framework laptop is being offered, but that's why I'm asking. I feel that manufacturers providing a approximate gamut coverage plot would be an enormous improvement to the status quo.
> any amount of P3 or HDR support is common only in higher end laptops
I disagree with this point. The MacBook Air (at $1000) is advertised to have P3 coverage. That's the exact same price (for a shipped laptop) as Framework. It also has HDR support.
> Also, as a correction, as long as you’re not performing colour grading on footage, you don’t need 10-bit input or output for HDR.
I'm aware - that's why I asked about HDR and 10 bit support separately. Worth mentioning that a bunch of cheap panels only really support 6 bits which then gets dithered, though. You're right that 8 bits in probably sufficient at the 400 nits brightness of the Framework screen.
> The MacBook Air (at $1000) is advertised to have P3 coverage. That's the exact same price (for a shipped laptop) as Framework. It also has HDR support.
True. But then it only outputs to one extra display, runs a chip Apple made from last year and hasn’t yet updated, and the rest of the industry isn’t Apple and can’t find a way to sell the same product in an iPad, mid-range desktop, entry-level all-in-one, entry-level laptop and entry-level pro laptop while manufacturing in quantity during the middle of a chip shortage. I mean, some things only Apple can do.
The closest comparison I can make to the Air in terms of price might be the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro for $999 which has an AMOLED screen, but that’s presumably because Samsung makes their own displays and wants a laptop to show them off. Everything else about the laptop is low- to mid-range and you need to pay extra for 16GB of RAM. Frankly most laptops with fancy displays end up being like the Dell XPS 9710, they ship with dedicated graphics cores and cost upwards of 2-3 grand. The exceptions with nice displays stand out as exceptions. To date, Microsoft’s entire Surface line has yet to go P3 HDR (iirc) with the exception of the Surface Studio, their giant (and outdated) all-in-one PC.
Frankly, if a third-party repairable MacBook Air with Apple silicon existed, I’d be over the moon, and more so if Apple came out with an OLED display, but in a way even OLED panels aren’t very repairable as if you get the tiniest of scratches the entire panel might need to be tossed, etc. And you might consider repairability from the perspective of “how inexpensive is it to replace?” If so, you wouldn’t want a part that’s only affordable if you buy in bulk, you’d want a screen that’s common and easy to get instead. Probably 16:9 aspect ratio too. So… a repairable laptop might not be the laptop to get if you also want the best of everything… for now, at least…
We use a BOE NE135FBM-N41 panel, which you may be able to find some profiles on from other notebooks. We haven't gotten a chance to generate profiles just yet ourselves.
I did find a review of one laptop that used this panel, and it looks like it's a designed-to-standard 8 bit panel with pretty much no coverage beyond sRGB, similar to the panels Apple was putting in MBPs around 2014 or 2015. Support for HDR (e.g. PQ) shouldn't be expected.
For what it's worth I'd be very interested in future upgrades for the screen quality. I'm fine with the current density (~200 DPI or so), although I know some have requested 4K screens. The real selling point would be a 10 bit panel with ST.2084 HDR support and full coverage for the P3 gamut. Something in line with base model laptops from Apple. (Obviously, such an upgrade would carry an understandable price premium.)
Do you have any other keyboard + pointing device design in mind? I've read sibling comments about trackpoint and numpad, but what about a 7-row keyboard and/or a smaller trackpad with real buttons for clicking? Is this possible? Do you see there's a market for it?
The cover that the keyboard and touchpad install into is the limiting factor. The tooling for that part is extremely expensive, so we only have one version of it. We have the ability to install ANSI, ISO, and JIS keyboard layouts with any language in the artwork, but we can't change the keyboard or touchpad geometry beyond that without shelling out big money for a new cover.
A touchpad with buttons is something we believe could fit in the existing cover though, and something we want to explore more when we have time.
How does that work then - do left shift & enter key caps bridge over the cover on the respective layouts where they're bigger?
i.e. on the US/ANSI layout photographed on the site - L Shift is using both L Shift and Backslash holes; Enter is also occupying Octothorpe, but not covering the hole above it where Backslash is in that layout? So you have a fixed, what I think the mechanical keyboard enthusiasts call 'switch plate', and then different sized key caps for the relevant keys making them occupy multiple spaces with dummy switches or whatever?
The current keyboard is not really fit to be used as a primary keyboard. A proper 7-row keyboard with full-sized arrows is really a must for people who use laptop keyboards as their main daily driver. Here's a picture of what one looks like: https://imgur.com/Epo5kBw
With or without a trackpoint, I'd really love to have buttons above the trackpad. I can't stand tap-to-click, and I feel much more comfortable on a laptop with buttons.
Everything else about this laptop looks great, especially the 3:2 screen aspect ratio.
+1, please consider offering this. A track point and 3 real buttons are so much nicer than a trackpad. At least to some of us. ThinkPads success seems to indicate there are a lot of us.
A touchpad with buttons is something that we have explored, and is in theory a replacement module we can create. Inserting a track point would be much more challenging from a cost and engineering feasibility standpoint. We may have underestimated the level of interest around track point...
Their warranty is utterly ridiculous. Even the EU mandates 2+years for all consumer electronics.
I'm not expecting Next Business On Site warranty from a new company (though that would be nice...), but an option for at least 3 years is the very minimum for me.
We'll certainly be complying with EU warranty requirements before we start selling there.
For longer warranties in general, that is something we would like to do. We're giving ourselves some time in market in order to price it appropriately, but since our product is easy to repair, we believe our costs for supporting warranties will be lower than it would be for less repairable products.
> We're giving ourselves some time in market in order to price it appropriately, but since our product is easy to repair, we believe our costs for supporting warranties will be lower than it would be for less repairable products.
Absolutely. In particular, I wouldn't expect an "at-home service" warranty this early in the life of your company, for such an easily repaired laptop. Rather, I'd expect a warranty in which you cross-ship a replacement part, provide instructions to replace it, and say "just put the old part back in the box we shipped you the replacement in and drop it in your outgoing mail".
Joining the chorus of those asking for a trackpoint equivalent and a larger gamut screen option. Love what you're doing and would buy today if those two issues were addressed.
As someone with experience looking into touchpad hardware are there any options that compare to the features and functionality of a mac?
As a predominantly windows based user every time I use a mac touchpad I'm blown away the fluidity and features like the psuedo-click. I've been eagerly awaiting windows compatible hardware of the same quality and functionality.
As a counterpoint, I love ThinkPads but never understood the appeal of the track point. I don't mind it being there of course, but it is not a reason to prefer one laptop to another, and definitely not the reason I like ThinkPads.
I normally don't ever use it however I discovered in some areas I work it is necessary. Attempting to use the trackpad results in the cursor jumping around the screen and the only thing I can figure is that there is electrical interference messing with it.
+1, trackpoint is keeping me vendor-locked to Lenovo. It's just too useful for text editing to pass up. And it must have 3 buttons, middle button is essential for scrolling.
Really love this product and the concept! I'd love if you guys would build a touchscreen tablet too, although at this point I'm probably asking too much. The tablet landscape ain't pretty with much of its electronic component were destined to landfill instead of being reusable like this.
A 13.5" laptop is our first, but certainly not last category. Just about every category in consumer electronics is missing a product like this, with rare exceptions like desktop PCs and what Fairphone is doing in the smartphone space.
Hey! Love the entire concept behind it. That being said, for mass-adoption and a large parts "ecosystem", do you guys anticipate you'll be able to get the initial price for the laptop down in the future with either cheaper casing materials or after recouping the initial R&D cost for the custom motherboard design and such?
It's totally understandable that the first product from a rather small company would demand some sort of higher price, your initial investment into R&D and product design & manufacturing must've been huge! But is this something we can expect to get a bit better in the future?
The base price for a new system will likely stay in this range, barring future lower-end mainboards like one using an ARM SoC. However, one thing that will help on cost of entry in the future is refurbished and used Framework Laptops. Since the product is easy to repair and upgrade, we want to foster a healthy secondary market.
We don't want anyone to put an old Framework Laptop that they are not using into a drawer and forget about it. We want to get them to list it on the Framework Marketplace to find another happy user.
If you ever do start doing bringup of an Arm SoC, drop me an email (in my profile) - I work on an internal BSP team at Arm and would be happy to (unofficially) assist
Some idea about considering other option as well. Would be great to buy your motherboard (original with some adapter or completely differently designed) that would fit into old macbooks or thinkpads - this way people could reuse case, keyboard, touchpad and maybe even battery or screen.
Is there a chance you might produce a fanless configuration? Since I first bought a fanless machine, I'm a total sucker for them and just stopped considering fanless computers for home use anymore (100% confirmed by my later buying choices). I'm happy to notice that the fan seems to be on the mainboard in your DIY Build video, so at a first glance it looks not impossible; but I also understand there's more to that, in overall heat transport and airways design/considerations, that's why I'm still asking and really interested to know the answer!
You can technically unplug the fan, but with a U-series CPU, it will just be throttling most of the time. A lower-power/lower-performance mainboard without a fan is something we could technically do in the future if there is customer demand for it.
Just wanted to say: great job! Am generally skeptical of modular consumer designs but this looks very tidy. As another hardware developer really appreciate the thought that went into this.
1. What was the sort of reaction to your unorthodox modular laptop design from the OEMs who are used to making standard laptop designs? Do OEMs have a preference for making disposable products or do you think that they see opportunity in making more modular machines that users can upgrade piece-meal over years?
2. Is there anything hardware wise that would prevent someone from making an arm based motherboard for this device, or even a RISCV based motherboard?
From our manufacturing partners, there was definite skepticism at first, but as we worked together it became immediately clear that what we had proposed was entirely doable! For consumer electronics brands, I think their challenge will be the business model shift that comes from focusing on longevity instead of short replacement cycles. We have a counter-positioned business model to that!
Nope, it is entirely doable from a technical perspective to build an ARM SoC-based mainboard for the Framework Laptop! I haven't seen a RISC-V SoC that has the necessary interfaces for it to work well in a laptop yet, but I strongly suspect that isn't far away.
I'm also very interested in ECC memory. Historically Intel has leveraged access to ECC memory as a price segmentation tool, so I wonder if it's even possible to support ECC until an AMD-based board is available. Unfortunately ECC memory is also significantly more expensive (probably propped up by Intel's segmentation strategy), but it is available in SO-DIMM form factor which kinda surprised me.
Pretty good already. I mentioned in another comment that Fedora 34 respins as of this week have full support for the Framework Laptop built in. On Ubuntu 21.04, everything works out of the box except the fingerprint reader, which requires a newer libfprint.
We designed the display interface to be able to support a touchscreen, and we've designed the display to be easy to replace, but we don't have a touchscreen yet!
Any plans to "open up" (for a price) the specification for outside companies, so they can build components labeled "framework compatible" or some such?
Absolutely. We’ve already released open source reference designs publicly for the Expansion Card system, and we’re happy to enable third parties on other modules too.
What about the cover with the keyboard and trackpad?I know you've said it's expensive to make tooling for, but perhaps a 3rd party could offer an alternate version with a trackpoint or something?
Have you considered going down the route of MIL-spec and turning this into a Defense-friendly product? Would imagine the armed forces would prefer to repair than to replace their hardware and the ability to upgrade down the line is basically how all of Defense contracting works
Yes. We have the necessary certifications for Europe, and are working through setting up keyboard languages, fulfillment, support, and everything else we will need to have to be successful there.
Great to hear! Checkout page request: please make it so you can buy a different keyboard than your shipping address/locale, in case that's not already on your roadmap.
Apple/Lenovo let you spec an “English International” (ISO) keyboard even if you're shipping to Germany/Austria, for example, so that you're not forced to buy QWERTZ.
It's unlikely we'll add discrete graphics in this form factor, but integrated graphics is actually much better than it has been in the past (e.g. Overwatch and GTA:V can run at 60fps), and there is also support for eGPUs.
We've designed the mainboard to be end-user replaceable for upgrades, and we'll be developing new ones for future CPU platforms as we go.
How is the eGPU support? I had to get a 2018 Dell XPS with 4 PCIe lane Thunderbolt 3 support since the 2017 version had only 2 PCIe lanes dedicated to TB3.
Yes! We're hiring across a bunch of roles in development, marketing, operations, and more: https://jobs.frame.work
We don't currently have anyone on the team in Canada, but we are definitely open to it for the right candidate. Please do mention HN so we know where people are coming from!
It is technically possible, but the cost of custom tooling for it would be unfortunately be astronomical relative to the number that we could reasonably sell. At some point in the future as we continue to grow the Framework Laptop install base, we'd love to revisit that though!
Does the extra connector reduce the quality of the USB-C signal? I am asking because my current notebook seems already a bit flaky with a 4K 60Hz display connected via USB-C, especially with an extra docking station in between. DP and HDMI directly from the notebook seem a bit more stable.
There is a small amount of signal loss from the extra connector pair. This is normally fine, but if your monitor+cable situation is already flaky, there is potentially risk there. We would recommend picking up a cable designed to higher protocol standards or using a shorter cable if you see issues.
The USB-C Expansion Card is purely passive passthrough designed to minimize signal loss and voltage drop, so it depends on the capabilities of the specific mainboard. The current mainboard does support 40Gbps through that card. For Thunderbolt, we can't state anything yet until we complete certifications.
It's a TI BQ40Z50-R3. I would strongly recommend doing a pack replacement rather than cell replacements for a Framework Laptop Battery. We'll be making replacement battery packs readily available at a price point that hopefully makes it the clear choice.
What helps us keep replacement parts available is that we'll be continuing to build new Framework Laptops with form-factor-compatible modules for the foreseeable future. That means we will still be manufacturing new batteries compatible with original Framework Laptops for many years.
Exactly. Apple even have third-party batteries in their supply chain (installed by an AASP), the printing of the warnings on the cells and the PCB date code look very suspiciously shanzhai. Yet Apple Support were able to confirm that the order number is real and the part came from them. They charged me $600 for it too. It'd better be reliable, unlike the $100 third-party one that idles at 12V, and a voltage spike when waking from sleep killed my logic board.
I'm in Auckland, and there's no Apple Store in New Zealand. The $600 price is in NZD, too, which means $418 USD.
It's not possible to replace only the battery - an AASP will replace the whole top case. I also think it's more expensive for older models, because the parts are not easy to find for a 2014 computer.
> It's not possible to replace only the battery - an AASP will replace the whole top case.
Yeah, this is true for Apple's battery service as well. I got a new keyboard and trackpad for the $288 SGD I paid.
> I also think it's more expensive for older models, because the parts are not easy to find for a 2014 computer.
This would only make sense if parts weren't ordered from Apple directly. I would imagine that they are able to as an AASP. Apple products only enter their vintage list after 5 years, and their obsolete list after 7 years: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
In this case, it looks like the AASP would still be able to order parts for your 2014 MacBook without extra cost.
The AASP got the part from Apple, but charged me 600 NZD and the parts look shanzhai (blurry printing on the cells, wrong PCB date code).
Apple Support confirmed the order number is a genuine Apple part. Makes me worry about Apple's own supply chain quality.
The AASP also did a pretty shoddy job at repairing: the case screws were in the wrong positions, and the logic board was seated badly so I couldn't plug in USB. I just spent an hour this morning reseating the logic board myself.
We've tested MobileMark 2018 at ~11 hours on the Base config, dropping to ~10 hours on the Professional config (due to more DRAM). Runtime will always depend on workload though.
It would be awesome if you could provide a more real life test like the reviewers you gave the laptop to will do. Having matching claims on your site vs what the reviewers say can only help your credibility, which is much needed as a new product.
If you put 11hs on your site but the average reviewed time is 4hs, it’s not going to look great.
I know you guys are super busy launching this and there are a million things to look at, just sharing my opinion as a consumer.
The other thing that would be useful to know is a clear return and warranty policy. The items I buy from Amazon without much worry are the ones I know I can return easily, for a product as new and unknown like yours, I’ll probably stand back if I don’t know what the return process works like.
You can run 4 4k 60hz monitors simultaneously if you turn off the internal display, or three if you keep the internal display on. The maximum external display resolution is 8k 60hz, but you can't run multiple of those.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T490 which struggles to drive two 4k displays at reasonable refresh rates. 4k60 + 4k30 is the best I was able to achieve so far (via Thunderbolt and an additional HDMI cable).
We have hardware kill switches for both the camera and the microphone. You can actually also remove that module entirely if you'd like. We published a guide on how to replace the webcam (so you would just stop after the removal steps): https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Webcam+Replacement+Guide/87?...
We're currently shipping to the US and Canada. We're working on adding additional countries, and making sure we can offer proper support in addition to being able to ship the product there.
Yes, I know that. I was hoping to see if he could tell at this point when they would ship with some specificity, eg. first week in August, end of August, etc.
The question was for Nirav. You dropped yourself in with an unhelpful comment. I told you it was unhelpful and you have now confirmed that, correct, you cannot help.
I noted in another comment that we partnered with Compal as our main manufacturer, as they are one of the strongest notebook manufacturers currently and they believe in our mission.
I see the cable from the keyboard in the upper lid not going directly to the main PCB, but first to the same board as the touchpad. Is there some IC scanning the keyboard right in the keyboard module, and turning it to something like usb or i2c?
The touchpad PCB acts as a passive signal passthrough for both the keyboard and the fingerprint reader, so that we can have a single cable going from the Input Cover to the mainboard.
If you want to repair or change anything on an M1 macbook you'd need to desolder components off the motherboard and then also own a spare M1 macbook for donor parts because you can't buy them separately.
> If you want to repair or change anything on an M1 macbook you'd need to desolder components off the motherboard
Exactly. Good luck to anyone upgrading the RAM or storage on that thing yourself. It is beyond risky to do this [0] (The article title is also misleading and ignores the extreme risk).
I don't think that [0] is remotely an option to the end user.
I love 3:2 displays. They're wider than 4:3 but maintain the vertical height necessary to see a bunch of code onscreen. If I only get one display (for portable use), I'll pick 3:2 every day.
Why not? Microsoft Surface devices also have a 3:2 display. Personally I love 3:2 displays as vertical space makes for a far more pleasant experience programming and reading.
Yep! The better experience for writing and coding with more vertical real estate is why we chose it. It also gave us a better form factor to work with for enabling our Expansion Card system.
The trend is going that way again. 16:10/3:2 is becoming very common again and that's great! The extra screen real estate is very useful and the body can accomodate a bigger touchpad. 16:9 limts vertical space a little too much imo.
We're almost all thinking it, so... are you trying to get sued by Apple, or what's the reason for 1:1 copy of the design?
Edit: To be clear, I'm not just trying to dunk on the idea. That would be the reason for me not to buy one if it looks like the vendor can fold because Apple dragged them to court.
The lead-in photo on that email happens to be at an angle that doesn't show off the distinguishing features and functionality. On our website you can readily see just how different it is from an Apple product: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-edition
It's such a tired design. I think the goals of this project is fantastic but man the macbook is getting ugly. They really need a refresh. It feels like it has been over a decade now...
Serious question: what would you expect/want in a design refresh? I'm speaking just of the industrial design, not the number and kinds of ports and such.
I'm curious because while I've also thought "yeah, these are increasingly overdue for an updated look," it's hard in practice for me to think of changes that I'd really want. I'm typing this on an M1 MacBook Air, and...I'm not saying it's somehow reached the apex of perfection, but other than a wider range of colors there's nothing that immediately comes to mind as an answer to "I wish the Air had [thing]". Smaller bezels? Maybe, but it's not like they're a glaring huge problem. A different shape? Maybe, but again, this is just such a nice one. They could bring in more of the current iPad/iPhone design language, especially on the MacBook Pro rather than the Air, I guess -- which is widely expected for the next refresh, so you'll probably get your wish in that regard.
Honestly just start with colors and/or black like say the Razer Blade, iPhone, or iMac.
I have a G14 with anime matrix led display and it's pretty slick looking (so cool how it lights up) [1]. I understand it's not as minimalist as a macbook but I've been blown away by the amount of comments I get on it's looks.
It completely goes against Apple's design DNA but maybe it's just the super minimalist approach itself I am finding tired. I like spice & variety.
That's fair. I mostly like a minimalist approach, but I'd like them to find space for just a little more whimsy than they've had in the last decade -- and I'd definitely like to see the laptops in more colors than "silver gray" and "kinda darker silver gray".
With all the other OEMs out there that have used the same exhausted design, do you really think Apple is going to go after some start up?
It has chiclet keys and a black bezel sure, but nothing about this screams carbon copied MacBook anymore than contemporary ultra book.
We’re pretty much in the modern equivalent of beige boxes and CRTs. Consumer computers aren’t very interesting to begin with. This one is a laptop that lets you swap out parts, that’s pretty unique.
Maybe Apple will go after some startup maybe not. As a customer why would I risk not having access to replacement parts because they can't be produced/sold anymore? Having a laptop that looks like Apple design is not a great trade-off here.
I was thinking what if this startup doesn't even exist in 5 years. And what if this replacement part thing becomes done by 20 other OEMs. But I don't see how the widely copied design from the 2008 MacBook would matter.
Also kind of sends the wrong message. Aping the masters of planned obsolescence and unrepairability. You'd think they wouldn't want an even passing resemblance to anything apple.
Great, you "somehow" missed my questions last time around.
>Every module has a QR code on it that you can scan for step-by-step instructions, support information, and a link to order a replacement from the Framework Marketplace
So its a dealer "repair" where you, the dealer, sell me a repair without the labour part in a form of black box to replace?
What about the schematics? the Board files? Firmware?
Who is the ODM? Compal? Pegatron? Quanta? Clevo? Wistron? Inventec? Flextronics?
Did you pay for fully tailor made design? Who else sells a laptop with the exact same design (ignoring form factor)? You dont have a single EE listed on staff. What part of the electrical design do you own? Do you own any part of it at all? This sure looks like tweaked Acer Swift 3 SF313-53, same ODM?
Do you own any part of the firmware that goes into the laptop? Will you be able to patch it?
"Great Webcam in a Laptop" Thinkpad X1 tablet 2nd gen uses same OV2740, isnt exactly known for great camera. Optics and ISP tuning are the important bits. Can you post a demonstration video instead of one 1mpix picture of a laptop screen at an angle?
End users have the ability to order replacement parts for every part of the laptop, down to the granularity of things like individual flex cables. We've also released reference CAD under open source licenses for the Expansion Card system for people to be able to develop their own (https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/expansioncards). Our embedded controller firmware is also open source, and we'll be posting the repository shortly. Full schematics for the rest of the system are available to independent repair shops that get Framework hardware in for repair.
Our main manufacturing partner is Compal, who makes laptops for many other large US notebook makers.
Apart from off the shelf modules like the SSD, RAM, WiFi, and LCD, the Framework Laptop is entirely custom to us, and we own all of the design and tooling. We don't have an EE on the team page, but I am actually an electrical engineer by training (or at least that's what it says on my degree from Carnegie Mellon), and our systems lead Kieran is an EE by background as well.
We own the embedded controller firmware, which is based on Chromium EC, and we'll be releasing the source soon. We use a licensed BIOS that we've customized for this go-around, but we would like to move to an open BIOS in the future.
Some of the reviewers have positive comments on their hands-on experience with the webcam. While it won't be at the level of a standalone plug-in webcam, it is substantially better than what is available in other notebooks.
I don't believe we have yet, but one challenge is that chromium-ec as a whole is in the process of migrating to Zephyr. We'll be needing to move over as well.
Are you trying to start your own company off the back of the research these guys have done?
I didn't see anything about this company claiming 100% open source and private consciousness. I thought that was a different company that never really did anything because of issues you've asked about. If I'm wrong in that, please correct me. Certain chips just couldn't use custom open firmware, so no device was ever going to be 100% open.
Just seems your questions might be a bit off target. No wonder you never got a response "the last time around".
Wow, does look almost identical, except renders/photos are showing keyboard for this laptop removed than bottom case for Acer version. To be fair they don’t seem like a huge ripoff in terms of price though, only ~$300 which is more of a simple reality of low volume products.
Mainboard/logicboard is exactly the same. Left side of the logicboard in the original Acer design is connected via a flex cable, which is where modularity daughterboard goes, which means that that part is custom and probably just a USB-C.
The main opening being on topside as opposed to bottom means the enclosure is custom made. So what.
Overall it’s not something that we are smoking, it’s basic understanding in laptops and modern electronics.
I fail to see the merits of your argument based on some handwaving interpretation of "exactly the same".
Merely speculating that FFC interconnect is "probably just a USB-C" says absolutely nothing of the fact that Acer's system is neither truly modular (because it's fundamentally constrained to specific I/O interface by its own case) nor externally reconfigurable by the user. Nevermind that Framework's design appears to sensibly apply what was intended to be floating interconnect (USB-C male) to a fixed peripheral module interface on both sides, which is a huge value add from a user configuration perspective on the merits of being able to choose what side your charger port is installed on alone.
So what about the enclosure being custom made?? Oh I don't know, nevermind completely disrespecting mechanical design considerations and effort applied towards targeted maintainability which have a direct impact on internal layout, user ease-of-self-service considerations that quite frankly the rest of the consumer laptop market clearly hasn't given an ounce of attention. That Framework completely own their tooling alone tells me substantial work was done.
Without even critiquing layout, Acer didn't even so much as give its prospective customers the courtesy of a fuckin' reach-around by soldering memory directly onto its motherboard and left a substantial amount of internal volume on the table. I suspect comparing display maintainability would be a complete joke of an exercise.
Basic understanding in laptops and modern electronics...yeah, sure.
This practicing hardware EE is far from convinced.
How easy is it going to be to source a mechanically compatible laptop logicboard and matching LCD to today’s design, at a competitive price, 3 years later from now, if it’s just a repurposed Acer parts without long term commitments?
51nb X210 system planar exists, but it also costs $800.
Why keep insisting it's Acer's this, that and the other? I'm certainly under no illusion that Framework fab'd every piecepart in its laptop design, but it's logistically of little to no relevance. If Framework controls its interface boundary spec and the market wills it, what's to stop them from contracting with any display manufacturer to produce a functional equivalent, or purchasing someone else's parts for sale in their planned marketplace dedicated to the application?
I think Framework has put together something that they believe has the potential to be profitable and I believe has the potential to be sustainable.
Nothing---especially with respect to obsolescence of consumer electronics---is without lifecycle risk to both a business and its customers. I choose to put my money where my mouth is now because I believe the problem is nevertheless worth trying to solve and the offering is good enough for my objective usecase.
Whether Framework can truly make their long term vision happen in a way that doesn't disillusion the community is obviously yet to be demonstrated. If the idea ultimately fails in the market, then such an outcome is hardly any worse than what I perceive to be an already regressive state of productivity laptops being overshadowed by consumption-centric mobile in at least the past decade, none of which ever focused on maintainability as critical design paradigm. Where I think the Framework meta truly differs is it lays a notebook form factor foundation that openly invites the hacker community to fill in at their leisure. Such a brazen "go fuck yourself" message to every other laptop vendor on the market earns my respect any day of the week.
Is it the best of all possible worlds? Probably not and there's surely room for improvement, but unlike most entitled consumers who want the future now for pennies on the dollar, that's not what I'm paying for either. I'm paying to support a sensible start towards something that the marketing and design of big companies intentionally ignore, have interim utility during a period of transitory company growth with hardware features and software (non-)options that I actually want, and hoping the rest of the market follows through with qualifying the movement's worth in the long run.
