And don&#x27;t forget that classy startup noise.

Thank you for the writeup, it seems like they have done a great job with The Framework. Does it come in that beige-looking color shown on the yellow background?I think I might want a beige laptop, something with the fine lines of The Framework and the raw aesthetic appeal of Lappy 486.

They can also easily sell it for 80% of the retail price if it&#x27;s outside the return window.

Well, if you regret it more than a tinge, and you just bought it from Apple, you can return it within a 2 week window, I believe.

i still have my first macbook. i was able to upgrade the HD and RAM. its sad that you can&#x27;t do that anymore.

I just bought my very first MacBook Air ever. But seeing a laptop like this, with everything being customisable (in contrast to my Apple laptop: nothing can be customised or replaced by me) I feel a tinge of regret...

And why are they BGA chips these days? That&#x27;s the real problem. Did mobile CPUs somehow advance past desktop ones while I wasn&#x27;t looking?

Because they are BGA chips designed to be soldered on, and most people do not have the capacity to do that at home.

Well, not anymore.What a fucking travesty.And note how this laptop has removable DDR4 SODIMM sticks!I couldn&#x27;t believe it when people were arguing that&#x27;s impossible because signal pathways or some shit (too many laptops have it soldered these days).

I don&#x27;t think that mobile CPUs are available socketed

There is an answer to that question in this video:&quot;Responding to your comments on the Framework investment&quot; - One of LTT channelsSurprisingly NSFW, because they show a clip from Louis Rossman&#x27;s Video talking about Linus&#x27; investment (its pretty funny, because it was Live)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=B7f3DTDsocA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=B7f3DTDsocA</a>

They also offer instructions to update that for when you need to upgrade that.It&#x27;s not bring your own but still upgradable, which is what I care about, especially with a smaller company obviously trying to keep everything ethics of repairability.

Even in desktops it feels like socket+chipset is becoming more and more tied to specific CPU so that you need to swap the motherboard and the cpu together.

Cool, but why isn&#x27;t the CPU bring-your-own?

Further down the article:&gt; The environmental consequences of that system weren&#x27;t lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.

That&#x27;s not really addressing it. It&#x27;s just acknowledging it.

The author does address that&gt; The environmental consequences of that system weren&#x27;t lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.

Buying a new thinkpad every year is especially confusing to me given that Lenovo’s switch from mobile to ultrabook processors in the x40 series meant that for around 5 years, buying a newer thinkpad than the x30 series meant getting a speed downgrade.

And apparently it made sense for him to pay 150$&#x2F;year to get his laptop fixed in 24h if needed, and buy two powerbooks at once... I guess what he really should have bought is a Toughbook instead of a ThinkPad?

Ignoring the (potentially substantial) environmental costs, if you do it &quot;correctly&quot; the total cost of ownership is about the same.If you buy a $2000 Mac and use it for as long as reasonably, it&#x27;s going to depreciate by several hundred dollars (let&#x27;s say, roughly $300) a year. At a certain point it&#x27;s worth nearly zero, and you must buy a new laptop. After 6-7 years your total outlay is $2000.Alternatively, every year or two you can sell the old one for a few hundred dollars less than the new model, and buy the new model. You always have a new laptop. And your total outlay is still only about $2000. Plus you are covered by free AppleCare every time you buy the new one.Plenty of people do this with mobile phones and automobiles and other things as well.Please note that I am not advocating it. I was still using my 2015 laptop until very recently. But economically it is not necessarily insane.(Assuming you are selling the old laptops, that is. It&#x27;s not clear to me that the author is doing that. He says he&#x27;s donating&#x2F;rehoming them. Not sure if that includes selling)

Many products are released on a yearly basis, but very few people are upgrading every year.

&gt;&gt; replacing their laptop every year?Not really that uncommon especially with a MacBook Pro where a new one is released...every year.How much sense it makes, that&#x27;s another story.

It just haa a horrible screen resolution.

2013 MacBook Air daily driver here. MagSafe? Usb A? Sd card reader? User replaceable battery? Runs Linux? All checks. It’s light on RAM (which for just chrome and light app use honestly it’s fine).

Ah, hehe, I got confused opening the tweet. I wonder why I had in my head that this was a woman writing the story, must be the monica-byrne in the url :)

&quot;the author&quot; here is well known writer Cory Doctorow. No one here seems to be making this connection, but pluralistic.net is his blog.

That&#x27;s the Vimes&#x27; boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Looking at your trend, you&#x27;ve got $500 laptop &#x2F; 2 year, or $2000 laptop &#x2F; 5 year, which reduces to $250 laptop &#x2F; year vs $400 laptop &#x2F; year. Getting low cost laptops isn&#x27;t necessarily a worse financial outcome, although it depends on how fast the processor updates are moving; when a 2020 intel cpu is about the same as a 2015 intel cpu, it would probably have been better to pay a little more in 2015 for a faster one; when a 2015 intel cpu smokes a 2010 intel cpu, incremental updates every year or two mean a low cost 2015 cpu is probably better than a high cost 2010 cpu. Plus, you get a battery refresh (even if it&#x27;s small).I think there&#x27;s more junk at the low end to avoid, but it&#x27;s not as if the high end doesn&#x27;t have a lot of junk to avoid. Either way, you have to do careful shopping.It&#x27;s like just my opinion, but a lot of higher end laptop spending seems to be on increasing the screen&#x27;s DPI, which is then run with scaling, at the cost of more CPU, more RAM, more GPU, and more software BS. Buying a cheaper laptop with fewer pixels that just runs 1:1 saves all that extra computation and BS, and maybe looks a bit less nice. Sometimes glossy screens are reserved for the high cost laptops, which is like wait, I want a matte screen, so I have to save money to get one, great!

I bought a low end laptop back in 2005, and I used it for about 2-3 years until it started to fall apart. It just didn&#x27;t hold up (hinges started to disintegrate). It&#x27;s performance was terrible, too, and it couldn&#x27;t be upgraded.I got a business class laptop in 2007 for probably 3 times as much. That laptop lasted me until last month. I maxed out the RAM and replaced the HD with an SSD about 7 years ago, but it was ultimately the now-anemic CPU and graphics that got me to buy a replacement. I&#x27;d have replaced it last fall but laptop stocks were too low.

In my experience, it&#x27;s the laptop case that always fails first. So it&#x27;s disappointing to see the trend toward ultra-thin cases.

I found it&#x27;s better to buy a second hand top model, or even last year&#x27;s best on sale, than brand new low quality stuff.It&#x27;s a little less visible for laptops than for, say, kitchen appliances, but even there my thinkpad x220 was bought and upgraded for €400 in 2015, and it did its job well untill half way this year.

I usually buy top quality laptops second hand from shops that give at least 6 months warranty. Best strategy. You get a $2000 laptop for $500. And honestly, Intel did not do too much in the last decade, so these are of great value.

Instead of buying a brand-new potato, consider buying a used or refurb&#x27;d laptop. Your performance stance doing this is much better now compared to.... any time else in PC history because PC hardware performance gains have flattened out. Plus, corporations get rid of perfectly good PCs like, every year because they want the latest model for their staff and especially their executives&#x2F;management. Know where to shop and you&#x27;ll find a glut of cheap and even free computers. I&#x27;ve been poor myself; used machines is how I got by. That and building my own.Either way, you&#x27;ll pay about as much for a used ThinkPad in good condition with good specs as you would for a new HP Stream or other cheaptop.

Back when I was making crap wages, I would get the cheapest laptops I could afford that would more or less give me decent performance (on the order of ~$500-600). It&#x27;s not too hard to find a new laptop that performs well at a reasonable price, but you always run the risk of them reclaiming those costs by cheaping out on all the mechanics of it, and it&#x27;s not like I was able to afford paying ~$2000 for a high-quality machine. Usually within 2 years, the laptop would just start falling apart, I would get sad, and then I would repeat the pattern.After the fourth or so time of doing this, and after getting higher-paying jobs, I ended up biting the bullet for a more expensive computer, and it lasted me five years, and I only replaced it because I wanted more RAM.Point is, if you&#x27;re lower-income, it&#x27;s fairly easy to get stuck in the &quot;one laptop a year&quot; trend, because, while probably a better deal in the long term, it&#x27;s really hard for lower-income to justify a multi-thousand dollar expense. I&#x27;m a proper tech bro now so buying a good computer isn&#x27;t the worst thing in the world for me, but that wasn&#x27;t always the case.

Or he could just save the money. But I guess he has to constantly reward himself for quitting? Man addiction sure is a pain.

I don&#x27;t care enough but I want someone to fact-check him on the environmental impact of a MacBook worth of cigarettes versus the MacBook itself. It&#x27;d be funny if the MacBook is ultimately worse for Nature.

Kudos to him for quitting. I quit, oh, about a dozen years ago.  When I decided to quit, every time I smoked, I told my self they taste like shit; every drag off the cigarette, I told myself that.  Eventually (about 2 or 3 months as I recall) it worked and I could no longer stand the taste and haven&#x27;t touched one since.

As the other comments have noted, Cory addresses this further down in the linked post. He further expanded on this in the post he wrote when he quit smoking[0]:&gt; That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. When I came back, I had my answer ready: “I spend two laptops per year on smokes. That money goes directly to the dirtiest companies on Earth, the literal inventors of the science-denial playbook that is responsible for our inaction on climate change. Those companies’ sole mission is to murder me and all my friends. I’m going to quit smoking and I’m going to buy a laptop this year and every year hereafter, and I’ll still be up one laptop per year.”[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doctorow.medium.com&#x2F;i-quit-9ae7b6010c99" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doctorow.medium.com&#x2F;i-quit-9ae7b6010c99</a>

Also just bc the link is buried, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doctorow.medium.com&#x2F;i-quit-9ae7b6010c99" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doctorow.medium.com&#x2F;i-quit-9ae7b6010c99</a>He traded smoking for buying a new laptop every year. Now that it&#x27;s been years, I guess he could quit and not buy a new laptop. But also people do more wasteful things. I do understand though, I drive laptops into the ground over many years but still 4-5 years per laptop

What you&#x27;re supposed to do, apparently, is buy a brand-new laptop, use it for a few months, then flip it on eBay before it gets too old so you can recover most of what you spent on it and buy the next new laptop.I worked with a guy who practiced this with all his personal hardware.

It&#x27;s very, very normal for wealthy people to replace their daily-use tools every year, or even more often.I replace my phone and laptop and iPad every year. I know people who replace their car and wardrobe and luggage every year, too.In laptops and mobile devices in general, annual updates make a lot of sense as power efficiency is still regularly increasing. The M1 Air, is, for example, a fucking marvel. It&#x27;s been out for way less than a year. I have an M1 Air, and will upgrade it again in less than a year when the Mx (where x &gt; 1) Macbook Pro comes out.

The author, Cory, links to a previous explanation of when he quit smoking he converted the cost into getting a new laptop annually. As he mentioned in the article he typically finds a new home for the used device. Laptop appears to be his primary device and critical to his work so updates annually makes sense, though a new device is partially due to the construction framework elimates(i.e. riveted or glued components).

&gt;Forget the cost, but the waste!They can just sell the laptop and someone else will use it. For example, I almost never buy new laptops, as perfect Linux support generally lags behind.

This looks really cool, but the author... is... replacing their laptop every year? Like, I&#x27;m writing this on an 8 year old MBP that has survived as my round-the-house driver because it still does everything well. My daily driver is getting on a bit now (3yr) and my desktop only just got replaced after 5 years.Forget the cost, but the waste!

how do you get rid of the doubly used Thinkpads?

And I’ve had a used 2016 Thinkpad running MacOS Catalina for almost 2 years. I looked at the prices and they are the same as when I bought it.

If it&#x27;s any consolation, I&#x27;ve bought a used Thinkpad every year since 2015.

Why the hell would you want a new laptop every year? Doesn&#x27;t seem very &quot;reasonable and responsible&quot; to me.

It&#x27;s addressed in the article and elsewhere in these comments, several times. They donate them after a year in order to upgrade. Seems a perfectly reasonable and responsible use case if you want a new laptop every year.

&gt;wat&quot;Self described early adopter consumer sees early adopter friendly project and supports it&quot;One might see some cognitive dissonance between the state of mind of being pro recycling and supporting reduce and reuse and being an eager consumer. However early adopters dance this line and lead the way for the masses to come after.All a matter of perspective or framing.

Yep, this is where I&#x27;m at too.  13&quot; is just not enough space for me to get anything done productively.  On my 13&quot; MBP with my standard font size, my code editor can&#x27;t show a full line of code without me having to scroll (VSCode with mostly default settings, font size 12).

Please get checked for glaucoma if you haven&#x27;t already. Goes for anyone reading this comment who feels their vision is slowly getting worse. I started getting it in my 30s, it can strike early.

&gt; I sincerely hope this company succeeds so that they are around when I do need a laptop.I sincerely hope they&#x27;re around long enough to make a 15&quot; version. My old eyes can&#x27;t do 13&quot; any more, unfortunately.

OP used that as a reward to help him quit smoking.  If it worked, it worked.

I wish that I needed a laptop so that I could buy one. I sincerely hope this company succeeds so that they are around when I do need a laptop.&gt; Yesterday, I put my 2019 Thinkpad on my pile of &quot;laptops to refurbish and donate.&quot; I&#x27;ve bought a new Thinkpad almost every year since 2006. I think that&#x27;s over.wat

I am saving currently for it and I can&#x27;t describe the vague worry I feel that this will become the next big thing. Where I&#x27;ll be refreshing their page every morning for new drops to attempt to get them before they sell out

Good news. If you have things that work with ubuntu. It should work with this laptop too.With the exception of being able to repair and replace parts, the Frame.work laptop is very boring.

Highlighted on the Linus Tech Tips video on the Framework laptop, there are thoughtful touches like drivers installing in unattended mode upon OS install, so the team clearly puts importance on that seamless functional experience too.

Can you provide an example, or that is just a dream you have?

I don&#x27;t personally want an exciting laptop. I want a laptop that works with all my other stuff (phone, tv, printer, various software) the moment I open it.

Powerbooks he mentioned, didn’t he?  Different era.

He didn&#x27;t say that. He talks about Powerbooks <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PowerBook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PowerBook</a>

He did not say that, he said PowerBooks had terrible build quality, which they definitely did.

Part of &quot;build quality&quot; in my mind is the ability to repair your device. Apple has shown this to be something they do not care highly about:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;laptop-repairability?sort=score" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;laptop-repairability?sort=score</a>While, yes, they may be built well in your mind, in many other people&#x27;s minds they aren&#x27;t.

He lost a little bit of credibility saying the Macbooks have terrible build quality… compared to a thinkpad they are on par or better, compared to everything else they are head and shoulders above.

Ditto.My other deal breaker is the fit &amp; finish of Mac&#x27;s touchpad. The qwan of it.If frame.work + Ubuntu come within striking distance, I&#x27;d buy.

I&#x27;m trying to hold out for an AMD cpu on the framework but I might not be able to wait much longer.

Well, the other reason is that customers don&#x27;t care either. I certainly don&#x27;t. The last desktop build I made 5 years ago hasn&#x27;t had a single component changed in that entire time.

That’s almost always the reality when a company “can’t” do something.

They care about keeping new laptop sales up and repairable anything goes against that.

Linus has now invested in Framework, which constrains how he is allowed to review laptops on his channel because of the possibility of a conflict of interest. He says it&#x27;s worth it to support what he believes is a great company with an awesome product vision.

I would clarify that - it is not in their best interests to care.what they want is:To sell you a laptop with a current cpu and memory.If you are &quot;price insensitive&quot; they will allow you to get a better cpu or more memory for a significant upcharge.next year, they want:To sell you a laptop with a current cpu and memory.They do not want you upgrading the cpu or memory yourselfThey do not want you to add next-year&#x27;s cpu yourself next year.

Another quote from Linus that&#x27;s relevant:&quot;Imagine being an engineer at a company at Apple, and it being your job to design the mechanism that makes it so that machine cannot start up unless the chassis is fully sealed. Apple spent actual fucking money making sure that product would not work unless it is in the exact chassis they shipped it in.&quot;That goes beyond not caring.

This effect exists all across society. Some culture seems to drive laziness &#x2F; selfishness across the (irl) social network. Every would care but nobody can pull the whole network in the right direction. That&#x27;s how your company doesn&#x27;t have the right tool, the right app, the right something.

Now we are being told the same about phones

Linus (the &quot;tech tips&quot; one) said something that sticks in my mind: &quot;The only reason other companies can&#x27;t do this - and Framework proved it - is because they don&#x27;t care.&quot;

As a student, I do want my laptop to be slim and tiny, but I was misled by Apple into thinking slim and tiny is only possible if the laptop isn&#x27;t at all repairable. Might sell my MacBook Pro for this thing. Though macOS is a guilty pleasure I will miss :(Edit: Also the 16:10 aspect ratio :(

Slim and tiny is what I wanted when thinkpads were smaller and lighter than average.Once we hit five pounds and I had a bag that stopped caring about smaller laptops? Well that was about the time that desktops died and I could have used a workstation class laptop with some more flexibility.But I opted for simple and put my energy somewhere else instead. Seems a lot of people did.

We&#x27;ve been told for years that &quot;slim and tiny is what you really want!&quot;No, I don&#x27;t want slim and tiny, I want to be able to replace and upgrade parts. I want a battery I can swap out or RAM I can replace.The problem is that being able to swap parts extends service life of machines. Can&#x27;t have that when they want you to just buy a new one ever 3 years.

Do you have an example of a corporation that makes laptops that says it’s possible?

You know, I can&#x27;t think of a concrete example of that, when pressed, so it is possible this was just something repeated to me by coworkers and friends doing Apple apologia, and I just treated it as a truth. A quick Google doesn&#x27;t appear to show Apple or any other corporation saying it, so I&#x27;ll take the L on it.I think my overall point still stands. I still find it irritating that, until very recently, the only way to get a nice, slim laptop was to accept that everything is hard-wired in. Framework proved that that&#x27;s not correct.

iFixit has repairability scores for products. Eg this Surface gets a 1 out of 10 because MS used adhesives among other problems. They traded off repairability for thermal, rigidity, and mechanical concerns.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Teardown&#x2F;Microsoft+Surface+Go+Teardown&#x2F;111895" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Teardown&#x2F;Microsoft+Surface+Go+Teardow...</a>

I can&#x27;t find a quote from Apple, but here&#x27;s a 2012 article by Kyle Weins (iFixit CEO) basically claiming that&#x27;s the reason<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;06&#x2F;opinion-apple-retina-displa&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;06&#x2F;opinion-apple-retina-displa&#x2F;</a>

Many companies do heavily promote the thinness of their device on launch. How many of them also say that it is thin and customizable? (And customisable doesn&#x27;t mean choosing between 8 gb of soldered ram vs 16 gb of soldered ram). There&#x27;s your answer.

Do you actually have any example of a corporation that makes laptops saying that it’s impossible to have slim laptops that are customizable? I would be very surprised if this ever happened, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.

Is that a property of the components being soldered in, or just a property of the fact that Framework cannot get access to the highest quality components on the market?Genuine question, I know very little about electrical components.

The Framework laptop is 1mm thicker and 200 grams heavier than the 9th gen Carbon.  We&#x27;ve gone long past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to size&#x2F;weight vs repairability trade offs.

The Framework is larger and weighs more than contemporary machines that have larger displays (e.g. ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th generation), and it has worse performance and shorter battery life because soldered-in RAM isn&#x27;t some kind of scam, it&#x27;s actually much better.In short, it was not a lie that you get smaller, lighter, and better laptops with integration. You do, in fact, get all of those things.

I don&#x27;t even care about slim. Light yes. Slim doesn&#x27;t really do a whole lot for me past a certain point (which for me was a decade ago). Being able to replace parts is way more important.

This is the barrier for me too. I&#x27;m writing this on a 4-year-old Thinkpad. (The &quot;25th anniversary edition&quot;, which has my favorite keyboard.) If somebody figures that out, I&#x27;m happy to switch, as my feelings on the Thinkpad line are the same as Doctorow&#x27;s: formerly great, now sadly declining.

I’ve never understood the trackpoint use case, the (admittedly few) computers I’ve had with it, I just felt it a nuisance in the middle of the keyboard.

Unfortunately currently framework says it is impossible to have a slim, tiny , customizable laptop with a trackpoint option (due to the keyboard height). Hopefully we will overcome this one too and I would be all in...

From comparative tests or from vendor specs? (Genuine question, I do not know which you are referring to)

Could you provide some sources to back up that claim? My first choice for laptop reviews (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Framework-Laptop-13-5-Review-If-Microsoft-Made-A-Repairable-Surface-Laptop-This-Would-Be-It.551850.0.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Framework-Laptop-13-5-Review-I...</a>) did not show that to be the case

Can I get a citation for that?The only laptop for which that seems to be true is the MacBook, but no x86 laptop will come close to that. From what I&#x27;ve seen the Framework has a mostly uninteresting battery life, outperforming some likely competitors (like Dell&#x27;s XPS 13 and MS&#x27;s Surface Laptop) and outperformed by others (like HP&#x27;s ProBook x360 and ASUS&#x27;s Zenbook 13).

55 Wh is a pretty good size for the form factor. looks like it&#x27;s suffering from a comparison against competitors with lower resolution screens.

As battery tech gets better, you can replace it. And the glued-in battery in the macbook pro won&#x27;t be 100% capacity after a bunch of charge&#x2F;discharges.It&#x27;s a compromise in the short term maybe, but long term it&#x27;s so much nicer.

As far as I can tell, this laptop has a 55 Wh battery. A macbook pro of the same size (13in) has a 58 Wh battery and the dell XPS 13 has a 52 Wh battery. What am I missing?

The Framework has half the battery life of similarly sized alternatives. No one was lying to you.

I love the Framework idea, and believe in repairability. But I’ll be interested to see what Framework does when they have the (enviable) challenge of manufacturing, distributing, and supporting half a billion of them.

M1 macs no longer run unsigned code. Apps now check stapled OCSP. There&#x27;s now a permissions dance to do much of anything.

&gt; MacOS is nice, probably my favorite consumer operating system currently available, but Apple&#x27;s walled garden approach is beyond annoyingWhat’s the walled garden on macOS? You can run anything you want on the Mac.

Newer laptops are starting to come with soldered SSDs. Macbooks have had non-standard or soldered SSDs for the past 5+ years.Framework is also proactively making documentation, schematics, etc etc available for repair shops.

&gt; you&#x27;re locked [sic] into whatever CPU&#x2F;chipset was current when you bought the laptop.Which you can replace&#x2F;upgrade too.

&gt; SSD and the batteryI have a MacBook Pro w&#x2F; Retina Display from Mid-2012. It cannot be fixed for a reasonable price, despite it being still mostly perfect for my daughter&#x27;s school computing.This computer definitely interests me (as someone who moved back to Ubuntu &#x2F; Regolith this year)

No, you can upgrade the entire main board (with CPU) in future. And the &quot;old&quot; main board can function as a standalone PC outside the chassis.

IMO, the selling point isn&#x27;t that you can carry around the ports you might potentially use and swap them out whenever you need them, it&#x27;s that you can buy a machine that&#x27;s tailored to your setup and peripherals.I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2020 after the GPU on my old one fried. What I wanted was something with a Cat6 and DisplayPort built in for when I&#x27;m in my office, and multiple USB-A ports for the peripherals I use (mouse&#x2F;keyboard&#x2F;mic&#x2F;speakers). I had to settle for one with a single extra USB-C port, an additional USB-C hub to get enough USB-A ports and a Cat6, and an adaptor for the built-in HDMI port to hook up to the DisplayPort on my monitor, which set me back a total of like $100 on top of the cost of the laptop itself. The laptop also has a headset jack and large card reader that I have yet to use, so that&#x27;s just wasted space that could have potentially been something I would have actually used.

I&#x27;m impressed that they have managed to take this product to market, and I&#x27;m glad that people who value modularity will finally have a viable option.at the same time, I personally don&#x27;t see what all the fuss is about. you can upgrade both DIMMs, which is cool, but not exactly unheard of these days (I guess it&#x27;s getting there in an ultraportable?). you&#x27;re still stuck with DDR4, which is almost EOL, and the max capacity it entails. it&#x27;s neat that you can customize your IO options, but how many people are going to do that more than once? being constrained by the chipset, it&#x27;s not like you&#x27;re going to be able to &quot;upgrade&quot; your IO in the future.the most likely parts of a laptop to fail are the SSD and the battery, both of which are fairly easy to replace on almost all laptops. past that, you aren&#x27;t really gaining that much when you&#x27;re locked into whatever CPU&#x2F;chipset was current when you bought the laptop.

This looks refreshing. Definitely one of the most interesting find of the year.

&gt;e.g. By this theory, android would become more popular than iphone.Well Android already is more popular than iphone worldwide.

Android is more popular, worldwide, than the iphone. It&#x27;s only in the US and Japan that the iphone is more popular, and in the US, only by a bit.

According to Clayton Christensen, there&#x27;s a cycle between integrated and modular, as consumer perferences change. At first performance is inadequate, but once it is good enough, people base their buying decisions on other things like customization.e.g. By this theory, android would become more popular than iphone.EDIT yes, which happened, favouring the theory; despite iphone still leading performance, due to integration even to cpu and gpu.

&gt;I’ve looking at their laptops since they announced, I’m just hoping they can release a Ryzen one, and then I’ll be on the fence between theirs and whatever Apple has to show for a ARM pro laptop (14”-15”).I&#x27;m in the same boat. While I in principle would love to invest in a powerful AMD laptop with tons of upgradeability with decent Linux support, Apple&#x27;s next offerings which may give upgraded displays, my favorite trackpads, impressive power and ~20 hours of battery life is very hard to ignore.

The only reason these two groups look at it differently is because people in the &quot;regular users&quot; group don&#x27;t know how bad things are, and how good things could be. What makes you think the Framework would have a hard time competing in the general laptop market? The baseline, preassembled model starts at $1000 and comes with Windows 10 Home. It has a quad-core i5, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, a nice 2256x1504 display, and it&#x27;s thin and light (1.3kg, 11.7&quot; x 9&quot; x 0.6&quot;). Compare that to your other thin and light options at this pricepoint:XPS 13: $1020* i5* 8 GB RAM* 256 GB storage* 1920 x 1200 display* 1.2 kg, 11.6&quot; x 7.8&quot; x 0.6&quot;MacBook Pro: $1300* M1* 8 GB RAM* 256 GB storage* 2560 x 1600 display* 1.4kg, 12&quot; x 8.7&quot; x 0.6&quot;This isn&#x27;t even accounting for repairability as a feature. Consumers don&#x27;t care about that as it stands, because they don&#x27;t know they should. But once they realize, it will become a selling point, too.

&gt; we were constantly told by these corporations &quot;it&#x27;s impossible to have slim, tiny laptops and make them customizable&quot;Because it’s true. The thing is “power users” and “regular users” look at that tradeoff differently. The bad part of economies of scale is that they reward conformity (you can pick your model T in any color, as long as that color is black).The framework would a hard time competing in the general laptop market, but luckily for them, they don’t have to. There’s a niche for specialized products and they are taking advantage.I’ve looking at their laptops since they announced, I’m just hoping they can release a Ryzen one, and then I’ll be on the fence between theirs and whatever Apple has to show for a ARM pro laptop (14”-15”).

Besides planned obsolescence and other malicious intentions, there are also economies of scale to consider: if making a non modular&#x2F;repairable laptop cost to a producer just one less buck, that&#x27;s a lot of money when multiplied by the huge number they sell.That said, I love the concept and plan to buy one next year, when they hopefully will have means to sell in the EU without outrageous shipping+import duties.

I wonder if the slowdown in Moore&#x27;s law had something to do with it? I mean back in the day the performance gap between a new processor and a 5-10 year old one was so substantial it was hardly worth your while

&gt; After seeing the framework, I&#x27;m more than a little annoyed that I fell for this.Me too. An I&#x27;m annoyed I fell for the lie that board level repair is impossible. What the manufacturers really should be saying is &quot;it&#x27;s impossible for us&quot; because it&#x27;s obviously possible for 3rd parties to do it and make a business out of it.I&#x27;m willing to pay +$100 for something that&#x27;s assembled with screws instead of glues.

It seems more likely that tech has advanced enough for this, rather than there being some greedy phenomenon where it just so happened that nobody thought to do better before framework.

I guess at some level I believed thatWhy should we believe anything any for-profit company says, without verifying (whenever possible)? Drug companies lie all the time, about having to price their drugs absurdly high. Facebook lies all the time about not being able to fact check, without even attempting to try seriously. And on and on.The insane thing is not that companies lie. It is that the general public has either given up or duped into thinking these companies cannot possible lie. We have created an economic system where profit trumps everything else.

To be fair to &quot;these corporations,&quot; the modules available for the Framework are basically built-in USB-C dongles. If you really hate the look of dongles, then thats great. If you only use one thing, like HDMI, then you don&#x27;t have to cart around a bunch of modules as if they are dongles.The three internal upgrad-ables are nice if you think that things will drastically change in RAM, SSD, or Wifi before the CPU, mainboard or faster connections to faster RAM and SSD make the effect of said upgrad-ables to be gilding a turd. Otherwise periodically buy the midrange storage and allow the secondary market to absorb your environmental guilt.

I hope this changes the way that people think about hardware now that Framework has proved that we can have this. Let&#x27;s just hope they scale

HP is a notable exception to this trend, they still make multiple ranges of slim, customizable laptops (at least non-touchscreen models). I oversee IT for an org of ~150 people and have swapped out RAM and M.2 SSDs on multiple recent HP ProBooks, EliteBooks, and a ZBook in the last few weeks with just a Phillips screwdriver and a spudger.Nothing epoxied shut or soldered in place, and the metal cases on recent generations of these HP models are sturdier than the older plastic. Our lead tech has replaced HP laptop batteries, keyboards and displays when needed with no issues. HP is also one of the few brands with backlit keyboards standard on most laptops, even down to the lower-end models I&#x27;ve encountered since 2018.But the Frameworks sure look intriguing!

My Dell laptop just cross three years in June and the extended warrantee also got expired. The battery has been deteriorating with only a few mins of backup left. Called up the customer care and they asked to instead contact nearby service center. Tried with multiple in Delhi NCR and no one seem to have a battery – one of them said that no battery is available right now (God knows why?)Finally, somehow got one via Amazon supplied from a state 1600 KMs away from here for about $80 in a week time. It could very well be expensive than the one gotten from the service center but, was left with no option.

It feels like for years we were constantly told by these corporations &quot;it&#x27;s impossible to have slim, tiny laptops and make them customizable&quot;, and I guess at some level I believed that, and just accepted that laptops with upgradable components were a thing of the past.After seeing the framework, I&#x27;m more than a little annoyed that I fell for this. They proved you can have a slim, clean laptop that&#x27;s somewhat modular, and more impressively, with something like 1% of Apple&#x27;s budget to do it. Had I known about it, I probably wouldn&#x27;t have paid an arm and a leg for a maxed-out Macbook Pro a year ago. MacOS is nice, probably my favorite consumer operating system currently available, but Apple&#x27;s walled garden approach is beyond annoying.

I&#x27;ve never met someone before that cares about cpu fan noise. Genuinely. It never bothers me so I have never thought about it. Perhaps also because my workflow involves playing music when I work to make me more productive.

It&#x27;s a shame ARM isn&#x27;t quite a first-class desktop architecture quite yet. I&#x27;d probably use one if my software ran on it. Otherwise, I figure in 10-15 years, when it is &quot;fully featured,&quot; the architecture will have already been usurped by RISC-V.

Same here. I went from a thinkpad to an m1 air, and although the noise wasn’t something that bothered me before, I do appreciate its absence now. The battery life also is a big draw. I can go to the office without a charger, and it’s not a problem. I’ve never had a laptop that made it past half a workday.

Ehn.. I used to be like you. Once I used Pixelbook, a superthin fanless device, I was in awe. Pixelbook Go was similar fanless device as well. But, then I realized that they have their limitations. With a fan, one can achieve much better performance when needed. So, now, I prefer a laptop that can passively cool for normal day to day work, and then for heavy workloads take advantage of the fan.I got the framework laptop, which should be able to push the intel chip to the max 28 TDP. I heard the fan is big, and thus not annoying. I am curious to see how it will turn out (My batch 3 order gets delivered tomorrow).

Same here but for fan noise. Since I&#x27;ve gotten the m1 macbook air, I don&#x27;t think I can go back to a laptop that runs hot and needs a fan.In the event that I must get a non-m1 laptop, I can definitely see myself buying the framework laptop and putting ubuntu on it.

Yep. 
At this point in time it&#x27;s the only choice.

As much as I love speculating about backdoors and NSA wiretapping, I seriously doubt these MEs are malicious. At this point, managing a modern x86 is tough work, especially if you want to run virtualization, complex threading and maintain high efficiency. It makes total sense that there are mandatory supervisor chips at this point, and without any evidence that these chips are &quot;phoning home,&quot; I simply have to assume that it&#x27;s purpose is virtualized KVM for remote management. Worst case scenario, the CIA wakes up my laptop while I&#x27;m asleep, big whoop.

There&#x27;s this great talk from a CCC about reverse engeneering the PSP: Uncover, Understand, Own - Regaining Control Over Your AMD CPU<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bKH5nGLgi08" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bKH5nGLgi08</a>At 47:10, they mention that they haven&#x27;t found anything evil. Ofc, this isn&#x27;t hard proof, but if I trust anyone&#x27;s answer, then it&#x27;s theirs. I think the likelihood of it being malicious is nonzero, but small enough that I&#x27;d condemn active backdoors into the realm of conspiracy theories.There&#x27;s always the possibility of it being exploited by others, but c&#x27;mon: Basically ANY other exploit would be way easier to distribute and activate than one in the PSP.

You cannot neutralize and disable the PSP spying module in AMD processors, while in Intel ones you can do that with ME: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Intel_Management_Engine#Assertions_that_ME_is_a_backdoor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Intel_Management_Engine#Assert...</a>.

I may be mistaken, but I believe that&#x27;s something that&#x27;s currently in the works (fingers crossed). Or it&#x27;s at least very requested by users.

The display is very disappointing apparently: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;System76&#x2F;comments&#x2F;m7cujq&#x2F;pangolin_screen_brightness&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;System76&#x2F;comments&#x2F;m7cujq&#x2F;pangolin_s...</a>

Check out the System76 AMD Pangolin. System76 has many values in common with Framework.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;system76.com&#x2F;laptops&#x2F;pangolin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;system76.com&#x2F;laptops&#x2F;pangolin</a>

Hopefully the next gen Ryzens will support USB4 which is basically Thunderbolt 3 without the brand name.

While I would prefer AMD here, because it&#x27;s Intel, you get Thunderbolt for free

I bought a TUXEDO Pulse 15. Very fast CPU, really low price and OK build quality.EDIT: did I said something wrong? -2 votes already.

These laptops would be an instant buy from me if I could get a new AMD chip instead of the Intel CPU&#x27;s.

I have a DIY version preordered, due in October - planning on transferring over my NVME SSD and 32GB of RAM from my busted, falling apart XPS15 into the new Framework.

They&#x27;re pretty garbage. Probably the worst part of the system.

I wonder about the trackpad, too. Apple has always smoked everyone else at trackpads. After using theirs for so many years, every time I touch another it feels crusty and unresponsive.

With Linux, worth following (or funding!) this work (HN passim):
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bill.harding.blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;linux-touchpad-like-macbook-update-touchpad-gestures-land-to-qt-gimp-and-x-server&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bill.harding.blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;linux-touchpad-like-mac...</a>

With Windows installs, they use Windows Precision drivers and feel at least as good as a Surface Book trackpad. YMMV with Linux however.

It&#x27;s pretty good. The click is definitely better than my 16-inch MBP (it&#x27;s physical instead of motor-driven). Moving the cursor feels precise.

Looks gorgeous - i wonder how the trackpad is though, otherwise seems to be a solid contender to a Macbook...

I agree.  I really like the keyboard on the original Google Pixelbook, the Pixelbook Go, as well as the Framework.  Nothing compares to the pre-chiclet Thinkpad keyboard though (IMHO).

as a thinkpad user - there is no keyboard comparable to it.  
and that is one of the most important component (in a laptop) to me

I might try that.  I&#x27;ve tried Ubuntu 20 and 21 and they still look blurry to me pretty much no matter what I do.  maybe I can figure out what PopOS includes in their distro and I can set that up on Ubuntu.

I&#x27;m using 150% on Pop!_OS (an Ubuntu derivative) with Wayland and it looks great.

As a long time thinkpad user I love mine.  Only problem I have now is my go-to OS Ubuntu does a really bad job of fractional scaling out of the box and none of the workarounds seem to really solve the problem.  Sadly the crappy screens on my thinkpads more or less &quot;hid&quot; this problem from me for years.

Louis Rossmann recently reviewed the Framework laptop and basically said the exact same thing, about them taking a lot of the stress off the soldered USB-C portion and transferring  it to the chassis instead.

Only a guess but they also act as a sacrificial device in place of the motherboard&#x27;s USB-C connector. I&#x27;ve read here on HN that Macbook USB-C adapters regularly fail.

They&#x27;re not totally proprietary, they&#x27;ve even released designs CC-BY that you can use to make your own: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FrameworkComputer&#x2F;ExpansionCards" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FrameworkComputer&#x2F;ExpansionCards</a>

They are actually open-source[1] so you can print your own case in a 3d printer and put the circuit you want inside. About the USB-C limitation, I initially thought it was a limitation too but Im not sure after learning that you can use them as thunderbolt ports. Anyway, I think the notebook seems to be thin enough and the possibilities of dongle are exciting[2] - like magsafe chargers[3] (which seems to have some patent problems).[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;c&#x2F;expansion-cards&#x2F;developer-program&#x2F;90" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;c&#x2F;expansion-cards&#x2F;developer-pro...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;t&#x2F;what-new-expansion-card-types-do-you-want-to-see-released&#x2F;193&#x2F;7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;t&#x2F;what-new-expansion-card-types...</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;t&#x2F;youtuber-elevated-systems-makes-a-magsafe-charger-and-rf-dongle&#x2F;7415" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.frame.work&#x2F;t&#x2F;youtuber-elevated-systems-mak...</a>

&gt; In what way do they limit the USB-C they pass through?GP means that if you use one other than the USB-C pass-through module, it&#x27;s (trivially) a proper subset of the USB-C functionality that you started out with.I don&#x27;t really see the issue: the alternative is that you do that in a dongle more external to the laptop anyway?

I think I read somewhere that they were planning to open up the specs of those modular ports. That may alleviate some of the points you bring up. (Can&#x27;t find the source right now though.)In what way do they limit the USB-C they pass through?

What do they limit? You mean when you&#x27;re using one of the non-usb-c ones that that&#x27;s limiting you?

But why the dongles? The go against all the principles of the rest of the design. They’re proprietary, consumable, and they waste space in the chasis. They limit what you can do with the USB-C they pass through too.

If a product manager is listening: you have my interest. I&#x27;ll be excited when mouse buttons become available. It&#x27;ll make my shortlist when it has Coreboot, and if Libreboot is on, I&#x27;ll be obliged to give you my money.

My guess is that they are using up all their manufacturing capacity to sell new full laptops (and DIY kits). Their current manufacturing setup seems to be that they periodically batch a bunch of what are essentially pre-orders and then get things manufactured after the fact.Once they&#x27;re more established and have money in the bank (hopefully that happens), they can think about ramping up manufacturing and actually keeping inventory before it&#x27;s been spoken for.Until then, at least the commodity parts (RAM, storage, WiFi card) can be replaced with off-the-shelf parts bought from NewEgg or wherever.

He might have to. As far as I can tell they haven’t even started selling individual parts yet. They all just say “Coming soon” on the website. I’m not sure what they are waiting for.

The author spent some time explaining the need to have a reliable laptop and spending $150 for 24-hour service and having two Powerbooks at once.  But there was no mention of anything about reliability and repairs (well, replacement parts) for the Framework.  I&#x27;m curious if he plans to keep a second Framework laptop in case parts are sold out, take too long to ship, etc.

AMD please? What about Coreboot? Nothing? Ehm...

That&#x27;s weird. I always see people claiming AMD is superior for Linux due to their opensource drivers (intel and nvidia are not).btw certain distro devs were provided with Framework laptops a while back<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;blog&#x2F;linux-on-the-framework-laptop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frame.work&#x2F;blog&#x2F;linux-on-the-framework-laptop</a>

Hey, AMD (Zen2 3800X) and Linux (NixOS - 5.14.6) user here; other than a weird bug once on temperature reading I haven&#x27;t had a single issue between Linux and AMD.

&gt; i always see people complain about AMD&#x27;s linux supportI&#x27;ve always heard the opposite, that AMD&#x27;s linux support is amazing and that it&#x27;s windows drivers are lacking. Especially in the GPU department where it struggles with minecraft.

AMD CPUs and Linux have always been fine for me. The GPUs on the other hand...

I dont know about laptops but I&#x27;ve been running Ubuntu on a ryzen 1600 since the couch came out and haven&#x27;t had any issues.

&gt;but i always see people complain about AMD&#x27;s linux supportNo, you don&#x27;t. You see people complaining about NVIDIA&#x27;s linux support.

ive seen a lot of requests for an AMD version but i always see people complain about AMD&#x27;s linux support.  Do you plan on running windows?  If you are planning on Linux is the support really as bad as people complain.
I say that because intel&#x27;s linux support seems to me as top notch.  ive never really had driver issues that i can think of

Sockets add measurable height, weight, &amp; power. That part, at least, isn&#x27;t just a conspiracy.

What is the distinction between &#x27;laptop CPU&#x27; and &#x27;desktop CPU&#x27; if not BGA (or whatever it is) vs. socketed packaging though, really? Power consumption?Wouldn&#x27;t it be nice if there just &#x27;CPUs&#x27;, and you could pick whatever was appropriate for your desktop or laptop. Sure some would maybe only make sense in one package, but there must be some considerable overlap. I use my desktop for work because it has upgradeable RAM and I needed to do that, not because it has a beefier CPU than is available in a laptop.

Alienware had a socketed CPU and it didn&#x27;t pan out: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;circuitbreaker&#x2F;2020&#x2F;5&#x2F;13&#x2F;21256845&#x2F;alienware-area-51m-r1-r2-specs-upgradable-parts-gpu-dgff-limited" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;circuitbreaker&#x2F;2020&#x2F;5&#x2F;13&#x2F;21256845&#x2F;a...</a>

The CPU is not socketed&#x2F;replacable because intel simply does not sell socketed laptop CPUs. If there was a socketed alternative, I&#x27;m sure it would be in the framework.

&gt;That tool – a small screwdriver – is also sufficient to upgrade the CPUCPU isn&#x27;t up-gradable without switching out the entire mainboard, which I&#x27;m fine with, once I get an AMD version that is :)

It makes sense if you use the laptop as a desktop - plugging it to a bigger monitor with an external keyboard and mouse. Otherwise it&#x27;s hard to have good ergonomic with a laptop and you can&#x27;t work long hours on it without developing some body pain.

I don’t use my laptop in any of those places because my desktop setup isn’t there. Laptop keyboards are awful to type on, why put yourself through that?I’d rather get my work done at the desk and then enjoy my hammock or couch without the computer, preferably with a good book.

Even when I&#x27;m home 90% of the time during COVID, I use my laptop in lots of places: my desk, my bed, my dining table, my kitchen counter, my couch. I can&#x27;t drag my desktop setup all around my apartment like that.

You must be out of touch.   In the last 20 or so years of work (~8 employers), I have never had a desktop as a primary work machine (I&#x27;ve had desktops as a secondary machine).  My primary personal machine has also been a laptop in that time frame.

My experience is that everyone claims they want the ability to go to a coffee shop, but very few actually exercise it. Obviously some will, like you, but not most. And unfortunately the perception of need drives behavior more strongly than actual need. Same with “off road” vehicles and trucks, people buy things based on capability they’ll never exercise.Personally I loved the idea of working from a coffee shop until I actually tried it. Then I found that the glamour of the idea was much more than the experience of trying to do focused work in a noisy environment on a cramped keyboard. So instead I do work in my office, and leave my laptop permanently closed and connected like the worlds most expensive Mac Mini.

I&#x27;m not sure how common it is, but at my old job devs and business analysts would regularly go on site to work with clients. Larger teams would have build boxes for CI and VMs that we could remote into if need be, but other than that laptops were absolutely required.I&#x27;m currently writing this at a coffee shop surrounded by others all working on various things. I really like the option to work from anywhere.

My anecdotal experience matches yours. I work for a smallish business in an active growth phase, and the onboarding process for every employee starts with &quot;Welcome to the company, here&#x27;s your laptop.&quot;

Literally everybody in my company (a large enterprise) uses a laptop as their main workstation. They work with them docked at their desks, but then unplug them to take them to a meeting room, a shared working space, etc.Outside of work, 90% of people I know have a laptop as their main computing device at home. Very few have a desktop PC - those are the PC gamers.Your anecdotal experience doesn&#x27;t match with my anecdotal experience.

Even if you mostly work at your desk, a desktop computer has just no option for mobility if you ever want to work somewhere else temporarily. It seems like many people value the option of mobility, even if they don&#x27;t use it often.

What? I finally switched from a desktop battlestation PC at work and at home to a high-powered gaming&#x2F;compute laptop that I dock at work&#x2F;home in my 3x monitor setup with mechanical keyboards and such at each location - and I&#x27;m a 1990&#x27;s LAN party, lug your giant tower to the basement of your buddy&#x27;s place nerd.I was really late to switch and I don&#x27;t regret it at all. Almost everyone I know made this switch 5+ years ago before me.I also needed a laptop anyway with the battlestations, because I travel for work. Now it&#x27;s all in one package and I spent a lot less money on it.

Yes. It has maintained true for me throughout the entire pandemic.Laptop ergonomics are catastrophically bad. Doing any meaningful work on them for any length of time without my keyboard, monitor, and mouse just plain sucks, so I don’t do it.My personal machines (gaming and non) are both desktops. I’ve never wanted to move them, and they cost me a fraction of what an equivalent laptop would have.

Really? This has maintained true for you even during the pandemic?I don&#x27;t know a single person who uses their laptop in one place. Hell, every one of my co-workers has been at home or in the office with their machine at least a couple times over the past month.

I have a laptop plugged into a dock, from which it basically never moves. If it was a desktop nothing would change.The one thing I want to do in a mobile fashion is take notes and do zoom meetings, a need that my iPad meets handily.

I keep my personal computer at my desk in my apartment almost all of the time, and for the past decade have used a desktop since I pretty much never needed to move it. But over that decade with a desktop, I found myself wanting - craving - the ability to easily take my computer on trips, or into the living room from time to time, etc. Not a lot of movement, but the possibility for it. But the concept of having files&#x2F;projects split over a desktop AND a laptop seemed to be a hassle. And syncing seemed to be a not-so-ideal situation (possibly hard to set up, or requiring a paid service, or not reliable, etc). The best solution I found was a dockable laptop setup. I&#x27;ve now been using a dockable laptop setup for almost a year and I honestly can&#x27;t imagine ever going back.The only other solution I could envision I&#x27;d be happy with is one that doesn&#x27;t exist: where I have a processor and storage &quot;core&quot; that I can use in a variety of dumb terminals. That&#x27;s my real dream, but a dockable laptop is kind of similar.

Carrying to meetings to be productive or stare at Zombo (back when meetings were in person). Some of my co-workers have a hybrid schedule and work won&#x27;t give us two machines. Getting things done while attending conferences (if those happen again).

I still remained baffled by the popularity of the laptop. Literally everyone I know works with them fixed in one location; their desk. Yes, some people do need mobility, but this appears to be a minority of consumers. We could’ve had all this repairability and modularity years ago if most consumers just admitted that really they wanted a desktop all along.It also fixed complaints about keyboards.

A few things. The newer TrackPoint caps are not good. I actually had to order some 3D printed one from some Japanese guy. Also my Thinkpad T14 is throttling to the extent that I had to install tools [1] (?) that fix this problem. Battery seems to be bad as well. Intel by the way, I wanted to have Thunderbolt for an eGPU.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;erpalma&#x2F;throttled" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;erpalma&#x2F;throttled</a>

Bundled spyware. That&#x27;s why I swore off Lenovo.

Why are you growing unhappy? (I have a X1 Extreme Gen 1, and Legion 7, and Legion 5 Pro, so I&#x27;m curious)

I don&#x27;t really know, but since there are no manufacturers that built good TrackPoints I think its either hard or there really is no demand (sadly more likely).I don&#x27;t need a touchpad though. Actually, one of the best laptops I&#x27;ve owned was one without a touchpad [1].[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkwiki.de&#x2F;Datei:TP_X60_2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkwiki.de&#x2F;Datei:TP_X60_2.jpg</a>

What would be the requirement for someone to build a trackpoint for the Framework laptop? Would they need to design a whole new keyboard plus a touchpad with the three buttons?

I am growing increasingly unhappy with Thinkpads in general, but as far as I know there is no real alternative for TrackPoint users. There are some that have a TrackPoint but they lack three physical mouse button that are in reach of ones thumbs.

I am so happy to see the Framework laptop get the good publicity it deserves, and I hope it helps them grow much more.My fear is that when it becomes popular enough, one of the BigTech&#x27;s may just make an offer too good to refuse, and just buy and bury the company.

The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used