I wonder if there is a market for a framework gaming laptop. Really hope there is.
Also, on another note, I've read this engadget article about how other companies tried to build an upgradeable laptop and failed but I see Framework as a different kind of beast for one simple reason. This is their only value proposition, they don't have an alternative.
In a very "Innovator's Dilemma" kind of. way, Dell and other big manufacturers have their main lines with higher margins and/or volume that really drives their attention and money, so any new innovation that takes more than 1 to 3 years to mature gets cut pretty fast. For Framework is kind a kind of "burn the ships" moment, they don't have anything else to turn to, so they have to keep pushing. I really hope they shine (and don't get acquired)!
We’ve been very deliberate about making this not a traditional gaming laptop, but a laptop that can be configured with enough performance to play intense games. You can configure it without the Graphics Module and have a high-performance 16” notebook with reconfigurable input and easy repairability and upgradeabilty.
If you could make it so you can completely turn off the dGPU through software (boot menu?), pulling no power, it would be insane. I would love the power of a dGPU to play casually on trips but turn it off for normal use when I'm just working. Also, I LOVE that it wouldn't look like a gaming laptop. I'm tired of the gamer-esque design cues, even when they're subtle (RGB keyboards are okay if configurable).
Heck, I'd love to not even carry the GPU unless I want to use it. What ever happened to external GPUs for mobile gaming? I faintly remember hearing about them years ago, but I don't know if there were ever practical consumer/prosumer products. I imagine it's not uncommon for some laptop users to carry Thunderbolt docks that are pretty beefy (the one I use weighs a full pound, although I almost never carry it with me), and I would bet you could fit a decent mobile GPU in a similar or smaller form factor.
You can completely turn off dGPUs from software nowadays. In theory the driver should do it for you when it's not in use (And I find this works well for me), but you can also forcefully turn them off, both on Windows and Linux, such that they draw exactly 0W.
Hmmm. My experience with XPS 15s is you can turn it off with software in Linux, but it was pretty technical (not something average users would be keen on). I wasn't sure if that was the case for most laptops. It definitely wasn't drawing 0W when I was just coding/browsing/etc though, it doubled the battery life in Linux when I turned it off.
Yeah, my experience with iGPU+dGPU setups outside of MacBooks has been messy. Part of the problem perhaps is the various different ways it can be set up, e.g. with/without mux switch, and last I knew AMD and Nvidia handle iGPU ↔ dGPU handoffs differently rather than agreeing on a standard.
With that in mind I'd also prefer that there be a way to flip off the dGPU in BIOS to guarantee that it can't unexpectedly become a power vampire.
I don’t think apple gets enough credit for how good their automatic graphics switching implementation was. I’d argue that most users who benefitted from it didn’t even know it was happening. It’s such a useful feature too, because dGPUs generally kill notebook batteries, and even at idle, they probably generate an impactful amount of heat.
Is there truly no equivalent to apples automatic graphic switching for PC laptops? If so that’s WILD.
AMD and NVidia now use the same standard, which is PRIME for handoff and automatic shutdown using Runtime PM, and if needed muxes are handled by the vga-switcheroo.
On the latest NVidia/AMD hardware, no configuration should be required, unless you try to use Wayland on NVidia.
Unfortunately on NVidia you really need the latest hardware, both on the GPU and CPU side. If you do, it should generally "just work". Of course Linux is Linux and it might not.
It depends on how recent the motherboard and GPU is, if you have an NVidia dGPU. If you have a GPU made in the last two years and a recent CPU, it works automatically out of the box with X11. On older systems, it's pretty technical, but thankfully many distributions now come with tools that handle it all for you and give you a button you can click to turn it off.
ASUS laptops, as of 6.1, I think, have kernel support and a userspace CLI and GUI to trivially configure this stuff (`asusctl`). In Windows, you can use GHelper and avoid the hundreds of megabytes of gaudy crap that is Armory Crate to configure this as well.
`asusctl` (the CLI), and `rog-control-center` (the GUI) lets you configure fan curves, "ultimate mode" (mux switch), LED lights, effects, panel overdrive, battery charge limit and more
And then `supergfxctl`, when "ultimate mode" is disabled, allows you to configure "Hybrid" or "Integrated"(-only) graphics modes.
For completeness/disclosure, flipping the mux switch aka Ultimate mode on/off) requires reboot, though it seems this may become unnecessary with new/future hybrid graphics tech in laptops.
ASUS should shower the developer in money, this G14 2022, all AMD is the most satisfying, best, complete out of box Linux experience I've ever had. And I've owned a lot of Lenovos, Dells, etc.
Looks wise, it reminds me of my Legion 5i Pro 2022 if only for the back part (I/O, exhaust). There's more laptop behind the display unlike most laptop designs where the display is the edge.
As someone who's blind and wants a lot of CPU performance but doesn't care about the GPU I appreciate this. I'm torn between a desktop and a laptop when replacing my current 8 year old desktop. I'm hoping that I will be able to configure this laptop with something more powerful then the current Framework CPU's. Given the fact that I only travel two or three weeks a year it would be nice to have this act as a desktop but be able to take it with me if I wanted to.
I don't know anything about your specific situation, needs, and preferences, but GPUs are not self evidently useless for blind users. In some systems, they can contribute to higher quality speech synthesis. They could also have a role to play in vision support tasks (e.g. determining whether you're properly positioned in front of your webcam in a video chat, or recognizing and describing something you're holding up to your camera).
Can you post info about them contributing to speech synthesis? I use NVDA as my screen reader with the built-in espeak synthesizer. I've been using synthetic speech so long I find I don't want natural sounding voices, I prefer more robotic sounding ones since I can listen to them at a faster rate. Vision tasks is a good point but not something that applies to me. I almost never use a webcam on my personal computer. I use my iPone for OCR although I could see a webcam being useful for OCR in some cases.
I don't have information about specific speech synthesis systems, but contemporary speech synthesis often relies on neural networks for best quality, and those can benefit from GPUs. If you truly prefer robotic sounding, that may not be relevant to you. But if it's all about synthesis speed, that's where GPUs may bridge the performance gap.
Are you able to explain what and how you use your laptop?
I saw someone blind using an iPhone one and it utterly blew me away - I also had no idea what they were doing, as they were hitting buttons before text yo speech had finished.
Will the graphics module be hotplugable (or at least, able to survive surprise removal or insertion without damaging the laptop and/or the card), or will it require that the laptop be fully turned off (perhaps even requiring to unplug the battery first) before exchanging it?
(My initial guess would be that it will require at least that the laptop be powered off, or will force it to power off when removed, because from what I understood the cooling fans are in that module).
I wonder if your offering would address a corner case: I have a Dell XPS 15 with a dedicated GPU. It's really obnoxious to allocate the dgpu to a vm and still use the igpu for video output, because the video output gets muxed through the igpu. Would the Framework let me use maybe a dummy plug on the dgpu and avoid muxing to make it easier to give the dgpu to a vm?
Presumably you could eventually get a 3rd party module like that.
Speaking personally, I would love a 60% keyboard option with a key layout similar to mechanical ones. Considering this doesn't really exist on the laptop market, I'd be willing to pay a premium for a framework keyboard like this.
If you watch the latest Linus tech tips video you can see the amount of customization available in that top deck area, which includes the possibility of a num pad.
I’d be surprised if there was a market for a Framework laptop dedicated to gaming but I am really intrigued by a Framework laptop that can game.
I use my laptop for my work software engineering but since the pandemic have gotten back into gaming a little. I’m on an old Xbox and it’s showing its age but I don’t game enough to justify buying a whole gaming PC. If I can plug a GPU into my work machine and play some games? Now that’s compelling. The fact that it wouldn’t have all the cringey “gamer” decorations you see on the average gaming laptop would be a bonus too.
(all that said a Steam Deck is probably still the more compelling purchase for me in that regard, I’ve been eyeing one for a while)
Definitely go with the Steam Deck. It’s literally a portable pc which you can turn adhoc into a workstation, plug into a TV for sofa gaming and it’s really really bang for buck. The performance is amazing, the community caring and it runs on Linux.
I game on a framework laptop with an eGPU. I have a Razor Core Chroma with a Radeon 2060. There’s plenty of guides out there to get it up and running [^1]. I did try to get it working under Linux but wayland support for Nvidia is still a mess. For now, I’ve been dual-booting Windows to play my games on. It works really well.
Isn't one of the advantages of Framework that you can swap out parts, so it would be much easier for them (theoretically) to build a gaming version of the laptop.
I have the Steam Deck, I mean, I had it, because I'm waiting for the RMA because mine had a nasty bug which capped either CPU or GPU at a low level.
And this is my message to you: Beware it is pretty much a beta product, so buy it with this in mind. You will experience lot of bugs and troubleshooting, specially if you want to use it outside Steam's box (custom mods, emulator's etc).
Upgradeability is a huge plus for gaming laptops, and they're likely to get very favourable reviews from PC gaming reviewers, so I think they'll probably be successful!
That's a great point. While laptop makers who are used to the status quo probably aren't going to like this, the competitive gaming scene might like it a lot. A laptop where you can always have the latest greatest graphics card without replacing the whole laptop? You could charge a lot of money for that and it would still make financial sense for a certain type of person. I mean someone out there is buying the latest top of the line Razer Blade every year for like $4K right?
Anecdotally, it’s one of the main reasons I got one. Aside from work things that require Windows, it can run plenty of PC games. Especially when combined with an external GPU via Thunderbolt.
The market for gaming laptops is tiny, but long term upgradability is a big barrier there. It's possible that being able to upgrade the battery, GPU, CPU, even thermals, could be super enticing to the PC builder community.
>> I wonder if there is a market for a framework gaming laptop.
Yes, there is. We have four in our family, since ~2018, and three of them continue to run without issue. The main weak point for the 4th one has been the hinges and case. It happens to be a later model so I think the company 'value-engineered' it to have a shorter lifespan.
I wont discount that as a possibility, but it kind of goes against the company's mission, so I think thats kind of unlikely.
A more likely explanation (in my mind) is that being a small company, there's a lot more variability of quality in each unit's parts than you would see from a larger company with more mature factories etc.
My partner and I both have frameworks, but mine has had a lot of issues with the track pad and theyve never experienced any.
"Gaming" is a wider demographic to target and makes sense from a marketing standpoint. However, the people that benefit from the same level of hardware and would be interested in the mission and aesthetics of framework are creators. Video content, indie/hobby game dev, light modeling, design work etc. This is really the group that's going to get excited about a 16" laptop with more graphics horsepower. I know I am.
I predict that these are going to be a hit with CS students. Performance, customization, repairability, "geek cool" factor; it's exactly what I would have bought.
I’m happy to answer questions that folks have on this. There was also an earlier HN thread on our full launch event where we announced 13th Gen Intel Core and AMD Ryzen 7040 Series versions of the Framework Laptop 13, along with a bunch of other stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35277660
I don't have a question, but I am a Framework 12th gen board owner and I just want to say what a cool company Framework is. For those who haven't seen a framework in real life before, I cannot emphasize enough how easy this thing is to put together or fix. Opening my computer up to replace my hard drive would take maybe 5 minutes at a relaxed pace. I bet it can be done in 60 seconds by someone who is fast at it. That's because of very thoughtful design and really thinking through the ergonomics of opening the computer up. There are little design choices like using case screws that don't come out all the way, so you don't end up spending 5 minutes replacing the SSD and 10 minutes looking for a 2mm screw that dropped on the floor near your desk. The layout of components on the inside is also very elegant. And then when you close the computer back up, it aligns itself with magnets, which just feels great; it's very satisfying, kind of like the magsafe charger design on a macbook. I really appreciate the design of this machine. You've gotten this to a point where anyone who can assemble a piece of Ikea furniture can probably replace their laptop speakers or trackpad. This is no small feat.
And more importantly, I love what you are doing for the industry overall. The idea that I can swap out my display from glossy to matte on a laptop that I've already owned for a while for less than $200 is pretty amazing. I wish you a lot of success.
What's going on w/ sleep/wake and suspend, particularly on Linux? From what I understand, the previous problems were due to Intel's bizarre behavior around s3 sleep. Has AMD introduced Apple-like sleep/wake/suspend behavior?
S3 is unfortunately pretty much dead all-around, but S0ix continues to improve. We have firmware optimizations going in on both the system side and the Expansion Card side to help reduce bad retimer behavior around suspend though which improves power draw.
I think we talked about that before, but lmk if you need help with S0.
It takes some work, but it's possible to get to less than 0.5%/battery/hour, a fair benchmark as a battery reduced by >=5% after 10h of sleep is generally acceptable
holy crap, I'd love usage numbers that low. I'm running PopOS on a thinkpad, not on a framework, but S0 has been a long fight for me and I haven't felt like I've made much progress.
I have more experience with thinkpads, so yes ofc!
First please read my windows guide on csdvrx.github.io: it's very generic and should get you a baseline in Windows
Then get at least a week worth of measurements over long periods of sleep (like at night, reboot on windows) as a baseline
Then tell me how it compares to what you get on Linux after enabling everythig with powertop tunables and we'll work from there, as it'll be more precise than powertop.
Just send that by email at my outlook address. Includes the discharge line plot from Windows sleepstudy you find the more relevant, and a dmesg from linux
FYI, without wifi, on my thinkpad recently installed to Arch I measure 3.6W in powertop but I think it needs a recalibration as I measure 2W on a USBC power meter when idling with wifi enabled and a full wayland desktop (edge, etc)
It's a complete bloody mystery and I thought the same thing when I saw their other laptops. I'm sure their target audience uses the cursor keys more than almost every other key, and they've made them those horrible tiny nubs. You could literally fit all four of them into the footprint of that right shift key, the right shift key thatIhaveneverevenoncepressed in 30 years of computing.
No matter what else they do, the arrow keys tell me they are fools who should not be trusted! (Hyperbole, sure, but only a little.)
Yeah there's quite a bit of disconnect between who Framework imagines their market is and who I think gets excited at the phrase "modular laptop". We care about things like real non-chiclet keyboards, full size arrow keys, mouse buttons. What is the point in buying a Framework when the laptop I already own has as much connectivity as a Framework laptop's entire selection of modules, all at the same time? Framework should've offered things you can't get anywhere else, like a module that's just four USB 2.0 ports in a stack, or a module that's actually a fold-out bluetooth mouse.
That is the advantage of modular devices. If you want something, you can literally make it yourself and slot it into the system. If you fall into the camp of just wanting to buy something that works perfectly out of the box, can you really claim you fall into the camp of the 'people who get excited at the phrase "modular laptop"'?
I want something I can't get somewhere else. Being able to make my own modules is cool but there's simply not enough slots to even match my current ultraportable, let alone give me room to experiment.
Indeed, all the space could be used to fit a keyboard in this manner very nicely https://imgur.com/a/V0Ykw1D and make this and any laptop immensely more usable.
I imagine that the numberpad thing in the 16s could address this problem. If not outright, then perhaps through the interfaces that enable it. But I agree, as a 13 owner I want a better answer than that.
I’ve loved my Framework so far and the excellent customer service. Is there still enough attention put into ensuring Linux compat? I’m especially interested in providing NixOS support as the Framework has been popular in that community.
Definitely. We have a dedicated member of the CX team focused on Linux support, along with a support agent who is also dedicated to it. Most of our lead engineers also use/dogfood Linux on their Framework Laptops daily. Mostly Ubuntu, but I believe one of our team members does use NixOS as their default.
Can you share the screen resolution? I own the 13 but the PPI on that screen makes fractional scaling necessary for me (which doesn't always behave well on Linux/Wayland). I'm wondering if I'll be able to comfortably use integer scaling with the 16. And if you can answer... are any screen replacements with different resolutions in play for the 13 chassis?
We'll be sharing full specifications on the Framework Laptop 16 later this Spring when we open pre-orders. What we have today is an early developer preview around the new module systems.
Would you consider releasing a graphics module “riser”? Since PCIe-is-PCIe, I would love the option to just connect a desktop GPU directly (no eGPU TB chip involved), even though I have to bring my own PSU.
I currently use a TB3 eGPU case and the massive overhead and OEM bugs are slowly making that real PCIe link worth it.
How crumb tight are the lines on the deck with the different panels on the 16? Are they held only by magnets, such that lateral pressure could cause them to move?
We have alignment pins and notches for stability in addition to magnets for holding force on the top row. The bottom row actually latches into place on rails.
I have to say that improving the battery by 11% is not nearly enough. I have a Framework Intel 12th Gen running Mint and I can't use it for more than 3h without having to plug it in. I've followed all instructions on your forums but it's just horrible! Don't get me wrong, I love my laptop, but I hate the battery performance. My wife has a MacBook Air which only requires charging every 3-4 says.
I wish you spent more effort in fixing it at the software level, whatever it takes.
One of my favorite things for keyboards is the ThinkPad feature where the Page Up and Page Down is above the Left and Right key. I don't understand why others don't do this, its so practical.
Specially in cases like this, there is just an empty space there. Why not put 2 more keys?
ThinkPad also makes them full sized keys, that would be even better. But just having empty space? Why?
Because it's easier to touch empty space and adjust fingers. Back when I worked on Thinkpad, I really hated these keys, whenever I accidentally pressed them. I don't say you're wrong, just it's a matter of taste.
It's the same with mechanical keyboards - I can't use these compact 75% keyboards where arrows/Pg Up/Pg Down/Home/End are flush with other keys; but a bit "exploded" layout, with just a bit of space between arrows and the right column keys is perfectly ok with me
What I really hate is that combination of full size/half size arrows on modern laptops, put there just because some designer hate empty space.
Spacing is heavily underrated in current laptop keyboard design. Consider another part of the keyboard: the function key row. On traditional keyboards, it was grouped with gaps between the groups: Esc, F1–F4, F5–F8, F9–F12. (Laptop keyboards will commonly have an extra key or two at the right end, such as Delete and Insert, which historically were part of other clusters.) This grouping is excellent for spatial memory, whether visual or blind. If anything, it’s more valuable than it used to be, with the other functionality of the keys (e.g. brightness and volume adjustments). But somewhere along the way, this gap has been removed from most laptops, in favour of an unproductive uniformity.
(I have an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, 2021 model, GA503QM. It has a larger-than-necessary gap between Esc and F1, slightly-smaller-than-ideal gaps between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9, and sadly no gap between F12 and Delete. It also has another row of four keys higher still: XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioMicMute and XF86Launch1. Kinda funny how XF86AudioMute is relegated to Fn+F1. I’m really not looking forward to whenever I switch to a laptop without a dedicated mic mute button, it’s wonderful. I honestly wish they’d added another couple of buttons on this top row.)
IIRC on ThinkPad keyboards, the 6-key navigation block (arrow keys + pgup & pgdn) has a lower baseline -- the bottom of the block is lower than the bottom of the rest of the keys on the keyboard. So it is still easy to find the arrow keys by touch, even without blank space above the left and the right arrow keys.
Absolutely agree. I have those keys remapped to an additional left and right arrow on my T480 because I was constantly pressing them while navigating on the command line and it would erase my entire command.
My company laptop is from HP, which has a large-left-right small-up-down setup (basically equivalent to what you describe, except the up-down arrows are even wider than usual).
I cannot possibly convey how much I hate this setup, I find it very uncomfortable. And even though there is a separate row of Home-PgUp-PgDn-End to the right, I can never find the correct key.
Compared to this, the Thinkpad's six-block cursor setup is vastly superior in my opinion. The down arrow has a notch, so it is easy to find as an origo, and the cursor keys are lower / slanted slightly compared to PgUp/PgDn, so it is virtually impossible to not know which is which! This is on a Thinkpad X1C.
All this goes to show that everyone has different preferences, so good luck if you are a laptop maker - you will inevitably make someone very unhappy with your keyboard. Possible solution - replaceable keyboard?...
The thing is, in every application, if you touch one of them by accidents, you can instantly hit the other one and you are right back where you were. On ThinkPad the page key have a different shape then the arrow key, its easy to feel what key your finger is on.
ThinkPads has slightly enlarged arrow and page keys that I think are perfectly usable.
Ha, that's an interesting take. My Dell work laptop has these (not full-sized) and I don't like them at all. There's nothing fun about trying to use the arrows and accidentally slipping onto a key that isn't usually there, which might scroll my cursor/window by a huge amount. My fingers expect no space there, so it makes the whole area less distinct to touch to have the spaces filled.
On my OS you can use CTRL+PgUp/PgDown to cycle through tabs, which makes the dedicated keys by the arrows really useful for single-handed tab cycling. Most other ways require a chord with both hands, so it’s just a lot slower.
> One of my favorite things for keyboards is the ThinkPad feature where the Page Up and Page Down is above the Left and Right key. I don't understand why others don't do this, its so practical.
Same. After falling in love with this layout, I just refuse to buy a keyboard that doesn't have them. These 2 keys alone are at least 50% of my decision to refuse to even bother with Apple hardware (the lack of OLED being another good 30%)
I fail to understand how people can accidentally hit a Page key instead of a arrow key, if they know touch typing and use the little bump on the Down key (like the F ahd J key) to reposition their finger.
In the worst case, they could disable these keys. Meanwhile, I have to suffer their non existance, or even worse: a ridiculously large left and right key, with a minuscule up and down key.
I find it far more frustrating the shift to half-sized arrow keys - when the space is also clearly already there. The r-shift key could be chopped up, or removed entirely, to accommodate a full-sized up-arrow.
For some (myself) the right shift key is the main shift key; so doing away with it would be terrible. Typically holding it down with the right pinky while typing full speed ahead, as well as single movement stroke patterns for <>{}?"+_ and so on, so heavy on all caps C snake case type use (if that makes sense.)
I also use the right shift a lot (though it's not my "main" one) and would hate to see it go away.
But there's no reason for it to be so freaking huge! On the two keyboards I have on my desk (HP EliteBook laptop and a "normal layout" desktop keyboard) the right shift is the second-biggest key after the space bar!
Hadn't really thought about it... kind of gotten used to Fn+up/down on most laptops. Though I rarely use a laptop except while traveling and that's usually on vacation, so limited use. At home, laptop for work is docked, and my personal doesn't get used much.
Vimium and vim (or even xmodmap if you like) are even more useful for this, since you don't have to have a special keyboard, and you can set it to whatever you like.
Framework have a very ... localization-interested website, that can be confusing some times in my opinion. The link here seems to go to the French (hence the /fr/fr/ in the URI) version of the blog post, but I still got to see it in English. Confusing. Here [1] is the non-localized version.
I guess its because they didn't translate the article into french. What I also find confusing is that when you change the language, the controls are still in the original language. I can guess what button is for changing the language but still not a great design.
Yeah... considering there are good browser APIs and most server platforms support language matching, that they could relatively easily deliver language content without specific language endpoints. Not that it's easy, just completely doable if it's a significant concern.
Automatic language matching is a real pain actually.
- sometimes the article / product is only available in 1 language and the redirection leads nowhere (I’ve seen it many times)
- the language of my phone/computer does not match the one where I live, and even maybe not the language I used to search for that thing in the first place.
So yeah, I never like it, especially when you live near the border of multiple countries and websites want to select the language based on location….
It would be nice if language selection was standardised and browsers would just offer a button and a default choice that websites would follow: no need to hunt for the language box on websites.
I wish language selection in OS and Browser were easier to access... but your browser does send a language header with your request, which generally matches your browser.
Location based is and can be a pain. I live in a border state and often get spanish versions of sites... I also follow a couple prominent youtubers who post english and foreign language content, so sometimes get results in those languages, that I don't read.
That said, using the default for the browser, and allowing override isn't a bad thing... I usually look for something that looks like a flag in the upper right, for language selection. And the few times I've written multi-language sites/apps that's the UX I prefer to use. I would default to browser/header, I would respond to the change event, and if the user selects a preference, set a cookie and use that first.
Again, I do wish it were easier to switch for the browser itself.
Why don't more people use DeepL or something similar to translate articles?? Unless you're using very specific stylistic devices (is that the right word?) it should work just fine, right?
I hope it's possible to fit a pointing stick (TrackPoint) keyboard within that 3.7mm, and that someone first- or third-party makes one. I'm keen to try replacing my ThinkPad with a Framework as soon as that's available, but not before.
Sadly I feel like trackpoints are really end of life and I wouldn't be surprised if Lenovo ditched them entirely soon. It seems they keep it only to please the tiny but vocal minority of tinkerers that we are. But we mostly buy old, second hand thinkpads.
And as keyboards get thinner, trackpoints lose in quality. On linux it seems the software side is also not as good as before with libinput.
So I'd be really surprised if any one new on the market would go about making keyboards with trackpoints now.
There's a trope in car nerd circles of "We all know the best vehicle is a manual transmission brown diesel station wagon" and then of course these people only buy one that's 10 years old, so at this point no car company makes such a beast new.
Pre-covid I'd made do with whatever garbage keyboard and garbage monitor $job dumped in front of me, but almost by happenstance I ended up with a 16:10 monitor and an IBM M4-1 keyboard, and surprisingly it is an enormous improvement in work environment and I'm actually somewhat more effective at $job. (And I should have known this -- I "grew up" using IBM F / M or Focus fk-2002 keyboards that these days sell for actual money on the used market; spent a decade in front of enormous tubed workstations, etc, but normalization of deviance is a real thing)
Anyhow -- perhaps with framework's more modular approach they'd be able to make a form factor with more depth in the case to allow for a "real keyboard". Or more likely I'm just asking for a manual transmission station wagon. Safety Yellow please.
Apparently the reason nobody makes station wagons new (for the US market) is because the US has a tax on cars and there is a loophole that allows SUVs and pickup trucks to avoids it as they are classified as "light trucks". There are plenty of station wagons made for the european market (although we call them estate cars on this side of the pond).
In my state, SUVs are classified as station wagons.
I think station wagons just mostly went out of style. I think it's dumb but the American public has always gravitated towards physically bigger and bigger cars, to the point where it's considered totally normal to commute to an office job in a 12 mpg super duty pickup with extended crew cab and duallies in the back.
In the USA the roads are big, the fuel's cheap, and everyone's got a huge vehicle so you need one too to feel safe / be able to see anything; it's an arms race everyone loses.
If you live some place where the SUV's just not going to fit and energy's more expensive, you get the smaller vehicle and everyone else does too.
There are tax rules around huge vehicles in the USA -- you can fully depreciate an enormous work vehicle so there's a surprising number of vehicles that fit just barely into that enormous category.
The only way to get a "manual" these days is to get an electric car. Not exactly a manual, but more like a manual than a slush box.
Yes, I'm living in Iceland. Our car market is quite a mix. It's mostly European/Asian commuters but also with plenty of bigger US cars, mostly pickups.
I spent over a decade dealing with the mushy keyboards... my preference now is the M-style unicomp, which I use on my work computer... or I'll fall back to a Cherry mx brown switch keyboard, if there's complaints. I use one for my personal desktop too for backlighting.
There's nothing like the feel, and my RSI issues that I was starting to get improved greatly not bottoming out on a sponge for every key tap.
Unfortunately, switched keyboards for laptops are limited and don't have much travel... they do exist and are definitely superior though. Would be a cool option for framework, but not sure how well they fit for clearance, or what kind of switches framework's kb uses... I've been using an M1 air that I had bought before hearing about framework for personal use, but don't use it much... in a few years, will likely buy from framework and hope they're still around.
It looks as though, to make the framework taller to support keys with travel, you'd need an entirely different case -- but so long as the mountpoints for everything were otherwise the same it seems like it wouldn't be a radical rework of the product.
One can imagine a double thickness framework with either somewhat bigger battery and mechanical keys or super huge battery and the smaller keys; and of course more (or at least larger) expansion cards.
But of course the idea for something is worthless - it's the execution that matters. I hope they succeed enough to be able to expand their portfolio to more niche markets.
> they'd be able to make a form factor with more depth in the case
while the company certainly seems interested in providing options, i would strongly suspect that this level of variability would be a step (much) too far.
Sometimes it makes sense to stay in your niche. The Thinkpad is never going to be huge in the consumer market; being marginally thinner probably won't have a big impact in the institutional market; having the only decent pointing stick on the market is a deciding factor for a certain niche.
I'm trying to decide whether my next laptop will be a Framework or a Thinkpad. If the Framework was available with a pointing stick, the decision would be made. If the Thinkpad wasn't, the decision would be made. The other things that have attracted me to Thinkpads are repairability and Linux support, but Framework does those better.
I'm on my sixth Thinkpad, and there are definitely more out there with the same preferences.
They removed it from the ThinkPad X1 Fold and got enough negative feedback that it was reintroduced in the ThinkPad X1 Fold 16.
What wouldn't surprise me is that they fuck up the trackpoint (e.g. by making it thinner). The Z16 laptop has a newer TrackPoint without dedicated keys, for example, and the newer T14s have flat keys.
Maybe don't generalize your personal experience. Working with almost anything can give you carpal tunnel. Is there any evidence carpal tunnel is more likely then with any other input method?
More anecdotes from me on the input-method to wrist-problems correlation:
I weight train regularly. Lots of forearm tension. I noticed one day that it always hurt more when I was scrolling (using an original Apple Magic Mouse). Brutal repetitive strain injury. However, when I went for periods of time only using the trackpad in my MacBook, my arm would feel
Upon realization, pretty much immediately switched to a trackpad at my desktop as well, and problems went away.
It took about 18 months to get from "my arm really fucking hurts" to "yeah, it was the mouse". People always ask why I use a trackpad at a desktop, I tell this story. I don't remember the last time I used a mouse on my computer.
Many people, developers included, use the mouse to point and click when they need to change the caret position while editing text. If you do enough of that, the amount of precisely controlled movement involved quickly add up to repetitive strain injury on your hand/wrist. I've seen colleagues in their 20s/30s suffering from this problem, to a point that they needed to use the mouse with their other hand.
I'd recommend using the keyboard to navigate within a document. It's going to take some getting used to, but it'll be best for your hand health in the long run. Meanwhile, switching to a trackball (remember those?), a trackpad, or a trackpoint mouse, will definitely alleviate the symptoms.
I had a very similar experience. It started to happen within less than a year of starting my career. Both arms bothered me if I was typing in high gear for a long time, but the right was a lot worse and started to be an everyday thing. I switched the mouse from right to left side for a week and the right side started to feel a lot better. I ditched the mouse for a trackpad and picked up a kinesis advantage and never looked back. Still use a mouse and traditional keyboard layout for my gaming PC though.
How many years exactly? I am at almost 9 years of use and I have not felt the slightest hint of any problem (for reference I have in the past suffered from carpal tunnel related issues so I know what it feels like).
Yes, on this particular topic I don't use laptops because I find them painful (cramped keyboard and track pad). It looks there might be enough space here (and maybe custom modules) to remove the track pad completely, and have a more ergonomic keyboard.
One of my least favorite things about the Framework 13 was the low midrange feel of the system. The customization experience is top notch, but the computing itself was underwhelming. This new entry should fix that problem.
It's a pity the keyboard design never seriously improves even for the niche laptops.
Like, the space to the sides is useless here, but if you could split the keyboard and move that space to to the middle - well, know you've moved one step closer towards more ergonomic typing! Or better yet, you could move all those pinky keys there so that instead of moving your right pinky to hit backspace you'd just move your right index finger
I don't know if the standard keyboard they ship with will change, but the flexible layout here does open a lot of space for keyboard experimentation and alternative options in future. The Framework CEO says there are already prototypes of an alternative ortholinear keyboard option (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35280168) and split keyboard like you describe is totally possible here too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35283252)
We see interesting use cases for the small modules on the left and right as well if you are not some who wants to slide the keyboard to the left and put a numpad on the right.
We’re showing a prototype of an LED Matrix that can be used for low res information display, but other things like a row of extra buttons, a narrow LCD, a capacitive slider, and others are possible too.
As a sibling comment noted, it is also possible for a module developer to create a full width keyboard with a different layout.
As I mentioned yesterday, I really hope that it becomes possible to DIY designs, whether with thin-enough modular scissor keys, or by opening the thickness requirements of the keyboard.
Perhaps there could be alternate tall hinges and a thicker bezel filling the gap to make room for discrete keyswitches without sacrificing thickness for normal users?
With a properly designed keyboard (ortho-staggered or ortho-linear without a huge spacebar) the numpad is not needed, you can have it right around your home row)
But am very glad to hear there is at least potential for innovation here!
Hmm Apple really put a ton of money into making their touch bar work and even they couldn't manage to make it actually useful. If they couldn't do it, framework has no chance.
I would have been a lot less critical about the touch bar if it hadn't replaced the function key row though. That one is mandatory for me, and there was more than plenty room on MacBooks to have both at the same time.
I totally disagree. I think direct shortcut keys without difficult to remember combinations are much preferable to me. And also much handier (e.g. when drinking something you can press a single button with the other hand).
For this reason I also use the big old 100% keyboards with numpads, and I remap the entire numpad to other functions such as a 3x3 desktop switcher. For me there can't be enough dedicated keys.
By the way the link you are quoting actually advocates using single keys as the ideal option :) It literally says the following:
> of these, in terms of efficiency and hand health (Repetitive Strain Injury), the single key is the best. Key sequence of single keys is second best. Key chord is the worst.
I suffer from RSI also which is another reason to prefer this.
However it is really a matter of preference of course. Some people love their 60% keyboards and that's ok too. Just won't work for me.
But what I disagree with is the "should be used" part. Nobody should tell me what to prefer :) This is one of the reasons I switched away from Apple. They are very strong in their opinions (to the point of actually building opinionated software).
Dedicated keys (F-keys or numpad keys) are harder to reach from homerow. There is limited number of such keys and usually that number is less then number of available functions/commands so not-enough-keys problem persists.
A lot of laptops need to reserve the space to the side of the keyboards, for their ports - in fact, whenever you see a laptop where the keyboard is kissing the edge of the laptop, it usually has a dire shortage of ports (typically 1 USB port, a charger, a headphone jack, and nothing else).
This makes sense if you realize that it's a choice between keyboard girth and thin-ness; you can either have the keyboard on top of the ports, or you can squish the keyboard to the side and be potentially ~4mm thinner. Or just don't have ports.
Not really, the bigger laptops don't need to preserve more space for the ports, right? Yet they all expand the space sideways instead of adding space between the keyboard halves
I mean, even with the same width, moving backspace between halves has no impact on the ports, where is that useful innovation for the few of us that make typos?
Or replacing the spacebar with a few thumb keys - that is also port-effect-free
Under X11 with KDE, or under Windows, that's no problem whatsoever. 144dpi isn't any more hacky than 96dpi or 192dpi.
It's only macOS, Gnome and Wayland that require 1x or 2x scaling (which is absolutely mind-bogglingly ridiculous, and anyone that contributed to that or encouraged that should be banned from ever touching UI code again).
Fractional scaling is just broken by design. If you have combined vector/bitmap graphics (like most web pages) designed for 'canonical' DPI, you can either break proportions between vectors and bitmaps (rendering vectors with proper DPI, while for bitmaps use nearest integer scale), or render everything with proper scale and introduce artifacts like blurring of sharp edges to bitmaps.
Why is that broken by design? You'll never see content that's in integer scale of its original source anyway. e.g., many Sony cameras have a 6K sensor but downscale (not binning) the image to 4K.
Android btw uses the same type of scaling – you'll just get slightly blurry edges, but that's not much of an issue.
It's much better to have slight blurring around the few rare edges where legacy bitmaps are used.
The alternatives are
1) full-screen blurring, broken gamma correction and wasted performance (e.g. rendering at 2x to display at 1x) of full-screen scaling
2) content that's not the correct scale, making it too small or too large to work with.
I'd much rather have a situation where the 1% of content that uses legacy bitmaps is blurry vs EVERYTHING being blurry.
Fractional scaling on Linux is still hit or miss in my experience. I played with several permutations of Wayland/X11/GNOME (with fractional enabled)/KDE and none got it 100% right, and even under the setup that got closest some programs acted confused.
It’s certainly not as painless as fractional scaling on Windows, where only truly ancient/esoteric programs pose issues typically.
I'm not sure what issues in Wayland you're talking about. I've been using sway with fractional scaling for a few years now and never really had any problems.
Sway with Wayland has every application render at both 1x and 2x and then has the compositor scale the application.
This sounds like a really attractive idea until you realize that a 1.25x 1080p screen means you’re now rendering everything at 3K resolution, including any and all games.
Additionally compositors often scale directly in sRGB, which means you’re introducing lots of gamma errors.
I've got a 3840x2160 and a 1024x1280 (yes, portrait) monitors under windows. The first one at 144dpi, the second at 96dpi. The first at 10-bit 600 nits DCI-P3, the second at 8-bit 300 nits sRGB. Works just fine.
Of course... that said, MANY software are dated and aren't or won't be implementing scaling any time soon. For those of us using Linux, it's even worse. This doesn't mean that the hardware shouldn't consider the existing software ecosystem. A 4k display with 2x scaling is often a good option for laptops.
My vision at computer distance isn't great in general, usually on a 32" 1440p display for desktop use. I generally can barely handle the micro size of higher res on laptops.
Modular keyboard and QMK! It's a niche within a niche but would absolutely love an ortholinear option to the keyboard e.g. https://deskthority.net/wiki/Planck
Though would like this on a smaller laptop, 14-ish inches seem to be the sweet spot.
Jack Humbert (behind both QMK and OLKB) is actually working on an ortholinear keyboard module for the Framework Laptop 16! We had a mockup of it at the event.
This would be my perfect machine. Over the past few years I've gone deep down the keyboard rabbit hole. Given it's a device I spend a large proportion of my waking hours in contact with it's a good point to optimise (or at least experiment with) to be honest.
I currently use an iPad and Atreus, but having this in clamshell form would be pure utopia.
QMK support on a laptop's internal keyboard would be fantastic! I've gotten very used to my corne, and switching to using my laptop's keyboard on the rare occasions when I need to is a bit disorienting.
Similarly, I’d like to see an HHKB layout option. It’s the layout I use most on desktop boards and it’s always been a bummer I can’t have it on laptops.
GPU modularity makes the framework even more interesting for small form factor pc projects. I might pick it up for my re-imagining of the ibm ps/2 laptop.
So if I buy a computer with Win 11 then I can claim €259 back as long as I wrote it and install Linux? Isn't that how things worked before with Windows-tax automatically applied to all retail computers in major chain stores?
That clearly won't work, as one could get free computers ... but what is the situation in getting reimbursements of Windows-tax?
So if I buy a computer with Win 11 then I can claim €259 back
Anybody else remember Windows Refund Day? Some OEMs actually did offer a refund of around $30-50, which was the cost of an OEM license at the time. Although many court cases around the world have since then ruled that you don't have a right to claim a refund for unused OEM licenses.
Yes, I got my Windows license refunded years ago. AFAIK it was not simply getting a refund for something unused, but rather the fact that the hardware and the software were two distinct products that were bundled together without the consumer having a say.
We have the Framework Laptop DIY Edition that ships without an OS or OS license specifically to make sure folks don’t have to do this and can bring the OS that they want.
>what surprise me is that a Windows 11 Pro licence cost 259 Euro. Micro$oft still make a lot of money with windonws =)
Not really. Windows 11 Pro retail is $199 today which might sound steep but in comparison Windows XP Pro retail was $299 in 2001 which adjusted for inflation would be $500 today. Ouch!
Windows 95 retailed at a whopping $205 in '95 or ~$400 in today's money, while a retail Win 11 Home is $139 now.
So Windows has actually gotten massively cheaper, which is weird considering that OS complexity, update frequency has increased and SW dev salaries and expenses have gone up since then.
That and no more customer support to pay for. Plus, the consumer prices are probably subsidized by the massive volumes in OEM licenses and O365 subscriptions.
I have no idea how they get the keys (probably OEM) and whether this is actually kosher (and I don't wanna know) but I did this with Win 10 some years ago as well and it has worked out thus far.
Just pay with e.g. PP and they'll send you the key via e-mail.
Grey market key resellers, apparently using volume licensing. It's a roll of the dice whether they'll stay valid, possibly because the same key is resold repeatedly, or Microsoft blacklists them.
I wonder, do they sell retail licence or re-sell OEM licence at retail price?
Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone really buys Windows at retail prices. Enterprise (subscription) and OEM costs are much lower, and for personal use you can buy OEM keys off eBay or AliExpress for a few bucks.
The opaqueness of Windows licensing for "pro" devices makes us assume that there are heavy discounts, which massively depends on the manufacturer- framework could not be at a size that gives them preferential pricing (even if we assume that licensing is cheaper for other companies).
I can say that it is more ordinary for end users to get discounts rather than OEMs, unless there is a lot of negotiation (including bundling crapware, as we well know) in the tech industry when it comes to bulk licensing.
Interesting bit, that many people miss: The enteprise windows license is not "standalone", you cannot use it with any device. You may use it only with device, that came with valid OEM or retail license.
It is not legal, but the advantage is that you don't have to deal with shady software like that pirate KMS server. Even though it is a breach of contract because it is not how these licences are supposed to be used, it is still recognized as genuine by Microsoft, so you get all the updates, etc...
You may get your license revoked it the seller get caught and as a result, you may need to get a new one. As an individual, you are extremely unlikely to get into more trouble (same thing as with cracked software), but I wouldn't use these licenses as a business.
It is legal, there's ECJ ruling that software can be resold. It cannot be a breach of contract, if that contract article preventing it would be unlawful.
Microsoft of course knows it, they are silent about the issue, preferring fear and doubt, just like you demonstrated.
The ECJ ruling only applies to Full Perpetual licenses of software. If these licenses came with other restrictions (could only be sold bundled with hardware, as part of a subscription, limited to use in academic settings only etc.) then they cannot simply be resold without those restrictions.
A lot of people in fact point to this ruling as a reason why more and more companies switched from perpetual licenses to subscription licenses. Without a full licenses there is nothing to resell and this ECJ ruling doesn't apply
These cheap keys are usually from MSDN subscribers.
MSDN subscribers can generate an unlimited number of keys at no cost, but they are for use by the subscriber only. Selling these keys is an abuse of the program. There is no resale here and you don't really get a license, you get a key.
The "respectable" resellers do keep paperwork where given license comes from. Just because it is legal to sell them, doesn't mean you cannot be audited what exactly are you selling (once you attract the attention of powerful people).
So while some might come from MSDN subscribers, they often come from unused enterprise ones. The MSDN sellers are creating a big risk to themselves.
I don't think it is illegal on the part of the buyer, who would be a victim in this situation.
But just like buying counterfeit goods, it is not clear to me, I mean if you buy your key from AliExpress, isn't it like importing counterfeits from China? That's something one should ask a lawyer. Anyways, these keys can be revoked any moment (and it has happened to me, with an Office key). If I had a business, I would avoid them for that reason alone.
Well now that you have read this forum thread and responded to it that’s proof that you knew that was a possibility at least. You can’t claim “lack of knowledge” if you do it and Microsoft comes for you.
But I am not a lawyer, perhaps on this case that doesn’t matter.
This is starting to be a really interesting choice compared to sticking to thinkpads.
The dream would be to have 6 expansion cards in the laptop 13. 4 really is a bummer for a work laptop, it's definitely not enough for me… And while you can easily carry other expansion cards and switch at will, it's kinda like carrying adapters, you easily forget them.
Are there any 13" laptops on the market with more than 4 ports? None that come to my mind. My macbook air has only 2 x USB C and I've never come across a situation where I needed more. For a 13" 4 ports is more than most people require and it wouldn't make sense for a small start up to only target extremely niche use cases.
The X1 Carbon has two USB-C, two USB-A, a full-sized HDMI, and a headphone jack.
I don't personally feel like the framework 13 needs more than 4 expansion bays, but I'd love to see expansion cards that use Thunderbolt to offer (for instance) two USB-C ports, or a USB-C and a USB-A. (There are some experimental unofficial ones attempting this.)
If those were available, my four expansion bays would be one Ethernet, one HDMI, and two 2-USB port cards.
There's been discussion of multi-port cards for a while. The main problem is how many different things you can shove on top of USB-C:
- USB 2/3
- Power delivery
- DisplayPort[0]
- PCI Express
- Analog audio
- USB4
You need some kind of chip that can negotiate two ports' worth of that nonsense and appropriately multiplex them into the correct set of altmodes on the interior port. Some of them have readily available and widely implemented hub silicon. Some of them require cursed nonsense like DisplayPort MST[1]. Some of them don't even have a hub mechanism - what do you do if someone plugs in two analog audio dongles? Mix the signals together?
Furthermore, as far as I'm aware such a "miracle dongle" chip does not exist. If it did, it very much would not fit inside the tiny footprint that a Framework expansion card does. One key thing to note is that because USB-C is reversible, all the high-speed data modes need a mux chip per port. So even a simple USB3 hub card with no power delivery or altmode support is going to need either several support chips or hideously expensive-to-design Framework silicon.
As it currently stands the state of multi-port USB-C dongles is absolutely terrible. Just... go to your local Best Buy, and look at the terrible compatibility of the multi-port dongles in the Apple section.
[0] There used to be an HDMI altmode, nobody uses it. All HDMI-to-USB-C dongles on the market are actually HDMI-to-DisplayPort-to-USB-C dongles.
I'm not mentioning the really cursed altmodes like MyDP (Nintendo Switch dock) or VirtualLink (VR headsets). That last one violates spec by reusing the USB 2 pins, necessitating the existence of bespoke 2-to-3 silicon that only people who hate USB 2 audio noise bother with.
[1] I didn't understand why Apple banned MST until I had to use it:
I have a triple monitor setup that needs to go over two optical cables to my computer in another room. The first MST hub I tried would hang Windows for so long I triggered some kind of display detection failsafe that bluescreens the kernel. The second one (an older standard) worked decently, except it wouldn't pass through EDID for one of my monitors. I worked around that with custom resolutions, which stopped working last September in a really weird way. If I connect all three monitors through the MST hub, the GPU cursor overlay refuses to move onto any monitor behind the hub. And that's only with the combination of MST + custom resolutions: if I only have one monitor on it's fine, if I give the other monitor a third cable it's fine.
Thanks for this super detailed and correct response! We are holding our hope that the miracle chip will appear some day to make it possible.
In the meantime, we have seen a community member start developing a Dual USB-C Expansion Card that offers only USB 3.2 functionality without USB-PD. That’s not a card we will build at Framework, so it is awesome to see it coming from the community.
So, there isn't enough internal volume to fit an A and C port in the same slot. Ports require more volume than they appear. But I'll interpret this to mean: "why can't we have one USB-C port with all the altmodes and another with just USB 2 or 3, no altmodes, no power/data role swaps, etc".
USB 2 is possible, for some really dumb reasons. USB-IF actually prohibits repurposing the USB 2 pins for other purposes in USB 3.x capable connectors; effectively making it a separate bus from everything else. So you can route the USB2 pins on both C connectors to a hub chip and route everything else from the "privileged" port to the inner port. You will still need some kind of power mux so that the USB 2 port still gets power regardless of what port holds the power role.
This technically breaks the USB-IF rules[1] because you aren't supposed to disassociate the USB2 and 3.x pins like that. In practice as long as every device sees either just 2.0 or both 2.0 and 3.x pins, it's fine.
USB 3 onwards is a problem because of altmodes. The 3.x pins are officially referred to as "high-speed lanes" in the USB-C spec, because there's two of them and they don't have to carry USB 3.x. Every altmode[0] exclusively repurposes the high-speed lanes for some other kind of traffic. So USB 3 is effectively an altmode in and of itself. If you put a USB3 hub on those pins, then you lose altmodes, unless you have that magic hub silicon that doesn't exist that I mentioned in the parent comment.
[0] The USB2 lanes are forbidden to be reused by altmodes. Which is why VirtualLink is incredibly cursed.
[1] Yes I actually have mentioned this sort of thing in the Framework forums, no they won't actually sell a card like that. Consider it an EE exercise for curious Framework users.
You'd definitely need a smart hub chip, yeah. But I don't think you need all the altmodes. No analog audio, for instance. Primarily Thunderbolt, and power.
I'm interested in the volume question; what makes USB-A and USB-C unable to both physically fit in the space no matter how creative you get?
The footprint of the receptacle is wider than the actual plug that goes into it, by a significant amount. It only looks like it'll fit from the outside.
Analog audio was just me being exhaustive, I'm pretty sure none of Intel's chips support that altmode natively. Hell, only like half of the market of USB-C phones support it, which makes it mildly cursed.
> The footprint of the receptacle is wider than the actual plug that goes into it, by a significant amount. It only looks like it'll fit from the outside.
To what degree is it impossible, and to what degree is it challenging? I've seen the internal side of a USB-A port, and while it's slightly larger, it doesn't seem excessively so.
(Also, as an aside, I do wish that Framework had made the two expansion slots on each side adjacent and allowed for double cards that take up both slots. Two USB-A and one USB-C in one double-bay, for instance.)
> Analog audio was just me being exhaustive, I'm pretty sure none of Intel's chips support that altmode natively. Hell, only like half of the market of USB-C phones support it, which makes it mildly cursed.
Yeah, it's cursed that there exist USB-C-to-headphone-jack cables that physically plug into a laptop but will never work.
The manufacturers do everything wrong. Why not add 10 ports to every laptop? Are USB-A sockets so expensive?
It surprises me especially that MacBooks seem to be targeted at professionals, like creators and creators always have lot of stuff with USB plugs - like MIDI keyboards, MIDI controllers, external audio interfaces, mouse, drawing tablet, external hard drives - but MacBook only has like 3 sockets, despite being super expensive.
They eat up a ridiculously large amount of physical space. Ports are cheap when space is cheap. Space is at a very high premium for laptops.
The port doesn't just magically disappear into the machine, it eats up that entire chunk of the laptop. Space which could be going to mainboard / speakers / hid / battery.
So modern laptops give you a very high bandwidth and low physical size bus (thunderbolt/usb-c) and a duplicate so you can charge at the same time and that's really all you need. Now I get the best laptop for the space the case takes up and the option to plug all that other stuff in is still there. The bus is plenty fast, you just need an adapter or dock.
I have a 4 usb-c port machine. I've never had all 4 ports in use at the same time. I have (just counting plugs on my hub) 9 usb devices and 2 4k monitors plugged into my machine. Switching them over from work to personal laptop is as simple as unplugging and replugging a usb-c cable. Feels fine to me.
thinkpad x13, hp 835 g9, dell latitude… and if you go for a 14" laptop, connectivity is even better while still having a small device.
I'm not sure more than 4 ports is _extremely_ niche use case especially for a work device, but yeah I get that most people would be okay with it and I understand Framework's choice.
4 ports total or 4 USB C ports? A ThinkPad X13 has two USB C, two USB A and an HDMI port. Not that hard to use all of them without a hub. One USB C for power, USB A for keyboard/mouse, HDMI for monitor and the other USB C for external SSD.
In the distant past I was of the "need more ports" camp, but with the advent of USB C hubs that have power pass through. One thing to plug into the computer. They're cheap enough that I've got one at my "normal" workstation area (with an external keyboard, printer, external monitor, printer, power supply, and wired ethernet) and another in my laptop bag that's got basically the same.
I've had lots of experiences of a laptop festooned with nubs getting caught / smashed in such a way (from normal in/out of the bag or being put down hard on an end) that the plastic shells or cables get destroyed and I have to fish bits of usb jack out of the laptop.
After a decade (it feels like, anyhow) the USB-C promise seems real.
(edited to add power supply to list of things on the "home" usb hub)
It is not a laptop, but Asus PN53 has 1kg with 7 USB port, 2x2.5 Gb ethernet, 4x4k@60Hz displays, 64GB RAM and 3xSSD. I use it as a docking station while traveling.
I want framework to succeed and they are targeting folks who want sleek and customizable computers (which they’ve nailed) but compared to a thinkpad the build quality isn’t great.
To be fair, ThinkPad quality from Lenovo doesn't come close to what it was when IBM was making them. I've had everything from screen backlight bleed, to coil whine, to recently, key caps popping off and switches breaking. This is on top-of-the-line models. At the end of the day, it's just plastic. Nice plastic, but plastic, nonetheless.
After decades of sticking exclusively to ThinkPads, these new Frameworks look very appealing. I'm not expecting Apple-like build quality, but the customization and repairability is unparalleled in the market. I'm willing to give up the TrackPoint and nice keyboard for that (pretty much the only reasons I stuck with ThinkPads for so long), and I'm almost certain there will be a TrackPoint module somewhere down the line.
>doesn't come close to what it was when IBM was making them
Sure, but laptops back then were also massively thicker and heavier so engineers had more freedom and less restrictions from the design/marketing team.
Nobody would buy a laptop with that bulk and heft today unless we're talking about these mobile workstation laptops with Xeon CPUs and Quadro GPUs.
Same here, both X1 Carbon and T14s have had keyboard problems after 3 years or so, yet they keep making them thinner and worse to use. Lenovo seem determined to destroy the ThinkPad's best feature.
Disagree. I switched to Framework from a Thinkpad X1, I've actually been very impressed by the quality - feels super sturdy, keyboard is a significant improvement, it's great.
That would be an extremely niche use case. Can't imagine any scenario needing more than 2-3 x USB A ports outdoors. In any case it would make much more sense to use a dock.
We're talking about a laptop. What's the point of a laptop if you're just going to make it into an underpowered desktop?
And it's not like mouses and keyboards need a 4Gbps connection to the host. Plug them into a tiny hub. You're already lugging a keyboard and mouse around, why not a hub too?
I don't lug a keyboard and mouse around, but I'm very happy happy to have three ports on my Thinkpad. There are lots of other things to plug in - MIDI controllers, audio interfaces, macropads, microcontroller dev boards and debuggers, cameras and other capture devices. It depends on what you do with your computer.
My laptop is "an underpowered desktop" 90% of the time, but it saves me from having a second machine the remaining part of the time.
But I agree regarding ports - at home my mouse and keyboard are plugged into a cheap KVM switch, so I still need only one USB port on the laptop; If I needed to lug them with me I'd certainly just bring a hub too.
My biggest issue by far with the Framework 13 is that the battery life is really bad (at least with linux). Less than 2 hours of normal use is not really workable. Will this one do better?
In either this or another post, they mention that the capacity will be increased to 61Kw battery. Don't know how this will effect things with the new processors though.
Agreed, the Macbook Pro 16" has a 100wh battery and i'm looking for something that has at least 3/4 of its autonomy, otherwise no point in investing into a >1500$ laptop.
Aside: The international urls for this site are annoying for sharing. I understand it of course but like this one shared as /fr/ when there's already been other posts this week about same thing but on other urls
How compatible are parts from the previous framework laptop? Can the previous one be upgraded with parts from the new one? Seems like that's a big part of what makes a framework laptop no?
The Expansion Card system and Webcam Module are shared between the Framework Laptop 13 (which we also announced a number of upgrades for yesterday) and the new Framework Laptop 16. The other parts are new, which lets us enable higher performance, the Expansion Bay system, the Input Module system, 6 Expansion Cards, and the overall 16” form factor.
Why do companies insist on messing with laptop keyboard layouts? Where's the menu key? Where are the Home, PgDn, PgUp, and End keys? I've used cheap sub 300-dollar laptops with keyboards more complete than this.
The silver lining here is that Framework keyboards are replaceable in theory. I'll wait until a proper keyboard gets released.
> Seems gone. I can't say I've personally ever used it
I rely on it heavily and I'm sure many others do to. I wish framework included the key in their study as well. Ether way, no menu key == no buy from me.
If someone from Framework is reading this, page up and page down are among my most used keys. Having to use an extra hand for something so common is crazy. I absolutely will not buy a laptop or standalone keyboard without dedicated page up and page down keys.
Ideally, page up and down will be next to the arrow keys (look at a Thinkpad keyboard), but off to the side is still better than not existing.
I'm probably going to need a new laptop this year. My needs are simple: large screen, numpad and enough raw compute power to be usable for the primary task my computers face: compiling a large-ish native C++ application. This machine looks like an excellent candidate and I love the modular concept ...
... however, every time I've put my faith in "this technology is modular and you will be able to extend/upgrade it way into the future", I've been disappointed. The worst offenders are CPU manufacturers who assure us that "Socket N" will be their new CPU pin format for, well, a good long time, and then two years later we move to "Socket N+1". The same thing for RAM. My experience that expecting an upgrade path via physical interface re-use with new components buys you at most 3 years, sometimes only 2.
Framework appear to building the actual components into their self-design modules, so that they control the physical interfaces. This seems like a step up but if the company remains small then the chance of not being able to upgrade again in a few years because they're either out of business, or are not packaging the components you want, seem fairly high. The fact that the designs are going to be open sourced is great, but I don't see that as a strong hedge against this problem.
Most of the "modularity" of Framework seems to be USB dongles built-in.
CPU upgradability was never a real selling point except for ONE use case - when. new socket came out, buy the cheapest reasonable CPU early on, and then just when it was about to cease manufacturing, buy the best you could get; would give you a year or two extra.
RAM and disk upgrades USED to be very important; but I haven't really "felt" the need anymore.
It's not modularity, but upgradability of the CPU (through a total replacement of the motherboard) is part of the Framework pitch: keeping the form factor the same so you can do drop-in replacements. So far they have boards for Intel's 11th, 12th, and now 13th generations, and an AMD option. So they're doing pretty good on that front.
At that point it seems almost worth it just to buy another one so you have two laptops; a mainboard has to be a significant part of the cost of the whole system.
(this was my problem back when I built desktops - it was almost never worth upgrading anything but RAM or disk, instead build a whole new one and repurpose/sell the old one)
It's something like a little under half the cost or so, last I checked. Not a terrible option if you're happy with the screen/keyboard/etc. bits you'd be keeping. And the one you take out can be repurposed into a mini-PC of its own, or sold.
As a desktop builder myself, I like the flexibility to upgrade (or easily replace for broken components) within the socket family (AMD in particular had a pretty wide run of compatibility recently with AM4), and even when doing a more "total" replacement down to the motherboard I could keep a good case, power supply, GPU, peripherals, etc. Just the fact that I have similar decisions open to me is interesting in the laptop space. The direction of the laptop market has otherwise been away from allowing even RAM or SSD upgrades, or making them tedious and onerous even if possible.
The repairability is a bigger thing for me; the upgradability is a nice plus (especially if you blow your motherboard, and need to buy a replacement, why not get the latest and greatest).
A built Framework 13" with a 13th gen intel CPU starts at $1050. Or you can grab the same mainboard for $450. For me, that's really compelling. And if you're upgrading (rather than replacing a failed component) you can still sell the old mainboard or use it as a server, etc. Not to mention the reduced ewaste compared to buying a whole new system.
"Finally!", I wanted to say, but it's not actually out yet. No prices known. No specs given.
I've signed up for the newsletter. My personal laptop is getting pretty old now. Really hoping it's not going to be a Fairphone price–performance+usability ratio, but I'm most definitely going to consider this as my first option!
Yes, for today, we’re showing an early developer preview to let folks get started on Expansion Bay and especially Input Module development. We’ll share more information on the laptop this spring and throughout the year.
I don't see this happening any time soon, but it would be really nice to see an 11.6 inch Framework intended for the education market. The new N series "Intel Processor" (aka Celeron/Pentium) CPUs are actually quite powerful considering they have a 6 watt TDP. The only problem would be the price.
> Since Expansion Bay modules can extend the laptop in both thickness and depth, we have immense design flexibility to handle generation over generation changes in mechanical, thermal, and electrical requirements for GPUs.
How do expansion bay modules change the laptop’s thickness and depth?
I too wish they'd answer this more clearly or show more pictures to give a proper impression, but it seems it covers the back and under-side, so if extending thickness presumably they'd cause the keyboard to tilt accordingly, and extending the depth would just mean more of it would hang out the back.
This article seems to show of what I assume is the GPU expansion with a "larger butt" [2]
That same laptop can take a slim battery, so you can choose your runtime vs form factor. Imagine doing the exact same thing but with small and large GPUs instead of batteries.
I want a stand-alone qmk ultra flat chicklet keyboard!
Does anyone know what the protocol they use is? I'd assume for the keyboard it might be usb. So maybe all I'd need is to solder a flex-adapter to a usb plug and 3D print a case.
What we shared today is an early developer preview of the new module systems. We’ll be sharing full product specifications when we open pre-orders this Spring.
I loathe mouse buttons that are integrated into the touchpad. Is it possible to get a keyboard/touchpad for this with separate mechanical mouse buttons?
If only they would make a laptop with an AMD processor, no discrete graphics + someone makes a decent keyboard with a trackpoint for it, I'd immediately buy 2, I don't care about the price. It's also likely that I'd be able to convince my employer to switch from thinkpads to this. Btw, it's ironic that the much cheaper T series Thinkpads work much better with Linux and are much more reliable than the X1 series.
Intel processors of this generation are just not energy effiecient and run too hot.
WOW! I think I'm going to pre-order one, trackpoint be damned! My wife is a bit suspicious of these laptops, let's see how this one fares.
I just need to check if it'll work with my Thinkpad Thunderbolt 3 dock (or something similar, I can buy another dock) to output to 2x 4K (actually 3840x2560, so bigger than 4K) monitors. I can currently both power my Thinkpad, and connect all the peripherals, with 1 USB-C cable. It's not something I'm willing to forgo.
At a notebook-specific forum I frequent[1], a user has noticed that the Framework 16 modular discrete graphics solution uses a connector first used by Dell in its Precision 7530 and 7730 workstation notebooks, released in 2018. The connector is called 'Dell Graphics Form Factor' (DGFF), and is the array of gold LGA pads on the motherboard seen in the bottom-right screenshot in a photo, at the above link.
Dell has been using DGFF ever since, in all Precision 7XXX notebooks and the Alienware Area-51m, to facilitate modular GPUs.
However, Dell changes its notebook layout every two years, so these GPUs are not upgradeable after two generations (so a 7530 could be upgraded to a GPU from a 7540, but not a GPU from a 7550, released in 2020).
It's going to be interesting how Framework adapts the connector for its own use. The Dell cards are fairly high-powered; in the most recent 7770 (17" workstation), the RTX 3080 Ti and Quadro RTX A5000 cards may draw up to 130 W.
Some examples of previous and current DGFF discrete cards (all by Dell, for Dell notebooks) are here[2][3][4][5]. Notice the difference to the previous mobile GPU connection standard, MXM 3[6], which was used by Dell in its Precisions until 2018, when it changed to DGFF, HP in its ZBooks until about 2020 when it changed to a soldered solution. Other notebook ODMs like Clevo and Tongfang still use MXM cards in their desktop replacement notebooks. I'm not sure if Clevo still sells these monsters; they had a 780 W power brick, itself heavier than many slimmer notebooks.
If I could get a hefty one to use at home, and be able to do without on the rare occasions I take my laptop out of the house, it'd be a strong incentive to get one of these. I've been pondering going back to using a desktop at home since my laptop is docked most of the time and it'd be nice to have a GPU that's unreasonably power-hungry for a laptop, but I really like not having to have two separate machines.
The laptop pictured has a US keyboard layout, that's just how the US keyboard layout is. They also have an ISO/most-of-world keyboard layout (with options for qwerty/qwertz/azerty labelling, at least on last gen), as seen on the laptop ad in the footer (assuming the link doesn't get changed from the french site after I post that comment, if it does, just go look up the order form on an EU site)
I’m not certain, but I’m under the impression that the ANSI layout is more common than ISO: that, potentially simplifying a tad, ISO is used in Europe, JIS in Japan, and ANSI everywhere else. (I have experience in Australia, New Zealand, India and the United States, and they all use ANSI.)
Ugh. After over a decade of work, everything was finally adapted to or made for 16:9, now they're going after hipster ratios? Not a deal breaker but a bummer. Interesting that phones are going the other way, so now we can enjoy letterboxes on both platforms and not be able to reach the notification drawer. What was so wrong with 16:9 that we needed another competing standard that's just slightly off...
You never watch any video content on anything but a TV? Make any content like a game or website? Having a universal ratio makes all these things a lot simpler.
Until 4k became more popular maybe five years ago, the vast majority of devices were 1920x1080, plus a series of budget 1366x768 devices but that's the same ratio. Upscaling an integer factor to 4k is also convenient and doesn't cause any issues, just makes everything sharper.
It's when you start to mess with the ratio that you need to suddenly account for different people having different things in view. You can't simply scale a hero image (or game scene or so) to 20:9 without everything becoming contorted, you need to start to crop, but then you're hiding information so now you need to add optional parts that don't look out of place when shown and can also be hidden without consequence.
Eh? 16:10 is a pretty standard ratio; all Apple laptops have used it since about 2007, for instance (until very recently, when they've gone a little taller) but also many other vendors (usually on the high end; for whatever reason manufacturers do tend to treat taller than 16:9 as a bit of a premium option). It was also effectively the standard ratio for widescreen desktop monitors for most of the noughties.
16:9 on a small laptop screen really is _very_ tight; honestly I kind of miss 4:3 laptop screens but that ship has definitively sailed.
Is your concern about video? Watching TV is probably not most peoples' major use of laptops, and in any case a lot of content is made at ratios _wider_ than 16:9 these days.
4:3 is definitely better for coding and working with documents because programs and documents usually span vertically, not horizontally. It is disappointing that manufacturers target people watching videos instead of people who do work.
16:10 goes ALL the way back to some of the earliest widescreen LCDs. The original Apple Cinema Display was 1600x1024 in 1999. This was predated by the SGI 1600SW with the same resolution in 1998.
IIRC it's so since Titanium PowerBooks which were the first to go widescreen at Apple, so it's 2001. Then aluminum PowerBooks with 16:10 screens, too. Intel MacBook Pros continued the trend.
... Wait, really? Huh. I thought the Powerbooks were 4:3 til the end, but yeah, just looked and you're right. (I had a G4 iBook at the time, which was 4:3).
What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better. Please explain for what kind of activity wide, but low height screen is the most suitable?
The only thing that comes to mind is killing time by watching videos on social networks sites.
I use Tree Style Tab in Firefox and hide the horizontal tab bar. (If I’m tiling a browser beside something else, I close the tab sidebar most of the time.)
16:9 is fine, so long as you’re set up to be able to use that width.
On my 13.5″ Surface Book, I appreciated its 3:2 aspect ratio, because it was already too narrow to comfortably tile things horizontally anyway, so why not go even more in the tall direction?
On my current 15.6″ 16:9 laptop, I tile and split frequently because it’s comfortable. 16:10 would still be fine, but I do this enough that I believe I’d honestly very slightly prefer 16:9 for its extra centimetre of width (~5 columns in my terminal), even at the cost of 1.5cm of height (~2 rows).
There are advantages and disadvantages to the different ratios in different scenarios.
(Still, I do think that most people would find 16:10 a happier medium at this size. But me, I can effectively use 16:9, though I don’t think I’d want to go any wider.)
> What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better.
Is it? Gee, I wonder why it's the only screen ratio I've seen people use since we moved away from CRT screens until a few years ago when 4k and friends became popular and there was suddenly no standard resolution to expect anymore. Curious that we're all using this inferior ratio for literally all those things all the time.
Hdtv made economies of scale that eliminated everything else for a time. Eventually more sophisticated folks realized it is horrible for everything but non-video applications. Mobile is separate because it’s mostly a consumption device.
Hmm, is that actually true? My recollection of widescreen PC monitors and laptops is that they all started at 16:10, and the shift to 16:9 came later (and is now reversing somewhat).
You may be right, I don't have good memories from the late CRT / early flat-screen era (I must have been 13 or something). Now that you mention it, I think my first flat screen monitor might have been 1440x900 / 16:10. I'm sure that my screen has been 1080p "full HD" since ~2007 because I still use that screen as my primary monitor. Whether I had one in between those two, I don't remember.
I thought you could have inexpensive laptop stands that also raise the keyboard a bit to the same effect. Try one, they are amazing. And they improve the airflow, too.
You cannot just pop in any panel that you like. The whole assembly needs to accommodate for it. I think your company would have to be obscenely rich to afford such a supply chain so it could offer different display assemblies for the same laptop.
I'd have thought there would be some kind of loose standards that come with the combination of economies of scale and provisions for options for consumers when it comes to existing larger players in the space.
Eg, I know some laptop manufacturers offer a choice of a few different display options when configuring builds - so framework choosing the display form-factor of a popular one could be an instant win for modularity.
Finally, a proper screen size instead of toy-level 13 inches. You cannot code on a 13-inch display (unless you have eagle's eyes and use tiny font) and it feels like the only use for 13-inch laptop is to watch videos and photos on social network sites while sitting in a cafe which makes it a toy, not a real laptop for work (but Apple seems to be selling such toy laptops successfully).
By the way the current trend is to install wide, but low height screens. What's the use of such screens? For coding, reading articles or working with documents height is more important than width, but manufacturers lower the height and extend the width.
Regarding keyboard layout, it is designed poorly: it has small Up/Down keys (easy to hit the wrong key) and it doesn't have Page Up/Down and End/Home keys which are necessary for coding or working with documents (but it has useless CapsLock key). What is the intended use of the keyboard? To post short messages on social network sites. They seem to copy the layout from toy laptops without much thinking about the target audience. They claim that "Whether you’re a gamer, developer, heavy Linux user, creator, or have other performance-demanding work, the Framework Laptop 16 is built to be customized to your needs.". No, your keyboard doesn't match the needs of those audiences (except for gamers and vi users who can program even on a calculator).
Also, many non-Latin based languages have more that 26 letters, but the keyboard doesn't offer additional keys for those letters, and two additional keys to switch to Latin and non-Latin layout. Nobody seems to care about this. Not Apple, not Framework, nor ordinary laptop vendors do not want to adapt keyboards to non-Latin languages and think that 26 keys should be enough for everyone.
Part of the point is that they're making a laptop where you can design entirely new keyboards and other input modules to replace what currently exists, so you could get your dream keyboard layout.
If you're actually coding without external screen and keyboard then your complaints may be valid. But lots of people only buy laptops so that they can transport their work between home and office, both equipped with external screens and keyboards without having to set up 2 computers and deal with data & config synchronization...
I only look at my laptop's display and use its keyboard for coding under extraordinary circumstances when I need to do some work from somewhere else (meeting room, conference, visiting a client, on a train) and most of those times I just need to quickly fix or review something, so basically any display and keyboard will do....
Also, on another note, I've read this engadget article about how other companies tried to build an upgradeable laptop and failed but I see Framework as a different kind of beast for one simple reason. This is their only value proposition, they don't have an alternative. In a very "Innovator's Dilemma" kind of. way, Dell and other big manufacturers have their main lines with higher margins and/or volume that really drives their attention and money, so any new innovation that takes more than 1 to 3 years to mature gets cut pretty fast. For Framework is kind a kind of "burn the ships" moment, they don't have anything else to turn to, so they have to keep pushing. I really hope they shine (and don't get acquired)!