I recently bought a framework laptop for a daily driver when I'm not on my desktop. For context I was running NixOS on an old 2014 macbook air, and I work on the glasgow haskell compiler in my day job so I do a lot of CPU heavy tasks.
I've got to say, as long as these things are being produced I'll never go back. They are just too good and I cannot recommend them highly enough. One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on. That may not seem like much but it was a revelation the first time I sat on the couch and thought "huh I really wish this was over on that side....wait a minute!".
I've also had absolutely no problems with NixOS on my machine, even my apple earbuds easily connect via bluetooth, something that I never quite got working on my macbook.
10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.
I recently received my first framework laptop after being a loyal Thinkpad user for years. I am loving it so far. I run Ubuntu 22.04 daily and have not had any issues with battery life or the lid (but I do typically leave it plugged in during lunch and overnight). The expansion cards are brilliant and the keyboard is comparable to my old t-series. The aspect ratio is great for coding and I'm happy to see upgradeability is being taken seriously as promised. If I can get 5-10 years out of it like my old ThinkPads (all while upgrading piecewise along the way) I will be a fan for life.
I recently received my first framework laptop after being a loyal Thinkpad user for years.
I get excited about different laptops occasionally...and then I remember that I won't have a trackpoint if I switch to a different brand, and I get disappointed. Literally happens every few months.
If I ever need to buy a laptop this would be a huge feature for me, I would love if they still made 4:3 displays for desktops, it's so much better for the triple-wide setup I prefer, especially on the sides.
Looks like it can be charged from any USB-C port you install in it.
Much better than my work-assigned ThinkPad, which only allows charging through one specific port. As if everyone on the planet has their wall plug in the same location.
> and the keyboard is comparable to my old t-series.
Really happy to hear this bit since it's my main concern when buying a new laptop. My 2 other questions - how long does the battery last, and how is overall build quality?
I'm happy to answer any questions around this! We've been working on this since update since we launched the product last year, so we're excited to be able to share it today.
I demo-ed my frame.work laptop yesterday to https://www.matinfo-esr.fr/ which is a single buyer entity for all french universities and public research institutes (once hardware is in their catalog it's click to order for universities without administrative hassle).
They showed interest on the non obsolescence, durability and repairability aspect of frame.work since these features are part of their public service mission.
Feel free to contact me, my email is on the website listed on my HN profile
What are the constraints that are blocking wider EU availability?
Right now, in Europe it's only available in a handful of countries (5 of 27). I'm in Spain, and I see I can spec a perfect machine and get it delivered just over the border in France, but I can't get the same thing delivered here just a couple of hours away, which is very surprising! My understanding was the single market & customs union etc should make going from 1 to N EU countries pretty easy.
Is this due to smoe regulatory issues, or needing to organize shipping differently for every country, or waiting to include an ñ key, or something else?
Right now, I'm very seriously looking at ordering one, renting a PO box in France and shipping the laptop here myself, which seems a bit ridiculous.
Any chance you'll eventually have a Framework with a 'clickier' keyboard and a trackpoint like the x220? I will happily buy your product the next time my x220 dies (instead of upgrading it) if it has the nice clicky keyboard and a trackpoint. A slightly thicker laptop is very much a fair trade-off.
I've been waiting for 12th gen Alder Lake availability and am ready to pay. However as a EU citizen from one of the Baltic states I am unable to do so.
Please, tell us that this year any EU citizen will be able to order a Framework laptop.
I could not even find which friends in which countries to ask to order Framework for me.. It used to be US then UK, and I know there are a few other ones.
Combined with a waitlist the logistics are painful.
At least I hope that signing up for the waitlist from a specific country counts as something.
Looking at the DIY Guide [0] it looks like a lot of the laptop comes pre-assembled still (case, motherboard, screen, keyboard).
Is it more cost effective to do the labor on Framework's side to ship everything more tightly together in 1 box or could we see a 'DIY Pro' option that ships every component in its own box? (Maybe even at greater discount?)
Also, check out this Mechanical Watch [1] tutorial that made it to the front page of HN last week. I could definitely see an exploded assembly view like this being really instructional for Framework DIY-ers.
I would really like to buy one BUT I find it a little bit too expensive, especially the price difference for better CPUs I find proportionate. (i would be slightly more tempted if it was for an amd 6000 cpu, they are much better in perf/power, I hope you will reconsider in the next generation when the iGPU will be RDNA based)
Not a question for the announcement, but the location page is missing countries, for example Bulgaria. This prevents me from even telling you I want to order form here (Bulgaria).
I love everything about what you have planned. Is there anything in the works for creating more keyboard options? While mechanical keyboards might be too impractical, even something with bigger arrow keys would be nice.
I was waiting for the availability of the US international keyboard for DIY builds, but I got an even better present today. I have just made my preorder, surprised to see that a 1280P CPU with 64GB RAM is very reasonably priced!
I was in the market for a MacBook Pro / max upgrades as well, mind you, so effectively I also saved a lot of money (I believe at least a $1k price difference).
I use Linux as my daily driver, super happy to see the better support here as well.
All in all, thank you for making a refreshing change in this market.
Wow, that's quite a price jump from the i5 to the i7 and then subsequently to the 6 core one. Could you talk a bit about the economics of having hotter / higher end chips in a notebook and whether there are other non-obvious cost increases to them? Are the higher end models "subsidizing" the lower end one, or is there motherboard / chipset upgrades that need to happen as a result?
Really like the laptop though, and it's a close contender when it's my time to upgrade... :)
I just ordered a Framework yesterday. I'm not interested in the 12th gen chip, but is there any other reason I might want to cancel & re-order today? i.e. would I be getting an older design?
Still no retina display option. Steve Jobs made the right call over a decade ago... the only scaling that looks good after 100% is 200%. Any in-between scaling will have display artifacts.
This laptop has 150% scaling. What sort of display artifacts can you expect because of this? Go to a web page with a grid, with 1-pixel horizontal grid lines. Even though all lines are set to 1-pixel, some lines will appear thicker than others.
I blame Microsoft for this mess. Windows supports in-between resolutions (with display artifacts), and hardware manufacturers therefore manufacture in-between resolutions. Framework laptop is limited to what the display manufacturers put out.
Alder Lake is still not fully supported by Linux (improvements are coming with v5.18¹, which is not stable yet, and it will take a while to be released into several linux distros (at least the Ubuntu based)).
It's a shame, because it would have been a great moment to offer an AMD alternative.
I'm waiting on alternate screen options. The 3K2K OLED screen on the HP Specter X360[1] would be a great highend option for me.
Framework is suggesting many customisable options but the wifi antenna is behind the screen so it's not a seamless transition. I would be interested in a screenless framework (with keyboard or just the guts) if they simplify wifi.
So a WiFi module or Cellular module would be a definite buy
Does anyone know if the Framework team plan to offer an ARM based mainboard?
I'm honestly not even sure that there are any good ARM based SoCs to make a laptop mainboard from, but given what we've seen from Apple's development of their iPhone chips being integrated into laptop and desktop, I wonder if something similar could be done with other existing ARM CPUs from Samsung or Nvidia?
Please, please, please make s keyboard option that has full size arrow keys, dedicated pgup, pgdown, del, ins, home, end. The current laptop keyboards, apart from thinkpads, are a joke for those who want to work on them, the framework, sadly, is included.
I'd also love a trackpoint with 3 dedicated buttons but I'll keep dreaming.
I'm now waiting for over a year for this laptop to be available in my country.
Would still really like to order one, but my patience is running out, don't have a laptop currently.
EDIT: I sound very pissed off. I know that it's hard to ship to lots of countries, it's just frustrating for me to not even have an estimation. Will I be able to buy it in 3 or 6 months? Or does it take another year? no idea.
> We’ve redesigned our lid assembly for significantly improved rigidity
They should make this part available to existing users as a warranty replacement. It sounds like they've addressed a common complaint on their support forums.
The lid that flops over because of the hinge's weakness, and the absurd excuses made by company personnel (they claim it was designed this way "to accommodate opening the laptop with one hand," as if the people who open a laptop with one hand do not need the lid to stay upright) has been a great disappointment for me with this laptop. It is a design defect, not a feature, for the hinge to be this weak.
edit: apparently they're talking about this, so I guess we're stuck with the weak hinge:
The Ethernet Expansion Card seems to be using USB type C connector. Can it works on non Framework computers?
Also, anyone has recommendation for great affordable router with 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports for home lab setup? I've been searching for one but it seems only gaming routers include these ports. I prefer something more enterprisy (lots of options to tinker with like mikrotik or pfsense), but those usually don't come with 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports, instead they (the affordable ones) have plenty of 1 gigabit ethernet ports and a single sfp+ port. Or should I bite the bullet and go full sfp+ for home lab setup?
Ohhhhh that's why there was a spate of projects posted last week about building computers based on framework mainboards - submarine marketing for this framework upgrade launch. Figured it was framework behind it somehow, but the fact that it's to promote the 'here are some ways to use your old mainboard once you upgrade' angle makes a ton of sense.
[+] [-] doyougnu|3 years ago|reply
I've got to say, as long as these things are being produced I'll never go back. They are just too good and I cannot recommend them highly enough. One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on. That may not seem like much but it was a revelation the first time I sat on the couch and thought "huh I really wish this was over on that side....wait a minute!".
I've also had absolutely no problems with NixOS on my machine, even my apple earbuds easily connect via bluetooth, something that I never quite got working on my macbook.
10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.
[+] [-] sryie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Goronmon|3 years ago|reply
I get excited about different laptops occasionally...and then I remember that I won't have a trackpoint if I switch to a different brand, and I get disappointed. Literally happens every few months.
[+] [-] efsavage|3 years ago|reply
If I ever need to buy a laptop this would be a huge feature for me, I would love if they still made 4:3 displays for desktops, it's so much better for the triple-wide setup I prefer, especially on the sides.
[+] [-] prohobo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|3 years ago|reply
Looks like it can be charged from any USB-C port you install in it.
Much better than my work-assigned ThinkPad, which only allows charging through one specific port. As if everyone on the planet has their wall plug in the same location.
[+] [-] xur17|3 years ago|reply
Really happy to hear this bit since it's my main concern when buying a new laptop. My 2 other questions - how long does the battery last, and how is overall build quality?
[+] [-] favadi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nrp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerby|3 years ago|reply
I demo-ed my frame.work laptop yesterday to https://www.matinfo-esr.fr/ which is a single buyer entity for all french universities and public research institutes (once hardware is in their catalog it's click to order for universities without administrative hassle).
They showed interest on the non obsolescence, durability and repairability aspect of frame.work since these features are part of their public service mission.
Feel free to contact me, my email is on the website listed on my HN profile
[+] [-] pimterry|3 years ago|reply
Right now, in Europe it's only available in a handful of countries (5 of 27). I'm in Spain, and I see I can spec a perfect machine and get it delivered just over the border in France, but I can't get the same thing delivered here just a couple of hours away, which is very surprising! My understanding was the single market & customs union etc should make going from 1 to N EU countries pretty easy.
Is this due to smoe regulatory issues, or needing to organize shipping differently for every country, or waiting to include an ñ key, or something else?
Right now, I'm very seriously looking at ordering one, renting a PO box in France and shipping the laptop here myself, which seems a bit ridiculous.
[+] [-] vodkapump|3 years ago|reply
Any news on plans for AMD models?
[+] [-] boppo1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|3 years ago|reply
I've been waiting for 12th gen Alder Lake availability and am ready to pay. However as a EU citizen from one of the Baltic states I am unable to do so.
Please, tell us that this year any EU citizen will be able to order a Framework laptop.
I could not even find which friends in which countries to ask to order Framework for me.. It used to be US then UK, and I know there are a few other ones.
Combined with a waitlist the logistics are painful.
At least I hope that signing up for the waitlist from a specific country counts as something.
[+] [-] mentos|3 years ago|reply
Looking at the DIY Guide [0] it looks like a lot of the laptop comes pre-assembled still (case, motherboard, screen, keyboard).
Is it more cost effective to do the labor on Framework's side to ship everything more tightly together in 1 box or could we see a 'DIY Pro' option that ships every component in its own box? (Maybe even at greater discount?)
Also, check out this Mechanical Watch [1] tutorial that made it to the front page of HN last week. I could definitely see an exploded assembly view like this being really instructional for Framework DIY-ers.
[0] https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Framework+Laptop+DIY+Edition... [1] https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
[+] [-] philliphaydon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nspattak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PetitPrince|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_gipsy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EastSmith|3 years ago|reply
https://frame.work/locale/edit
[+] [-] etbusch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lighttower|3 years ago|reply
Trackpoint is a bonus
[+] [-] cf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aestetix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stingraycharles|3 years ago|reply
I was in the market for a MacBook Pro / max upgrades as well, mind you, so effectively I also saved a lot of money (I believe at least a $1k price difference).
I use Linux as my daily driver, super happy to see the better support here as well.
All in all, thank you for making a refreshing change in this market.
[+] [-] schmorptron|3 years ago|reply
Really like the laptop though, and it's a close contender when it's my time to upgrade... :)
[+] [-] gavinpc|3 years ago|reply
edit: Someone also brings this up on the OP: https://community.frame.work/t/introducing-the-new-and-upgra...
[+] [-] yumraj|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kerrick|3 years ago|reply
EDIT: I just realized that you cannot order this laptop with GNU/Linux pre installed. I was mistaken.
[+] [-] Jhsto|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomerv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkulak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocqua|3 years ago|reply
Why no DDR5?
[+] [-] petilon|3 years ago|reply
This laptop has 150% scaling. What sort of display artifacts can you expect because of this? Go to a web page with a grid, with 1-pixel horizontal grid lines. Even though all lines are set to 1-pixel, some lines will appear thicker than others.
I blame Microsoft for this mess. Windows supports in-between resolutions (with display artifacts), and hardware manufacturers therefore manufacture in-between resolutions. Framework laptop is limited to what the display manufacturers put out.
[+] [-] nagisa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizza234|3 years ago|reply
It's a shame, because it would have been a great moment to offer an AMD alternative.
¹=https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/intel-thread-director-c...
[+] [-] rgrmrts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canuckintime|3 years ago|reply
Framework is suggesting many customisable options but the wifi antenna is behind the screen so it's not a seamless transition. I would be interested in a screenless framework (with keyboard or just the guts) if they simplify wifi.
So a WiFi module or Cellular module would be a definite buy
[1] https://www.theverge.com/22264792/hp-spectre-x360-14-laptop-...
[+] [-] intsunny|3 years ago|reply
The new AMD chips with the RDNA2 is a Linux user's dream. The open source support is incredible.
[+] [-] jai_|3 years ago|reply
I'm honestly not even sure that there are any good ARM based SoCs to make a laptop mainboard from, but given what we've seen from Apple's development of their iPhone chips being integrated into laptop and desktop, I wonder if something similar could be done with other existing ARM CPUs from Samsung or Nvidia?
[+] [-] pmlnr|3 years ago|reply
I'd also love a trackpoint with 3 dedicated buttons but I'll keep dreaming.
[+] [-] 4ggr0|3 years ago|reply
Would still really like to order one, but my patience is running out, don't have a laptop currently.
EDIT: I sound very pissed off. I know that it's hard to ship to lots of countries, it's just frustrating for me to not even have an estimation. Will I be able to buy it in 3 or 6 months? Or does it take another year? no idea.
[+] [-] filmgirlcw|3 years ago|reply
I’ve been VERY happy with my Framework and am glad to see this update.
[+] [-] justin66|3 years ago|reply
They should make this part available to existing users as a warranty replacement. It sounds like they've addressed a common complaint on their support forums.
The lid that flops over because of the hinge's weakness, and the absurd excuses made by company personnel (they claim it was designed this way "to accommodate opening the laptop with one hand," as if the people who open a laptop with one hand do not need the lid to stay upright) has been a great disappointment for me with this laptop. It is a design defect, not a feature, for the hinge to be this weak.
edit: apparently they're talking about this, so I guess we're stuck with the weak hinge:
https://frame.work/products/top-cover-cnc
[+] [-] headsoup|3 years ago|reply
I was confused that all options had Windows installed...
You can still get to the DIY configure page through Product Story -> Pre-Order Now.
[+] [-] motiejus|3 years ago|reply
I intend to keep it there permanently, which brings questions about durability, especially when carrying the laptop around.
[+] [-] neurostimulant|3 years ago|reply
Also, anyone has recommendation for great affordable router with 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports for home lab setup? I've been searching for one but it seems only gaming routers include these ports. I prefer something more enterprisy (lots of options to tinker with like mikrotik or pfsense), but those usually don't come with 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports, instead they (the affordable ones) have plenty of 1 gigabit ethernet ports and a single sfp+ port. Or should I bite the bullet and go full sfp+ for home lab setup?
[+] [-] Oxodao|3 years ago|reply
And do anyone know if the bug in the HDMI card preventing it to go to sleep is still a thing / need a firmware update / is hopeless ?
[+] [-] jameshart|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cebert|3 years ago|reply