I have daily driven this laptop since it came out. It's fine that you are not the target market, but there are enough people who don't care about all the points you made and have other priorities, even setting aside the weird airport comment (I fly with the Reform regularly):
I have schematics for every circuit and case part. I can (and have) use these to make whatever changes I want. If I run into trouble I have direct access to the engineer who designed them.
It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.
If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.
I do not have to use a trackpad. The keyboard is mechanical and several layouts are available, some from third party designers.
The design of the laptop was a public affair in which I directly participated. I can include patches in firmware bug reports and they will be merged.
Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.
I don't care that it's unfashionably thick, but others do, and I don't see any reason MNT shouldn't cater to them as well.
People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.
> I have schematics for every circuit and case part. I can (and have) use these to make whatever changes I want. If I run into trouble I have direct access to the engineer who designed them.
And have you made any change to any circuit? Especially any change that you would have had to make to any of the other linux first notebooks on the market?
> It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.
Yup 18650s are cool, yet I have replaced the batteries in many Thinkpads and Dells and never had an issue with finding a new one on ebay. Solution to a Problem that isn't really one if you buy any device not made from glue.
> If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.
Unless you are buying a Macbook that has been true for so many Notebooks.
> Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.
There's so much secret sauce in these. Again, the Firmware of the RK3588 isn't open source. No one here has any idea how these chips work and what kind of backdoors or basic security failures they might have. This isn't an RiscV CPU with open specs, it's an off-the-shelf ARM SOC from a chinese vendor that has never managed to release a SOC that has upstream linux support even a year after being released. You are imagining this device as something it provably isn't
> People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.
You know, i personally find it pretty offensive to see a website claim their hardware is "Open Source" or "Open Hardware" and asking an unreasonable amount for it and then having to scroll through the website to find an "eh so this isn't actually open source we just screwed an SOM into a 3d Printed case and called it a day. There's still lots of firmware that is closed source".
I wouldn't be writing this if this was REALLY open source. If there were 0 binary blobs. But that's not something they have achieved. So now it's a Product, sold by a FOR PROFIT company and that has to compete with others. And this doesn't. And to argue like this was this ultimate open source no vendor lock-in forever free device this factually isn't is just disingenuous.
This isn't useful feedback - you're just ranting. These different hardware offerings you mention can and do exist alongside each other. Other people are super-stoked on MNT's hardware and if you're not, that's fine. However, calling it "shit" or "beyond reason" is just trolling.
> Realistically usable and proven to be more "future proof" than the MNT Reform Devices.
How is Framework 'proven' to be more 'future proof' than the MNT Reform devices?
> You know, with actual notebooks you might use them, this MNT Reform will be in your "theoretically cool but practically useless open source projects that I will never use and my children will throw into the landfill when i'm gone"-Drawer we all have.
Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.
> How is Framework 'proven' to be more 'future proof' than the MNT Reform devices?
Framework has shipped multiple generations of hardware with upgrade SOCs/Mainboards in the same form factor. MNT Reform is already on their second generation case and mainboard form factor with no reasonable upgrade for their first gen in sight.
> Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.
I challenge you to do any real work for a week on an RK3588. When your done, you will understand why.
khm|1 year ago
I have schematics for every circuit and case part. I can (and have) use these to make whatever changes I want. If I run into trouble I have direct access to the engineer who designed them.
It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.
If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.
I do not have to use a trackpad. The keyboard is mechanical and several layouts are available, some from third party designers.
The design of the laptop was a public affair in which I directly participated. I can include patches in firmware bug reports and they will be merged.
Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.
I don't care that it's unfashionably thick, but others do, and I don't see any reason MNT shouldn't cater to them as well.
People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.
dtx1|1 year ago
And have you made any change to any circuit? Especially any change that you would have had to make to any of the other linux first notebooks on the market?
> It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.
Yup 18650s are cool, yet I have replaced the batteries in many Thinkpads and Dells and never had an issue with finding a new one on ebay. Solution to a Problem that isn't really one if you buy any device not made from glue.
> If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.
Unless you are buying a Macbook that has been true for so many Notebooks.
> Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.
There's so much secret sauce in these. Again, the Firmware of the RK3588 isn't open source. No one here has any idea how these chips work and what kind of backdoors or basic security failures they might have. This isn't an RiscV CPU with open specs, it's an off-the-shelf ARM SOC from a chinese vendor that has never managed to release a SOC that has upstream linux support even a year after being released. You are imagining this device as something it provably isn't
> People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.
You know, i personally find it pretty offensive to see a website claim their hardware is "Open Source" or "Open Hardware" and asking an unreasonable amount for it and then having to scroll through the website to find an "eh so this isn't actually open source we just screwed an SOM into a 3d Printed case and called it a day. There's still lots of firmware that is closed source".
I wouldn't be writing this if this was REALLY open source. If there were 0 binary blobs. But that's not something they have achieved. So now it's a Product, sold by a FOR PROFIT company and that has to compete with others. And this doesn't. And to argue like this was this ultimate open source no vendor lock-in forever free device this factually isn't is just disingenuous.
yencabulator|1 year ago
Framework also has a chromebook model that uses coreboot: https://frame.work/blog/introducing-the-framework-laptop-chr...
At this point, the fight is more against Intel and the copyright media lobby.
AMD has a lot of promise: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-openSIL-September-2024
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-announce...
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/hdmi-forum-r...
amatecha|1 year ago
dtx1|1 year ago
[deleted]
F3nd0|1 year ago
How is Framework 'proven' to be more 'future proof' than the MNT Reform devices?
> You know, with actual notebooks you might use them, this MNT Reform will be in your "theoretically cool but practically useless open source projects that I will never use and my children will throw into the landfill when i'm gone"-Drawer we all have.
Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.
dtx1|1 year ago
Framework has shipped multiple generations of hardware with upgrade SOCs/Mainboards in the same form factor. MNT Reform is already on their second generation case and mainboard form factor with no reasonable upgrade for their first gen in sight.
> Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.
I challenge you to do any real work for a week on an RK3588. When your done, you will understand why.
metalforever|1 year ago
dtx1|1 year ago
From the MNT Reform Website https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform
> RK3588 > Binary DDR and GPU firmware
That makes it just as closed source as the corebooted novacustom stuff: https://novacustom.com/coreboot-laptop/