This approach even allows the manufacturer to correct design flaws after the fact -- and let's face it, there will always be design flaws. For instance, my FW13 originally came with a very weak hinge for the screen. It was perfectly usable for most daily usage and most people probably wouldn't care, but it meant I couldn't hold it up without the screen tilting back. Well, FW corrected this for those customers who really did care by just selling a new hinge for $24, and so $24 + 10 minutes with a screwdriver later, I had a substantially more refined device! (And to clarify -- there was a defective hinge version in the early batches, and those were replaced free of charge. Mine was a slightly later version that, beyond lacking the level of stiffness I preferred, was not defective.)

I replaced my last laptop after 10+ years because the battery gave out, the end-of-life hardware was so old it no longer got OS upgrades, and eventually apps stopped working. I like the idea of getting to easily throw new hardware at my machine to keep it going.

(I also tired of Apple shoving bad experiences down my throat (TouchBar, Butterfly keyboards, thin glass screens that crack, USB-C and no USB-A...) so I spec'ed out my Framework with USB-C and USB-A.)

But aside from repairability when stuff breaks, a laptop's hardware slowly becomes obsolete because software is usually written for the new stuff. If you're like me and you keep your laptop for 10 years, that means: in year 1 you have 1 year old hardware, in year 6 you have 6 year old hardware, etc. So your laptop gets worse and worse performance because you can't incrementally upgrade your hardware... you only upgrade in a big bang every 10 years when you buy a new one. Towards the end of its life, you're really struggling to keep the thing above water.

With a Framework, in theory I can upgrade the hardware incrementally over time rather than needing a big bang every 10 years. So instead of having 6 year old hardware at year 6, I'll probably have 2 year old hardware again. So I'll more closely match the industry improvements curve.

Will this work in reality? Will it be expensive to replace all the parts, and will the case be able to cool new CPUs, and will I have to get a new mainboard, etc? Who knows. But I thought it was interesting enough to take a gamble on the laptop. And worst case, it's not a fatal decision... I can just go back to MacBooks...

I have a custom built PC (been building my own since 2008). In that span, I had many minor upgrades and 3 entirely new from-scratch builds. I could not imagine it any other way.

For my laptops though, I never bothered. I want something that “just works” when I’m on-the-go, it’s fine if it’s not new hardware as I won’t game on them, and my primary concern is how light they are.

And then a few years ago I got the iPad Pro which became my only device I’d take while traveling.

I've ordered a Framework 16, though. Not for any of that crap, but just to be able to customise it. That's what I love. They should really lean in to this.

Once the eco and repairability nonsense has faded - and it will, because it's marketing fluff - you still have a laptop that is extremely versatile from a company that doesn't hate you. It's not bloated with spyware by default, the checkout process isn't full of dark patterns, they support and encourage you to use it how you want to use it.

Lean in. Make more modules. Make better modules. Assist the community more with new and varied modules. It's crazy that eGPU and dual USB modules are primarily driven by amateur forum volunteers rather than being major priorities for Framework's engineers. Design a low-profile mechanical keyboard, I don't care for your excuses. Give us proper touchpad options with buttons. Keyboard modules with scroll wheels and panning for CAD.

These are what makes Framework special. In 3 or 4 years it's going to be thrown on the same pile as all of my other old laptops, never to be upgraded or repaired again. I don't care for that. I just want a laptop customised for my needs over that time, rather than fighting against the antagonistic whims of Dell et al.

In case it breaks, I walk to my nearby electronics store and purchase a new MacBook Pro. With Time Machine restore I am up an running within an hour. The M1 goes onto the pile of stuff to repair later. And this is where the international part plays a role, in nearly any city in the western world I can grab a new MacBook Pro within an hour.

My day rate is significant enough that downtime is expensive. Not working for a week waiting for Framework to send parts is not an option for me. I can get next day delivery for memory and an SSD through Amazon in most of Europe but that is still a day rate wasted.

I literally just brought a laptop 3 weeks ago and I've already upgraded both of those. It's a newer model with an RTX GPU.

I think framework has potential, but it's going to be a decade to see how things pan out. Will I be able to use the same mainboard for a decade?

So far what I'm seeing is a laptop brand which charges between 50% and 100% more with strange customer support issues and a limited service network.

If you're thinking about reducing waste , buy a refurbished Thinkpad.

Its a good laptop, but not a great laptop. Its very light and compact (very important to me), and its been reliable, at least since the AMD GPU driver issues were resolved. The matte screen is fine, battery life is adequate, and the CPU meets my needs as a hobby developer.

Overall, I'm happy with it and I expect to use it for many years.

Its biggest issues are the touchpad (it's a diving board design, so you have to always click in the bottom 1/3 of the pad) and the quality of the case. The case flexes slightly if the computer is on an uneven surface, or if you are holding it in one hand by the corner while typing/mousing with your other hand, and this can cause the mechanics of the touchpad to jam. I've trained myself to tap instead of click, but that's me adapting to bad hardware.

I wish the case were more solid, even though I know this would add to the expense, size and weight. I expect to eventually replace every part of this laptop except the case, so I would appreciate more durability.

I don't think it's fair to compare Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Framework. The T14 range is a much better comparison. While Lenovo took a few steps back a few years ago the last couple of generations seem to be much better in regard to being repairable. The T14 Gen 5 [0] gets a 9/10 score on ifixit. Parts are easily available globally, while Framework is still somewhat limited in this regard geographically.

That said, it's great we have a choice! If it were not for Framework, I don't think Lenovo would have made an effort to make the Thinkpads repairable again.

- [0] https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T14_Gen_5

To me their software story is compelling. To use the wording of the article, I like that I can be a weirdo running Linux on a laptop and not be a fringe use case. I had no interest in either of their supported distros but their support forums had the necessary hints needed to get a different distro up and running (plugging in newer firmware from the Linux kernel git).

I like that they’ve given some support to the FreeBSD community and I’d like to run that on a future Framework.

Granted, it was their first ever shipping product so I gave them a free pass but I thought they would atleast issue a recall or have a repair program where you send in the laptop to get it fixed. Instead they first denied it was even an issue, later on when enough people complained - they started a battery program where they send you a new ML220 coin battery that will also eventually stop working.

I was told buying a new mainboard (12th or 13th gen Intel) would fix it, but I decided to just buy a new ZenBook instead.

I currently own a Lenovo Legion laptop. Still, a very powerful machine, but the screen now has a spot in the middle with multiple dead pixels, the topcoat on the trackpad is peeling off, and the main body has spots where palms rest. I'd happily buy replacement parts and install them, but I can't.

Apart from thinkpads and maybe framework, I don't think there is any other reliable laptop brand with reasonable prices.

I was talking with my mother about buying jeans pants that would last for a long time, and a 200 euros jeans would have holes on its 6th year or something. Everything is built to last "just long enough".

> I could finally watch 480 YouTube videos instead of 360

What’s meaningless about this big upgrade in quality?

So with that and the misconceptions like "You can't change the RAM /SSD" (you can, but for a smaller set of laptops than before), the thesis is rather muddy (unless you literally plan a custom printed snacks tray, but even then other laptops have pluggable side bays, so could also plug in there?)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46375174

I think the Framework model (OTC/commodity parts + mainboard) is neat, but what Beelink and others in the MiniPC space are doing is much more useful and compelling for someone who needs a modern, extensible system.

My work doesn't require a lot of local compute (or repairs), so there's nothing really a Framework offers that I'm not already getting on a 5 year old $150 4GB Chromebook.

First: Remove the internal CDPD wireless modem, remove the internal 56k POTS modem/10/100 Ethernet combo card. Wire the TTL-level UART from the CDPD port over to the RJ11 jack so I could now hack on embedded devices using a simple RJ11-to-bare-wires cable.

Second: The modem/ethernet card removal freed up the MiniPCI slot. Obtain a MiniPCI-to-USB2.0 card (4 downstream ports), and desolder the tall headers (it was meant for embedded machines with more internal space). Then verrrry carefully desolder the machine's external USB1.1 port pins from the mobo, and wire them over to one of the USB2.0 host ports. (Ground stayed, but D+/D-/Vbus moved.) Ta-daa, faster external devices.

This is the only bit I seem to have a photo of: https://flickr.com/photos/myself248/255205625/

Third: Carve out some stiffening ribs from under the palm-rest, shuck a USB-Bluetooth adapter, and mount it in there. The palm-rest being plastic means this puts the radio outside the magnesium shell, but still "internal" from an ergonomic perspective. Sneak some wires past the touchpad opening and solder them to the now-freed-up USB1.1 host port on the mobo, since bluetooth doesn't need 480Mbps.

Fourth: Shuck a 2GB USB flash drive and wire it to another internal USB2.0 port, and run EBoostr, a third-party implementation of Readyboost for WinXP, which gave flash-cache functionality for severely RAM-limited machines like mine (192MB mobo max, sadly!). Tuck it up by the RAM, ironically, because there's plenty of room up there.

Fifth: Shuck a USB2.0-GigE adapter (one with separate magnetics and jack, leave the magnetics but remove the jack because it's too tall, also remove the USB port), and wire it to yet a third internal USB2.0 port. Wire the Ethernet side out to the RJ45 jack freed up by the 10/100 card removal. The speed boost from 100Mbps to 480Mbps (GigE bottlenecked by USB2.0) isn't nothing, but the real benefit is that GigE is Auto-MDIX so I never have to carry a crossover cable, and that's worth it all by itself.

Sixth: Shuck a USB-Wifi dongle, and wire it to the fourth and final internal USB2.0 port. Do the world's hairiest coax splice to the CDPD modem's antenna lead, so the 2.4GHz RF now goes out to the 800MHz-tuned antenna mounted on the screen. Split the antenna open and trim the active elements to 1/3 their length, raising the resonant frequency accordingly. Without access to a VNA at the time, this was as good as I could get, and it worked just fine.

At that point, it was pretty much the perfect laptop, except for the brutally-limited RAM, which eventually forced its obsolescence as browsers bloated without bound. I used it heavily during 2006-07, and to this day I still miss that perfect little keyboard.

I also find their design very boring. I am not asking for a MacBook, but even ThinkPads are way more sexy and you can actually identify with that design. Framework just comes off as another 2015 MacBook Air design knockoff.