Then I'll be switching all the developers in our company over to a new machine.
(Currently running XPS 13, but we are due an upgrade, especially on memory)
The battery drain is annoying, it's around 30-50% per night depending on what addon cards you have. I've got a setup that puts it close to 40% per night so the laptop has to live on charger over night if I want to use it the next day.
However, the thing that's really stopping me from using my laptop (it has sat in my office for the last 3 weeks with its lid closed) is the touchpad. https://community.frame.work/t/subpar-touchpad/3962 External mouse only.
The mac-book killer was very much hyperbole from paid reviewers.
Edit: Also, the I'll throw in the speakers being absolute garbage as well. Think 1 step above 90s pc speaker. And the sound device has a constant background static when using headphones which clicks on when there's sound and then 2 seconds after any sound being played clicks off.
On battery - I am using "sleep then hibernate", which typically means 4-6% of battery drain overnight which happens while it is in first ~2hrs of sleep mode. Of course it means you now spend 30sec booting up, but I can live with that.
On touchpad - weird, my experience is opposite. I'd say this is the closest to Macbook experience I had, no issues whatsoever.
Speakers are a bit quiet, agreed, no static or anything, we occasionally use it to watch Netflix with my wife, while away from TV, interchangeably with her Macbook and definitely wouldn't call it garbage.
So, all in all I am in "quite happy" camp. Yes, not Macbook killer, but for me it is close enough and without any major inconveniences, but with all OSS benefits and presumably infinite upgradeability. I use Arch btw :)
I'm generally otherwise super happy with it though. The speakers don't bother me much, they're good enough for calls, and if I'm actually trying to listen to music I'll just use actual bluetooth speakers or headphones.
I'm most happy about the fact that they put an actually decent screen and key switches. Many other laptops that run Linux have shitty 1080p screens and shitty keyboards.
And the fact that I was able to shove in 2TB of SSD and 64GB of RAM all bought at market pricing, not at Lenovo or Apple pricing.
That’s the thing with running Linux as a desktop, you’ve gotta tweak it to get it just right.
Battery life is a non issue for me on the framework. The speakers on the other hand is a brutal downgrade.
More thoughts here comparing a 2018 mbp: https://erock.io/2021/11/01/framework-vs-mbp.html
Why buy a laptop with four interchangeable ports when my normal laptop has two USB-A, one USB-C, HDMI, microsd, and a charge port all at the same time? Heck you can't even charge the Framework unless you leave one port as USB-C.
I can agree that the speakers aren't stellar but that's something I don't care about on a laptop since I always have on headphones or I'm just using the speakers for video conferencing or something. Never experienced any background static when using headphones.
>That’s not subpar, that’s standard. There’s a reason why macbook touchpads are so widely praised.
Trackpad improvement in current gen PC is a very recent thing. After people trashing PC laptop trackpad for years, and Microsoft throwing in some R&D money to help improve the situation.
And again if you are comparing to a Macbook, most PC speaker has been garbage for years. Only when reviewer start comparing their PC laptop speakers to Macbook did they start to put effort into improving it.
I dont know any reviewer actually said it is Macbook Killer. It would actually be a stupid thing to say. ( Show them to me so I will take notes ). But I am not surprised because current generation so called reviewers have practically little hardware and supply chain knowledge.
There are of compromise being made to have it all fixable. But they also put in the extra effort in motherboard reliability design. And things that aren't so obvious. Compared to Macbook which is all integrated. ( Although that is changing now, you see more individual components "blocks" being used )
I think it is an expectation problem. And may be people should not have overhyped it so much.
Just because people have a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are hyperbolic paid reviewers. I love the trackpad, although I did have a minor issue out of the box where I had to click kind of hard toward the bottom center to get it to start working. I expect those things will go away as they get better. It's gotta be damn hard to put together such a complex hardware product.
Anyway, this is a 13.5" laptop so space is at a premium. I can't expect to include everything. But if they'll build a 15" laptop with NO NUMBERPAD and buttons on the touchpad, I'll consider buying it. I'll pay extras for those buttons and for the numberpad-less keyboard.
Hold on. Which reviewers received payments in return for positive coverage of the laptop?
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/bios-3-07-windows-10-and-11-a...
Awesome that you're switching your whole team to Frameworks - my next work laptop will for sure be a Framework too :)
If you build/install the latest kernel (or a newer one) on Ubuntu I would expect a similar experience to Fedora (although Gnome and wayland versions can make a difference on some things.)
Generally speaking I haven't found it to be any better than my Framework optimized PopOS 20.04 NVMe boot setup:
- Rock solid Intel wifi (mostly thanks to Pop providing kernel 5.15.15)
- Fingerprint reader works (custom fprintd/libfprint debs, kind of hacky but works)
- PipeWire PPA for better bluetooth audio support
- Suspend-then-hibernate for battery drain issues
- Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting ATM
- Quickemu
- Still basically Ubuntu LTS for the occasionally goofy/proprietary stuff I need to run requiring it
Not encrypting the volume isn't an option for me.
Battery drain seems to be a common serious issue among enthusiast linux hardware, e.g. PinePhone, CutiePi and now Framework. Is this a coincidence or is it due to incompatible ACPI on non-standard hardware?
If you mean high consumption in "shallow sleep" -- I switched to "deep sleep" in the first day.
What kind of MBP have you looked at?
I agree with the ethos part, but the current M1 devices are pretty unique in the laptop space.
Hope they fix these issues.
Their community forum has a lot of users asking for solutions for the problems you mentioned and even Linux compatibility issues.
I really hope they fix these issues too. A friend made a joke, which I find hilarious: "you can always replace all the parts that are failing, isn't that the point?".
I suspect as a whole intel moved to these new fangled s0ix sleep states, which are not well supported in Linux and s3 state does not work well enough in these new Laptops.
I just hope my current laptop can hold out till whenever that is, else it'll have to be the 16" MBP with $400 for 32GB RAM upgrade :(
It seems a lot of developer-type folks have moved to cloud focused work, at least in my bubble the raw computing power seems to be less and less valued.
It’s pretty powerful so far (comparable to my 2019 i9 mbp roughly but I haven’t measured).
I’m not sure what battery life will be like. I haven’t finished tuning my installation so I can’t really measure reliably. Overall the hardware is really solid though.
Modularity could be a big advantage for smaller companies - getting a decent system (cpu/ram etc), and a great screen in one package is enough of a challenge.
Add in touchpad, keyboard, hinges, etc, and it's no wonder only the premium large manufacturers seem able to pull off an all-round great machine.
Plus the tablet form-factor is just more versatile than a clamshell laptop.
AMD vs Intel? Touchscreens? Strong opinions about screen aspect ratio and resolution, keyboard layout, touchpads, wifi chipset brand, GPU brand, etc.? All there.
I wish the company luck, but they are targeting the most picky consumer market there is.
HW development is insanely capital intensive and they're far away from the resources of the likes of Asus and MSI, let alone Lenovo or Dell.
The one thing the ended up keeping me from the Framework laptops was the lack of Home, End, Insert, Delete buttons. Having had a number of Thinkpad machines I have gotten used to using them all the time.
I also quite enjoy that I can put my hands on the keyboard and almost not move them at all while using the little knob for mouse-activities when keyboard shortcuts run out.
I'm also still not sure how I feel about the 3:2 screen. I've gotten so used to 16:9 & 16:10 that I think it'd be hard to go back to something similar to a 4:3 screen again.
This is what I've ultimately found to put me off the project - what I can customise I mostly don't need to, and the things I'd really like choice on: keyboard style, trackpad, etc. I can't.
Since it boots to desktop in 10-15 seconds I don’t have to deal with the overnight power issues everyone complains about. And since it doesn’t run a hundred automatic background processes it’s much quicker to start working than my MBP was.
Printing on the other hand…
I don't have one (yet?), so I can't speak to how well they actually achieved this goal, though.
* Intel only * Windows only
... sorry boy and mum are arguing over homework -- gotta run!
I would expect the vast majority of users will be using Linux though, so calling it Windows only seems a little misleading. There is an option to get no OS and avoid the Windows tax.
I'd love if Linux has as officially supported and just worked.
I think I will just have to get a Dell or HP or Lenovo by now (if not another Mac). By the time they will decide to sell on this side of the planet they will either go defunct (just a sad prediction) or customised laptops won't be a limited fad-like anymore.
If not, is it really that different than a thinkpad?
With framework that would be doubly unnecessary because the EC firmware is open source. Also they open source stuff having to do with their add on modules.
Plus, I'd wager a guess that Intel/AMD make you sign an NDA that would probably rule an open mainboard (I don't know this for sure). What may need to happen to get high end open hardware is for a company with the right ethos to become big enough to have negotiating power or to design their own SOC.
Framework is trying to strike a balance between producing laptops competitive with mass market offerings and providing users control. If you want freedom over all else you should probably buy a Librem or MNT reform.
Calling it "balance" is a big stretch when all the important hardware is closed and there are no independent 3rd parties selling replacement parts.
I recently got a new laptop with Ryzen 5 5600U, 32GB RAM, and 2TB SSD. The laptop is HP ProBook 445 G8. RAM and SSD were sold separately, the upgrade only took 10 minutes and 6 screws. I paid less than €1000 including the upgrades.
The laptop is comparable to the Framework professional they offer for €2280. AMD CPU is better, 15442 versus 11036 points of cpubenchmark.net (that’s 6 cores versus 4). Surprisingly, Intel GPU is better, 2 versus 1.6 TFlops FP32. RAM amount is the same, AMD has twice the SSD storage.
The only large downside is the display, my laptop has 16x9 1080p 14” IPS, the Framework has more pixels and 3x2 aspect ratio.
Also, this is what integration, that is, limiting the customization options, does for you.
Having a niche and highly customizable thing costs you extra.
Niche sure, but I'm not sure I agree it's highly customizable. Not all laptops are designed like macbooks with just a couple ports and soldered everything. There're still good models made in large volumes. They are often made for corporate sector, but who cares about their marketing as long as the hardware's good.
I have already replaced RAM and SSD in my laptop as soon as it was delivered. WiFi is user upgradeable as well, but I don't have a reason to replace that part. It does not need port expansion cards because all these ports are already built-in.
Also, for people in US or other countries where their online configurator works, that model is even more customizable than the Framework laptop: supports a choice of 5 CPU models, a few different display panels (albeit I have to admit none of them is as good as the one in the Framework), optional infrared webcam, couple options for keyboard.
And I guess Satoshi's paper on Bitcoin, which shows that Bitcoin is fundamentally run by whoever has the most CPU power, which has naturally triggered a CPU power arms race which has led to a corresponding increase in power consumption is also FUD.
(Once/if alternatives like Ethereum's Proof of Stake are the dominant force in crypto then yes, power consumption will not be a problem, but it is a very real problem now, and if it had simply been dismissed as FUD then solutions like Proof of Stake would never have been created).
