At least that's what I hoped for, but no, that's not how it works, you need some screwing and unscrewing to swap them out, it not something that can be quickly done before you leave the house. Sad. Maybe the next model.
I am using it to change from the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 to a ThinkPad X1 Nano. The X1E4 is 2kg, I have a third party GaN + SiC charger which is just 330g. The X1 Nano Gen 2 is 970g, the GPD G1 is 920g so the two together is less than the old laptop alone, with a hopefully similar CPU performance and vastly higher GPU performance. And it's much easier to pack, the X1E4 has a hard time fitting in a personal item backpack. Only disadvantage is I can't really game from battery but oh well that was never a goal.
Similarly going with the Framework 13 could be an interesting solution.
I love the idea of a repairable laptop, but reparability sure as heck isn't worth a 60%+ price premium far as I'm concerned.
Personally I'm done with the HP/Lenovo/Dell/Asus/Acer/<insert what I missed> offerings.
They make junk that breaks, is impossible to fix and they bundle more and more malware every year.
I'm happy to pay the small premium to a company that has different values. They need to cover their R&D and other costs that are higher per unit at their small scale. I'll be here to watch them grow and show the rest of the market how it's done.
well with that attitude, it will never be worth it. I replace a laptop every 3-4 years for various reasons. I can upgrade the GPU in a framework for $500 every 2-3 years instead of grabbing a whole new laptop for $2000+*. If the core chasis/motherboard are sturdy enough to survive 2 laptop upgrades it's more than paid back its difference.
I don't have one but am keeping a close eye on it. current laptop is 2.5 years old so I'm very interested to see how things will progress in 2-3 more years.
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* for full transparency, my purchase history:
- entry level HP back in 2012: $1200 new after customizing a lot of stuff on it (the base price was like $650). It was back when they threw in an Xbox 360 with the laptop; I never used that Xbox.
- 2015 Asus strix laptop in 2015: ~1000 used, likely 1500 at market price
- 2017 Razer Blade in 2018: ~1300 used. That thing was easily $2300+ because Razer.
- finally, my current Asus ROG in 2021: ~$2700, pretty much has every bell and whistle at the time.
Also I'd like some ports on the back. Why does every manufacturer expect you to like monitor cables running sideways across your desk? Structurally it looks like the 16 could, but they didn't think of it.
As it stands, its a bit impractical and there isn't anything about it that would cause me to buy it over a 16" Precision with a 5k screen or something.
I think they've probably made the right call. To be properly expandable for graphics cards, you need the flexibility that comes from allowing fairly significant size differences for different configurations, including allowing configurations that don't exist yet. The only reasonable place for a laptop form-factor to grow is out the back. I don't think it's possible therefore to have ports on the back be a standard thing, but perhaps a specific expansion module could have some in the future, since the expansion bay supports 8-lane PCIe 4.0.
Also the resolution is too low for a graphics/video-editing workstation. Maybe crypto/ai? But heard nothing of a nvidia card so far.
Also, FW doesn't sell a dock and the Dell dock I used to have was clunky and not that great. Now collecting dust, but been meaning to see if it is compatible with the fw13. However that will make my DP expansion port redundant. Not sure about graphics performance.
lumafield.com scanofthemonth.com
i.e. Dell.
> the off-the-shelf FXBeam connector from Neoconix
So that's the company that makes the Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF) connectors[1], and that's why they're called beam connectors in the service manual[2] (search for it on that page; notice how similar the connectors are to Framework's). These have been used in Dell Precision workstations since the Precision 7530 and 7730 (released in 2018).
I ought to have realised that surely Dell didn't develop this themselves.
> We quickly found that these connectors (on the left in the image) could only reliably be installed once. On removing, handling, and reinstalling, it was easy to bend or break off the small pins.
After working with these connectors, they require some finesse, but they're not as fragile as the post makes them out to be. They're essentially tiny LGA sockets. Dell's implementation put the pins on the connectors and the contacts on the board, so the cheaper (and more disposable) component could break more easily. I'm not sure why Framework decided to forgo the connector and try to join both graphics card and motherboard directly together; this isn't addressed in the blog post.
That being said, 'beam connectors' still aren't cheap, though; when I asked Dell's service centre for spares, I was quoted something like SGD20/connector. They're roughly the same price on eBay[3].
[1]: https://i.imgur.com/aMal40L.jpeg
[2]: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-uk/precision-15-7560....
[3]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313...
One of the major issues with MXM is that it assumes the add-in cards stack on the mainboard, resulting in a thick system. We developed a custom module solution where the card and mainboard can be co-planar.
A case being made by Cooler Master for the Framework mainboards.
Did anybody actually get this laptop, so far?
I just need to understand if i should hold my breath or (again) go for an used thinkpad.
Last time framework didn’t ship to my country (yet), this time… will see.
> This is likely our last Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive before we start shipping, and those of you who ordered one can dive deep on your own
They've had some delays with manufacturing (https://community.frame.work/t/second-update-on-framework-la...), which they wanted to resolve before starting large scale manufacturing.
When you do your own repairs especially the first time, you find that out the hard way, and then you're more careful the next time ;)
I'm not interested in a laptop with an integrated GPU since I'm unlikely to need it much outside of home, but an unconstrained desktop eGPU would allow me to just have one computer instead of two.
