I should mention that I like what Framework is doing and have been tempted to buy one. Don’t mean to take anything away from them. It’s just not for me right now.
I think this is cool. But at some point in my career/life in the tech space, I stopped caring as much about my tools as long as it works to a reasonable degree. I am fine with whatever Dell/Apple/Asus/etc laptop that's out there. Will my productivity increase if I switch to Framework? Maybe? I am not sure how to convince people like me. Obviously, I am not the target audience for this. I wonder what is their addressable market?
I was definitely skeptical of Framework at first, but it seems like they're committing to their pluggable module concept and supporting their OG users. Way more interested in them now.
Framework is such an interesting project. Especially from the perspective of a Linux user, there is tons of potential here and I cannot wait to see their next generation laptops.
One reason I'm hopeful about Framework is that I've recently realized I care a lot about keyboard / key caps.
When I shopped for a development laptop recently, some gaming laptops were really good matches for my needs. But the keyboards / key caps were squishy rubbery things that I couldn't get used to.
It would be awesome each buyer could tweak the laptop design based on personal preferences, where large manufacturers could never justify selling that exact config due to low demand.
I love framework's mission. I would not change the past on buying a framework. To provide a counter example, quite often I open my bag to find that my Framework 13 has cooked itself in the bag. The battery life, and the bad intel sleep management have been a thorn in my side since I got it. But the power management does leave much to be desired.
Given LTT's review of the laptop, it may be best to wait for the 2nd revision of this which hopefully will deal with the deck flex and screen consistency issues.
I really like framework and I happy they are offering AMD.
But I really struggle to recommend Framework after they were unable at this time to fix a hardware issue. The headphone jack will beep when sound turns on and off. Framework confirmed with me that the vendor intended for this and they were unable to fix it because of the parts shortage. It is so annoying I bought a USB C dac to play the audio in.
The keyboard, they minimize way too much, like having to use the fn key for home, end, and pg up/down, as well as insert, I need to press fn+shift+insert to paste something in gnome terminal which means I need to do it for Neovim.
Aside from that, I do like the 3:2 aspect ratio, even if it has issues with GNOME and websites. GNOME refuses to let you snap two windows to each side for some reason. Websites think your screen is too small and so you get the mobile version for a lot of sites.
Still, beautiful screen, excellent webcam, metal body. Needs more execution.
I love framework.
Have been using as my main device during the last years of my PhD. However now that I got a company mac book I was using it less and less, so I decided to buy the Cooler Master mainboard case and now I'm using it as a home server. Wouldn't have been able to do that with any other laptop.
I had a Framework and really liked it. Unfortunately the components just degraded really quickly for me, and now can't work but 20 minutes at a time until it freezes completely. Swapped out for a Thinkpad last week.
Even swapped out the Framework mainboard after a long back and forth with support. Just some poor battery unloading or similar causing shorts. I was very close to committing my company to using them until this started happening to my tester unit and my lead engineer's tester unit.
I hope the best for Framework -- I really love their repairability promise -- but before I can commit my company to them I need them to not be lemons.
Definitely look very seriously at Framework. Bought one last year and it's easily been the best computer purchase I've ever made. Solved every problem I experienced with Dell and Lenovo. I run Manjaro Linux on it.
I wonder if framework will have a mysterious bump in sales because of this
reply