Framework Laptop 13 Pro(frame.work) |
Framework Laptop 13 Pro(frame.work) |
... but I wish they would make something with a bit more screen estate without being heavy and bulky. Their 16" is just too big. I really like the Dell XPS 14 and MBP 14", which I think is the right trade-off between screen size and portability.
I await a Linux-based battery test for both active work and overnight suspend consumption. I don't think suspend battery drain is vendor-specific though; AMD and Intel both shat the bed compared to Apple due to hardware decision-making.
edit: I missed this.
>7 days Standby without charging, Wi-Fi connected on Ubuntu
Does a Framework Laptop bridge the gap somewhat?
No T-shape cursor keys?!? Lame. No love. No want. Go home.
Thinkpad FTW. Sorry.
Most of the port options are decoys because it means 1 or 0 USB ports.
And no I'm not carrying around a satchel of modules like an old British lord.
- Touchscreen -> mmkay, but i don't really care
- Haptic touchpad -> I absolutely hate those. I want to click buttons. Buttons. Buttons.
Well, this is not for me i guess :(
Unfortunately Linux support isn't fully baked yet, but people are working on it.
So can we finally update the firmware for the Sandisk SN7100 and 850X SSDs under Linux? Last time I've checked you couldn't even download the firmware for WD 850X using a plain browser. You had to use their "special" Windows software.
I'll buy one on the day of release if they offer both options (my most recent¹ Lenovo is long overdue for replacement)
¹ I don't think I'll ever sell my X220, any I regret selling my X270. Everything after that was a disappointment.
As I require ECC, it seems I won't be upgrading anytime soon.
If you don’t reboot your laptop in years where ECC matters I’m not sure how to help you.
That's a huge negative for me.
Alternatively, you can also "not touch" the touch display :)
> 16" 16:1- Anti-glare matte display (2560x1600), 500 nits, no HDR
Sorry. That's just not going to cut it. These are 5-year-old specs.
:(
I thought most modern laptops have dedicated video decode hardware that is fairly easy on battery. At only 250nit though...that seems dim by today's standards. I'm happy to be wrong though!
However, the 358H processor + 64GB RAM + 1TB NVMe is $2700. Wow. Even if I sold my current AMD 7840U with 64GB of RAM it would still be quite an investment.
The biggest question I have, which is probably easily searchable: How well will this run local LLMs? Seems the RAM is fast enough.
(Now you have to validate the next person's justification when it comes up again.)
Those might look cool, but they're a huge pain to use.
I don't have plans to buy a laptop in the near future, but its nice to have this as an option. I like the idea of a bespoke Linux machine I could use.
Also how's Linux support for either?
edit: I think I found it: https://frame.work/products/laptop13pro-mainboard-intel-ultr...
at the same time, there is a decent level of risk with using "new" standards before the industry catches up. lpcamm2 is great and should allow faster memory while "upgradable". the issue is with only having one slot which forces you to replace memory instead of adding to it. this is working with the assumption of having a single slot, which i am happy to be proven wrong on.
the current timing is a shame but at least when one needs to shell out so much money after all, might as well get better performance and hardware along with it.
There is no such product in the market.
That's a non-starter. Why not 128GB or push boundary for 256GB?
As I understand it, 64 GB modules are largest LPCAMM2 modules yet released with 96 GB being announced only a couple months ago. 128 GB might be possible on the Ultra 5 325 once either sufficiently large LPCAMM2 modules have been release or if the motherboard was redesigned to support dual LPCAMM2 modules, the Ultra X7 358H and Ultra X9 388H only support 96 GB. Support for 256 GB would likely require a desktop processor, or a redesign from Intel to support a quarter terabyte of memory on a mobile processor.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245720/...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245527/...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245526/...
Isn't this a Linux device? Why not skip mentioning this non-feature?
Anyway, the next Frameworks need to adopt Thunderbolt 5 to handle modern HDMI 2.1 and 2.2, eGPU, Oculink, etc.
Intel has really crushed it lately.
They don't ship to where I am so I didn't stay long
It's the one thing I'm jealous of the Laptop 16 together with their key module that should let you design arbitrary layouts.
> Watch a Framework Laptop 13 Pro battery go from 100% to 0%. Live.
Live stream is not available.
* Some will even work with graphics cards from newer laptops using the same chassis; for example, the Precision 7530 (8th gen Intel + Pascal GPUs) can be upgraded with Precision 7540 (Turing) GPUs. This isn't officially supported, though, and may not apply to later models.
The Core series has GPUs on par with or even slightly bigger than most of the Ryzen AI series (look up benchmarks and articles).
But that's bad in my book. I'm happy with 720p on low detail once in a while if it's a laptop. What I remember is Intel GPUS being unable to do even that.
If they caught up with AMD iGPUs, that's great. I don't do desktop replacement laptops, I prefer the ones I can hold in one hand, the dGPU is in my desktop.
Maybe in the days of HD graphics cards... I've got a Tiger Lake chipset and the Xe iGPU outperforms the laptop 3050 dGPU in actual games (due to having access to waaaaaay more RAM).
During the previous chip crisis when covid and crypto were waning I needed a new desktop. Damned if I was going to buy a discrete video card at those prices so I went AMD integrated graphics. Didn't even stop to look at Intel.
(For the record said desktop has a discrete GPU now, but I bought it like 2 years after I built the desktop.)
Intel has had a positive reputation the vast majority of the time from 1990 up to now, with only the last few years being bad.
For integrated GPUs? Both sides were crap until Zen. I just didn't notice Intel caught up.
> from 1990 up to now
For CPUs they're fortunately still playing catch up with each other. You remember when AMD released Zen, but do you remember when Intel released the Core stuff and how crap Pentium 4 / Netburst was right before that?
"This product can only be used with both the Framework Laptop 13 Pro Bottom Cover and Framework Laptop 13 Pro Input Cover."
I applaud that the mainboard and keyboard are backwards compatible, but I don't think the pro is quite as backwards compatible as some are thinking
Mainly just a trade-off because of because of the bigger battery (but it sounds like they'll sell you the bottom chassis pieces as well).
https://frame.work/sg/en/products/framework-laptop-13-pro-ch...
Bottom cover alone goes for more than that, even without battery or speakers: https://frame.work/sg/en/products/laptop13pro-bottom-cover-k...
So does the screen: https://frame.work/sg/en/products/laptop13pro-display-kit
Fuck I do love these guys! Give me a little hope in humanity.
Will definitely buy this new chasis as soon as I can!
First off, I believe that Intel has its memory far more "unified". AMD typically has a stricter VRAM/RAM 'tradeoff' setting that does not exist on Intel in the same way to my knowledge. (See how on Strix Halo systems, there is a thing about "allocating" 96 GB to the GPU, which seems to be needed sometimes but prevents the CPU from accessing that memory.)
Secondly, the Panther Lake board has LPDDR5X LPCAMM2 memory at 7467 MT/s, while the AMD boards are stuck with DDR5 SODIMMs at a meagre 5600 MT/s. In other words, the Intel board gets a third more memory bandwidth!
BTW as an AMD fanboy and stockholder, Intel's latest generation of CPUs is quality.
How does it compare to an ipad in terms of fidelity / responsiveness, and for native-feeling integration with ubuntu?
I am, naturally, a bit skeptical that touchscreen UI would be any good in linux.
GNOME supports multitouch gestures, and the GTK4 toolkit is overall very touch-native. It strikes a nice balance between overpadded and touch-accessible, IMO: https://www.gnome.org/
(some of the newer Libadwaita widgets that GNOME is using: https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/libadwaita/doc/main/wid... )
> How does it compare to an ipad in terms of fidelity / responsiveness
With Wayland, it's borderline identical.
I've heard that there's *support* -but is the experience of having a touchscreen on an ubuntu device actually usable and good?
For example some random GUI app you're likely to use on ubuntu is the experience not broken?
I guess Chrome is the first thing that comes to mind.
Come on lol. I have a couple steam decks and both are really clunky.
Most applications are not built using GTK4 nor Qt6 for that matter.
On my steam deck the keyboard never pops up by itself so I have to use a key combination and it feels like I am moving a ghost mouse around the place (rather than proper touch screen support)
I ran gnome on the deck for a while but anyway the on-screen keyboard provided by the gnome sucked so bad that I gave up (sucked as in, it groups all the keys around the center of the screen tightly together and very small)
I also have an M1 iPad Pro. No comparison because those issues simply don’t exist on iOS.
Everything around actually a Linux device with a touchscreen sucks.
Like on-screen keyboard will be inconsistent depending on the framework of the app.
comparing to iOS which was built from the ground up around that input method is simply not fair lol.
Framework Pro 13" DIY AMD Ryzen 7 350, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD = $2,049.00
Framework Pro 13" Pre-Built AMD Ryzen 7 350, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD = $2,059.00
Your FW's Keyboard breaks? Original price you paid, bonus: you can just buy the newest model.
You want to upgrade anything in your MBP? "You know, with how thin, lightweight and fast they are, it's physically impossible to make them user-serviceable"
On the FW? They gave you the one tool you needed when you purchased your laptop.
Why are you lying? That price is to replace the main board.
Give us the price of the Framework's mainboard if you want to compare that.
I thought they’d either solder the memory or skip out on delivering the good integrated graphics from the X SKUs.
I’m stunned in a good way. This is a MacBook Pro killer for the nerdier end of Apple’s market.
The fact that you mostly can pick and choose your upgrades to Pro is really cool, too.
The mid-tier X7 board sold alone seems like a great value and it would be a pretty solid uplift to the old system.
I did find this list: https://community.frame.work/t/list-of-company-or-individual...
According to it there are more 3rd party main boards than expansion cards. I kinda get it, but wow. End of an era I guess.
At least I have the option of that CoolerMaster case. But maybe it'd be best to just sell the whole thing.
I didn't do shipment forwarding. I just bought the product and later moved to Japan. Also, Framework supposedly blocks shipment forwarding.
It's odd, because I remember them advertising a Japanese keyboard layout in the past. They must not see a large enough market to justify the costs.
They aren't lying. Apple's OEM keyboard repair will charge you for the entire topcase assembly, which can easily crest $500.
Contrast this with Framework or Thinkpad where a keyboard replacement is $20 and 5 minutes of screw work: https://www.ebay.com/itm/286053777254
Besides that, it all works about as well as you'd expect it to. You can drag the window around by the tab bar and tap-and-hold to pull up a context menu.
They eventually got on the EUV train and were the first customer to receive ASML's current state of the art machine which they call high-NA EUV. Intel's 18A process is the first to use this machine as part of the manufacturing process, Panther Lake uses this process so now they're right back to being SOTA.
All the news about them (stock price movements, theories about them going bankrupt, Panther Lake, etc...) for the last 2 years has essentially been people betting on whether or not they can successfully incorporate SOTA ASML machines into their manufacturing.
My touchscreen laptop is closing in on being a decade old (i7 6600u) and the worst thing I can say about the experience is that it VSyncs down to 30fps during more taxing animations (just like my iPad does).
> Any gesture functionality is dependent on the software you are running. This includes both, the application (e.g. Firefox) and the desktop environment (e.g. GNOME). The driver can only provide a set of input coordinates to the applications. By default, the system will behave as if you've clicked at the point of a single touch, or mouse-button dragged when you single-finger drag.
I love Linux but no need to embellish the current state imo
I am glad that it is working really well for you though
Taking a quick look, all of the things they list are basically reiterating what I've already said vis-a-vis Wayland:
You should make sure that you are running a Wayland desktop session [...]
It is important, that your applications run on Wayland as well.Now Intel's process node is also SOTA and on par with TSMC 2nm so they should be more or less equivalent and the only differences down to what set of compromises they make in the design of the chips.
In fact, Intel also had Lunar Lake, which had on-package memory. However, it was still limited to 128-bit dual-channel, so there weren't really many performance benefits; it did however help with power efficiency.
(Except for the caches, which everybody has)
Yeah no. All of this depends on everything up to the application.
A gtk2 application will have no support for anything. A GTK3 application running on xwayland will have poorer support as well. And anyway most applications just treat the touchscreen as an invisible pointer as it says there.
Just to give an example of some basic thing that doesn’t work reliably: you can’t reliably use a long press gesture. In most apps that will be equivalent to holding the left click (aka does nothing but a long click). On iOS you will get a contextual menu to select/format text or whatever. (You can find a real report of this issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/s/crLHZhHkuM - “how do I right click using the touchscreen?” from barely 6 months ago)
Your claim that this is an equivalent experience to an iPad is just false.
I’ve been around long enough to remember setting up TouchEgg, the situation is better now but still not equivalent at all.
Anyway originally I wanted to reply to provide balance to your take so casual readers wouldn’t install Linux on their tablets and expect iPadOS. I think that has been sufficiently achieved by this comment chain, readers can choose which side to take :-)
Cheers!
If you're going to fight over edge-case consistency, then at least be consistent. People build iPad apps with horrible custom widgets that block context menus too. They run "real" software in QEMU and iTerm that truly has no support for any of their default HIDs. Linux has more software to support, by nature it's going to have the larger number of inconsistent experiences. I don't think that's a fair basis of comparison, though.
Strictly speaking, I think KDE and GNOME's Wayland stacks are the closest equivalent to the Quartz Compositor on the market. I don't really know any other stack that comes close.
To go back to the app-by-app comment, I do know that there are like ubuntu tablet and touch setups.
Are there any browsers already setup to be more touch native, or specific browser builds that are more touch native already?
To be specific: There's a new lower chassis, and a new chassis top with haptic touchpad. On my older framework I could buy just the chassis top to get the new touchpad. Crazy that they could make that work.
I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations nerding out over the new devices and shouting out specific team members who did the designs. Really hope the company is doing well.
It's sorta essential imo if they want to make good on their one value-prop: repairability and the good will that comes with it. If they start releasing a tonne of SKUs with a million different parts, they'll inevitably have to sunset parts at a clip that'll completely make useless their repairability claims.
I am a happy Framework laptop owner, but I paid a premium b/c I expect moves like this. If this would change, it would become just an over-priced laptop... might as well by another Thinkpad or Dell XPS.
That said, I'm super happy they apparently have the good sense to see this. Not all companies make moves in their best interests.
I've just ordered my own 13 pro. I've been waiting for a laptop and this ticks all the boxes. I'd previously ordered a new dell xps laptop and ultimately returned it because the keyboard was busted. I would have kept it if I could have swapped the keyboard for a new one. The use of LPCAMM is also really nice. I've hoped to see this standard start taking flight and I'm happy to grab a product with it included.
Unfortunately, as is usual for them (edit: and it makes sense; I'm not blaming them), the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering (edit: or pre-ordering) yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping. But yes, this is amazing, and the new pieces are not things I was expecting from them. As soon as it's available, I'll be taking my relatively recent AMD mainboard and putting it in a new chassis+battery+keyboard+speakers+touchpad, possibly skipping the display (I don't care much about a touchscreen, but I do care about display quality, so I'll wait for comparisons to the current 2.8k display). My laptop will, at that point, be almost entirely in a Ship of Theseus situation: I think that only the bezel and some of the expansion cards will be from the original, first-generation laptop I bought from them. That mainboard runs a number of services for me, along with an older display. A second, newer one is waiting for RAM to be a reasonable price (since the RAM it was using is now on my current mainboard); I had planned to use it for some of my research, but maybe I'll end up putting it into this older chassis and have a spare laptop again.
That all this is possible is wonderful, and a credit to them in staying true to their stated ideals.
Why would you expect otherwise? I fully expect any OEM to place itself at the front of the queue for parts coming from its suppliers. If for some reason they sold parts before the laptops started shipping, I'd fully expect impatient customers would build complete machines from parts ahead of the shipping dates, which would wreak all kinds of havoc on logistics.
It's unfortunate that they can't sell you something that hasn't been manufactured? That doesn't yet exist?
HN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about.
+1. The less-scripted plus the lack of the pretending-reality-distortion personality is such a breeze.
I think a number of people would have expected these to eventually require a trade-off. Especially coming from pc-building land, where we see new non-backwards-compatible CPU and RAM sockets every 6 or so years.
There's a version of this where Frame.work said, "Design tradeoffs mean the 13 Pro is a new platform that is largely not backwards compatible, but don't worry, the 13 series will still get 5+ years of support and parts" and everyone goes "Aw, well, I guess that's reasonable."
I really want to emphasize that it's looking like Framework is creating a laptop with _better_ backwards compatibility and build-ability than a desktop PC.
All this is to say that this is very very impressive!
An 11th gen CPU/mobo that came out in 2020 can be dropped straight into this new chassis.
Or the newest display be can be dropped into your 2020 laptop/chassis.
Inside the case somewhere on mine there was a list of all the names of the people who worked on it. Was pretty cool.
And then I click through and see the compatibility table and my jaw drops. Amazing! Yes, it's a new chassis, but all the parts that matter will fit into my old chassis. And if I want to upgrade the chassis, I can even do that piece by piece as well, not all at once.
I'm also glad to see another Intel mainboard, and one with the new, actually-powerful iGPUs. A part of me has considered over time defecting to AMD, but I'm still just more comfortable with Intel, for some reason that probably isn't rational. My one concern is that their CPU options top out at 4 performance cores; the i7-1370P I have right now has 6. But I know these days it's hard to reason about real-world performance just by core count, especially with the different flavors of cores we have now.
Another worry: the thermals of the original 13 chassis have never been great, and I'm concerned that the new mainboard will throttle a bunch under load when installed in the old chassis.
At any rate, I may not upgrade this year, given RAM prices. I have 64GB of DDR4 in my current laptop, and replacing that with the same amount of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X is probably more expensive than the rest of the laptop itself.
But maybe over the next few years I'll ship-of-theseus myself into a new laptop.
- Actually naming your inspiration as Apple
- Saying that thanks to machined body, the keyboard is actually slightly better. No overstatement, just an honest detail
- No: "This is our best laptop yet" (As if managing to not making it worse is something to be proud of)
- To the point, fast paced, clear communication
- Honestly stating that you're working hard on getting as good as "the gold standard, which of course is Apples track pad" and that you think you'll get there soon
- Clearly stating that the new memory standard is not magically your own invention somehow even though you're the first to use it
- Clearly stating the actual numbers of the battery in Wh and density AND also how many video minutes you get
- Clearly stating, not hiding but also not overstating that you started the company for the purpose of upgradeability
- Proving what you mean with examples before emphasising that "we really mean it when we say we have redesigned the computer from the ground up" (While absolutely fantastically letting the new motherboards upgrade last generation chassis!)
Result: I placed a pre-order, and kind of felt sad for this honest and clear language to apparently be rare.
Having mainline Linux on a system with 24h+ battery life in a 13" case is pretty damn impressive.
The case is warped in multiple places. One USB C module doesn't accept a power charge reliably. It can overheat and shutdown. If the case flexes a little the trackpad stops responding - it needs to be on a flat surface. Power brick died.
On the plus side, my partner had one and when she threw it away she gave me her parts and I was able to swap some out. That was cool.
Framework 13 Pro: £2064 (Ultra X7 358H, 16GB, 1TB, default ports, no adapter)
Framework 13 Pro: £2264 (Ultra X7 358H, 32GB, 1TB, default ports, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £1699 (M5, 16GB, 1TB, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £2099 (M5, 32GB, 1TB, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £2199 (M5 Pro, 24GB, 1TB, no adapter) - added as I think it’s an even better deal
- There's zero mention of the display technology, just "2.8K Touchscreen Display"
- The optional HDMI ("3rd Gen") adapter is only 4K 60hz, when the host chip has integrated Thunderbolt 4 which can output 4K 240Hz
So I can perfectly imagine a small hardware vendor like Framework being unable to get support for this. Perhaps DP is a better solution for your use-case?
The new display, battery life, the new Intel chips, and LPCAM2 memory all look great. I love my M1 MBP but Apple’s software quality has been rough the past year especially. I think this is also the first time the Framework 13 has officially supported Thunderbolt? Depending on how macOS 27 turns out I may seriously consider the 13 Pro as my next laptop. I’d slap Fedora Workstation on it and call it a day.
FYI, the existing Framework 13 Intel motherboards do support Thunderbolt 4: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/usb-port-definition-matrix-... There's an additional, optional retimer update that's officially Thunderbolt certified, but I haven't bothered with that because my Thunderbolt dock was already working: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/framework-laptop-bios...
That being said, thinkpads are almost as upgradeable as frameworks. The latest t14 received a better score from ifixit than framework for repairability (first ever to get a 10).
Hm, I wish they had scores for the X230 and older; I'd like to see how they compare. IMO they're better, if nothing else because you can replace RAM, SSD and battery without unscrewing the entire bottom.
I really would like to give other laptops a chance but the substandard keyboards of most laptops are always holding me back.
I wonder if the 13 pro uses qmk or similar for its keyboard firmware, I think the framework 16 does, so maybe? Being able to re-arrange on the hardware level the Fn-key related layer would make it the perfect laptop keyboard for me.
Otherwise, it rubs me the wrong way to pay 3 000€ for a premium device with a rather frustrating keyboard layout. But oh well, paying even more for macbook pros that have an even worse keyboard makes the pill easier to swallow I guess.
A few years ago we were told only "Pro" parts have ECC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37828168
I was busy with work and didn't touch my personal laptop for a few weeks and it still had well over half the battery.
Crucial is certainly the only option that comes up looking on amazon or newegg right now. Lenovo has some OEM modules but they are obviously marketed as replacement parts to just their laptops, not sure how the warranty and support for them would be outside a lenovo product.
But the Crucial brand was unceremoniously sacrificed by Micron to the AI gods at the beginning of this year. So will these lpcamm2 modules even be available once current stock runs out? The 64gb module is already sitting at $1000 on newegg.
Samsung is making lpcamm2 modules but no telling when those will actually hit the market and be accessible.
I'm clinging on to my older Thinkpad X1 because the 4K display is so good.
I do UI design, so I find it important to see things in full fidelity (no pixel smudging).
I still use it because the end result on some of my most-used applications is nicer, and it seems to be slightly-noticeably better performing (on a high framerate screen). So it's good enough for my tastes. But it really isn't anything I'd call "successful".
1.6x works surprisingly well now, that wasnt the case a couple years ago
How is it that Apple is the only company these days() that consistently gets this right?
( Yes, I know they used full-sized keys for a while, I moaned and cursed them at the time as well.)
Sorry, I've never seen this perspective, why do you want the smaller ones? The small arrow keys on my MacBook are one of my least favorite parts of the keyboard.
I'd much rather see something like that, going back to Fn+up/dn makes me feel like a caveman.
The problem I have with laptop keyboard is that the arrow key height is too small, and the cluster itself is too crowded to sit my fingers on comfortably when using arrows. I want the arrow cluster to have full sized keys.
Thinkpads also do this right, and have a way better keyboard layout than macbooks actually :)
It's weird what people prioritize.
> The side-firing speakers are tuned with Dolby Atmos® to deliver clear, balanced audio on Windows
I've made several "attempts" to jump ship from Apple hardware before, like the dell XPS "developer edition" which ships with Linux so all the hardware was supported out of the box; the hardware was OK, but the battery life was abysmal. If I can't get 8hr of battery on a machine battery it's just a portable desktop.
Overall it looks awesome. I just bought Thinkpad T14s upgrading from the same model of older generation, I wish Framework would expand its sales coverage, probably would buy it without second thought if it was available in my country without overseas shipping and customs tax hurdles.
It's not exactly impressive to say you can stream 20 hours of 540p video. Netflix DRM is awful for Linux users.
Though I agree it would have been better to show a benchmark of youtube or similar for Linux.
Everything about this is what I've been looking for in a Linux laptop. (Also, how refreshing is it to not have to think hard about how much RAM you might need over the next few years because you know you can always upgrade it later?)
I've always wondered if these laptops can scale beyond the enthusiast group. If so, how?
Having something called an "App Store" on my personal laptop I can't remove.. I'd deal with having 4gb of RAM before I lived that reality.
This is like the really cheap televisions that harvest your data for profit.
How can you compete/compare against vizio if it makes more on your data than on the television?
Since Framework has a great track record with display upgradability, just an indication that there is serious interest in OLED options in the future would be enough to sell me.
So if anyone at Framework is reading this: is there any opposition inside framework to OLED? Any fundamental constraints that make OLED panels unlikely for the next several years?
Accepting the prices of the ram shortage era is still painful, but even with the 64gb option, here in France it's still a great deal compared to similarly configured premium thinkpads or macbook pros.
Those DRAM chips being the bottleneck that would require hard to build new silicon fabs to increase supply.
However, to be fair, that's only at lower DPIs smudging's an issue. Anything retina-ish and integer scaling loses all meaning. I'm typing this on a 15" 4K laptop on 1.75 scaling with HN set to 120% zoom. At those DPIs, it does not matter at all. I adjust most websites zoom level because a lot of them think the content must breathe, while I think I should not fiddle with my scroll to read a paragraph.
I wouldn’t think of thermal performance in laptops as “throttling,” think about it in terms of “how much power is this laptop manufacturer deciding to give the chip versus its maximum possible rating and what does that mean for me?”
Performance per watt has a massive diminishing returns curve so you often do NOT want a laptop manufacturer to push the chip to its limit.
Obviously, framework has a limitation that many other similar laptops don’t have by having one fan rather than two, but for these chips in particular I wouldn’t be very concerned as they just don’t consume enough power to create a lot of heat.
I don’t think you need to be concerned with the chassis cooling in the original versus the pro because I think most of the heat dissipation design is on the mainboard. Both versions of the laptop just have a big opening on the bottom for intake then spit out the exhaust out the back. The new chassis is unchanged in that regard.
This concept of “throttling” becomes more of a “design tradeoffs” discussion especially in the world of gaming laptops, which is why I don’t like using the term “throttling.”
Is the thin and light MacBook Pro-sized Zephyrus G14 “throttling” because its RTX 5070ti is being fed less power than a big thick Lenovo Legion? I say no, it’s just being tuned to the intended use case. No, you don’t get the “full power” of the GPU but even the thickest laptops generally don’t get that compared to desktop systems.
I'm two years into my fw 13 and think I'll start by upgrading the chassis. I also bought 64GB of DDR5 (it was on sale, if you can imagine such a thing) - The trackpad, speakers and battery are the parts of the machine that I don't really love so will be happy to upgrade those.
I think if I can I'll keep the silver top cover - A bit of a "I had a fw before they were cool" statement
I was looking at benchmark comparisons between my i5-1240P which has 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, and the Ultra 5 325 which has 4 performance cores and 4 low-cache ultra low power efficiency cores.
The 325 is still faster multicore than the 1240P.
Macbooks have a better design here. They are safe to put on top of sofas and beds. No ventilation holes on the bottom.
So seems basically the same on the low end, with the new part boosting quite a bit higher. Presumably you get more perf per watt on the new CPU, but still.
This advice is a bit more difficult with the current LPCAMM situation. In the US, besides Framework, I was only able to find a 32GB module from Adorama, seemingly a left over new stock Crucial module that I assume must be discontinued in Crucial-branded form, or eBay. But it is far cheaper than Framework’s price ($250) and seemingly still available.
(Interestingly, Adorama’s website says that it’s “trending.”)
You’ll save at least a little bit of pocket change buying your SSD elsewhere at the very least.
Does it have such battery life on Linux? The benchmarks, apart from suspend battery life, are for Windows.
Yes, I am running mostly in dark mode now. Yes, I am using the terminal significantly more often now (80% of the time). But also I have always a browser, always Slack, WhatsApp, Obsidian and more often than not a few other things running on virtual screens.
Just the added battery life made this my daily driver. Yes - I so, so want to buy a framework. Still waiting for the multicolored international keyboards - and also the prices for memory just kill it for me right now. The system I would love to have is about 2k more than a few months ago. I just can't splurge that much right now.
I bet they don't publish Linux numbers because it depends on which desktop you use etc.
Linux battery life is fine and on par with (or possibly better than) Windows these days if you don't do anything silly (I'm sure some distro and DE consume silly amounts of power just because, but it doesn't have to be that way).
Based on reports about Panther Lake, the new process, plus a 13" screen and large-ish battery, I believe the battery life claims.
Strangely it was not flimsy and held its own but it felt flimsy and to be honest I never was quite able to tell why. What one want for a premium laptop is the satisfying rigidity of a Macbook and it didn't have it.
So for me this new chassis is a banger release. It's amazing that I can just drop my "old" hardware in it and it would just work.
Strong = won't break
My Framework 13 is robust but isn't the most rigid-feeling. If I one-hand hold the laptop by the front edge it presses the touchpad clicker.
Two questions 1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens ) 2/ software-wise how reliable are the suspend/resume and all the laptop features ? I’ve been using Linux for about 30y and to me this is typically the bits that usually fail. To put it differently, how confident are you that things will work properly out of the box ?
Other than that , I love what you’re doing, please continue.
We've been sending pre-release hardware to developers at a bunch of distros to make sure that the core use cases like suspend/resume work as expected out of the box. You can check our general Linux support at frame.work/linux
> 1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens )
They make a Framework 16, so a Framework 16 Pro now suddenly seems like a possibility, but I don’t think they’re going to make a 15-inch when they have the 16.
Seconding this question, though I would also be very interested in learning whether they're planning a 14" version.
And secondly how healthy is framework as a company, and to what extent do you make money from consumers vs sales to big companies?
If you add this then you'll have a new customer for life.
The trackpoint is the only thing that keeps me chained to Thinkpads.
I don't know how much keyboard-design flexibility is available to you, but innovative keyboard could even be a killer feature.
I don't know how relevant is the parent argument these days, but pfu see released HHKB with trackpoint. Even despite dropping their signature topre switches, I consider this one of the best purchases. My wrists can't thank me enough.
I won't consider a laptop without one.
Two questions:
1. Will there will be a concrete guide to upgrading a standard Framework 13 to the Pro. I watched the video and read the page a few times, and I'm a bit confused what the whole process is and if all the required upgrades need to happen together, or if they can go piece meal.
2. With all the different components and increasing SKUs, I'd be a little worried that if I didn't upgrade to a Pro in the near future, that the old hardware would no longer be supported and it'd be a headache to upgrade at some point. Can Framework guarantee that there will always be an upgrade path within a size and line?
Again, big thank you to Framework and I look forward to using my Framework 13 for a long, long time :)
A couple of questions:
1. How are the thermals? I've had mixed experiences with my 11th gen FW 13 throttling under load with the fan sounding noisy. It's fine if I'm alone but if I'm at a team gathering, it's noticeably loud.
2. Does the lid open with one hand?
2. We have one hand open on the lid for each generation of 13.
- Is the Dolby Atmos configuration available for Linux as well as Windows? Or more generally, will the speakers sound as good on Linux as they do on Windows?
- Will we be able to get audio comparison samples between the old and new speakers?
Also is there a way of exposing an existing touchpad to that new control board for your external one? (Or keyboard I guess, but the use case is that I had to replace my keyboard too, and for what was available at the time ended up just going with a whole input cover. Truthfully, I was already curious about exposing it to USB-C before hearing about this, and prefer wired anyway, but am also curious about the more immediately relevant part of the question.)
You probably can't comment on this, but just to note it, I would be very excited to see the 16 get a similar Pro chassis.
Please, I do have a question about Desktop: there have been numerous reports of noisy PSU fan and little feedback from FW [1], could you shed some light on the situation? Are you seeing noisy PSU yourself, are there plans for a fix or another PSU? I understand you wanted a separate, and thus reparable Flex ATX PSU, but maybe just one larger fan for the whole case would have worked better (c.f. Steam Machine)?
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/noisy-psu-fan/74751
Thanks!
200g is weight of a smartphone, there's no way touch weighs that much.
Framework 13 Pro screen seems to have plastic surface as before, not glass-laminated (which I guess could add 200g, but it's not a requirement for laptop touchscreen)
I know it's not the most ideal form factor for a repairable device, but I can dream.
I'd expect/hope to see whatever comes after Strix Halo in a Framework motherboard. That's when you should be looking for LPCAMM2 for AMD.
The Framework Laptop 13 Pro Touchscreen supports touch input but does not currently support stylus input. Like other Framework Laptop 13 models, it opens with a maximum hinge angle of 180 degrees and is not designed for pen or convertible-style use.
Pretty disappointing honestly.
The upgrade kits I'm seeing on the marketplace have a keyboard included.
Would it be possible to have a input cover pro, bottom cover pro, batteries pro, speakers pro and use my existing keyboard?
If I want the best battery life and sound possible with Linux, should I switch my preorder to Intel?
What I am also curious is around memory management. On the Intel, I can get at most 64Gb RAM for now, 96Gb in the future. On AMD I can get 128Gb right now. Do they differ in how they can share RAM with the GPU? Do either need me to specify how much is vRAM and how much is available to the CPU, or are them both unified, similar to how Apple Silicon does it?
Will the new keyboard colour schemes come to other locales? I love the orange/black/grey but probably not enough to learn American English.
Will it be possible to change the backlight color to, f.ex. dark red?
https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-aipc?variant...
And anyway the performance of this CIX chip is really bad compared to the Snapdragon X2 or current x86 chips. Jeff Geerling has geekbench results here:
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/arm-mainboard-for-fra...
I have a feeling that laptops don't keep up with the today's dev workflows.
and by the way, it’s a world where it’s hard to be a fan of any company any more and the fact that you guys remain exceptional gives me hope
On the other hand I can go to a local store and buy a stick of 32GB lpcamm2.
P.S. The printer gag was cruel, just saying.
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop13pro-input-cover-ki...
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop13pro-bottom-cover-k...
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/top-cover-cnc?v=FRANGKHA01 (not specifically a pro part but listed as compatible)
I just had my mainboard die, and I was advised there currently isn't another mainboard in stock that works with my old DDR4 RAM. They don't have any newer DDR5 RAM in stock apparently either, so I was out of luck and ended up buying a Lemur Pro last week.
In my experience, the Framework hardware is great but very flakey and frequently needs replacing.
Support is awful; they'll repeatedly ask you to do things you've already done (and shown proof of), they can take days to get back to you, and are generally unhelpful. They also didn't think to mention to me when I said I needed to buy a new laptop and their parts were all out of stock that they had a new machine coming out in the next week, which is insane to me. I would've been an easy convert. Sometimes I think it's bots doing the support, but if that was the case, they'd reply back faster.
Time will tell whether I'll return back to the ecosystem, but the support experience (and the hardware being poor enough that I frequently need support) is putting me off for now.
In general, coming from a MacBook, I’ve had more quality issues with the framework, but fixing them has always been possible with a little digging. I’ve enjoyed the experience of learning how to take apart and fix my gear, but I’m also the sort of person who darns holes in his socks, so ymmv.
The vibe I got was the quality is really bad, BUT the people who like Framework and believe in it gladly just buy another one.
Not for me though. Within 6 months we’ll see similar specs from other oems at 50 to 70% of the price
I'm not going to weigh in on quality issues (I have had a 16 for a little over a year and it's been great, but it probably gets far less abuse the way I use it than average), but I'm surprised to hear this because the whole point of Framework is that when something breaks you don't need to "buy another one". You just buy the specific part that broke. Chassis warped? Buy the top/bottom/whatever part of it is warped. Hinges worn out? Replace just those, etc.
The kind of person who is happy to just buy a new one when a particular component breaks seems like the kind of person who would probably prefer to buy something else, or so I would have supposed.
I very much like the modularity, upgradability, and repairability, but those things come with tradeoffs, and if one isn't the kind of person who is interested in repairing a computer piecemeal, I'm not sure I understand why one would accept the tradeoffs.
I like Framework, I like their mission, and I intend to continue to support them as a customer (I'll likely buy the new wireless keyboard as soon as it's in stock), but my intention is to never buy another complete laptop from them again, unless I for some reason decide I need to have 2 laptops. It may be that in a decade or two, I have Ship-of-Theseused my 16 into an entirely new laptop, but I can't imagine the scenario where I replace the entire thing in one go.
Their support has been very responsive and helpful every time I've contacted them so I'd be surprised if they wouldn't have helped the GP.
I bought it because it's repairable but I didn't realize that meant I was going to have to repair it more than any other device I've purchased.
I was really sold on the idea of a repairable laptop and the Linux support was excellent. I like the laptop a lot and it happily replaced the old-skool Macbook that had served me so well over the years.
However, I had a screen die on me and that's when I found that their product support was truly appalling (even worse than Apple!) - They took ages to reply and then asking endless irrelevant questions in a very arrogant tone (version of BIOS, operating systems etc) - in the end, I gave up and bought the replacement screen myself.
I'll buy a Thinkpad next time.
And they’re miraculously within 10-20% of each other.
Peep the margins on “Products” versus “Services” and you will understand what Apple's incentives are and why just selling me hardware isn't it: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2026-q1/FY26_Q1_Consol...
I pay $3/month to Apple in exchange for full-quality backups of decades of photos, but I could easily stop doing that, or switch to another provider, if I wanted to. (I don't, because $3/month is extremely fair for what I get.) I've never paid for any other Apple service and likely never will. The OS never, ever nags me about services - compare that to Windows!
Also MBP is not really repairable at all.
Big enough that they specifically targeted that exact group with this laptop.
What I really want is for other hardware vendors to catch up. I like Apple hardware but hate their software.
One benefit of framework is you may not need to get storage, and just go use the one in your current laptop, saving around £200. And you might even try to source the RAM on your own to save a few more. But I admit that is somewhat difficult these days haha.
We should also consider that repairability, upgradability and open hardware/software support don't come for free and are features that are worth paying for.
Unrelated, but never thought I’d see this kind of sentiment
Imagine telling this to someone in 2010 or 2015.
Apple: Every repair is Mainboard replacement and costs 70% of the used value of the Notebook. Upgrades are impossible. Have a nice day!
64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
I've wanted to get a Framework for a long time now, but their lack of shipping to Israel (and active prevention of using Freight forwarders) has prevented me.
If they were willing to sell me the 13 Pro, I'd sell my Yoga Pro 7 in a heartbeat to replace with a 13 Pro
then when it comes to repairing broken parts they are on opposite ends of the scale where apple actually go out of their way to make it harder for you to do that and its probably more expensive as well since only apple certified repair shops have access to certain parts
You can sell the old Macbook and recoup a lot of the original investment.
Leno 14.1": £300.19 (i7-8650U, 16GB, 1TB) Leno 14.1": £341.59 (i7-8650U, 32GB, 1TB)
Biggest gripes I had are:
A) battery life (both during use and standby just kinda sucking on Linux in general compared to os x, not exactly framework specific but I did get used to how amazing my m1 pro for longevity)
B) the case looking nice but feeling a little flimsy
C) the speakers are pretty bad (though I did get turned on to easyeffects and there is a profile for the 13 which helped a bit)
D) macs completely spoiled me trackpad wise
It seems like they are taking a stab at all of these in some way and I'm excited to see how it goes, especially with so much being backwards compatible.
I am very excited about the Framework 13 Pro and it’s dramatically improved battery life. It’s unfortunate regarding RAM prices, though; I only paid $96 for 32GB of DDR5 RAM back in December 2023 when I ordered my Framework 13 (I bought my RAM on Newegg). It’s much more expensive today. I’d like to upgrade, but I can’t afford it at today’s RAM prices. With that said, because the RAM is still modular in the Framework 13 Pro, I could settle for a lower configuration and wait until a later date to upgrade the RAM.
I’m running Fedora. Other than some h265 and heic codec/file format issues, (I’ve had to convert videos and photos to more open codec/format), it’s been a great machine.
I miss the battery life of the M1 but I enjoy the comfort of knowing I can upgrade storage or fix anything I want when needed.
Other than personal web browsing, I do web development and tinkering with music creation (Bitwig).
I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Apple machine. I want to use devices that are repairable, support those companies, and use software that is open source or multi-platform without continuing subscriptions.
Now that I’m personally invested in Linux, I’d like to contribute to desktop app projects that are open source since now, I am also a user.
I have gradually been moving my digital life away from Google and Apple/iCloud.
It takes time. On many dimensions, the Framework running Linux is laughably worse. I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
That being said, running Linux is very fun and can be productive if you choose a well-supported distribution and desktop environment. I landed on KDE Plasma and Fedora/Kununtu. It has been my daily driver and I see no reason to go back.
My gateway to Linux was buying an old Thinkpad T580 and messing around Arch Linux. If you’re on the fence, this may be a good place to start.
In the days of S3, I never thought about it either. Ironically it's on my Mac that I have to remember to hibernate if I won't use my laptop for a week or whatever, because it'll die if I don't. It just happens to be that it was on a Mac on which I first tried "modern standby" features.
Anyway I feel you. This big battery life improvement is what has convinced me my next laptop can be a Framework.
The battery life is the biggest negative compared to a MacBook, but that seems to be better now (though I doubt it, or anyone, can compete with the power/performance that Apple is putting out now).
The issue with my advice to you though is that I prefer Linux. And I would be running Linux at work if I could. Mac OS is fine, but I do prefer Linux as my main operating system.
If I didn't specifically want to run Linux, though, I would probably be using a MacBook, despite their lack of repairability.
All that said, I really love my framework and I don't intend on buying another machine any time soon, especially because I can upgrade my Framework 5 years from now (hopefully).
It's by far the best primary computer I've owned. The tradeoffs in battery life, speaker sound quality, and so on didn't matter much for my use case, so I was happy to take them; but this new model seems to fix those issues too, so I think it'll appeal to a much wider audience.
I upgraded the screen and speakers, nothing else really needed changing throughout the years.
I was so tired of the bad docker performance on macOS that I went to a framework with Linux. Linux on a laptop (Fedora/Gnome specifically) worked so much better than I expected too.
I'm hopeful I can pre-order this new model as well.
Also things like lpddr5x, ssd controller built into the SoC with cache in unified ram (instead of running a whole ass separate computer with its own ram on an m2 stick) etc
Sleep is such a finicky thing which requires all parts of the system to do it right.
My desktop lost the ability to sleep because I guess the nvidia drivers have decided that you are wrong to want to put things to sleep.
Looks like Framework has started heading this direction too, which is nice to see.
Apple's storage controller is not even a PCIe peripheral internally, so it's saving power and latency cutting out that interface, even when it's active.
Just to beat my favorite dead horse, this is why the insistence on SO-DIMMs "BEcAuse it's rEpAIrAble" has wrecked the reputation of a lot of laptops. DDR on a stick is fundamentally hostile to sleep power draw. Soldered-down LPDDR memory has always been massively superior for energy savings, and LP-CAMM finally solves the issue.
My Zen2 based Lenovo laptop has 6-7 hours of battery when doing basic tasks in both Windows and Linux, but sleep on Linux lasts a week while on Windows it's empty in 24 hours.
And that is OK, as long as they provide a way for you to disable it. I do not want my laptop to be doing things when I put it in sleep mode. Nothing at all. Save battery life above all else when sleeping. But Microsoft does not appear to provide a way to do that. At least none that I can see.
On the other hand framework is actually in a good position to do something about it. Similar to valve. I think they do have more control than a regular PC vendor when also using Linux ad they have a very limited portfolio of devices and can actually upstream software fixes.
> 7 days
> Standby without charging
> Wi-Fi connected on Ubuntu
(I'm unimpressed with listing all the "active" battery life listings with Windows, mind; I just want us to be precise in our criticisms.)
Battery life? Should they share all possible config combinations? Should they share the most power-saving setting (and then be blamed for sharing numbers that almost no one gets to reproduce?)
As a Linux user on an AMD FW my battery life is good enough (7ish hours of work), and I never felt I need to tune it further from the OOB Fedora Kinoite.
They financially sponsor Linux/OSS projects and give them laptops to test on. What more do you want them to do?
They don’t have a zillion employees like Lenovo who is the #1 volume computer company in the world.
Finally, IMO, System76 is a much worse example because they aren’t focusing on the things Linux needs to grow. Linux doesn’t need contributions like their their silly Ubuntu reskin distro to be popular on the desktop. Instead, Linux needs a company making compatible hardware that is good, attractive hardware that will stop people from buying a MacBook instead.
The System76 lineup is a complete mess of white label Clevo systems. They have no business offering 8 different laptop models. That just tells potential customers “wow, buying a Linux laptop is a lot more complicated than buying a Mac!”
All laptop speakers sound like shit on Linux. I'm sure people will reply with their anecdotal evidence, or pretend that it's not that bad once you have a good EQ. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I've spent hours trying to get multiple laptop speakers at least half as good as they sound on Windows. No success. And I'm talking thinkpads, dell xps, the usual linux go-tos, not some exotic stuff.
I take note though that the 13 inches framework is bigger than it seems because of the aspect ratio
Apologies for the edit in a separate comment. But the typo was so misleading, I decided to fix it.
2. Huh. Well, I feel like an idiot! I always use two hands when opening the lid, muscle memory, I guess.
ps. one question you don't have to answer: for the wireless keyboard, did you guys consider something like a fingerprint sensor? I like the idea of having something like that akin to Mac's Wireless Keyboard but I don't know how much integration something like that would need.
Reading it again, I'm assuming they're overtime and individual upgrades that can take place? If someone could confirm or deny that for me, I would appreciate it. I may just be overthinking this table.
Edit: yeah that's what I'm taking away after rereading this a few more times. Very impressed by the modularity on each of those parts.
So you are either running Linux with a web browser that has a tablet mode, and making sure all apps are web apps adapted for mobile or at least non-keyboard use. Or you re-invent Android. One thing that somewhat worked was Nokia's Maemo -- it used X11, but the defined UI toolkit and guidelines made everything uniform and touch-screen friendly. Not sure about how the successor projects look if they are what I remember from Maemo / Meego (so maybe Sailfish or Tizen, not sure how open these are though).
> We're keeping the SKU stack simpler and just having a single display option that has touch. You can disable touch in your OS though if you don't want to use it.
The reason I asked was mostly that, in my experience, touch displays tend to be glossier / less matte than non-touch ones.
Thinkpad P1: W 361.8mm x D 245.7mm x H 18.4mm
Framework 16: W 356.58mm x D 270.00mm x H 17.95mm
The Framework 13 roughly matches 14" laptops from other manufacturers. It's really a 13.5", and has a taller aspect ratio than typical.
I agree that offering more user choice here could be a unique and standout feature, though. One of the small things I love about their keyboard offerings is that they offer all blank key cap options.
The grid layout makes key positions more predictable and consistent.
Most ortholinear boards are 40–60% layouts.
Heavy use of layers (like Fn, but more advanced)
On the other hand, nrp, since you're likely to be in this thread: if you had pre-orders and/or batched shipments of parts/upgrade kits, I would likely be paying a deposit or even the full price today, rather than ordering in a few months. Even if that meant ordering a full upgrade kit with a new display, but getting the upgrade sooner, I'd probably still go for it.
You’ll get far better battery life for all use cases as well as performance that matches or beats AMD. Also, if you select the X7 you’re getting the best integrated graphics on the market that isn’t made by Apple - basically on par with the M5, and far better than the top option from Framework (HX370) while sipping battery by comparison.
I’m sure AMD will come back soon with a good answer to Panther Lake, but as of right now, it’s not what you want.
Don’t worry about AMD needing your charity, they aren’t going anywhere, they’re a more valuable company than Intel, and they’ll compete in this segment in the future. It’s just not the right buy right now.
Something like a Ryzen AI HX370 and even the 350 does perform better than the 8 core X7 Intel chip, along with a number of other options.
But on the graphics side, the Intel is really fantastic.
And of course we are talking about a thin and light laptop where you’re going to appreciate stellar battery life a lot more than exceptional performance for the most part.
Search this thread for the “oh but it’s so expensive, I could just buy a new laptop from any other manufacturer every 3 years and it would be cheaper” posts - those are the normies.
“wait so i can have TWO ethernet ports???”
i have been responsible for at least three fw16 sales because I got one first, and this was the biggest thing i heard
I'm guessing Intel/AMD could integrate a single SSD controller that OEMs could use for a specially socketed SSD?
I'm not familiar enough with SSD controllers - but what limits would this introduce. I'm thinking they can't be totally generic - with any NAND chips, any layout, 1-4 chips and TLC or QLC NAND - any capacity etc. It strikes me it would be limiting - you would become restricted to a a small subset of SSDs, maybe not forwards compatible with newer NAND chips etc.
I'd think only the minority of PC Laptops would make sense to have this - ones with soldered SSDs - and I don't know many of these. So Intel/AMD would need a big push to integrate any controller. Maybe Windows ARM laptops, if the controller makes a big enough difference, will do this. I'm curious now if any Snapdragon devices are doing this already.
Maybe this will be different with the pro, but no one knows until they actually ship.
As for the Framework 16, I brought a 5070TI laptop recently for around 1200$ after a nice rebate. After a bit of complaining( which was also needed to honor the rebate ), they added a second year warranty too.
For the Framework 16, with the 5070 addon(which has 8GB of VRAM compared to the 12GB on the 5070TI).
Sure, the framework might be better, but is it worth twice as much ?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/915508/framework-announces-...
My understanding is that he's a giant in the enterprise software space, I don't see how that would give him any clout in the hardware space.
Eg - Current Framework 13 bottom stand alone https://frame.work/products/bottom-cover-kit?v=FRANFD0001
But I wouldn't pay (much) extra for it.
Framework is very much a premium brand (where the premium experience is centred on repairability/upgradeability), and don't have the economies of scale Apple do. It's natural that they'd end up being more expensive.
Yeah, I’m assuming just the one of the various tiers here that’s in the same bucket as MacBooks, and that we’re generally talking devices that are specialty-capable; such as media production or Linux development or gaming or what have you. If you lump the entire “portable screen bigger than nine? inches and with an in-box physical keyboard and pointer controller” market together, you’ll disregard ‘glorified word processors’ that cost a couple hundred bucks (before the RAM underproduction grift) in their own specialty niche. Framework isn’t competing there, right? (I could have missed something..)
Yeah, because they buy a Windows laptop, slap Linux on it, and expect it to work.
OSX sucks even more by this metric; it won't even install!
I've found suspend performance has improved since upgrading to a kernel that supports the AMD 7640U NPU cores. I have no concrete evidence of that though.
I'm happy to accept poorer sleep performance to have a repairable laptop and Linux OSS (with good support), but I wouldn't say its problem free.
And yeah… what I really want is some Oryon cores in a Framework 13 motherboard.
I have 64GB of DDR4 in my current laptop, and replacing that with the same amount of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X is probably more expensive than the rest of the laptop itself.
I just had my mainboard die, and I was advised there currently isn't another mainboard in stock that works with my old DDR4 RAMOnly benefit of trackpoint nowadays is that you don't move your hand. Otherwise, it's all downsides compared to modern trackpads, especially haptic ones like here. It's less precise, less ergonomic. Nowadays I'd rather move my hand a few centimeters off, than put regular strain on my forearm and struggle being precise with the pointer.
And most thinkpad users, employees of big companies, don't care at all about the trackpoint. I'm pretty sure it's only kept for the thinkpad brand and to keep the vocal minority of us geeks pleased.
IDK why it's not working for you but this should all just work without bothering with any configuration, drivers, or whatever.
My distro's compile farm compiles kernels for me (thanks guys!), and switched to pipewire years ago.
Pulseaudio still does the device juggling etc on most systems even when there's a pipewire backend.
I’ve literally never used the touchscreen.
You're blaming the touchscreen for a lot here, when the explanation is likely a lot more pedestrian. Change in case molding, change in PCB size, slight change in battery size...
e.g. 30g in larger heatsinks, 80g in glass-laminated screen, 20g in larger battery, 40g in more stiffer chassis. 30g in aluminium top case instead of carbon fiber :)
Maybe that's the reason, not the touchscreen?
I don’t buy it.
Are you running a DE or just a lightweight WM?
They should probably give the Linux numbers after the Windows ones at least tbf, even if they are bad.
Personally I also can't stand the exterior design, albeit overall hardware of MBP is good. Guess if I land an old MBP this is what I'd do with it.
So to get the best battery life you need, for example, your browser to use GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding.
Linux is something of a second-class citizen for both GPU vendors and browser vendors. So for example if you're using Firefox and an nvidia GPU on Linux? No video encode/decode acceleration for you. The browser will silently switch to CPU decoding.
This translates into worse battery life.
There's other software that can do GPU acceleration in the repos, and there are plenty of distros that enable closed-source software. It's shocking to me how difficult it seems to be to get GPU acceleration working in Linux.
They ship with Ubuntu on it, which would be quite natural choice for such benchmark. Also they do do the standby test on Ubuntu for some reason.
Can't help but suspect there's a reason why Linux numbers are not given. :(
By the time these laptops start shipping, 26.04 should be released and testing should be easy. I suspect no major differences from it vs windows.
7.1 includes even more performance improvements for panther lake. [1]
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Enabled-Intel-FRED
I definitely /wouldn't/ rely on just Windows figures for a machine that's otherwise advertised as "Linux first". If the battery life was the same on both, I'd prominently mention that.
- opens to a full-page Apple Music subscription service ad on first run.
- search functionality defaults to “Apple Music” instead of “Local Library” (or “iTunes Store”) even when the user has no active subscription.
- Apple Music subscription upsell banner ad along the bottom of the search results screen, that stays on screen as you scroll the results pane.
Check out at the end when he demos Music-dot-app's Settings pane changing to include CD-ripping settings when and only when a CD drive is available, something they could also do and chose not to for Apple Music subscription service when the user isn't subscribed.
My last (and first, and only) iPhone was even worse. At one point the Settings app had no fewer than three paid-service nags at the top that I had to scroll through to even get to the first actual setting.
Storage almost full: enable iCloud Backup!
Try Apple Music, first month free!!
Activate your Apple News+ free trial!!! https://i.ibb.co/Cp275qQ9/news.webp
Weird.
A bigger battery is the more likely cause.
Can you though? Its been a few years since I've been on apple, but being able to get anything but icloud native support in other apps was basically non-existent. Compared to android where it gives you a plethora of choice out of the box.
First and foremost, you cannot install any applications through the primary method of app installation, which is the App Store.
You also cannot use certain applications like iMovie (which is pre-installed) without an Apple Account.
MacOS will always prompt you in the Settings to sign in with iCloud. Opt into Betas, including Public and Developer Betas are not possible without an iCloud account.
The Apple land is miles better than the Microsoft land, which you aptly point out though.
At least I've never had to use the store in my 15+ years of using MacBooks, and I can't see myself using one anytime soon, unless Apple starts forcing you to (in which case I'll just stick to using homebrew).
1. I won't be using NixOS so that point is moot to me.
2. Reliable sandbox I can get using Apple Containers. I won't argue that the Linux experience is better, because it is. Alone it wouldn't be a reason for me to switch but it does count towards it.
3. Fair enough, I haven't had that issue on the Mac but that may just be because I'm working with other kinds of tech or I have the things I need installed in a different way.
4. Same as 2, really - unless I misunderstood you.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I have been primarily a Mac user for longer than I care to admit and lately macOS and the ecossystem have been growing more hostile to me. I've been on the lookout for a Linux laptop that wouldn't feel like much of a downgrade and the Framework 13 might be it so I'm trying to get as much information as I can before I commit (especially money) to the switch.
Virtual machines. I can't ask claude to figure out an issue on the hw host w/o falling back to per-action confirmations or giving it full unconditional access. When everything runs on one host I can organize controllable sandbox escapes for Claude and let it work in huge batches with minimal attention.
> won't be using
Well, that's your choice to avoid efficient agentic workflows
> misunderstood
There are no containers on mac, there are VMs hosting containers and subtractive sandbox filtering syscalls.
> get as much
FW 13 is great, FW 16 is a disaster.
No technical argument will fit with the mindset of an average dev preferring MacBook.
Yeah that seems to confirm my suspicion that we have very different use cases. :)
> I can't ask claude to figure out an issue on the hw host w/o falling back to per-action confirmations or giving it full unconditional access.
Doesn't help me if the agent is efficient but I'm not. :D
> There are no containers on mac, there are VMs hosting containers and subtractive sandbox filtering syscalls.
I understand the tech. It serves the purpose I need from it.
> FW 13 is great, FW 16 is a disaster.
Thanks! I did take a quick peek at the 16 but I find it too big anyway.
LPCAMM2 really shows the trade-offs. It adds a lot of bulk and cost, and repairability hasn't been valued high enough by the market to cover that overhead for most consumers. That's why Micron exited the market they played a big part in founding.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
https://xcancel.com/dhh/status/2046677012878708834
he mentioned good numbers before, but of course you may want to wait for reviews
I don't see that he's bringing anything noteworthy to the table, but I've repeatedly heard people talk as though he's going to bring better battery life to Linux through omarchy.
people want to get laptops that work well and have good battery life, whether this was easy or hard to achieve means naught
If the Framework Pro holds up in reviews and works as well with Linux as claimed, it'll probably replace my M2 Air as a daily driver. If they add Dvorak as an option so I don't have to rearrange the keys myself, that will make the choice a slam dunk.
The video says that directly. They want to compete with MacBook, but people coming to Framework from Mac are attracted to the idea of owning their own computer and being able to customise it.
I'm someone who doesn't want to go through a new laptop every other year. I've got an M1 mac right now. I've owned it for 5 years and could easily see myself getting another 5 years of use out of it. Only problem is, the hard drive is small, I can't upgrade it. It only has 16 GB RAM, which is fine for now, but I can't upgrade it. One of the 2 USB C ports gave out on me. I can't repair it.
If I had a laptop that I could repair and upgrade that also ran Linux? I would absolutely pay $2k for it - as long as the quality is good - because I think I would save money in the long term by making a laptop like that last a long time.
I will attempt to use Asahi as my daily driver once this is officially released.
I already know that combinations of hardware and software can be stretched and tweaked to do really interesting things in really excellent ways. I don't need them to tell me that computer systems are flexible. That's just noise.
And I don't want them to tell me how their (unreleased) hardware might work in the future with some unreleased/beta software. That tends to be interpreted as speculation, or as lies and deceit.
I'd prefer to see benchmarks of how it works if it shipped today.
If those benchmarks are unsavory (as they may presently be) and thus omitted, then that's not ideal but it's okay.
I definitely don't want to feel as if I'm being lied to, in place of an omission.
[1]: I just want a 15" version. I'm not a fan of little screens. My eyes aren't getting any better.
Long ago I installed Linux on a MacBook and found it unusable because of clicks and movement while typing. It’s probably improved these days though.
I might have to try their preinstalled Ubuntu images or something and see if there's some secret sauce in the input configs.
> For Linux libinput “Disable While Typing” (DWT) problems, this page claims libinput will only use the DWT setting if the keyboard and touchpad are either both identified as internal devices, or are both identified as the same device.
sudo nano /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks
[Framework Touchpad Fix] MatchName=* MatchUdevType=touchpad AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal
It actually stays, even after expired. Then if you tap the "two weeks free!" it says "expired, so sorry, but do want to pay us a slightly discounted rate instead of free?"
Then the alert went away.
Super scummy.
Source: happened a few months ago with the promo on my newish iphone 17 when I thought I'd try appletv out to watch pluribus.
But I think it is very fair to judge the OOTB experience as a whole as a reflection of the company's priorities.
You seemed like upgradability and repairability are secondary things to you, whereas the framework makes them its primary asset. It's unlikely the Framework Pro will ever be an "upgrade" over the MacBook in other areas. Comparing it to the MacBook completely skims over its most important differentiator.
The more important part is first-class Linux support. From my perspective, macOS is basically discount Linux; it's tolerable, but only if the gulf between a MacBook and the next best hardware is wide enough to justify it.
Assuming the basics hold up well, upgradability and repairability likely push Framework Pro over the edge for me from merely "close enough" to "materially superior" on balance. I'd still be interested if it didn't have those features, but I'd also look more closely at alternatives and be less willing to pay a premium over the cost of an equivalently-specced MBP.
