Fixing a bricked Framework laptop(quantum5.ca) |
Fixing a bricked Framework laptop(quantum5.ca) |
However modern FW of PC clones don't only contain a bootloader and a "simple" hardware initializer. Modern laptops have tens of sensors, power measuring parts, power controllers, completely remote management (Intel ME / AMD PSP), embedded controller code for fingerprint, embedded controller code for keyboard etc.
Companies ship a new product line every single year. This churn causes nothing but shitty FW to be developed. Moreover the component manufacturers also slightly change things every single year. That's why sleep sucks with PCs. That's why Fn shortcuts don't always work correctly. That's why batteries drain.
Everything is fixed in the 6 months to a year following the launch in PC industry. Then they start to work on the new model and only supply security updates.
Why can't the BIOS/UEFI offer some basic initialisation functionality and then the OS (Linux, Windows, ...) does a more advanced initialisation? Why does it have to be so complicated?
Only semi related but I would like to give MSI credit here, a few years ago I was dealing with a bad graphics card and as part of diagnosing it I tried to update the BIOS. I botched it and bricked the mobo (which to be fair was under warranty so a different case to this). I called MSI and RMA'd the motherboard even though it was my fault. Still using the replacement Z-97 PC mate today.
While it's nice to know that I can buy a $100 replacement keyboard (I'm about 6 months out of warranty) it's also frustrating that Framework wouldn't own up to what is obviously a manufacturing failure.
But on that last point, it's also the first laptop in a while that I had to get into to fix something. The webcam never worked. That's not a linux issue, it's just that my fw13 is a hand me down from a previous colleague who I believe borked the webcam installation. But I don't use the webcam, so I never cared. On the other hand, when I first got it, the cpu fan was emitting a constant high pitch whine. After some research I wasn't the only one affected, and the support had me do a lot of steps before sending a replacement part (which was very easy to install, but the problem should not have been there in the first place). I also had some random crashes that I was never able to debug. The mic is very meh also. I never use it in anycase with my setup but still.
But at the same time, I don't see myself switching to another laptop. Despite all, this is still the laptop that felt the most "right" to me. I do believe that Framework has to seriously step up their support and QA game. But it does feel like it's a company that is "suffering from success". They got big investment, lots of publicities in some circle and so I feel like they have to produce and sell way more computer than the rest of the business can reasonably handle. I hope it's a “necessary evil” for them to get enough customers and revenue to start being able to attract more investment and being able to invest more in the “quality” side of the biz.
EDIT: I should say, being in the E.U make it so that I have an automatic 2 year guarantee, so I didn't have to experience the whole "just buy new parts lmao"
Sounds pretty repairable to me, sorry that you're not used to using a chip flasher.
The machine has been fine since and I still really like it.
Then you're going to be very disappointed a lot. When HIBP first came out, I worried over each incident. These days, breaches of non-payment data are so common that I don't even bother to sign up for notifications.
When it comes to PII, we live in a de facto panopticon.
I've bought 12th gen i7 FW, and after about a year, a fan bearing had failed. Despite originally sending me a laptop through a freight forwarder (FF), they both refused to send me a replacement fan for free, and to sell me one to FF address.
I had to use other means to buy myself a new fan (It is not sold separately from the heatsink), paying around 50 bucks for it.
After another year my motherboard stopped working completely. Framework refused support besides the post light interpretation, did not give any schematics, and outright ignored emails from my company with requests for schematics. Autopsy shown that CPU just freaking cracked in the middle.
I've got a replacement 12th gen i5 from a friend of mine, and not 3-4 months later it met pretty much the same fate, except it looks a tad bit more alive (no visible damage to the crystal, no blown mosfets, no nothing). I cannot diagnose power circuitry without spending time to reverse engineer it, and no local shops would accept it.
At this point, given that you don't have any documentation nor parts available in most of the world, FW is generally less repairable than a macbook. For macbooks you can at least buy docs at Vinafix (and for most other laptops too), and chineese replacement parts pretty much anywhere.
I don't really care what they are telling about «waa waa cant release schematicc nda» or «scammers use ff u will die using it». System76 doesn't care about FF, and provides warranty replacements. They could have tried to renegotiate NDA terms for older boards, or outright let someone leak them; they could have remembered their Coreboot promises; they could have done lot more to actually make something that doesn't just look repairable and hackable.
Instead, they've spent their money to make a nice to use, yet unfixable piece of trash currently lying in my closet and waiting for some cheap board to show up on aftermarket.
So, heed my warning. As good as their promise sounds, you better off supporting someone who actually cares about the mission of repairability, and not just doing whatever poser shitshow they are doing.
It deserves to be laid out and reiterated, and it's the author's choice what they want to talk about, and they want to talk about FW as much as the technical incidentia.
If you just want to learn how to flash an isp chip, there are surely countless sources.
I was hugely disappointed when the CMOS battery completely died and the only solutions were: "Don't leave it unplugged or put in a new battery every n months". (Btw the battery holder was a very fragile piece of plastic).
I also pre-ordered the Framework 16 willing to give them the benefit of the doubt - growing company, first product, etc.
In general I like Framework, but this is unacceptable. Get your act together.
My standard for repairable is Schiit Audio. I've had 3-4 things from them (out of like 12 I own) die in various ways, some their faults, some mine. In every instance, I've sent it back to them, and received the same unit back a few weeks later with a new component of whatever failed. Sometimes at my cost, sometimes at theirs. And they do everything in the US too - I'm shipping it to Texas and they are employing someone in Texas to solder on new parts.
Get your act together Framework. This is against the spirit of your mission. No one cares about warranty periods. Buy a new board should be an absolute last resort.
the programmer, especially with crocodile clips, can be used for other laptops with bios chips of the size. however, it is always nice to have info from someone else who has previously done this. while it took a lot of digging for the specific laptop i had, at least with framework we hope to see more high-quality writeup like this.
I won't try and say that this situation is totally fine, or ideal, or anything close to it, but I think that in order for us to know how to feel, we need one very important piece of information that is missing: was the actual BIOS update itself bad in some way, or was this just the kind of error that happens sometimes, especially as hardware ages.
If it was the former, then this becomes quite bad: Framework released (even if they were not the ones who made it) a software update that bricked someones computer, and it is incumbent upon them to fix it, even out of warranty.
If it's the latter, then, I'm sorry, but that's the kind of thing that happens sometimes. Yes, having dual bios chips or some other way to recover from a failed flash would be nice, but I don't know the engineering trade offs to make that happen. Lots of desktop motherboards have it, where space is not at a premium, but do any laptop motherboards have it? My guess is that, at the bare minimum, it's much much less frequent.
I think that, in the latter situation, the main thing that I would like to have seen from a company like Framework, with their ethos, is to provide the pogo pin reflashing tool (at a reasonable price), along with the necessary instructions and files, either for the user, or for a local, inexpensive computer repair shop (depending on the users preference). So even in the latter situation, I do think that Frameworks support is lacking here. This seems like the kind of thing that, with the proper tools (which seem cheap) and instructions and files, that this wouldn't actually be that hard, especially for the type of consumer that would buy an upgradeable, modular laptop.
But, in the case that the BIOS itself was not bad/caused the bricking, then I think the rhetoric around this is overblown. I'm not sure that any laptop I've ever had before has ever told me that I needed a bios update (aka: provided that level of support post purchase).
Again, if the BIOS was in fact bad, and caused the brick (and no, a thread of people who experienced the problem is not enough to conclude this), then that's a very different situation, and the level of failure exceeds even what is described here. And even if it wasn't bad, I don't think think that "buy a new mainboard" is the appropriate service response when "buy these $20 dollars of parts and tools, and follow this guide" would likely have solved the problem.
But, as I understand it, BIOS updates are always somewhat dangerous. If Framework is on the hook for every time a BIOS goes bad outside of warranty even in situations where nothing they did directly caused the issue, then what they will do is just stop offering BIOS updates outside the warranty window. We can hold two ideas in our heads at once: Are they completely and perfectly living up to their ideals? I think that the answer here is obviously, even in the least bad case, no they are not. But are they providing better service than other laptop manufacturers? I think that as long as the BIOS file wasn't bad, the answer is yes. No laptop manufacturer would have offered to fix this out of warranty if they even provided continued BIOS updates, and for most manufacturers, their answer would have been "buy an entire new computer", and your only alternative would be third party resellers or used parts on ebay to get a new motherboard.
-edit- After doing a bit more research, BIOS recovery paths in laptops, while not universal or as common as in desktops, are also not exactly rare, and not having one, in a company with Frameworks ethos and stance, is worse than I initially assumed.
I think that, even if this isn't due to a bad BIOS or updater (which, again, would make them, in my opinion, liable for fixing it), then this is a very significant oversight, and the fact that they don't provide the support necessary to route around it (reasonably priced tools and clear, well written instructions) is even worse.
Is thinkpad really it? I wasn't wildly excited about that one either.
Someone else noticed that there is actually a (unpopulated) header for flashing, which avoids the janky pogo pin thing even unpopulated. Why didn't fw point him at it when explicitly asked? And even if they had, where is the firmware image to use with it? They have it, so there is nothing about the "exiting" nature of the product that stops them from saying something more helpful than "throw the motherboard away".
i'm realizing that framework's marketing swayed my opinion a lot more than i thought. i was seriously considering a framework laptop when my current one dies, but i'll probably just end up going with a thinkpad again, as the level of serviceability seems a lot closer to equal than i was lead to believe, and apparently there is no "feel good" advantage of buying framework.
That said, with another drive (and a larger EFI partition), I've been able to do 4 or 5 different bios updates on my AMD 7040 Framework 13.
My understanding is Coreboot is a minimum-viable firmware implementation to get your hardware initialized ... and not much else.
Once Coreboot is ready you then use "Payloads".
Payloads can be as varied as booting into Linux directly, GRUB directly, or a whole UEFI/BIOS implementation.
SeaBIOS is a whole FOSS BIOS implementation (commonly used for emulators like QEMU) and is somewhat tractable according to my prior research (~50k lines of C).
My comment about CPU support is due to modern systems using UEFI - the payload for that is TianoCore EDK2. It's quite large (900k+ lines) and while it has much more eyes on it, if minimalism is what you're looking for I doubt it would qualify.
That leaves you with systems from before ~2013 or so - assuming you can even flash Coreboot to them, which only supports a handful of systems.
I suppose you could just jump into Linux though. Perhaps it's silly to do anything else.
https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/statutory_warranty... (Page 2):
> Without limiting consumers rights, Apple will provide its own remedies equivalent to those remedies in the consumer guarantee provisions of the Australian Consumer Law at any time within 24 months of the date of purchase. For the avoidance of doubt, Apple acknowledges that the Australian Consumer Law may provide for remedies beyond 24 months for a number of its products.
The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells me that this person lives/works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While the issue is already fixed, for others affected with the same issue, I would suggest the small claims route. Make sure to talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps to gather and prepare evidence for your claim. If you are lucky enough to win, then you should "go nuclear" on social media (and their own forums) to share the win and the exact details about how you did it. Framework Computer will surely (1) cave and provide replacements or (2) be flooded with small claims about this issue.
Or, if you need legal advice, go to a lawyer, not an LLM.
The last one that tried that was fined 5,000$ for wasting the court’s time.
I uploaded a dump of the flash [1] in the bad state and they somehow analyzed it and made a fix. Great for others I guess, but I'm still mindblown that the regular path would have been that this perfectly working laptop to this day become ewaste.
Being an embedded dev, I don't understand why there isn't a special USB-C protocol to recover bios over SDU/CC pins. Or some DFU mode you can boot into.
Not enough of these cases happen under warranty for them to bother (and out of warranty cases are either neutral, or even beneficial to them if they drive sales of new hardware).
Ironically, Macs do have that, no?
I'm tired of sloppy updates or change of behavior that mess with how I use MY device.
At this point, I'm convinced Google is doing this on purpose. My Google TV has become slow since the Gemini update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted it. My pixel battery life gets worse with every update, etc.
I somewhat regret buying my framework laptop at this stage, because the answer to every fault is "buy a new component, from framework".
I'm not sure I blame them for this really, but there is no competitive market of parts (or really any market at all), which means that the reality is that you're just locking your money to them. They also often have stock issues, so woe betide you if your component fails at the wrong time.
It's very hard to predict costs here, but framework laptops do seem to fail more than other brands, and their laptops do tend to be more expensive. In comparison to MacBooks I've used over the years, which other than screen delaminating, have been faultless, at least.
Op probably missed https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/FrameworkDebugger#jspi. Though, the connector is not populated for cost reasons.
Otherwise, I agree with the author, this is a pain.
Thanks for linking the documentation! To be clear, when I wrote "header", I meant something with a connector that can be easily used for this purpose. Soldering on the connector is probably more difficult than the pogo pins that I used.
I also can't help but notice the linked connector is less than $1 in bulk on DigiKey and probably cheaper if ordered at Framework's scale.
And where is the bios image to use with this anyway? Including the documentation to fix the serial numbers.
The existence of this header changes exactly nothing about the story.
Not to mention there are no "alternatives" that you can look into to purchase these replacements. You are essentially just locked to purchasing from Framework only
Are there any reports out there of macbook OTA updates causing laptops to become entirely unbootable with no recovery options (and, in case it actually happened, Apple refusing to fix/replace affected laptops at no extra cost)?
I am yet to hear of it being a thing, and I would love to be proven wrong.
As far as I am aware a failed bios/firmware update on any device can cause it to brick, thats why they always come with massive warnings everywhere. I personally do not just do bios updates because some OEM marketing said so. The old saying does me well, "If it aint broke dont fix it"
Various enterprise boards with BMCs can flash the BIOS from the BMC even if the BIOS is fucked.
You might even be able to do that with Intel AMT, but I've never had occasion to try.
I have the original Framework 13, but I have almost changed everything inside of it (motherboard AMD 7840U, wifi 7, ram 96GB, ssd, better hinge, the CNC shell, hdmi dongle v3, APU Fan, speakers v2, webcam v2). I still was using the original battery and it was at 60% health. So, I decided to update to the 61W battery.
After changing the battery, I decided to turn on the battery charge limit to keep the battery at a cool 60% charge to increase its lifespan.
First interesting thing I faced was realizing that Framework has 2 methods for the battery limit implementation. You have to use framework-tools and set it on the ec instead of the standard Kernel module. The kernel allows you to set the min and max, but the ec just allows you to set the max, and it will automatically set max-5 as the min.
But what was more frustrating, was realizing and when it gets to that threshold it constantly discharges 5-9W until it gets to the min and then charges the battery again back to the threshold. So, if you set a threshold it keeps charging that 5% once an hour, instead of parking the battery and waiting for the natural discharge to get to the min (which should be days later, since when you're plugged in the battery is not used for anything, it's like your laptop is off, not sleep, off).
But the good thing is the ec code is open source, I found the code, dug into it, found a bug, fixed it, flashed it, and for the past 2 weeks my battery is working perfectly.
I opened a PR, then found a multi hundred forum post of people talking about something similar with no proper solution, or any fixes in the ec. And my PR has been sitting there with no attention from Framework. Setting a battery threshold is actually worse for your battery because of this bug, but nobody is in a rush to fix it!
So, I'm mad that Framework operates this way, their circuitry, power delivery, and software is flawed (just read the forum thread[1]). On the other hand I'm happy I can see the code, find the bug, and fix it at least for myself! Feels like the hardware version of Linux! If you are technical, you can literally change how your kernel behaves. You can't recommend it to your Mom, but you definitely prefer it to the closed alternatives.
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-battery-flipping-bet...
Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades. In addition, they're a much more mature product -- been selling laptops for much longer at much higher volumes. Thinkpads are the prototypical example but I actually like Dells better. Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well.
AMD has had several USB based issues on their 500 series chipsets, x570 etc. so part of me wonders how much of these problems are on the vendor vs the integrator.
Either you hardcode your keyboard and mouse absolutely into kernel parameters, or you make two systemd unit files: one that runs with before suspend and one that runs 'before' resume.
You make the before suspend unit file manually temporarily disable USB enumeration. And the before resume unit file enables it again.
This trick at least works with Gigabyte Aorus 5XX motherboards that have an infamous suspend bug, where any used PCIe SSD slot would prevent the system from properly suspending and you have to disable the slot temporarily.
Also, always check the NixOS repo for stuff like this. In some ways it has started to rival or even surpass the Arch wiki for finding workarounds for hardware quirks.
The kicker is that the things they were telling me to buy didn't even fix the problem. My fingerprint reader was very flakey, and after replacing it and all cabling connected to it, it still didn't work.
They then told me to buy a whole new input cover which was the wrong solution again. The issue was the touchpad, which routes the signal for the fingerprint sensor through its circuit board.
They also encouraged me heavily to update the BIOS and firmware of everything aggressively before really digging into any of the kernel messages I was seeing.
All that said, it's really hard to complain that for $50 and some waiting I was easily able to fix the problem.
Compared to replacing the battery on a MacBook pro which took me 5hrs and required complete disassembly of the chassis sans fans it was a dream.
Here's to hoping that framework does better, they do seem to take well to community feedback.
Notably, the flash process itself does not check for the positions of the jumpers and exit, or anything like that, it just proceeds merrily along, and renders the board unbootable. I've been around with Flashrom a dozen times and can't figure out the right sequence of flash-this-rerun-that to recover the thing. (It's an X9DR3, if anyone here has hints.)
So I wish I could be mad at Framework, but only the tiniest bit. It's sadly common.
At least, it has been the case on several boards of mine, including an X10SDV which bricked itself, as far as I can tell, just from bad luck somehow.
As far as I can tell, the jumper dance was to enable the main BIOS to use the Management Engine controller to perform some other part of the flash, which would ordinarily be locked out with the jumpers in their normal position. But now that it's tried and failed, it won't try again, maybe?
But now I'm reconsidering. Not standing behind their own BIOS update is pretty horrible.
I like the apparent upgrade ease of the Framework since I have a pile of old laptops, tablets and netbooks dating to late 1990's already. If I can find one that is long-term upgradable then that is a big plus.
I had almost convinced myself that Framework is the way to go with their hot-swappable ports and easily replaced internals.
I found Tuxedo not long ago. They seem to be a valid competitor in that space. I know they're a German company but I think they ship to the boondocks in Texas.
I read that BIOS recovery procedure and was reminded of all the times I had to flash and then recover on desktops or laptops and how much fun it wasn't. The fact that Framework treats you like a second-class citizen after the warranty expires is very valuable information in a case where your problem is caused by their recommended procedure. The hack of their partner company feels so relevant today when companies can still leave PII open in public datasets and suffer no consequences.
I will more strongly consider Dell and Tuxedo. I have long experience with Dell workstations and have found that even though a lot of their components like Mobos are proprietary formats requiring a Dell part to repair, that those parts are identifiable and generally available thru Dell or eBay.
I don't know enough about Tuxedo so if anyone has experience I would appreciate some insight. The use case for us is typical document authoring, programming in python with maybe Jupyter notebooks, complicated spreadsheets, photo documentation of field sites, and GIS work maintaining project map resources using ArcGIS most likely. Gaming is probably another option but it is not necessary for it to run top games though it does need decent graphics.
> Naturally, I reached out to Framework support, who told me to unplug the laptop, let the battery drain, and power it back on again afterwards, hoping the laptop would recover by itself. Unfortunately, it never did, and after giving Framework a bunch of information, they informed me that since my 1-year warranty has expired, I have no option but to purchase a new Framework motherboard, which will cost at least CA$500.
This is very disappointing.
1) Framework failed in not implementing a bootloader which takes a BIOS file on a USB-Stick and flashes it w/o requiring a working BIOS/Firmware or even a CPU/RAM. Every $70 Desktop-Mainboard worth its salt has this feature.
2) Considering 1) and that it was an official BIOS that caused the issue, Framework should repair (replacing/re-flashing the BIOS chip) for shipping fees max.
> bootloader which takes a BIOS file on a USB-Stick and flashes it w/o requiring a working BIOS/Firmware or even a CPU/RAM
This way you can solder the thin wires in crammed places, don't have to stress about them shorting out anything they touch, easily routable and they don't put stress on the solder joint, like a regular thicker wire would.
Working with this type of wire made things easier for me in these sorts of situations. And it's perfectly adequate for signal (withing reason, if not very high speed), and even some power, few mA needed for these kinds of chips is no issue.
The nvme drive itself reports no media errors so I really do think it's a system side problem with the pcie controllers...
RPi has SPI pins and is supported by flashrom.
Also, if you are doing the Raspberry Pi, you'd still need the level shifter since the Pi is a 3.3 V device.
This systemic lack of support for the product for two problems of their own making, both the original design flaw of inadequate recovery from a broken BIOS and producing a bad BIOS for some models and actually encouraging its installation, is more than alarming.
My primary concern about Framework was if they would survive so they were capable of following up on their goal of modular upgrades. That was a risk that I was willing to take.
However, that a company that targets a market segment of fairly sophisticated technologists would fail this badly on _both_ engineering and customer support is a deal killer.
Framework is not even on the shopping radar now for me.
[1] https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+...
I was using a Macbook Pro before. Went back to a Macbook Pro again. I don't want a Mac. I just can't find anything else remotely worth my money.
For context I have a 13th gen intel with the old battery and only get ~4hrs of battery life, but generally go a week or 2 between full shutdowns, since I hibernate all the time. I can close the lid, throw it in my backpack, not use it for the weekend, and when I open it it is ready to go, not having lost charge.
I generally have a better experience than when I was on windows.
Mine is using the AI 300 chip and is presumably on the latest bios so this specifically wouldn't be a problem for me, but it doesn't fill me with future confidence either, though I suppose if you look hard enough you can find similar stories about any manufacturer
That sounds like a big incentive to never ship updates.
Of note, I really like my framework, and I have installed BIOS updates on the past without issue. However, there have been a lot of firmware problems and fixes that are not fixes (battery related) and then bios updates that apparently cut the sound volume down to far lower levels than before the update, etc.
A user shouldn't have to worry about installing a BIOS update from the manufacturer causing the machine to die without circumstances like power loss, etc.
I feel personally that if such a BIOS update bricks someone's device, it should unquestionably be "we are sorry, let us send you out a new board asap". They can then reflash using pogo pins and send them out to other customers.
Accountability these days doesn't exist anywhere. It's making the world shit.
I had Google WiFi points that worked fine, and then there was a directive to merge them into Google Home. They didn't show up correctly in the Home app for a year or so.
At this point I’m comfortable saying that on device “Smart TV” software is a crime against humanity, full stop.
Within a year many of these (>20%) started experiencing the "400 MHz bug" where the CPU is either intermittently or constantly stuck at 400 MHz, and the laptop starts to heat up like an oven. As far as I know there has never been any conclusive fix for this issue from Framework, or even an official debugging guide.
It really soured me on the idea of repairable laptops - what's the point of it being "repairable" if you have huge fundamental flaws in the hardware that go unfixed?
At least in my case, a proper cold shutdown was the remedy. (Many normal reboots were attempted in vain)
everytime someone brings up the e-waste aspects of fw, i don't know if its that simple...because i've definitely already generated much more e-waste with my frameworks than any other laptop i've bought in the last decade
that being said, i do like the fw vision, but they might be trying to do TOO much that their quality is suffering for it
I started looking at refurbished Dell Precisions and came across one that was $800 with specs not _too_ far off from the Framework 16. Not exactly what a wanted, but it ticked all the boxes and was a very decent deal. I procrastinated a bit by accident and then happened to be checking back on the morning of Black Friday and saw that they had cut the price to $400. I've never clicked "Add to Cart" so fast in my life.
Now, to be fair, when it arrived the battery was pretty much toast and the webcam didn't work, so after sourcing replacements and fixing those myself, it ended up being more like a $500 laptop. Still a bargain for a pretty damn good machine. It has done everything I asked of it. I'm very happy that I wasn't able to order a Framework and walked away from the experience $1000 richer.
How so? Most FW parts seem quite resellable, did you just throw them away after upgrading or something?
I can buy 3rd party: RAM, SSD, WI-FI,random Expansion cards from the marketplace. I can open and clean and change thermal paste, etc. I've heard the display can be bought from alibaba, etc.
I can't even open my Mac.
You know what’s even better than easily changed thermal paste?
A laptop that doesn’t need it changed.
Land Rover guys love to say how easy they are to repair, and forget to mention they need ten times as many repairs as other vehicles.
A modular gpu using a new standard that is form-factor specific for only a specific model? Matte panel released a few months after the first 13.5 model was released with glossy panel as only option?
It sounds a bit fishy to me. But maybe I'm just a bit too cynical .
Manufacturer lets you replace each part separately: it's a conspiracy to make money
I think this is absolutely what you sell to investors. For it to be attractive to consumers though (and thus attractive to investors, since people actually need to buy the thing), there has to be a balance. They haven't even managed to conjure up a market for third party expansion cards, which feels like the lowest of hanging fruit.
At the moment they are living on borrowed time and good will from the tech / hippie community who want to be more sustainable and customizable. I think they have likely lost me at this point. I don't know how close they are to losing everybody else.
Such system firmware is generally provided by AMI / Insyde / Phoenix and similar.
There are a few vendors who decide to go their own way (notably google using a fork of Coreboot for their chromebooks), but it's generally list of vendors that you can count on a single hand.
If it means anything I'm pretty sure AMI provides A/B updates on most products i've used with their stuff.
Intel / AMD and BIOS vendors simply do not expose their designs to everyone. So you have to go through an ODM to have an Intel chip-based motherboard design. The silicon industry is completely rotten at this point. Framework could simply be too small to get access to secret sauce.
If you are willing to pay, you can design from scratch everything.
That thing really hacked me off generally. Coming from a MBP 2016 that sipped power, the battery anxiety was real (especially standby drain), and I spent more time than I’d care to admit tweaking tlp to be still a pretty poor drain.
Then the backlight would only work in certain positions.
Love the dream, but it got sold and replaced by a MBP of 2x the price. 4years later the MBP has been used and abused like a tool, dropped from my car boot while trying to carry it and a child, and is still fresh as a daisy. I worry that FW doesn’t fit into “buy once buy well”
Two BIOS chips was supposed to protect you from bad BIOS updates or a bad BIOS mod, just like the scenario from TFA.
[0] https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/pull...
While I'm all for stronger consumer regulation when it comes to this stuff, on balance I prefer the Framework approach here relative to the other options available to me.
I agree nothing is perfect in the grand scheme, there are always trade offs. But using that as argument against this specific failure being wrong and bad doesn't help IMO. Framework should handle this better, and maybe they still will.
The fact that the RAM isn't soldered is such a huge benefit here as well. The most recent 7040 series board that sold on eBay with no RAM or SSD included only cost $269. Even if the author decided to just buy that board, that kind of repair cost is unheard of. That's battery service cost territory if you own a MacBook Pro.
Or you can just use the opportunity to upgrade, which a repair from a competitor is not offering.
I disagree with a lot of the assessments the author made:
> First, it is clear that Framework’s BIOS updater is broken, at least on the AMD 7040 series.
This is only true anecdotally. I have installed this exact same BIOS version just fine on my 7040 series unit. It's not broken, works on my machine, my anecdote is worth exactly the same as theirs.
> Secondly, Framework encourages users to perform BIOS updates in their newsletters, and yet if the update results in bricking
Again, anecdotally.
> Thirdly, Framework claims to have made a repairable laptop, and I think my experience and the hoops I had to jump through to flash the BIOS have decidedly shown this not to be the case.
I would definitely welcome a built-in recovery flashing mechanism and more general repairable design within the mainboard. Any improvement is welcome. That said, Framework is already well above industry standard in regard to repairability. There are not many laptops out there with non-soldered RAM and removable WiFi modules.
The trouble here is that they invite this criticism upon themselves by offering repairability as a flagship benefit, but the reality is that it's not very practical for 100% of the computer to avoid every possible pitfall with long-term ownership. Yeah, after 3 years of ownership, X% of laptops get bricked for some kind of reason. This is why extended warranties cost hundreds of dollars regardless of brand. Consumer electronics are just not risk-free purchase transactions.
You also see how the sausage is made because you are doing the repair yourself. If you brick your MacBook Pro and take it to an Apple repair center, they might just be throwing your board in the trash and replacing it, charging you $500, and you get your computer back "repaired." Framework doesn't have a repair center since all repairs that they would perform in a repair center are repairs that you can perform at home, so you get to see how repairs actually work in practice. No computer OEMs and essentially no authorized repair centers hire component-level repair technicians, it's just not a business they want to be in.
I'm sure if you took your Framework to an electronics market in China you could get your BIOS flashed by dozens of vendors for $20 while you wait.
Completely unrelated: Yes! I do prefer to be able to replace specific broken parts when they die. That sure doesn't apply to this situation though does it?
I assume you have when in italics to show this is a “when, not if” scenario.
Some anecdotal evidence for you:
I’ve been buying used laptops of a certain brand for almost 20 years. I buy when they are 2-3-4 years old, keep them for 3-4-5 and then sell. Usual buy price is around $1000, sell around $300.
I tote them around the world. Writing, light dev, photo and video editing. Thousands of hours of use, plenty at +40C in the dust.
I’ve never had a single failure of any part, selling the laptops 100% functional. I’ll let you figure out the brand.
My previous laptop was an ASUS G14 and it didn't even take two years for huge problems to appear - particularly throttling.
Also the very last firmware update absolutely destroyed power management, making it idle at a crazy 20W.
The keyboard in my Framework is weak and I had to replace it, but other components are doing well.
I mean, if you want my personal reason - I assume any company warranty is barely worth the paper it's printed on - I'm very hesitant to do a bios update ever, only to address specific issues. So yea, I'd buy another framework (currently have a 12, and I love it despite the many flaws)
Yeah, but does Dell allow you to change your laptop's mainboard for another mainboard with time? That is such a quantum leap. You do not have to adjust your self to a new keyboard just because you wanted a new processor.
Also, buying a new mainboard every few years and putting the old mainboard on a shelf is a lot less sustainable than buying a complete new laptop and selling your old laptop to someone.
Business laptops are swapped out every few years.
Reusable chassis? Literally no one asked for this, it makes no sense outside of a very, very small community of enthusiasts who think it's cool. Restricting yourself to no mechanical changes/improvements in perpetuity is not the flex you think it is.
Keyboards wear out, the chassis gets dented/scratched. Thermal requirements change.
This feature is for no one.
How is this supposed to work exactly? The company builds a product that fails quickly, so that people will buy another one? I'm highly skeptical that this works on consumers. Almost nobody will buy the same brand after the first one craps out. And I'm certain that it doesn't work on companies who will track failure rates for the product across a large fleet.
Cheap products exist because of a race to the bottom. Some consumers care a lot about quality, but there is also a market for $150 Best Buy laptops for broke college students. These companies make both high- and low-end devices, cutting corners as necessary to meet that price point while still competing on quality and features. They're not building products worse on purpose, because that doesn't work in a competitive marketplace.
Framework benefits from the same halo effect as Apple: They only make high-end devices, and so they don't get judged for the cheap crap they make. It doesn't mean either company's products are actually better than mainstream offerings at the same price point.
Even if I'm wrong, and planned obsolescence is actually very lucrative: how long do you think Framework's "core values" will hold up against market incentives? Fortunately, we don't need to rely on that. Manufacturers make good products because consumers pay for them; that applies to Apple and Framework, but also high-end laptops from many other manufacturers. If they weren't more reliable and more repairable than the low-end laptops, then IT departments would just buy the consumer devices costing 5x less.
However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability.
Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again.
I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.
BTW: Dell has great repairable business notebooks (I recently switched to a cheap Latitude 5420 - the T480s was getting to slow for some tasks), but there are caveats I immediately noticed and most people don't think of:
- Keyboard Backlight is way too bright in the lowest setting
- Keyboard layout is a bit off
- It cannot be opened with one hand
- Display Brightness steps are to low (using the ALT key could increase / decrease the step size, like in MacBooks)
- Display Brightness cannot be set to "off" / black screen (this only works on macbooks)
- The Dell 5520 Trackpad is horrible
- Nobody except Apple supports AudioJack-Headphones remotes for controlling audio playback and volume (with USB-C to audiojack Adapters this works out of the box on Linux)
Original author here. I like your optimism, but I've linked multiple threads on their forums with people doing the same problem going back over a year. I also pieced together most of the stuff from people doing external flashing on the forums. Still, no official guides, no changes as far as I can tell. This post is the most detail repair guide available right now.
If something happens after this, it would be because this post got to the top of HN and they have to respond to save face.
My headcannon is that the only reason the T14G7 is as repairable as it is, is due to the whole right to repair movement, including framework.
I preferred the older plastic coated Mg chassis ones. At least they were honest about the materials.
Personally I avoid laptops now since the T430 line. Desktops are faster, cheaper, more reliable, easier to repair and replace bits and most of the time I don't need to carry a computer around.
The P40 spent more time in the repair depot than in use before I replaced it with something that didn't ship with a fucked M.2 slot, a touchscreen that failed out of the box and then a month after replacement, and a battery that pillowed within a month after that.
The T14 Gen 2 bricked on a BIOS update. The pinhole reset didn't work, so it went to the repair depot, came back two weeks later with the BIOS updated. Next BIOS update bricked it again.
usb-c port is now dead, it is soldered.
Not going to happen to my https://frame.work laptop, 10 eur part, no soldering, not even a screwdriver, and good as new
The actual USB-C port on a Framework is soldered to the motherboard. If you destroy the port electrically it is the same thing.
If you are inserting/removing cables like a gorilla, then buy a 3" dongle (aka magic Framework module) for your other laptop.
On balance, I think the framework has been a cool talking point, but yes, a 2015 dell would have supported all the improvements I made over time to my framework, provided it had all the ports I needed originally. It'd have definitely been bulkier though!
I don't think any framework owner seriously thinks they are buying the most repairable laptop in the world or the most cost effective laptop in the world.
Stop buying new. Great retired business machines on eBay daily.
The big issue we see on our Dell and Lenovo units is broken USB-C ports and the only repair method possible there is replace the motherboard. No ports on daughterboards like the MacBooks. And you can't just buy the parts from most vendors. Dell is utterly impossible and with Lenovo half the time they don't actually have any of the parts available or somehow manage to fuck up their shipping so they never turn up. Had to charge back Lenovo/Digital River twice. Zero support at all and impossible to contact anyone. And the whole PART NOT USER SERVICEABLE in the HMMs.
If you want Dell/Lenovo repairs just buy two of whatever.
At the same time iFixit are gushing all over Lenovo who are hell and pissing on Apple. The Apple who don't have this problem and I seem to have no problem getting parts for from their official parts store, the parts actually turn up and work.
Thinkpads have been a meme since the early 2010s.
It's funny to bring up the T480/s as positive example because I remember people complaining about anything past ~xx20 series.
> caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle
Framework is a reaction to the cult following a lot of the business laptops had. When people are spending $$ to retrofit modern mainboards to vintage Thinkpad chassis you know there's enthusiast money to be made there.
In general, I agree with you that the bigger laptop makers can repair laptops and do an amazing job.
What we're all here for though is 2026. No big company is coming to fix your machines, even big companies are waiting 30+ days for parts availability from the big company bros they bought from. If you're a consumer, forget about it.
"Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well." I'm calling BS here. Dell and HP hide their limited, paltry Linux offerings in the back of their website. Define your use of "many."
Now we're down to the BIOS. Today's blog post encountered a failed BIOS update, and takes Framework to task for it. Some of the support team at Framework are really cool and would probably have detected this customer is https://xkcd.com/806/
This time he got the strict script follower for customer support. I hope it blows up on Framework.
This is how I define "many." Dell in particular seems to certify lots of laptops for Ubuntu support, even if they don't sell them with Ubuntu. It's not just their enterprise offerings, either; I see lots of consumer models.
I love my framework because it’s the only laptop where I can design a custom plugin module to talk to my hardware and EE testbench, but DIY repairability pales in comparison to a service network where the tech arrives with a library of spare parts faster than you can get a replacement from Amazon.
Used thinkpads and the glut of EBay parts for them reach about 85% of what Framework does for me, and at half the price. But it's a different experience.
Framework does seem like better build quality than most laptops I've had, but I'm used to cheap crappy ones.
On the other hand, you do seem to find more cases of multiple people doing things like the linked bios update procedure on framework.
Very satisfied with my Framework laptop and the customer support. I can't imagine buying another laptop.
Not "terrible" obviously, but a slight negative that the battery failed under warranty and a slight positive that they honored their published warranty.
That being said, I think the particular bios-chip is a design flaw that they should communicate about and fix for future boards... Probably a teething issue thing, but they should fix it. Either a usable replaceable chip so they can just send out a fix, or the fallback bios chip....
That said, I agree with the article that a company like Framework with an ostensible mission of maximal repairability can and should at minimum provide header pins to reflash the firmware instead of requiring a bunch of adapters. Ideal would be an internal USB-C port that presents the flashed firmware as a file on a FAT filesystem that you can copy to backup or overwrite to restore/upgrade, like what the Raspberry Pi Pico does. Either approach would entail pennies of added cost per board, at most; it wouldn't take very many prevented warranty claims for that investment to pay off.
What I found from my research while writing the post is that both Dell and HP have BIOS recovery options without having to open the laptop at all, so that's not quite true. I think there's more Framework could have done here to make this a much less painful experience.
Having said that, MacBook is a very homogenous machine with minimal choices (which can be a good thing) so testing upgrades patches on them should be fairly easy as compared to other vendors (a good outcome of that thing).
With framework and effectively with other vendors, this is where a lot of problems come from. And the problem is significantly harder.
The important thing here is awareness and helping anyone affected, not trying to get Framework fined for a tiny sum.
People doing what you've done, documenting the problem you had and the steps you took to fix it, are what make the internet great. You also get bonus points for having that information well formatted/presented and accessible. Even without JS the page displays nicely, images included. Thank you for that! I may never need the information for myself, but I'm grateful that you took the time to put it out there.
I imagine there's a way to program the flash from a header or connector, or maybe it was programmed before being assembled onto the PCB.
Definitley worthy of even an extra $1-2 per laptop if needed.
What most others have realised is that devices fit the 99% with USB-C, A and HDMI. Or, increasingly, just USB-C as everyone who needs one has a fleet of cheap dongles to provide just the right IO.
Like Airpod after all is just a bluetooth earphone, but it is way more successful than traditional one.
It is not just payment. Without being "big enough" and guaranteeing some big volumes of CPU sales, Intel won't give you the specs. AFAIK only ODMs and BIOS makers like AMI has the full low-level CPU bootstrap spec.
This is just the CPU. Now add the other peripherals like HDMI controllers. You'd see the problem now.
Thats like BMW saying their transmission fluid never needs to be refilled. It absolutely does, its just financially more lucrative for them if the transmission explodes and you have to buy a new one or a whole new car.
My post was not a fiery indictment of framework, more that I am musing that perhaps I have been duped. Not because they aren't repairable (they are), but because I didn't consider that the quality would be so much lower than other options.
I genuinely don't know which is cheaper or better for the environment: buying a macbook that I change out every 8-10 years (this is how long they would last, based on prior experience), or I buy a framework and change out parts as they fail.
It sort-of does. Naturally this situation can be resolved much cheaper with a flasher, but in this situation you absolutely have the option to replace the "broken" motherboard, while still keeping your screen, laptop chassis, battery, ram, SSD, wifi card, expansion cards, sound board, webcam. Another commenter said the board is available on Ebay for $270 which is going to be less than just the ram for a new laptop.
This laptop has been owned for 3 years, so you have to benchmark against other 3-year-old laptops. What percentage of those fail or get bricked in some way? What is the cost of a solution for those failures?
It would be nice if this laptop had a BIOS recovery feature, and perhaps competing laptops have such a thing as well. I've mostly seen that feature with desktop gaming boards, and if it's common with other PC laptops, Framework should implement it.
If an update bricks your MacBook Pro or Lenovo, I imagine the cost and method of repair is exactly the same. These laptops get sent to a service depot or a tech comes out to your house, and they replace the board. Unless you happen to find an extremely nerdy repair shop like a Louis Rossmann situation, the techs don't mess with reflashing BIOS or other board-level stuff like replacing capacitors. It's just not really worth the labor/parts balance. Spending an hour or more on labor will likely cost more than spending 10 minutes on labor and $400 on parts.
Perhaps this looks worse for Framework because you the consumer is seeing how the sausage is made. Framework doesn't have a white glove repair service since the computer is designed to not need one. You're just buying the part yourself and installing it.
This solution doesn't cost more than the competition, and maybe it even costs less. Plus, you might even get an upgraded board out of it, which is unheard of with the competition. But it doesn't feel like "repairability" compared to dropping off your computer at your local certified Dell or Apple tech and picking it back up "repaired."
If, hypothetically, laptops have a 2% failure rate by age 5, that means you had an 81% chance of never encountering a dead laptop. With these hypothetical numbers, your experience is not extraordinary or indicative of an incredibly reliable brand.
The other thing that skews statistics in your favor is that you would have never bought a for-parts laptop. I.e., you buy a 3-year old laptop, which has a survivorship bias because it is currently working at time of purchase. You wouldn't actually buy one of the ones that broke between years 0-3 [1] and hasn't been repaired yet. Even if the failure rate by 5 years is much higher than 2%, your probability of experiencing a failure is still higher than if you had bought the computer new and kept it for 5 years (compared to buying a working system at 3 years old and selling it at 5 years old).
We can't actually guess your preferred brand because it's likely that 100% of consumer laptop brands last 5 years have a single-digit percentage failure rate.
The 3-year extended warranty for a Framework 13 costs $139 and the cheapest pre-built configuration costs $988. The warranty cost scales with part selection (e.g., configure the system to max it out at over $5000 and the warranty cost is now $259)
The industry average gross margin ((revenue - COGS)/revenue) is 40%
I'll take a "typical" configuration of the mid-tier AMD CPU, 1TB storage, and 16GB of RAM, pre-built cost is $1774.00 (no OS). 3-year warranty cost is $209.
We can assume the raw cost of the laptop hardware is approximately $1060, although that's without any consideration to operating overhead, shipping, etc.
That means if Framework's complete replacement failure rate at 3 years is higher than the ballpark of 10-20%, that extended warranty loses money.
That's a pretty high failure rate, but we have to also recall that extended warranties have about a 50-70% profit margin across the electronics industry.
I think our napkin math here generally aligns with the idea that the amount of consumer electronics that fail within 3-5 years or so is somewhere in the single digit percentage range.
There's also 3rd party ARM and RISC-V mainboards, but I'd recommend the average user sticks to the x86_64 boards.
Thank you for making this guide. The knowledge in it can be transferred to other Brands, too.
> I like your optimism, but...
Well, I'm not saying framework is perfect. The Hardware is expensive, inferior to bigger brands and, as you stated, support is worse. The repairability promise is hardly relevant as long as you're keeping your notebook > 5 years taking good care of it like most people. The switchable ports are a nice gimmick but not a total game changer. However, I really hope they succeed while keeping most of their promises and not actively preventing repair like e.g. Apple.
> If something happens after this, it would be because this post got to the top of HN and they have to respond to save face.
That's the way it goes. As long as only few people raise their hand, nothing changes. That's why I'm thankful you kept going... Now it is likely you actually changed something for the better
As for BIOS updates outside warranty, I think it's always been risky for all brands. Maybe I'm wrong.
I don't think "non-sequitor" applies here.
But yes, Dell is the outlier that has me saying “likely” instead of “definitely” above; they've had orders of magnitude more time and money than Framework has to throw at BIOS development, and it shows. I agree with you that Framework should be making a priority of getting their BIOSes to that level; I'm also willing to extend them some grace given the company's age and resources.
As another example of a vendor low-key screwing Framework in a way that I think it’s entirely appropriate to blame Framework themselves for, the first couple 13-inch models could charge off 5V chargers. The newer ones still have the necessary hardware, but whoever they get their power circuitry from cut that bit from the firmware on a newer chip version, and Framework obediently went “welp, guess we don’t have that feature anymore”.
For the EC, I feel like a team of a single developer could arrange something there?
They definitely have FW team inhouse, but idk if that team handle the EC too.
I did eventually tweak it to a very particular state where it had decent idle power use. Of course, it had to be re-tweaked occasionally.
Apart from that laptop, I've only ever used good-gen Thinkpads (and I'm back on one; the Framework now lives on my son's desk). The whole "we ship a screwdriver" gimmick gets old fast if you have to use that screwdriver on a regular basis (_of course_ they couldn't just use Phillips screws).
I don’t have the same confidence in FW
I still don't see how Framework's relative youth compensates my issues.
A Fairphone is repairable right now but might not be in the future.
It doesn't need to cost twice as much - https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-pulse?sku=286947218 . It however does require legislation to make manufacturers comply. A good example is the minimum 2/3 year warranty mandate in EU (depending on the country) - https://www.eccnet.eu/consumer-rights/what-are-my-consumer-r...
People like you and I are happy with this, but the average person could not care less about computers and simply need something to send emails, do taxes, and browse the internet. They don't want that extra burden, they want something that is guaranteed to "just work".
Proper second hand refurbishment pipelines that are well known and trusted is something we should aim for and want, but I believe the current state is that people want new and want cheap new. What is wrong with wanting cheap + new, and wanting laptop producers to cater to this?
People would buy refurbs a lot more if they were more noticeable/marketed. People “want” whatever electronics are on the shelf in front of them when it’s time to buy, if we’re talking general public now (I wasn’t trying to).
The main firms refurbing are also selling new, and so aren’t in a rush to eat their own lunch.
Just because you don't need a lawyer doesn't mean it's not in your best interest to get one.
A lawyer isn't going to hallucinate case law that doesn't exist. And if THEIR AI does? THEY'RE on the hook, not you.
Judges don't like their time being wasted, and they doubly don't like plaintiffs and defendants who don't even go to the effort of trying to follow decorum.
And, I'm just throwing this one out here; contempt of court is one of the vanishingly few civil offenses you can be held in custody for.
Another thing (this is me guessing here): The standard for evidence and "legal excellence" must be far lower for small claims court, compared to regular district court. The whole point is to provide a very low cost way for average citizens to sue other citizens or companies for recourse. As I understand, most small claims courts don't need or require a lawyer.
Related anecdote: This year, there was a story of a single Japanese mother using an LLM to file a lawsuit against the father to establish paternity[1]. (Note: This was family court, which, again, will have many people attending that cannot afford a lawyer, but the judge will show care that they receive fairness, given their limited knowledge of the law.)
[1] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260325/p2a/00m/0na/02...
This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one.
Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't have a bias against it. But those suspicious "features" pulled me away from the 16" model for example.
If I understand correctly, the problem was that the board was the exact opposite of that. The post title uses the phrase “bricked”.
I agree that FWs handling was pretty bad, but then again, what exactly is the proposed ideal-but-realistic solution they should have offered here?
A/B updates automatically recovering the bios is case of failed update, recovery from usb in case that somehow fails as well (InsydeH2O call it "crisis mode" I think). Lenovo support both. Dell too afaik. This is very much realistic to have, and I would expect it from a decent product. A computer without this feature is pretty much designed to fail more easily.
If for some very weird reason framework was unable to offer this, then at very least they could have placed a header on the board with flashing instructions on the website, instead of advising to buy new hardware.
They could have also had the BIOS chip be socketable and sold it individually pre-programmed.
I agree not everyone does this, but its not like some incredibly out there idea.
ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 utility. That's from a 10-year-old MB. Probably a few other examples.
I don't trust iFixit's quite frank "press handjob" because they're giving higher repairability rankings for that junk compared to Apple who have replaceable ports and a good supply chain available to the end user. Also they were all over selling battery kits for Pixel phones which are a complete pain to replace the batteries in compared to an iPhone.
Not that Apple are the bastion of repairability, just their claims are less insane than both Lenovo's and iFixit's.
> ... but there is also a market for $150 Best Buy laptops for broke college students.
Sure. Why do you think such a market exists? Compare it with the Automobile industry, where really cheap cars (comparable to the $150 laptop market segment) don't really exist. Instead we have a flourishing second-hand market - a whole new industry around selling used cars. Even if a cheaper, lower quality car were to exist, people would still buy a good-quality, used car over a cheaper, lower quality one. Why? Repairability. Why would I buy a cheaper low quality car, if I can buy a good quality car that I can repair as needed, for the same price or even lower. A market for cheaper, new laptops exist because today you fear buying an older computer that is no longer repairable or upgradeable. (And note that it isn't as if the old products wouldn't make money - people will still need to buy the parts for it. The profits would be lesser than selling whole devices though). It is because electronics have somehow escaped the purview of consumer rights and repairability that even the Automobile industry (and others) have started including more and more electronics in them to make their products less repairable.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+U...
This argument is flawed for two major reasons:
1. You can do perform the exact same non-modular ownership experience with a Framework laptop. It's just a regular laptop. You don't have to use the modularity or repairability at all. You can treat it like any other laptop and sell it when you're done and buy a new one.
2. Framework systems are getting increasingly competitive over time. The 13 Pro is quite competitive in its field and is one of the best options in its size/price/use case category. What other Panther Lake laptop is offering a drastically superior value? I'm looking for a portable system with long battery life (Intel Panther Lake) that is primarily for text work and coding while being capable of decent gaming on the side (Nothing crazy, the X7 Panther Lake chip gives me enough GPU usage for my needs). I did a ton of research and basically narrowed down my list to the ThinkPad X9 15p Aura Edition and the ASUS Zephyrus G14. Last I checked the ThinkPad was roughly 10% cheaper with an equivalent spec, the OLED screen is lower PPI and worse for text work, the battery lasts 5 hours shorter performing office productivity tasks (Just Josh's testing methodology), and the webcam is/was broken in Linux. The 15" screen is almost exactly as tall but it's wider, I call that neutral to negative for backpackability (3:2 screen ratio is lovely). On the plus side, the ThinkPad does push more power to the CPU/GPU, improving overall performance compared to the Framework. The ASUS Zephyrus is only in the same price category if I buy the 2025 model which has more compromises compared to the current model, especially for non-gaming battery life (no Panther Lake). Even if I open up my wallet to buy the 2026 model, I am missing out on things like a haptic trackpad, and of course, if we think Framework's support/repair experience is lacking, we don't even want to talk about ASUS RMA horror stories.
Other Panther Lake options with the X7 356H:
HP Omnibook 7 16, $1419: too big, off-center keyboard with numpad (don't like), low PPI display.
Acer Swift 16 AI, $1549: too big, off-center keyboard w/numpad, 16GB soldered RAM, non-premium chassis, no charge port on the right side, loud fans
LG Gram Pro 16, $2999: more expensive than the Framework 13 Pro with same specs
ASUS ExpertBook Ultra 14, $3599: more expensive than the Framework 13 Pro with same specs
Of course, Framework's other systems like the 12, 16, and base 13 are not really as competitive as the 13 Pro in my mind, but still, I think there's this whole vibe like Framework buyers are really giving up a lot of basic laptop things and paying way more to get modularity. This was much more true 5 years ago, not so much today now that Framework has been selling in higher volumes and refining their designs over the years.
You've never moved your laptop without realizing it is still plugged in? I've done that a couple of times. My framework gives me peace of mind because I know the only port that will be damaged from that is the one on the $10 card because the card is firmly attached to the laptop body. Your suggestion of a 3" dongle doesn't have that benefit so yanking a plugged-in laptop could still cause a loose or broken port on your motherboard.
No.
This damage usually happens by tripping over the cord, which results in the laptop falling on the floor, so a USB-C port is the least of your worries.
There's a reason Apple went back to MagSafe.
It is a non-feature that results in a net loss of physical space for ports owing to their gargantuan size.
I was testing ECC previously in https://qt.ax/ecc and was trying to overclock the RAM to induce faults to confirm ECC was fixing them. Since I was using a cheaper board, I had to use keys to short the CLR_CMOS header and that got old really quick... I didn't ultimately succeed in creating a barely stable overclock that generated a ton of ECC errors, but that was a very awful experience.
Having some sort of BIOS recovery is definitely the baseline I'd expect these days, and having two BIOS chips so you can just keep using the device as if nothing had happened is the best solution.
I was under the impression that GPU overclocking, overvoltage and fan curve settings were not persistent across reboots.
> This is only true anecdotally. I have installed this BIOS version just fine on my 7040 series unit. It's not broken, works on my machine, my anecdote is worth exactly the same as theirs.
I linked an entire thread where people have had similar bricking issues with this exact update: https://community.frame.work/t/bios-update-stuck/83416
If it's just me, I would chalk it up to a freak accident, but it's not.
And in the repair thread, you see it's been happening on and off since last year: https://community.frame.work/t/success-in-recovering-from-ba...
This isn't an anecdote at this point, but a pattern. I don't think the BIOS updater is working as intended if every update is like playing Russian roulette.
> That said, Framework is already well above industry standard in this regard. There are not many laptops out there with non-soldered RAM and removable WiFi modules.
Yes, but they are below industry standard for BIOS flashing issues.
> The trouble here is that they invite this criticism upon themselves by offering repairability as a flagship benefit, but the reality is that it's not very practical for 100% of the computer to avoid every possible pitfall with long-term ownership.
The part that upsets me isn't that they aren't warrantying this. The problem is that they promised to make a laptop I can fix myself and provide all the documentation to do it with confidence long after the warranty ends. That's why I bought into the ecosystem in the first place.
Turns out, they claimed to do better and then does all the anti-repair design anyway for BIOS flashing. They didn't even provide any documentation for fixing it myself, which I would have done gladly and then praised them for having documentation.
Are they below industry standard for BIOS flashing issues? How do you know? Do you have some data to point to? Do vendors like Lenovo or Apple make that information public?
I'm not trying to shill or defend them or anyone else in this industry, and I think they should have a BIOS recovery method built-in like my desktop does.
However, it's important to understand how statistical analysis works for issues like these. As of 2024, reports indicate that Framework has sold a six-figure quantity of laptops. So we have here about 116 posts on the subject of BIOS update failures, 0.1% of sales volume or less.
I realize this napkin math is flawed in itself since we should be isolating to the AMD 7040 series, and we should not assume that every person who has a BIOS flashing issue is posting on the forum, but I think it gives you a very rough idea on why we can't say one way or another whether these issues are common.
If there was a forum post with thousands of anecdotes about this issue, or even better, a class-action lawsuit (law firms will only do this if there's a large enough class to make it worth it), I'd be more inclined to be on your side.
No one bricked their own laptop! They installed an update provided by the people that made the laptop! You bet your ass if installing software provided by apple bricked a macbook pro they would fix it for free. If they didn't it would be equally as unacceptable. Why are you defending a company that is doing the wrong thing? Framework is unequivocally wrong here.
“Unequivocally wrong” is highly debatable. You may feel that way but I don’t. I’m not defending anyone, I’m just providing a reality check on how things work when you buy a product from anyone.
I think the only thing framework did wrong is fail to provide a BIOS restore fallback function, which my desktop motherboard has, but not every laptop has a feature like this.
For one thing, any conclusion that a BIOS update failure is automatically Framework’s fault is a big jump to conclusions. A BIOS update has a small risk of failure with any device. Find me a motherboard manufacturer who will bail you out outside of the warranty period and I’ll do three cartwheels for you.
Like if this update bricked like thousands of out of warranty laptop, they are still free to go?
But only 3 in stock and 3x the price of the Apple ones. Good luck!
But yes, lack of an USB bios recovery path is a pretty terrible design fault, and I’m surprised that they haven’t improved this by now.
Apple part number is 923-03553
Also available third party via various retailers.
I don't get the LLM hate on this site sometimes. Just because it is easy to use an LLM irresponsibly doesn't mean all LLM usage has to be irresponsible.
A recent experience for me was a lawyer I hired just forwarding whatever their LLM service said. Granted it was for a commercial contract so doesn't require that much legal muscle, I imagine, but I had to go through multiple rounds of feedback just to point out problems in their amendments. And the response was something along the lines of "yeah that could be a problem, let me review it". It was quite a bit of money too but the experience left me without much confidence that having a lawyer review the contract was any better than just running it through any capable model myself.
You need legal advice? You need a lawyer.
The lawyer costs more than what you've lost? Sorry, you're SOL then unless you want to piss off a judge and definitely not get the verdict you want.
Why don’t the OEMs of GPUs aimed at OCing just ship with a BIOS that exposes more tweaks through software though…
I had sleep issues. It was the lowest-end G5. I ended up recycling it.
Perhaps framework can learn from Apple here.
Here's a little story to frame this a little better and help you understand my meaning: My second-to-last MacBook Pro before I quit the Apple platform was the 2016 MacBook Pro with the butterfly keyboard.
That machine had a flawed design that was never 100% fixed, and Apple swept the whole issue under the rug until media pressure intensified. They then made a warranty extension for the keyboards.
The fix did not work 100%. The underlying keyboard design was flawed. I got my MacBook Pro "fixed" under this extended warranty,
The result was a huge class action lawsuit, for which I just received my last check this year. I was not fully compensated or given a refund. What I ended up doing was unloading the laptop much earlier than my normal upgrade cycle to switch to the 2019 16" MacBook Pro (Intel) that no longer possessed this fatal design flaw.
This incident damaged Apple's brand perception with at least one customer, me.
So, I'm not saying there are zero consequences for Framework not making this right. At the same time, every company that makes products draws a line somewhere. A restaurant isn't going to compensate me for a bad meal I had a month ago. Dell isn't going to buy me a new computer because my 7 year old Inspiron is on the fritz even though I expect a device like that to last longer.
If you bring a 2016 MacBook Pro in to Apple to get the keyboard replaced under the keyboard replacement program, Apple will not do it for free. The program has expired. Even though the system cost Apple millions of dollars in a class action suit and the design is fundamentally flawed, Apple will not make it right for their customers indefinitely. They offered a limited time resolution for customers who experienced that issue.
There is not a customer expectation that all the products they buy will last forever or will be indefinitely fixed for free regardless of issue, so in practice it's a balancing act between minimizing your long-term support costs and pissing off your customer base.
To directly answer your question though, a lot of times bricking or severely handicapping products happens and companies are free to go. Ask me what happened to my second generation Google Nest thermostat. Of course, my reaction to that was to throw the thing in the trash and resolve to never buy a piece of Google hardware ever again. But I'm sure thousands of people responded by justifying an upgrade to the latest and greatest and calling that a win because shopping for something new and unboxing a package is a fun dopamine hit.
I don't think that everything I described above is what is happening with Framework in this situation. I don't think there is any indication that failed BIOS flashes are a widespread issue. It seems that the standard rectification for a bad BIOS flash is a replacement board because it is considered a rare occurrence.
Remember that, if you don't want to worry about this or any other hardware failure, you can go ahead and buy a 3-year extended warranty at time of purchase, and that sort of option is available with basically every piece of consumer technology on the market.
I would agree that it would be better for them to be able to service it for a lower cost or maybe have a BIOS recovery function built-in to the hardware, but other than that I don't see anything that deviates very far from standard industry practice and policy.
Also in your example with google..
.. why did you resolve to stop buying Google products? ..
5% of all hardware fails, google can't possibly make things perfect, blah blah fucking blah, same fucking argument applies. They didn't do it on purpose! They can't make all hardware perfect! How dare we expect them to do the right thing?
Because the way they handled that case was WRONG. Framework is WRONG. Apple's keyboard's were horrific and their response sucked but at least they tried to respond and tried to make it right on some level?
Framework have calculated that doing the right thing here is too expensive and they (so far!) aren't doing it. That pisses me off. It should piss you off too. Defending them is wild. They don't care about you. Their behavior is WRONG.
As an anecdote: I know people currently preparing to file suit against a former roommate who decided to leave mid lease and stop paying because they had an LLM convince them that they could just do that (they definitely can't, it's not even close under local tenancy laws).
Which fits with my general impression that LLMs are extremely inclined to validate that you can do whatever you want to even when that's not how the law works and my expectation that using them naively for legal matters is a really bad idea.
And applied to this specific case I can easily imagine an LLM picking up on the commenters outrage and supporting them that they're right, when I tend to agree with the actual author's comment that it doesn't seem like they have any actual damages since they fixed it for $20 (not that I'm a lawyer).
> I don't get the LLM hate on this site sometimes.