I'm almost ready to sell my DIY Windows framework and go back to mac. It won't go to sleep-- fans always spin unless I shut down completely. Forums aren't any help. Anyone have this issue? Other commenters have similar complaints here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31433556
I really wanted to support this company because I believe in repairability! But repairability is meaningless the software doesn't work... I'm not a 16 year old enthusiast anymore, I don't have the time or patience to troubleshoot drivers, firmware, devices etc. etc. :(
> I'm almost ready to sell my DIY Windows framework and go back to mac.
If you do so make sure to buy the longest extended warranty you can, covering the slightest tiny thing that can happen to your M1 Mac. Mine was a fine machine, zero bug, while the screen worked. These M1 Mac laptops have brittle porcelain screens. As someone put it here: it's the bend-gate all over again. FWIW I've got both a 2013 and a 2014 MacBook Air as well as a 4 years old (?) LG Gram laptop. They all have their screens still working fine and I'm pretty sure I know how to handle a laptop: these new M1 laptops are just fragile.
I suspected there would be a catch preventing me from buying a MacBook.
I damaged the screen in every laptop that I ever owned - either by creating pressure marks or - like in the most recent one - somehow stretching(either via temperature or flexing the surprisingly flimsy cover) the adhesive which kept all the LCD layers in place, creating a diagonal clouding pattern in the process.
My next laptop will be a framework because then at least I will be able to easily replace the screen once the inevitable happens.
As the context of this topic is Australia, this isn't necessary. Warranties don't add much value compared to consumer law, which the vendor must comply with in Australia.
Anything I've ever had a fault not caused by me with has been replaced free of charge years after I bought it, including from large American companies like Amazon and Apple.
I returned my 12th gen Framework and purchased an M1 Pro MBP. It was absolutely the right decision. I just wasn’t ready to accept the lower quality product for such a premium price as much as I wanted to support the company.
Same here, I ditched mac for Framework, tried Windows, nope, fans always on, Ubuntu, battery died when lid closed in < 2 hours and fingerprint scanner didn't work. Fedora, same issue. I sold it and bought an M1 Pro. Nothing wrong with it so far. OK it was 3 times the price, but you get what you pay for.
For those evaluating the new Framework 12th gen as a Linux laptop, I got a Batch 1 DIY Edition last month, and wrote a big review (includes covering compatibility, performance, and power usage, and some comparison vs my old Ryzen 4800H system): https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...
In your alternatives considered section, you didn't consider a single mainstream Thinkpad or Dell laptop ? At least the gen 3 Thinkpads with Ryzen seem pretty good, although configs and availability are hit or miss.
Most modern ThinkPads only have soldered RAM/max out at 32GB so were basically a no-go for me. They also had 2mo+ delivery lead times for BTO options, which also put it out of the running. I wasn't super happy w/ my last Thinkpad (X250) and general sentiment seems to be that they've continued to go downhill, so unless they release something that hits it out of the park from a design perspective then I'm not so interested. (The Z13 is actually pretty neat now that it's available and discounted, but only 2 USB-C ports doesn't work for me.)
Dell QC has been pretty terrible the past decade, and they're inferior in basically every way (Intel-only, mediocre cooling solutions, meh battery size, expensive, long-standing (like multi-year, basically entire product life cycle) unresolved bugs/incompatibilities even for their dev edition versions, soldered RAM, awful support, etc).
One other thing is that if you are a Linux user, I really don't see much point in rolling the dice/fighting obscure compatibility bugs (most of them being BIOS/ACPI bugs that are hard to impossible for mere mortal end-users to fix) when there are similar (or better) alternatives that are known to work OOTB, or better yet, explicitly support Linux.
I actually bought a Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, pretty much for the same reasons as you listed. The lead times for usual contenders were too high and the G14 was easy to get with the specs I wanted.
If it makes you feel any better about your purchase, I don't get great battery life either. I didn't make any attempt to optimize it, and I get about 3-4 hours of dev time out of it (yes, not very scientific, I know).
Your review was great though, I might get a framework as my next laptop assuming they are still good in a few years time.
Besides the short battery life, I hope your new laptop is treating you well otherwise!
I don't know about your workload, but in you case you ever wanted to poke around, one thing that might be worth looking into is to see whether the MUX switch (only accessible in Windows) is on its dGPU-only mode. On iGPU mode, the battery life tests for idle and wifi web browsing seem pretty good in Windows: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-GA402R-G...
On Windows, 3rd parties have been working on a utility called AATU to improve performance and longevity: https://amdaputuningutility.com/
And on Linux, I used https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj all the time for my preferred use cases (eg, setting the temp limit below when fans turn on to get a completely silent laptop on battery, lowering max power limits if I wanted to hit a certain amount of battery life, etc). (TLP has run-on-ac and run-on-bat commands so you can easily set your defaults based on whether you're plugged in or not (udev can see power events too).
I ordered one to New Zealand when they initially released. Had no problem going through a shipping redirection service (YouShop) but did have to pay import duty and some other fees on top of regular GST which wasn't cheap. Also pretty sure I have no warranty coverage because framework wasn't technically selling outside of the USA at the time. Still totally happy with my purchase.
I imagine the purchase experience would be a lot smoother now.
They really bleed us dry, don't they? We get shit all choice for computers and when we branch out beyond noel leeming or pbtech, we get slapped with import duties.
An interesting effect of the DIY model is that you can see just how large the markup is on individual components, and source them otherwise if you desire.
500GB - WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ for $189? I can find that exact item for $139 from quite a few places.
32GB (1 x 32GB) DDR4-3200 for $256? I just ordered one for my current laptop for $149 (+ $11 shipping since I live in the country and can't just drop by a store), though no guarantee on it being the same brand (some start at $20-30 more).
I really appreciate the transparency from them. They even lost out which models of RAM they have tested for compatibility so you can buy on your own. I just ordered a computer from them and I sourced those parts separately for something like $70 savings but I’m actually having second thoughts because
1) if I source from them I’m more positive that they’d be able to help me if I have problems within the warranty period, so maybe saving $70 on a $1600 purchase isn’t worthwhile
2) peace of mind vs the mess of counterfeits from Amazon third party sellers
3) they are a small company and I want them and help them to succeed because I love what they are trying to do (but also, selfishly, I need them to stick around if I want to order parts in the future)
Supporting the company is fine. I truly wish these guys succeed. This is an awesome project. But the bring your own options are great.
How many of use have spare SODIMMs and NVMes lying around from buying base models and upgrading HD and RAM ourselves. You can get a stock Frame Work and shove your spares in there. Or PIF your parts to someone that can't afford a spiffy new machine. You can even reuse your USB-C charger. It's still not "cheap" but saving a couple hundred dollars and reducing electronic waste is nice.
I think the the DIY spec should price in 2 USB-C modules, a HDMI module and a USB-A module though. You really can't use it without a few modules. Or Even 2 USB-C and 2 dummy modules (make dummy modules are release 3D model to print) if you already have a USB-C hub.
Yep! You're welcome to bring your own memory and storage, and we encourage it. The pricing we get on retail memory isn't all that much better than what consumers can buy memory for, and occasionally even higher than when promotions are running, so it is certainly possible to save money on a DIY Edition purchase that way.
can you tell me if a market like India is on your radar? i mean i use an old dell e7440 because the current sold laptops on amazon are basically the same with mostly structural differences and now epidemic of having windows license prices baked in to the product and no way to get without it.
sure, the OEMs have their local websites and you can order from there without windows but your options are seriously limited.
then you have included ram limited to like 8GB for upwards of around 50k inr which is just insane. if one were to do a BOM on these brand new laptops, the markups would be insane.
with something like framework, i could potentially get the products at a same/cheaper rate because it is "upgradeable" and also because i dont have to pay for windows
A little markup like this is not unusual, especially considering the USD-AUD exchange rate is weak and volatile. Plus the labour for someone to install the drive is not free.
At least it's not the Apple markup.
To go from 256G to 512G in an M2 Air is an extra AU$450.
That's where the DIY aspect makes it more interesting: you're putting it together anyway, so the labour aspect is removed and it's pure markup.
And I wouldn't call 30-60% a little, though it's not dissimilar from other non-Apple OEMs (Apple being in a league of their own). (I didn't sample any but those two items. Others may vary.)
Tossing up between an i5 and an i7 for someone who does both programming and devops.
Languages used are Go/C/C++. Go builds are spectacularly fast so I don't think I'll notice a difference between i5 and i7. For C/C++ some projects I work on are large, for example the Linux kernel, but again I don't think I'll notice a huge gap between i5 and i7.
I think what interests me in the i5 versus i7 aside from i5 being cheaper is that the i5 might be more energy efficient than the i7; is that even a valid claim?
Also really hoping that some day they'll release a laptop keyboard with the inverted-T layout like Apple laptops.
For laptops, CPU choice often comes down to wait for reviews and thermal tests. An i9 can perform like an i5 if it's on your lap. Or it can perform like an i5 if it's on your desk. All comes down to cooling efficiency.
Typically, higher SKUs within the same power class (eg, U/P/H) are better binned so tend to not only perform better but also more efficiently, since they need to reach higher clocks at the same TDP.
The biggest performance difference between the i5-1240P and i7-1260P BTW though will probably be that the i5 only has 12MB of L3 cache, while the i7 has 18MB:
I gave up on waiting for one with AMD cores, come July.
It was not easy to find an AMD laptop with 4K 16" screen and socketed RAM at 32G... I had to accept one with an Nvidia GPU (3060M) in it I won't use, and which nouveau turns out not to support. So, no HDMI until that gets fixed.
I believe the founder has dropped hints that they're possibly working on AMD boards, because I've asked this very question and got a similar response from them here on HN.
A 2-in-1 option, similar to the Thinkpad Yogas would be cool as well, because I use my laptop in tablet mode sometimes. But I can see that it might be a niche.
I held off replacing my 2015 MBP for a long time, but a couple months ago I blew out one of the speakers and the quality of all replacement speakers I could find for sale online looked very suspect. I got my new MBA M2 just the other day, I think if this announcement had happened last month I would have seriously considered it but clearly it was not to be. Maybe next time, I’d love to get my hands on a Framework and give it the Ship of Theseus treatment.
The MBA M2 is great by the way, I love Linux on the desktop but it’s been a while since I had working touchpad gestures and sleep/hibernate that didn’t just die sometimes. No moving parts, all-day battery life, and having my computer in Find My is nice too. I know though once the storage starts going it’ll be an expensive replacement or a new computer altogether.
(Also, the Framework is available for pre-order - the turnaround on my new laptop was about 3 weeks but I have no idea how long I’d wait for a Framework, is it still being released in limited batches?)
Did you find a replacement speaker for the 2015 MBP? I have a 2015 MBP 13" that needs a replacement speaker, and I've seen a lot of parts online, but not sure if they'll be the same quality as the originals.
The prices are in AUD for AU, USD for US, and CAD for CA. In the top left corner of the Framework website, we show the locale and currency you are browsing the site on (in the side nav and at the bottom of the page on mobile).
If you go to their site and select a region, it looks like prices are the prices for that region in the local currency. It’s a little bit more expensive to buy a laptop in Australia (starting price on DIY 12th gen is ~$870 USD vs ~$820 in the US, but that’s seems reasonable given tremendous currency fluctuations lately, plus added cost of servicing a smaller market.
If they're actively advertising to Australians, consumer law dictates that the prices must be AUD inclusive of any applicable taxes (which normally just means GST), unless clearly stated otherwise and a permitted exception.
Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
I've come across plenty of overseas online stores that "advertise" to Australians that don't follow ACL, apply GST, etc.
I'm also not entirely certain that ACL dictates that they must advertise it in AUD. A quick browse of the ACL Sales Practices PDF[1] only mentions that currency here:
A price is not a ‘displayed price’ when it is: [...] not in Australian currency, or unlikely to be interpreted as Australian currency. " [1]
> Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
Decades of buying stuff online from other suppliers who advertise as shipping to Australia, just show stuff with a $ symbol and mean USD.
It's not a Framework-specific thing, it's just every online store that isn't clearly Australian I look for that currency code beside the symbol. After it was pointed out (a few times now) that there's an AUD symbol in the top of the page, then it's now clear in my mind.
Readit News
I really wanted to support this company because I believe in repairability! But repairability is meaningless the software doesn't work... I'm not a 16 year old enthusiast anymore, I don't have the time or patience to troubleshoot drivers, firmware, devices etc. etc. :(
If you do so make sure to buy the longest extended warranty you can, covering the slightest tiny thing that can happen to your M1 Mac. Mine was a fine machine, zero bug, while the screen worked. These M1 Mac laptops have brittle porcelain screens. As someone put it here: it's the bend-gate all over again. FWIW I've got both a 2013 and a 2014 MacBook Air as well as a 4 years old (?) LG Gram laptop. They all have their screens still working fine and I'm pretty sure I know how to handle a laptop: these new M1 laptops are just fragile.
I damaged the screen in every laptop that I ever owned - either by creating pressure marks or - like in the most recent one - somehow stretching(either via temperature or flexing the surprisingly flimsy cover) the adhesive which kept all the LCD layers in place, creating a diagonal clouding pattern in the process.
My next laptop will be a framework because then at least I will be able to easily replace the screen once the inevitable happens.
Anything I've ever had a fault not caused by me with has been replaced free of charge years after I bought it, including from large American companies like Amazon and Apple.
Nothing about the M1s is more fragile than before, just treat your things more carefully.
Dell QC has been pretty terrible the past decade, and they're inferior in basically every way (Intel-only, mediocre cooling solutions, meh battery size, expensive, long-standing (like multi-year, basically entire product life cycle) unresolved bugs/incompatibilities even for their dev edition versions, soldered RAM, awful support, etc).
One other thing is that if you are a Linux user, I really don't see much point in rolling the dice/fighting obscure compatibility bugs (most of them being BIOS/ACPI bugs that are hard to impossible for mere mortal end-users to fix) when there are similar (or better) alternatives that are known to work OOTB, or better yet, explicitly support Linux.
If it makes you feel any better about your purchase, I don't get great battery life either. I didn't make any attempt to optimize it, and I get about 3-4 hours of dev time out of it (yes, not very scientific, I know).
Your review was great though, I might get a framework as my next laptop assuming they are still good in a few years time.
I don't know about your workload, but in you case you ever wanted to poke around, one thing that might be worth looking into is to see whether the MUX switch (only accessible in Windows) is on its dGPU-only mode. On iGPU mode, the battery life tests for idle and wifi web browsing seem pretty good in Windows: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-GA402R-G...
On Windows, 3rd parties have been working on a utility called AATU to improve performance and longevity: https://amdaputuningutility.com/
And on Linux, I used https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj all the time for my preferred use cases (eg, setting the temp limit below when fans turn on to get a completely silent laptop on battery, lowering max power limits if I wanted to hit a certain amount of battery life, etc). (TLP has run-on-ac and run-on-bat commands so you can easily set your defaults based on whether you're plugged in or not (udev can see power events too).
I imagine the purchase experience would be a lot smoother now.
500GB - WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ for $189? I can find that exact item for $139 from quite a few places.
32GB (1 x 32GB) DDR4-3200 for $256? I just ordered one for my current laptop for $149 (+ $11 shipping since I live in the country and can't just drop by a store), though no guarantee on it being the same brand (some start at $20-30 more).
1) if I source from them I’m more positive that they’d be able to help me if I have problems within the warranty period, so maybe saving $70 on a $1600 purchase isn’t worthwhile
2) peace of mind vs the mess of counterfeits from Amazon third party sellers
3) they are a small company and I want them and help them to succeed because I love what they are trying to do (but also, selfishly, I need them to stick around if I want to order parts in the future)
I had a very weird screen/UEFI issue and their support has been amazing.
This is business done right at so many levels they totally deserve a markup.
How many of use have spare SODIMMs and NVMes lying around from buying base models and upgrading HD and RAM ourselves. You can get a stock Frame Work and shove your spares in there. Or PIF your parts to someone that can't afford a spiffy new machine. You can even reuse your USB-C charger. It's still not "cheap" but saving a couple hundred dollars and reducing electronic waste is nice.
I think the the DIY spec should price in 2 USB-C modules, a HDMI module and a USB-A module though. You really can't use it without a few modules. Or Even 2 USB-C and 2 dummy modules (make dummy modules are release 3D model to print) if you already have a USB-C hub.
sure, the OEMs have their local websites and you can order from there without windows but your options are seriously limited.
then you have included ram limited to like 8GB for upwards of around 50k inr which is just insane. if one were to do a BOM on these brand new laptops, the markups would be insane.
with something like framework, i could potentially get the products at a same/cheaper rate because it is "upgradeable" and also because i dont have to pay for windows
Any idea when a model with anything-other-than-intel cpu's will be available? eg Ryzen, (or anything)
Asking because I swore off Intel a few years ago. :)
At least it's not the Apple markup.
To go from 256G to 512G in an M2 Air is an extra AU$450.
And I wouldn't call 30-60% a little, though it's not dissimilar from other non-Apple OEMs (Apple being in a league of their own). (I didn't sample any but those two items. Others may vary.)
It's an extra AU$300 = US$200 for just the storage.
Your upgrade includes extra 2 GPU cores + better power adapter.
Languages used are Go/C/C++. Go builds are spectacularly fast so I don't think I'll notice a difference between i5 and i7. For C/C++ some projects I work on are large, for example the Linux kernel, but again I don't think I'll notice a huge gap between i5 and i7.
I think what interests me in the i5 versus i7 aside from i5 being cheaper is that the i5 might be more energy efficient than the i7; is that even a valid claim?
Also really hoping that some day they'll release a laptop keyboard with the inverted-T layout like Apple laptops.
The biggest performance difference between the i5-1240P and i7-1260P BTW though will probably be that the i5 only has 12MB of L3 cache, while the i7 has 18MB:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?pro...
It was not easy to find an AMD laptop with 4K 16" screen and socketed RAM at 32G... I had to accept one with an Nvidia GPU (3060M) in it I won't use, and which nouveau turns out not to support. So, no HDMI until that gets fixed.
Linus Tech Tips actually reached out to AMD on behalf of Framework and there he said there was no response on either side.
The MBA M2 is great by the way, I love Linux on the desktop but it’s been a while since I had working touchpad gestures and sleep/hibernate that didn’t just die sometimes. No moving parts, all-day battery life, and having my computer in Find My is nice too. I know though once the storage starts going it’ll be an expensive replacement or a new computer altogether.
(Also, the Framework is available for pre-order - the turnaround on my new laptop was about 3 weeks but I have no idea how long I’d wait for a Framework, is it still being released in limited batches?)
Unfortunately it's not clear if their pricing is in USD, CAD, or AUD.
Quite a difference between a laptop being priced at USD$1,639.00 (~=$2,414.25) or AUD$1,639.00
I'm used to US-based companies just using $ to mean USD, and hence a little cautious.
As a suggestion, It might be worthwhile actually putting the currency code beside the amount.
Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
I've come across plenty of overseas online stores that "advertise" to Australians that don't follow ACL, apply GST, etc.
I'm also not entirely certain that ACL dictates that they must advertise it in AUD. A quick browse of the ACL Sales Practices PDF[1] only mentions that currency here:
A price is not a ‘displayed price’ when it is: [...] not in Australian currency, or unlikely to be interpreted as Australian currency. " [1]
> Have you some reason to suspect they're doing it wrong?
Decades of buying stuff online from other suppliers who advertise as shipping to Australia, just show stuff with a $ symbol and mean USD.
It's not a Framework-specific thing, it's just every online store that isn't clearly Australian I look for that currency code beside the symbol. After it was pointed out (a few times now) that there's an AUD symbol in the top of the page, then it's now clear in my mind.
[1] https://consumer.gov.au/sites/consumer/files/2016/05/0553FT_...