Just adding to e-waste down the line, and I'm sure they are selling enough units.
In the future when you do actually need/want a new laptop of course it would be great to support them then. And advocate for them when a friend asks about what laptop to buy.
It drives me absolutely nuts when I open my bag and feel the heat coming out of it, and my laptop is left with 20% charge.
Apple has been able to do "clever" things while asleep, like waking up the wifi chipset periodically to check for email / messages / notifications / updates, so that when you wake up, everything magically feels ready to go instead of feeling like you just woke up from 1984 and have reams of crap to download.
But this only works well because Apple does their own firmware for most of the machine, and seems to do a reasonably good job, despite a few issues. They're careful about only doing things that aren't going to obliterate the battery in a way that would be surprising.
Microsoft is jealous of this functionality and knows they want something like that for Windows. They also know they need to cater to the lowest common denominator with system builders, so they asked Intel to put this kind of capability into their platforms, and to explicitly disable the old modes, so that system builders wouldn't be able to drag their feet. The result is that they've all switched, but the outcomes are generally poor and high variance. Sometimes they're passably okay within Windows, but not always. It'll probably get better, but for now things are crap, especially on Linux.
Not that I blame them, there are many different sleep states from core/package level [0] that map onto system/platform level sleep states [1]. Fucking confusing, and I'm sure something is waking it up. Have you checked Windows Task Scheduler? My college laptop had a Norton Antivirus scan wakeup at 5am every day and would be re-enabled every Windows Update, similar pain to you
[0] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000... [1] https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63346-sleep-states-avail...
My wife (a teacher) loves his 13" one, it's ideal for her to make video calls, write emails etc.
For me as a developer at least 15" is a must, even though I love Framework, I'll only buy if they release a 15" or 16" version.
I'd like to support their cause, but like you, I have way too many machines that already work well enough, that I can't justify another purchase unless it would offer a substantial improvement over my current setup (old ThinkPads). Plus I really can't function without a Trackpoint ;)
So I'm holding out a generation or two to reconsider. I hope they improve.
I'm gonna be really honest here and say that people have a very distorted subjective idea of what a 'sturdy laptop' is like. A lot of marketing money has been spent to make people think the only way to have a strong object is for it to be made of a rigid metal or glass material, so people go "oh my god the lid can FLEX this thing will break if I drop it!" but that's not at all how things work.
The truth is you can't really just guess at whether a thing will survive falling or whatever by looking at or touching it. The only thing that tells you anything really is actual experience and/or testing.
(personally, I think my framework laptop feels plenty sturdy for all the subjective anecdata that's worth, it's just not designed in a way that's trying to scream at you "you can run it over with a truck and it will work perfectly")
Sources please. That's news to me.
None of that is build quality.
We can argue about how subjective all of those points are, and if a single report has any merit on its own, but it was enough to disuade me from making the purchase.
If I could test the laptop locally before buying it, I would do that. Otherwise I don't want to risk it on a first gen product, since I _can_ wait for gen 2 and 3.
> Build quality is clearly a step down from my old Thinkpad X1 Yoga. The hinge doesn't feel as strong, some keys are mushy/creaking and I'm skeptical my Framework will survive as many falls as my old laptop.
Replacing "Model S" in the sentence with a beat-up '97 Honda civic and it may be true, but there is not enough evidence contained in the sentence to support an absolute statement.
Perhaps our individual thresholds for quality differ, but either one of those two statements are dealbreakers for me.
1. I hate that plastic had to be re-branded in this manner because a small-but-vocal contingent decided it "feels cheap" on phones, or somehow lowers build-quality. This resulted in glass-backed phones which ironically had to be kept in plastic cases to take advantage of plastic's superior elasticity.
Perhaps and "build quality" and "premium feeling" need to be separated. I suspect I'm not the only one conflating the ideas.
I checked my Apple elitism at the door and I put my name down for a Framework in September and got it in October. Happy ever since. It's a great little laptop and would highly recommend others.
If it's published data, mind sharing a link?
This comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807585
Some of these issues could be subjective, and I shouldn't decide based on that single report alone, but it was enough reason to reconsider the purchase, especially since, like I said, I really don't need a new machine.
Can’t comment on the trackpoint, which is something I’ve never personally liked, but if that’s a deal breaker, you’ll probably have to have a Thinkpad. But I’ve been very pleased with the build quality of my Framework.
I've been thinking about selling my current beefy laptop (razer blade 15) since I end up doing all my MCAD/ECAD work on my desktop anyway, and moving back to Manjaro on my laptop which only really gets used for software/firmware anyway.
But, I read so many horror stories about linux firmware glitchyness and poor battery life that I gave up on the idea. If I can just by a used thinkpad from a few generations ago that might be perfect.
It should be said I run a pretty minimal system (dwm, st, Vim, stuff like that) and usually throttle the system to "powersave", mostly because the fans will never spin up with it. It's a bit slower, but still plenty fast enough for me.
XPS 15 laptops appear to have an unresolved mouse lag issue that is noticeable under linux (but seems to happen in Windows too). Seems to not happen with external mice. Annoying but not a big deal. There is an open issue for it but no patch yet.
So yes. The Dell. I do NOT recommend. They are garbage quality devices and their support is utterly terrible. Wildly overpriced for what you actually get.
Avoid.
* very few people can solder a cpu and I've never heard of a heatsink needing replacement
It definitely happens. Usually as a direct result of someone just not taking care of their machine at all, but it still happens.
Source: work at independent repair shop.
That being said, that's a bummer. Would be nice to get a higher end compute option or one with a dGPU.
Then go for the Framework one.
I want paid Linux support upfront.
I don’t want to pay for Windows support, remove it and then run unsupported Linux on my laptop.
A manufacturer saying “this is a Windows laptop but we won’t stop you running Linux on it” isn’t really good enough for what I want.
That only applies to the prebuild laptop. The DIY edition gives you the option to buy the laptop without an operating system. It's fairly easy to assemble the DIY edition yourself and save money by DIY.
They officially support Linux: https://frame.work/blog/linux-on-the-framework-laptop
It’s not the “not paying for Windows” angle for me. I don’t care much about that.
I can just treat it like an unused part of the package, like a foreign power adapter. It might even be useful someday.
What I really want is to positively pay for vendor Linux support, pre-installed.
I want the vendor to benefit from Linux and know why they’re supporting it for me.
I guess they could change that in the future though so it’s still worth keeping an eye on.
I kind of want to buy a framework though, just to support them? But I have no use for another laptop, let alone a small 12" one! Should I get one anyway because, what the hell, why not? Should I wait and then jump on one if/when they release a larger model?
Anybody else have similar feelings?
Edit to add:
I also have one of the last Thinkpad models that support S3 sleep (T480 -- within a model or two, I think?), which is currently super critical for Linux... I need to be able to close the lid and come back after a week.
It's easy to blame the manufacturers for this, but the consistent answer seems to be "Intel's Tiger Lake platform does not support S3 sleep," and all of the system builders base their work on what Intel's reference platform does. So short of going to extreme effort to hack it together themselves (something that is likely not their specialty), reasonable sleep behavior is not going to be an option unless Intel brings S3 back, or does work to improve the S0ix states.
I absolutely do not want to support the no-more-S3 clusterfuck right now.