It's a huge step down from my previous Thinkpads. The battery life is atrocious - a night in modern standby drains the battery from 80% to 35%. Outside the office battery life is a constant worry, I mostly use it docked these days.
The display hinge is wobbly - when I lift my Framework from my lap on a table it often folds back 180 degrees. Very annoying.
In general it feels less durable than my old Thinkpad X1.
Linux support is better than on most laptops and worse than on Thinkpads, e.g. no BIOS upgrades out of the box (only beta firmwares for months). Additionally, I experience rare kernel loops, sometimes the laptop doesn't shut off properly etc. Overall Thinkpads seem to be more stable.
Probably start here: https://community.frame.work/t/explainer-lid-rigidity-hinge-...
Key section: "However, we identified that for a period of time last fall, our hinge supplier shipped a subset of hinges with forces below our accepted spec range. We’ve since added additional tests both at the hinge supplier and at our laptop assembly site to prevent out of spec hinges from shipping out. If you have a laptop where the lid angle drops on its own while the laptop is stationary, write into support with a video of it, and we’ll send you a new Hinge Kit."
The hinge is not very wobbly when typing and won't move if I lift the laptop carefully. However, it won't stay in position when moving it quicker.
Maybe this is by design so one can open the lid with a single hand. I prefer the sturdy hinge on my old Thinkpads though - it's difficult to open them with one hand but they stay in position when I move them.
I don’t own a framework, but will probably get one at some point. This issue, at least, has been fixed. You can swap the hinges out for the new ones— not sure if it’s a free fix or not, though.
And... It's not actually the batteries, it's just the newer CPUs. If you want good battery life on intel you simply have to downlevel the CPU as much as possible or go back a few generations to an i5. My old x260 still gets 8 hours of coding on a charge. But my recent X1 is lucky to get 3 hours.
I’m building a startup and it turns out trying to build a startup literally on a startup maybe isn’t the best idea.
I sincerely regret the purchase.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I regret it more than any other large technology purchase I’ve ever made. If it weren’t for the principal of the matter I’d just cut my losses, buy something else, and put this thing in a closet.
I also run a startup from it, wherein it's my software development machine when I don't feel like sitting at my desktop. It would need to be flawless in order to accomplish that as I can't really tolerate any downtime due to computer issues especially when I have a fully functioning high-end desktop, and flawless it has been. In fact, this is the first laptop that doesn't make me miss my desktop from being too slow or otherwise not performing the way I'd like.
Charging works regardless of the laptop being on or off, it performs beyond my expectations with no thermal issues while pushing the processor to its limit (something other laptops have always failed at for me), and the various expansion cards all work very well regardless of what configuration they're in. Overall, I've been regarding it as one of the best purchases I've made recently. After a month of ownership and using it over my desktop, I can honestly say that I picked the right laptop. I would lambaste the laptop if it had issues, but I can't think of one time over the past month where it's been problematic.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that if I were to have an issue, Framework's support has seemed to be very responsive based on others' reports (especially for a startup), and the fact that I can continue to use the laptop or even just have it in my possession while whichever replacement part is being shipped out. This alone would make me choose this laptop over any other.
There is also an issue where the built-in webcam stops working and you need to restart the computer to get it to work again.
Considering how much I spent on the machine I was hoping not to be bothered by issues like this...
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/macos-monterey-12-1-bug...
Perhaps there's some variability in the build quality between machines or batches. I've been happy with my purchase.
* Horrific battery life. I don't actually mind that the battery life under light usage is in the 6-7 hours neighborhood. What I do mind is that the battery life when the laptop isn't being used is abysmal. When I shut the lid, I lose 20% of the battery every day. Since I got the Framework to supplement a desktop, that really isn't acceptable. Fedora 36 doesn't do hibernate out of the box, but on OSes where that's doable battery life while inactive should be better
* The trackpad scrolling is annoyingly fast, and I haven't found a way to change it (on my mac I can just change the scroll speed under mouse settings, but Fedora doesn't expose that option)
* Speaking of the settings app, the settings app FREQUENTLY causes the laptop to lock up. This is a known issue and might only affect certain hardware configs, but it is super annoying.
* Brightness buttons don't work out of the box. Only way to use them is to disable the laptop's built in brightness sensor
* Don't love the fn key placement but maybe I'll get used to it over time
1: https://community.frame.work/t/framework-and-popos/2898
Quote:
“DeepSleep: My Framework is defaulting to S2Idle which is burning through battery like crazy during sleep. you can enable deep sleep by adding a kernel boot option in `/boot/efi/loader/entries/pop_OS-current.conf`
Just add `mem_sleep_default=deep`
At the end of the options line. Waking up from sleep will take a little bit longer, but you won’t be chewing up battery while you rest.”
Last time I checked, they (notebookcheck.net) said it used a glossy display instead of matte; I cannot find a specifications table in the frame.work website and the closest thing I got is in the "Marketplace Parts" section, e.g. at https://frame.work/products/display-kit - where the non-trivial, simply critical detail of glossy vs matte is not specified.
However turning a matte display into a glossy one isn't possible.
FYI, https://community.frame.work/t/matte-screen-please/577/114.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/keyboard-marks-on-displ...
I stick with Lenovo because they make great displays with matte that can even do touch!
I used a firm that provided an excellent product and decent service, but two years ago they replaced the film they had used for many years and which was superb, with an appalling grater - you can see the pins with naked eye, and it even sounds when you pass a finger on it. I have stopped purchasing mobile devices because of lack of proper ways to finish the screen.
I was actually thinking of finding a "universal" solution to use at home.
For laptop displays, I think will insist that they are professional grade, for professional use, until () the "universal" solution is in place and () for ethical reasons: you have to guide the market to the best standards and counter the bad ones.
I met from a most prominent producer of chemical products the statement
> Glossy Protection Film offers a glossy finish to help maintain the finish of a glossy display or instantly upgrade a matte display to high-gloss
Repeat for disambiguation: they would """upgrade""" matte to, mh, glossy and highly so. There was also a picture for the monstrosity nearby. So, that «isn't possible» has a counterexample. (Which is not difficult: rub some oil on it etc.)
When I saw that further confirmation of the apparent ongoing process of the total eclipse of good sense and downfall of ethics for the perverse purpose of courting lunatic rubes for their wallets, I uttered something along the lines of Sean Lock's "Are you mental?!" (from the cab driver asked if free for giving a tiger a night ride) - only, in a discriminatory form that moderators would not approve.
The matte layer already damages the light. A glossy film can only make things worse.
This laptop is really build to be repairable and modular and it does not suck at all. I think it will last a long time.
The ability to choose your own edition also means I got a reasonably affordable laptop with loads of RAM, which I find is quite useful for development.