Edit: I'm running linux. I don't recall doing any battery optimization but maybe I installed or configured something a few years ago? I don't change things often.
Another edit: I just checked and I do have TLP installed!
Given LTT's review of the laptop, it may be best to wait for the 2nd revision of this which hopefully will deal with the deck flex and screen consistency issues.
Macbooks are the only device I would trust to not light a bag on fire…
It’s excellent in that I can suspend any software and have it come back to life exactly the way I expect (no small feat!) and it’s excellent that it never cooks itself when unattended in a case or bag, but it is total trash that it eats 20-30% battery a day while “off”. That’s not a bug, but expected behavior. It’s just not what I have come to expect from a modern computer, and portable Macs haven’t behaved that way since about 2005.
However, my (5+ yrs old?) T480s running linuxmint never does it (i5-8250u). YMMV
It's also a trade off against competence, because you can kill the battery right quick if drivers don't idle things properly, but even after you address that you still have the other thing.
Which makes 16+ hour battery life an odd choice for most people. Who uses their laptop for 16 contiguous hours with no opportunity to charge? It could have been lighter or faster.
Naturally Framework has the potential to make it flexible: Have a dual-use bay where one of the options is a second battery, and then if you want it you take the weight/battery life trade off in favor of battery life, and if not the machine can be lighter.
Also generally speaking more efficient laptops are cooler which is generally a quality welcome in a device sometimes used in a person’s lap.
Sure, it's the bulk of a Macbook Air, but I often leave that open, with the screen on, running VMs for work all day without it being plugged in. I expect that any time I open it, I'll have at least 30-60 minutes of use before I need to plug it in. My Framework, more often than not, tells me it's about to emergency shut down as soon as I log in.
Did you report this issue to Framework? Do other users have similar issues?
This is just the same trade off. For a given level of efficiency you could have put in a smaller battery and offset the weight of a second battery / charging brick that you would then only need when you need many hours of battery life.
> Also generally speaking more efficient laptops are cooler which is generally a quality welcome in a device sometimes used in a person’s lap.
That isn't really part of the trade off either. The faster ones generally don't have worse performance per watt -- they're often better because they have more cores with lower clock speeds. You get 100% more cores with 75% more performance for 50% more power consumption. For the same load they generate less heat. See also "race to idle".
They only generate more heat in absolute terms if you put more load on them than the slower alternative would have been able to handle.
The weight isnt the problem. It's the poor optimisation of hardware and software.
For Linux, when following our installation guides for power optimization, power consumption with integrated graphics should be similar.
Edit: Tom's Hardware similarly reports 9 hours on Windows (with Graphics Module installed): https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/framework-laptop-16-rev....
I'm in the same boat, looking for as light as possible with a much battery as possible, was banking on the 16 yet we get 9 hours instead of (an assumed) ~10-11, and 2.1/2.4kg.
Somehow the Thinkpad Extreme X1 and the new Zephyrus G16 have similar CPUs, dGPUs, a >90Whr battery and they weigh less than 2kg.
Where's most the weight going? Will I be able to buy a FW 16 and eliminate weight to achieve similar specs? Literally asking about using a "stripped down version".
If you want the lightest laptop with the longest battery life, you'd get a Mac. If you want the best bang for your buck go with a basic Ultrabook. If your willing to have a bit more weight, size and a bit less battery in exchange for repairability/customization, that's the niche framework fits well.
As a result, its beginning to resemble a paperweight.
discussion: https://community.frame.work/t/simple-extra-battery-for-the-...
Previous generation Macbook running the same workload last for 6+ hours.
That said, for someone who isn't going to be running every core at 100% all the time, I'd still recommend it.
Edit: Oh, and under arch with the latest kernel, I find many monitors that cannot display video output over usb-c, like the Dell U4919DW.
If you have processes pegging CPUs at 100% and you don't want them to, then use a cgroup to limit their CPU time.
You do understand that different machines can do the same calculations with different amounts of energy, right?
Still, if your dev environment is using CPU constantly you're likely doing something inefficiently. Redis and postgres don't do much unless you ask them to, for example.
I now make sure to save my work and shut the laptop off completely at the end of a session.
With the greatest respect it's 2024, a laptop should be capable of 8 hours at the very minimum for a mid range model but I'm seeing a lot of people getting sub 2 hours.
The 16 ticks all the boxes for me but I've held off for now as having the possibility of worse battery life than my old 2015 mac isn't as you can imagine making for a compelling upgrade.