Check now, preorders for Batch 2 of the Ryzen 5 board seem to be available! I was in the same boat as you, though I simply was on edge about ordering for batch 1.
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I just placed my order. It is in the (late) Q3 Batch.
My current 12th Gen Intel is great. But I do need a hot backup. The old Dell Latitude that is my current backup will be handed off to someone who needs one.
I struggled with wanting a 16", but the 13" footprint is just too nice for portability. I just switch workspaces to get more screen.
I have looked at many, many options for a hot backup, other than Framework. But the truth is that I love 3 things about Framework:
- The basic philosophy of upgradeability / expandability
- The ability to choose what ports and where they go
- Out of the box Linux support (often dubious for a random new laptop)
Framework is how I rid myself of the Apple/Mac ecosystem. I switched cold turkey over a long weekend, and I have zero regrets. My workflows and development environment are much better now that I am 100% Linux all the time.
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i gonna stay with my 12 gen for now even if i would like the amd
maybe i will wait for the 14 gen
I’ve only had my 11th gen for 13 months and there’s already a 13th gen. At this rate I’ll be waiting for 21th gen unless I buy backup for fun or fear
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So do I. Since my current machine is 11 gen, the RTC issue becomes paramount if I were to switch it to backup role; It would have to stay unplugged for extended periods.
The day FW announces the right fix for this is the day I happily hand over my money for a new AMD machine and get in line/pay to send my 11 gen board in for the fix.
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Did the new motherboards got a RTC battery or rechargeable?
It’s not a choice between RTC and rechargeable both non rechargeable and rechargeable are used for RTC (Real Time Clock) and CMOS ( Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor)
RTC|CMOS battery
CR1220 Non-rechargagle NOT USED
ML1220 Rechargable USED
@dimitris I understand your concern with the RTC.
But in my mind, a ‘hot backup’ needs to be up to date anyway, so for any hot backup machine, I simply take it our every two weeks on a Sunday, leave it plugged in for 2 hours and update the OS.
That way, if I ever need to use it, it is immediately useful.
And while not needed, I also do a ‘git pull’ on all my repositories as a sanity check that the machine is ready to go.
In contrast to a true replacement machine, I travel with a Chromebook as an emergency backup. It would really suck to have a machine stop working while on a longer trip.
I confess to some level of paranoia - but Andy Grove wrote a book about it.
Good luck with your backup machine. 11th gen Intel is plenty powerful enough to do most work. (Maybe video editing suffers, etc.)
Bluto
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Hi @Bluto - no need to “confess” to paranoia, there’s some of that behind my backup strategy 
I guess I’m giving less priority to the “dropped my laptop” failure mode, and more to the “backpack got stolen/airbnb was broken into” one. In that latter case any backup devices would probably get lost at the same time as the primary.
So I think this requires some kind of “remote” storage of the backup, at least when traveling for more than ~ 1 week. Of course I risk some downtime (2-3 days end to end to get trusted third party to overnight backup to me) for this. Anyway, it’s here that the RTC becomes a bit of a showstopper.
BTW, I’m not even sure if plugging into AC for ~ 2h every 2 weeks would actually keep the RTC battery from a long term discharging trajectory.
Re: backups and “freshness”, remote cloud-hosted backup (already in place) should cover this if I have to break the glass. Goes without saying that regular testing of this is required to verify.
@dimitris
Yep - many scenarios would result in both machines ‘lost’.
My actual config is a ‘thin client’ 99% of my files are cloud stored. While this may raise some insults, I have found Dropbox to be the winner in cloud-via-rclone. Google drive is in last place ;-(
All functional files are in the cloud on Dropbox or in github. And I have bootstrap scripts. In the worst-case-scenario, I go to a local store, buy a chromebook, and in a few hours, I am operational. Chromebook is my default emergency solution because there are lower cost options, I can make it work with 8GB RAM and there is 95%++ chance of Linux working right away - albeit a generic Debian build. But it works.
I can have Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, VS Code, SSH, DBeaver and Slack running within an hour.
The biggest compromise using Chromebook is that the default Chrome in ChromeOS does not support Profiles (insert random swearwords in your preferred patois).
So I install Chrome (again) in Debian Linux and that supports the profiles I need. The same with Slack (who would think that Chromebook users want Slack???). I install it in Linux and it works fine.
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This was only necessary for the Version 1 (11th Gen) after that the RTC|CMOS is kept charged from the main battery.
The battery ML1220 has a 17mAh x 3V capacity so some 54mW, the main battery has 1000 times that. (55Wh)
if the ML1220 was to drop by 50% the main battery could recharge it 2000 times in theory.
A drop of 50% theoretically could take 40 days so 2000 x 40 days of life
OK ?? Is my maths OK ?
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17 mA h × 3 V = 51 mW h, not 54 mW. While the number is reasonably close, the units are wrong. Also, dimitris appears to be specifically referring to using an unmodified 11th gen as a backup, in which case the main battery capacity is not relevant.
Unfortunately, it does seem like a potential problem more generally: the effects of the RTC flaw may show up more frequently as people upgrade, and 11th gen mainboards sit unused for longer periods. When I upgrade, I’ll probably keep my old mainboard running, but if people have one sitting around for a few months after upgrading before they decide what to do with it, it’s likely not going to work well.
(Somewhat off-topic, it appears that Discord replaces narrow non-breaking spaces and hair spaces with full size breaking spaces?)
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Thank you for everything y’all are doing and listening to us. I’m very happy that a matte screen option will be available and have already signed up for that. I’m also going to get the new battery and hinge stuff. Unfortunately since I’m running FreeBSD (and want to stick with it), I’m limited to using the original 11th gen machines (batch 6). It’s still working well and FreeBSD support for that machine is continuing to improve. Upgrading to a 12th gen or 13th gen would mean losing more support again at the operating system level (even if FreeBSD is still making progress on those fronts). So I’ll continue to use the 11th gen for now and just make upgrades on the other parts of the machine.
The 16th inch framework option is also something that interests me. I wonder if you will have the option to get the 16th inch shell but allow one to take the mainboard out of the 13" 11th gen machine and basically “upgrade the size of the machine” like that. I don’t see any limitations why someone won’t be able to do that, you would just need to allow the shell and 16" screen to be sold separately.
@TheTwistgibber is there any technical reason why AMD users can’t get better 80dB speakers? And same question about glossy screen?
Other than that i think frame.work laptops are really great products. I just don’t understand reason why this limitations in what CPU and speaker or CPU and display can be ordered together.
@Tomas Laptops are manufactured/built at the factory with all of the components pre-installed in certain SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). Allowing the level of configurability and SKU diversity you’ve mentioned increases the complexity, timing, resourcing requirements, storage costs, inventory levels, and the entire cost of the pipeline. We do not build-to-order at this time, and perhaps when we are are larger company, with with bigger margins, and manufacturing lines dedicated to custom work, this will be possible, but we are quite a ways from that being a reality.
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@fearedbliss Unfortunately, that is an dramatic oversimplification of what would be required given the internal design of the Framework 16 vs Framework 13. If you review the Framework 16 sneak peek videos and what we’ve already shared publicly, you’ll see that there would be significant hurdles to overcome to allow plug-and-play functionality and backwards compatibility with Framework 13 mainboards. Who knows what the future holds, but the Framework 13 and Framework 16 are unique products. Should cross-compatibility of chassis-dependent core components be possible in the future, we’ll let the Community know.
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Wish I could get a AMD framework, but I NEED it before school. Any news on how 13th gen battery life and performance is?
No chance on getting a used <200$ thinkpad/latitude or something to bridge the couple months? Or hell borrow a laptop from someone?
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Is there any mention about the 13th gen supporting ReBAR if we want to use Intel graphics cards externally?