The thought came to my mind of a bulkier variant of the Frame Work laptop that has extra ports and maybe extra expansions options other than the USB Type-C cards. Like the laptops from 2000 to 2010 that had a lot of varying ports, Dell’s Latitude series laptops still have that trait. Of course slimness being not too much of a concern.
Hi and welcoem to the forum.
There are many topics on what people want, it may be better to add there. Another topic on such an issue seems a bit demanding.
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Thank you for the welcome.
I looked at the other topics and it seems my suggestion is best left here. On the first link, I was not thinking of a rugged variant and none of the other “alternate laptop” topics had what I had in mind. I imagine the “bulky” variant not being much different than the regular one, but having a bigger base.
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If you’re just aiming for a bigger base, it might be possible to throw together in CAD software and 3D print or CNC mill, especially if by “base” you’re mostly meaning the Bottom Cover / the aluminum frame on the bottom of the device. I haven’t seen any projects aimed at specifically at this yet though so there’s not a drop-in solution I can recommend.
As for adding ports… the fastest way to that is probably a USB-C hub, to be honest. I’ve seen some people recovering USB 2.0 ports through breakout boards of certain components, for example this one recovering a USB 2.0 port by sacrificing the Fingerprint Reader and replacing it with a “normal” power button
There’s something of a master list of a bunch of concurrent projects here although I don’t think they’re all of them.
It’s unfortunate that the terms bulky, and chunky, are the first to come to mind, because they all have rather negative connotations when speaking about laptops, and IMO sort of ushered in the era of thin/compromised by calling the competition bulky and chunky.
We’ve now gone so far down the development cycle for thin devices, that we’ve lost tons of functionality. ex: the fact that I have to carry around a power bank to extend the battery run time of my laptop (Which requires you to charge the non-removable internal battery from the power bank) instead of carrying around several precharged batteries that I can swap in instantly is ridiculous.
What we want is a case design that houses all the features we miss from before the thin and light era of laptops; bulk and chunk be damned, I and the others calling for a design like this don’t view larger dimensions on a laptop as being a drawback, but an acceptable compromise (if you can even call it a compromise) or really an acceptable condition of having the added functionality.
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