A bunch of questions

[blorptron]

This project and the idea behind it are amazing! Love the prospect of actually being able to upgrade the specs inside the machine, and repair it if necessary. If this works out, the reduction in e-waste will be immense! This is definitely on top my list to look at when my current one becomes too slow to work on.

That being said, I have a couple of questions that I’d love to get answers to:

1. With the founders coming from some very high profile companies like Oculus, has enough funding been raised to support this business for a few years / product cycles in order to build up a sizeable customer base to become sustainable?

2. The FAQ mentions that they don’t plan to charge a premium for sustainability. That being said, are there any plans for a more budget-oriented model with, say, a plastic case and non-backlit keyboard, or does it make more sense economically to just produce more of the same?

3. Is there a possibility (down the line) for other chassis form factors that the current motherboard design will fit in? i.e for a 15" 16:10 screen, would you just need extensions for the usb-c ports on the sides so they’d reach the points where expansion cards plug in?

4. About the expansion cards: Does the USB 4 spec allow for an expansion card that turns one usb-c port into two? What about an ethernet port?

5. Is the screen that’ll be in the kit glossy or matte?

6. Is it possible to set a charging limit (for example 90%) via the BIOS / charge controller somehow to extend the lifetime of the battery?

Thanks and best of luck to the team, I look forward to following this thing and hoping that in a year they’ll be selling a Ryzen 5 kit at a reasonable price
Really hope this becomes successful and the circumstances and market allow the team to stay true to their vision!

[ts.spivet]

I think questions 4, 5 and 6 are already answered somwhere else in this forum, but I can’t find it now.

[blorptron]

@ts.spivet You’re right, after looking around and discovering the search feature (whoops) I’ve found an answer to 6 ( Battery Charge Options - #3 by Kieran_Levin ) and some info on 4 (Ethernet is planned, and there is a discussion about splitting it into multiple ports on one card).

[Marro64]

For question 4:

What new Expansion Card types do you want to see released?

@Hiroyoshi_Mori that is a great one. We actually did start developing a 2 port USB-C card. The receptacles physically fit, but not all of the circuitry that would allow for power input and output and display output to both ports. We are still working through this though, and expect that with new silicon being released in the future we will be able to make this work

For question 6 I’ve found these vague snippets:

In addition to the useful shape, the panel we chose has great pixel density, low glare, 1500:1 contrast, and 100% coverage of sRGB, resulting in excellent visual quality.
Framework | Framework Laptop Deep Dive: 3:2 Display and Customizable

and

Glare reducing coatings and >400 nit brightness lets you take your work outside too!
Framework | Choose Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ 7040

There’s also been this popular post about it already, but they haven’t giving an official response.

[SOLVED] Matte screen please!

A portable device will be used in numerous settings where the user can not control the ambient lighting, like in café’s, meeting rooms, outdoors etc. A proper matte screen would be much much better to avoid that annoying glare which makes it harder to work, and in my opinion also gives a picture that is much nicer to the eyes. It still today boggles my mind how seemingly every manufacturer could jump onto this craze. Cheers to the Framework development team, really nice to see someone finally …

[nrp]

Matte displays typically have an added diffuser layer bonded to the front of the display to make them look matte. We don’t have that on our display, but we do have anti-glare coatings on the display to make it super usable in most lighting conditions.

[Brahad_Kokad]

I read that you’re providing a screen with 100% sRGB color gamut in the framework laptop; do you have future plans to provide a laptop variant/only screen with 100% Adobe RGB?

[Ian_Darwin]

@blorptron

2. The FAQ mentions that they don’t plan to charge a premium for sustainability. That being said, are there any plans for a more budget-oriented model with, say, a plastic case and non-backlit keyboard, or does it make more sense economically to just produce more of the same?

Plastic is (from my limited knowledge) harder to mold into shapes like this because of its shrinkage properties. Plus, aluminum is much easier to recycle at end of life. So, unlikely a plastic case would save anything, environmentally or economically speaking.