Upgradeability…nope. Repairability…good luck with that. (Read as: Don’t buy it)
Price: $993 CAD
I feel bad just for even thinking about it…as it’s a lease-on-the-way-to-landfill unit. But it’s such a cheap 1260P unit.
On a serious note though, how can Framework compete in this pricing bracket?
I would be lying if I say I’m not even tempted… For comparison, the 1260p mainboard from Framework is $909 CAD. …and I have to install that myself…
With a price tag of $1000…and getting a whole new usable laptop, if you don’t need more than 16GB RAM. From that perspective, the ‘lease’ model seems to have a lot of bang.
Don’t mean it to come across like that. Forget about the laptop model…it’s meant as an actual example to ask…whether the Framework pricing model makes sense.
It’s almost like that Intel vs AMD power / performance graph…there’s a point where the lease model has an advantage over the upgradability model.
I think the advantage of the Framework laptop suits those with higher spec requirements. e.g. 32GB+ RAM, 1TB+ storage.
For lower requirements, those dumpster units are dirt cheap.
I wish Framework can span out and compete in that sub$1000 / lower spec market sector…but maybe that’s not until Framework has grown larger, matter of scale?
Like, for my wife & my mom, they don’t need anything beyond 16GB of RAM, 512GB storage is more than enough. I can see myself getting them a sub$1000 Framework laptop if that ever exist. That would accelerate Framework adoption rate. Hell, they don’t even need a 1240p. Would it be possible for Framework to have something like an i3-1220P…for $1100 with 16GB RAM and 256GB storage? That could great if it’s possible…for entry level units.
The current non-DIY units:
i5-1240P (8GB RAM, 256GB storage) - $1369 CAD
i7-1260P (16GB RAM, 512GB storage) - $1899 CAD
Gap of $530 for a processor jump and extra 8GB RAM, extra 256GB storage.
Would that open the Framework laptop to more of the market, general home users? That way, people will be buying into the platform, the ecosystem at a lower entry fee.
imo Framework doesn’t need to compete in this pricing bracket- a laptop isn’t determined purely by the CPU.
Of course people could buy older models second hand and likely reach around this price point.
It would definitely be cool to see a lower priced framework, and hopefully as they grow the cost will come down a bit, and offering a lower end model would be cool, so you can trade performance for reparability instead of trading cost.
Unfortunately, framework must be fighting a bit of an uphill vs comparable machines. there is a lot that has gone into it to give it such nice reparability, but I’m sure it comes at a cost. a dozen magnets for the bezel is more expensive than a strip of glue, all the connectors for non-soldered RAM, even all the labeling inside the laptop and pull tabs on connectors will add up a bit.
They don’t have to be the only laptop ever sold. They only need to sell enough to survive. System76 seems to do well enough for themselves, even though I’ve yet to see one in person, or hear anyone talk about them outside of niché forums. Framework just needs to carve their section of the market. I wouldn’t buy that Lenovo. If I had to rebuy a Framework I would. It’s that simple.
I said it elsewhere and I’ll say it again. Framework needs to take a page out of Apple’s book and keep older models in the store at a lower price point. The fact that the units are upgradable means that consumer’s wouldn’t even necessarily feel like they were wasting money by purchasing older models. Framework can take in older mainboards and give a small trade in credit towards a newer board and then use the same chassis and parts to manufacturer/refurbish those older boards into a new product. They don’t need to pay to keep manufacturing older boards and when the boards truly are obsolete they can pay to recycle them. More money from the same cost of manufacturer and closing the product lifecycle. It’s a win-win and allows Framework to penetrate these lower market-tiers without hurting profits. I really wish Framework had the capital to implement such a buyback program.
@GhostLegion totally agree there, I have a friend who is buying a new laptop, and the 12th gens are a bit too much for his budget, if he could still get a 11th gen i5 he might have gone for it (and also not need to wait for the next batch)
That being said this is probably also teething pains as framework shores up their supply chains. given the number of spare parts listed as coming soon, I’m guessing they are needing to do everything they can to make sure the 12th gens are going out the door, and are lacking resources to support supply of the older gens.
Framework is a relatively small business with limited resources.
Pricing is almost certainly governed by the margin they need from each laptop in order to cover expenses, grow somewhat, and make a profit.
Unlike larger companies, selling more product at a lower price might not really help them accomplish this. The worst thing they could do would be to try to compete as a commodity, with near-zero margins; they’d be eaten alive by the competition.
I think they’re handling growth and pricing pretty well: Framework provides a unique, differentiated (repairable) product at a competitive price. Customers who value the uniqueness of the product will purchase it.
Framework’s honestly a pretty cheap option if you go for used parts. In USD, I can build my own eBay Special™ i5/16GB/1TB/4 Type-C for $950 or so – meanwhile the Surface Laptop 4 is $1,000; the HP 13.5" offering is $950; Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon is $1,550; you pretty much have to jump down to the Acer units that the Framework inherits its screen from to get a cheaper price, at $900 MSRP. And that has half the LPDDR4X and half the SSD space at 8/512 and an 11th gen i7. I’m willing to say that FW is a pretty great value considering the theoretical longevity – would you prefer $1300 every three or four years or $600 every decade?
$1300 every three or four years gets you a newer unit all together (e.g. you don’t have to worry about battery degradation, display panel powered-on hours - (panel aging)…and newer processor, new connectivity…if any).
$600 every decade…is that just for one board swap?..and so your battery is 10 years old? Display panel is no longer accurate? Storage and memory are 10 years old…and your 10-year newer board still supports them? I’m not sure what the $600 / decade is for.
Fair point about the battery I suppose, but I daily drive a PowerBook G4. Every piece of it is 17 years old, including the battery, which still holds a 3h15m charge – which, for a 7447a which got five hours the day that the seal was broken from the box isn’t bad, especially since it’s college surplus so who knows how many people let it overcharge and drain completely. The panel still looks perfectly fine and the pixels are still sharp, if small at 1440x960, discounting the kinda meh color rendering but thar’s probably just it being a panel from 2005; they all sucked back then (and honestly still do).
Yeah, I was just thinking a board swap, though looking at the prices now a battery and board swap to i5 Alder Lake is $508, I remembered it being $579 for the board alone in the past. Besides that, just parts as needed, anything more is wasteful.
If the use case only requires one purchase every 10 years. (e.g. battery is fine, display is fine…you don’t care about colour reproduction accuracy… And trust me, your 7447a TFT panel has aged a fair amount if that’s been your daily driver. That CCFL backlight likely doesn’t get brigther than 150nits…if that) Then, I would ask, why would I not purchase another laptop once a decade? I’ll have two functioning units. Nothing to drive me to make a purchase every 3 or 4 years as you’re stating. I would have two compute nodes…instead of one node + board-only. (i.e. In your example using the PB G4…everything is original) And that’s assuming the new board still supports the memory type and storage from 10 years ago. (i.e. your memory bandwidth and storage are now definitely the bottleneck in the updated system)
I currently see the 1240P board at this price(CAD):
If your first laptop survives that long. Now, I’m not the type to say planned obsolecence makes laptops blow up the millisecond of their first birthday, but life happens. Last month my G4 fell on its side from a shake and the case dented in on the charging port, the RAM sockets are known to just die sometimes (but both of mine are working fine thankfully), I could at any point spill water inside of it… A 2009 Daily Free Press article suggests about a third of all new laptops start to fail within about three years of un-shrinkwrapping them.
Not quite everything, I did put a 256GB SSD in an adapter into it since it came without a hard drive. I also wonder how long ago the RAM was maxed out – it wasn’t done by me.
I suppose, but storage sockets don’t tend to change very often. SATA was introduced in January 2003 and we still have it 19 years later, even if it’s gone from primary to secondary storage medium; SATA-1 and SATA-3 are fully intercompatible asterisk. Though hey, the generally stated lifespan of both components are also about 10-20 years. Maybe 30+ for a huge SSD that doesn’t get filled past 80% at any one time. I’ve got some DDR2 that was in a Core 2 Duo that looked to dethrone the G4 that’s just now kicked the bucket. DDR4 was introduced in 2014 and will probably show up, at least in cheap boards, until 2023 or 24. A decade is about the time for a hardware generation, so you’ll still find boards around with specs from the generation you bought, if on the tail end. I mean, Alder Lake is DDR5 too biut Framework is going for parts interoperability so who knows how lon it’ll take for DDR6 to be introduced after DDR5 shows up.
Asterisk: some SATA-3 drives don’t clock down to SATA-1, but that’s the fault of the drive itselr, not the spec.
Yeah, in USD it’s $449. This is just a matter of currency conversion.
So to make your argument, you intoduce a bias in the argument that weight other laptops having a higher likelihood they will blowup in one way or another. And your data point is from a study that’s 13 years old, trying to apply that data point to the current time discussion?
Sorry, but I sense multiple levels of biases here, as opposed to objectivity.
Currency conversion…so 993 CAD turns out to be 778 USD. So $780 USD for a new system / decade vs $450 for just a board upgrade / decade (in the hypothetical situation). I know what I’ll go with. And you know your choice. Let’s leave it at that then. Agree to disagree.
If I’m not mistaken, Framework was never about the price of not buying new parts. Base on what I’ve seen from Framework, they’ve always said it’s about reusing existing parts…never said anything about cost saving. The ‘sustainability’ is on the environmental side…not the wallet side. So from a pricing perspective, they know there’s a slice of the upgrade buget to be had. It’s not about cheap upgrade…it’s about giving you the upgrade option, and Framework wants a slice.
