Are more advanced Touchpad + Keyboard options possible/likely?

The Option to change out the keyboard is certainly nice.
But with the heavy Modularity everywhere in the product i couldn’t help but wonder, how likely is it we will maybe later see top shell with a sensel Trackpad?
Or would that, if ever, only ever appear on a second generation Framework?

Or maybe a Cover where the Cutout for the keyboard is just rectangular for olkb (or other) style keyboards. The demand for non standard keyboard layouts is high enough to spawn some pretty cool options, using discrete off the shelve switches, but would it actually be at all feasible to do this kind of stuff for the framework? (from a cost perspective)

29 Likes

thanks to ajtakrajta for pointing out this cool project, through which i found out about the Kailh X discrete switches. With just a top cover that has a cutout to accommodate many different keyboard designs, framework could be an awesome platform for the custom keyboard community.

3 Likes

That sensel trackpad is amazing. It would be great to see it in as an option in the future, especially tacked on to the existing laptop.

10 Likes

+1 for Sensel Force Haptic Touchpad! Would love to see an option for that!

6 Likes

@nrp Is this something Framework would do? I would absolutely buy a Sensel force haptic touchpad for my laptop.

4 Likes

That keyboard project mentioned above by @germanwtb looks super interesting – I’m looking into seeing if I can get into steno with the opensteno, and even if I can’t get into it myself, it’s super cool imagining a laptop that actually has one of those types of 20% keyboards instead of a normal one. Or even outside of that, a split keyboard like that seems super cool. I’d love to see keyboard mods in the future, or even cool things you can actually buy.

2 Likes

I also would love a sensel trackpad

5 Likes

Imagine w/ Kailh X or Cherry MX UL profile laptop switches & Rotary encoder module. Framework would be a laptop that caters to the keeb & input community.

2 Likes

I would also buy a sensel trackpad for the framework laptop

3 Likes

Just throwing my support behind a Sensel trackpad! Definetly one of the more underrated feature requests (of the feasible ones) in the forum!

3 Likes

How energy efficient would it be though ? It’d be great to see an indepedent DIY engineer to actually pull off a custom haptic touchpad, integrate it to the Framework laptop and make it a functional piece that we could buy !

1 Like

The trackpad is my one worry with the Framework. The laptop seems great in almost every other way. I’m in the market for a new laptop, but having used a modern MacBook with work for a few years, moving back to a poorer trackpad is very difficult to justify. And the MacBook Air is sitting there at basically exactly the same price as my chosen Framework configuration, with an excellent trackpad…

I’d love a Sensel trackpad, or even just a good glass haptic trackpad. The inconsistency of clicks further up a normal trackpad is really annoying, and being able to configure how hard I need to press to click is great. But personally I definitely don’t want separate buttons!

2 Likes

The best part is, you can just put it in existing frameworks! So when one is hopefully made, you can just replace the old one with it!

HI,
Just wanted to throw it out there that I think it would be cool if one of the options to replace or buy the laptop with would be for a more advanced touchpad, such as the ones Sensel is working on.

5 Likes

Duplicate-ish, see Are more advanced Touchpad + Keyboard options possible/likely? - #13 by Catt0s

1 Like