Really the discussion would have been legitimate in the past. I definitely prefered using the knob, but that was because the alternative was awful. Modern precision touchpads are definitely nice to use so now it boils down to habits, i guess.
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Well, I don’t think anyone that uses and loves a TrackPoint does so because they believe it to be more accurate than the touchpad. For me, the primary reasons are that a) I don’t have to remove my hands from the keyboard and b) I have a tendency to palm touchpads, resulting in inadvertent cursor operations.
I actually disable the touchpad, in the BIOS, on my ThinkPad computers.
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Where do I place my palm, using a pad with your thumb to lessen movement, using gestures in your workflow… it all boils down to habits and habits are hard to change. I did not draw your argument in question.
My apologies if I misunderstood what you were saying, but, for me, it doesn’t come down to habits so much as it is just a matter of fact.
I actually enjoy touchpads, despite the fact that I rarely use them. I find a touchpad preferential to dragging an external mouse with me everywhere and the gestures are very nice.
My preference toward the TrackPoint is not the result of habit, it is just more ergonomically efficient when you are doing keyboard heavy work, which I am most of the time, to have your cursor operations controlled from the center of the keyboard. TrackPoint mouse buttons are typically directly beneath the spacebar, so there is no need to reach to hit them. Furthermore, some models of TrackPoint actually support tapping on the “nub” itself.
I understand that you can operate a touchpad with your thumb(s) to avoid lifting your finger from home row, but that requires a lot of stretching to be achieved.
As far as palming the touchpad is concerned, I could just avoid resting my palms on the keyboard, and the fact that I do is out of habit, so, I agree with you on this one point.
I would also say that, in mouse heavy implementations, I would prefer to use the touchpad over a TrackPoint, but, with the type of work I do on the computer, the keyboard represents the overwhelming majority of the work I do. I even use the keyboard shortcuts for this site to do most of the operations that I do on it.
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I do agree sometimes reaching down to the trackpad during keyboard heavy work can be a bit of a stretch and a bit out of the way, that being said I’ve never found the trackpoint useful or ergonomic for me. It’s lack of accuracy and needing to reach down to click anyways ( the one I used was not tap enabled) just didn’t work. Yes this was the actual thinkpad track point as well on an x1 carbon. for keyboard heavy work I would much prefer just using a tiling window manager with keyboard hotkeys to switch windows, and move things around and what not than use the track point, but if I had to use an OS that didn’t support these (like Mac or Windows) then I’d much prefer the touch pad for the accuracy, I find it much easier to reach down to the touch pad with my thumb that trying to get the trackpoint accurate.
I’ve always been partial to the trackpoint, and that’s despite never having had a laptop where I’ve had one available to daily drive it. Honestly what I think lots of people here are loosing in translation is that peoples’ hands and therefore ergonomics are not all the same. For some, operating the trackpad with your thumb can be achieved with no problems at all, but if you have hands the size of my sister’s it would take some serious contortions to spin your thumb around that far.
Integration of trackpoint seems like a logical step which could be taken in future iterations of the laptop, at any rate. For a first device though, I feel like it could just be too much additional complexity for a product that needs to be able to run off shelves at margins a small company can afford. Even a 1% cost increase to your “final” hardware can be a tough pill to swallow for small manufacturers, where initial tooling costs are easily one of the biggest problems, not to mention the additional cost of finding suppliers and building relationships with them and their supply chain…
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What you’re asking for is a completely different and EXTREMELY niche laptop. Personally the framework is exactly what I want and the modularity it achieves while still being sleek and presentable is amazing.
Also, nothing is stopping you from essentially building (and trying to sell–good luck by the way) the features you’re talking about yourself. Just use the framework mainboard.
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Wonderful discussion. I do hope that everybody truly liking this concept will actually support and buy this product. The more this company is successful, the more other may pick up similar trends. I have noted what others have said and will come back later. I agree to an extent with some of the comments, but others have receded the discussion away from important core issues. Thanks for everybody that has participated, I will try to steer this topic to a more constructive direction in short time.
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This is a great discussion - but like others have said your wants are incredibly niche (but valid). For Frameworks laptop to work Framework the company needs to be around for some time. Making a reasonably slim, nice looking laptop is key.
Personally, 4 ports is plenty. I rarely plug things in to the computer except for a USB drive and a SD Card. Here’s to hoping we get a full size SD reader, either from the community or Framework themselves. For everything else, a dock will work. If you read between the lines, the ports are Thunderbolt capable.
I couldn’t be more excited for this computer, and can’t wait to see how it performs.
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I love this machine and the entire idea and commitment behind it, so when I saw this title I was primed to dislike the post, but these are all solid points.
I will continue to value my Framework, but it is despite the OP’s points, not because they aren’t valid.
I am not bashing Framework. I LOVE this thing.
But that can be true at the same time as these other things can be true: I want a well-made machine, and Apple products are well-made, but in fact I do not want an Apple-like machine. I hate a huge trackpad, and I want trackpad buttons, and I want a trackpad-disable button (I haven’t loaded an OS yet so maybe I have this already, via linux desktop customization if nothing else) and I want a matte screen. If I am your audience, then I am your audience. My Girlfriend is not your audience no matter how almost mac-like it is, because it’s neither an actual mac, nor a much cheaper Windows machine, nor has some other special virtue she actually cares about like her LG Gram which is not a mac but is stupid weightless and not too pricey.
But I also recognize you can’t please everyone and a start up is a startup and can’t provide a rainbow of variations in the first shipping product. So, I’m not complaining, I’m informing.
I am blown away by the insides of this thing, and by the github for designing your own new modules. Blown. Away.
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I think you’ll find it is not.
The vast majority of the OP complaints can be basically boiled down to “it’s not a workstation ThinkPad”. I’ve seen how much Framework’s reparability/upgradability message has drawn the interest of the old-school ThinkPad fans, however I find that most are disappointed that it’s not an IBM-era or mid 2010s-era ThinkPad with a modern CPU.
The Trackpoint, IT-specialist-grade ports, battery slice, hell even the black-is-cool “utilitarian” paint color are absolutely niche features when you account for the general laptop-buying market.
“ThinkPad Clone” is not Framework’s mission, and ThinkPad enthusiasts are not the target audience. The target audience is “regular folks” who want a “regular” laptop from a company that doesn’t screw them over as a consumer. And IMHO they’ve delivered on that.
Would I like a TrackPoint/physical buttons, hotswap battery slice, 6 expansion slots, and 2mm-travel keyboard with dedicated Home/Insert/End/Delete and larger arrow clusters? Absolutely. I can also see how including those would result in a completely different product with completely different design tradeoffs.
I like the passion I see here from those who are advocating for ThinkPad features and am happy to see more of it, because they probably are influencing the folks at Framework while they iterate on their next product. But I also completely understand why they’re not setting out to explicitly compete with the likes of the ThinkPad brand.
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As much as I love Thinkpad and Trackpoint, I think Framework has absolutely made the right choice to start with the thin and light market, as it’s where the glued/soldered laptops are the most common, whereas going up to a chunkier workstation size and adding features to please ex-Thinkpad users would not have a chance of making as large of an impact on reducing e-waste.
However, I desperately hope that Framework are planning on making a workstation laptop in the future, even if it was using the same motherboard but had a larger case with room for a discrete GPU on a separate board, larger battery, and perhaps either extra expansion card ports, or a couple of larger expansion cards that have more ports on them and more room inside for speciality hardware that third-party companies and individuals could make - maybe the GPU could even be inside one of these if performance wasn’t impacted too much.
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We can’t know the specifics beyond what you describe, but I’m intrigued to know how having all of the cables connected directly to your lap-based laptop could be more optimal than using a long cable UBS hub or dock which would allow you to connect/disconnect all of your peripherals via one USB-C connection.
One long cable hub or dock would free up 3 bays which can be customized to your specific occasional use needs (within the constraints of ports offered in the yet to be launched marketplace).
No judgement. You have a situation optimized for you. I agree with others that your use case is likely an edge case.
Relative to the purchasing market? I don’t think so and I think you know that too.
Remember the initial release from Framework is to target the widest audience possible. The irony here is that by bashing Framework for what their first release doesn’t have is shooting the only means by which your dream laptop might happen. The industry as a whole is not interested in modular repairable laptops.
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I can’t wait to get my Framework in hand and start assembling it. Its time to retire the 2015 MacBook pro and exchangeable ports / upgrade ability played into my buying decision. I’ve grown used to having to work with a limited amount of ports and endless dongles and I suspect that I’ll be much happier with configurable ports - especially once I can order additional components for occasional use cases.
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I’ll just say that yeah, as someone who owns a T430, I vastly prefer ultraportables. I personally hate the added weight, dongles, and having a billion cables coming out of my laptop. The thought of using my laptop in my lap with a bunch of cables, oof. USB-C is nice because if I absolutely need a bunch of connectivity I can take a hub, but Frameworks modularity let’s me have 90% of what I need. Hoping Framework or an intrepid third party makes a hub to house spare and oversized modules for those few outlying cases.
Laptop market has shifted. Wifi and Bluetooth have have improved dramatically in the last 10 years, both in terms of coverage and speeds. If I need to do anything intensive I remote into my desktop workstation. I would like to see a WWAN expansion eventually if possible, but probably can make do with a mobile hotspot.
I get mobile workstations are still a use case for some people, but pretty niche. I agree with the decision to focus on broader market appeal initially.
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No one’s bashing Framework. I love this thing. I bought one and I would buy another immediately if I lost or broke it and I won’t make a video saying it sucks. I did my part helping Framework succeed.
And all the OP’s points are valid.
Both things can be true at the same time. Don’t read things so simplistically.
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Yeah bashing is the wrong wording for sure. Asking for more niche things is NOT bashing framework. I’m merely saying that because something is important to you does not make it prevalent or popular.
I love my Framework as well, and I really look forward to seeing more from Framework!
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Maybe I haven’t seen such docks (the one I use with my work laptop has a pretty short cable that is not suitable for sitting somewhere off to the side with the actual computer on my lap), but even so, that would at best be one less wire… and much less convenient, because now if I want to plug something in, I have to reach for a second box that isn’t conveniently right on my lap. And I have to find somewhere to put the dock.
The mouse really ought to plug right into the laptop, or at least right by it.
Really, the only way I could see that working would be to have the laptop sitting on a tray that the dock also sits on, effectively turning laptop plus dock into one “unit”. Please, just give me double-height expansion cards. Six or more ports (I think a taller card could fit up to three ports, turned vertically?) is probably sufficient. Four is in “what do I have to do without?” territory.
As someone else said:
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