So… first thing’s first. For months the battery was apparently not available for individual purchase. Then for a brief period it was, but now it has again been unavailable for several weeks. This is the core reason I haven’t bought a frame.work laptop yet. At this point, if I buy this model at all, it will be with a second battery in the same order, just in case. Battery defects happen and a laptop isn’t much good without a still-strong battery. This would be less of a concern if support could at least provide an ETA, but they have not. So my purchase remains in limbo for now.
That said I want to echo some of the concerns I’ve seen others also have about the battery and add some ideas of my own. An externally-swappable model, ideally with some sort of adapter to allow charging batteries outside the laptop from whatever source is available, would be strongly preferable, as would one with a more standardized, less fragile connector. You could kill 2 birds with one stone by just using a female USB C, A or Micro B connector on the battery with the male on the motherboard - that would be a fantastic innovation. If that’s somehow too pricey, you could standardize a hotswappable external casing with the USB circuitry and have a replacable battery inside it. Options for greater capacity such as a way to latch a multi-battery-slot power pack onto the bottom of the unit (possibly with other expansion features as well - maybe a 4 Expansion Card Thunderbolt hub and a 2.5"/3.5" slot or two? You can put 2+ SSDs in each with adapters) would also be a wonderful improvement - even just in general having multiple hot-swappable batteries would be a great feature. Something where you can carry half a dozen batteries into the wild and charge them from a generator or portable solar panels outside the laptop without being tethered to them. Power banks are a partial solution but quite sub-optimal for plenty of reasons. I also see too many concerns about surprisingly fast battery drain and faster-than-advertised loss-of-capacity to rely on just one battery for which replacements aren’t consistently and readily available.
Also, while I’m here, I’d very much like to see more security-focused features available (though not necessarilly default) like the Librem line, such as Intel Management Engine kill, optional encryption and other key support, stronger Linux/VM/Type-1 Hypervisor support (I won’t be touching Windows 8-11 outside a VM and I suspect type-1 hypervisors may be the future of dealing with unreasonable, intrusive software with gross misconceptions of who owns the hardware it’s running on,) etc. Not nearly as important to me as a rock-solid, easy-to-quickly-replace battery though.
I very much like most of the other aspects of this laptop, it’s a shame it’s so marred by weakness in this one area. I hope frame.work will be able to greatly improve on it in the future so that I can feel more confident making a purchase.
I do believe it will, actually, that’s part of the point. You simply emulate or kill Pluton-related functions and/or emulate the OS API outright as things like Wine do, and can do better with the support of something like Xen. And you stick to hardware without Pluton or where it can be killed.
Microsoft Pluton is not yet deployed in silicon, e.g. the processors used in the current frame.work models do not have it, right? And I hope frame.work will continue to move towards customer control of hardware and e.g. IME disabling instead of moving to e.g. only selling Pluton-enabled processors. Even if Intel and AMD move entirely to them, we can always move to ARM architectures at the cost of a performance hit, which Xen supports.
And if I have to move entirely to Linux and programs that run on Wine/etc… so be it. I will not tolerate software tyranny, even if it means taking the performance hit of x64 instruction emulation on ARM. And I’d like to think frame.work will support people more and more in efforts like that as it’s a concept that dovetails heavily with right-to-repair and reducing ewaste. Microsoft’s forced obsolescence and bloat do far more harm than even moving to hardware emulation will. I’m quite determined to have a laptop I can take into the woods and run off portable solar for long periods if I feel like it. Technology should be liberating, not a mass of big-brand chains and manacles. I understand the concern and am very interested in collectively finding ways to circumvent or otherwise eliminate the problems Microsoft is creating for us.
pluton has the theoretical ability to block and/or kill the cpu to prevent ‘non approved’ software being run. Such as potentially linux or anything that tries to interfere with it. the design is for the cpu to be dependent on pluton to function.
pluton is currently deployed in the AMD mobile Ryzen 6000 line, and likely also in the desktop models. It will be in the upcoming generation of intels, and it is already in some ARM chips (primarily mediatek iirc)
POWER and RISC-V look to be thankfully free of this crap (though POWER10 has its own issues with blackboxes)
I would be surprised if Framework didn’t have a stock of batteries for warranty replacements, in fact I’d be surprised if they offered any parts for sale on the marketplace without holding a supply in reserve for warranty replacements too so they don’t sell out through the market place.
What is your actual concern here? That the battery will suddenly die and to avoid that you’ll need to keep a spare on your own shelf so you’re prepared?
Sounds like people have very good reasons to hard-boycott Pluton hardware like latest-gen AMD then. Thank you for your part in spreading awareness. I’m still a strong believer in ownership-supporting hypervisors software-emulating Pluton to circumvent its dangers.
I want to point out that the more entrenched hardware booby traps like this become, the more likely they are to be also used to enforce Apple-style restrictions on replacing parts and other Right-to-Repair and Real Ownership necessities. That cannot be tolerated. Hard-disabling them needs to be commonplace. Perhaps even hard-firewalling them so they can’t “phone home.” This could be accomplished by for example using a hardware firewall and only letting the Pluton processor access the internet through the firewall via Ethernet or a WiFi password that only goes through the firewall, so you can prevent it from ever being able to update to attack new versions of Linux, etc. Whatever it takes. I won’t waste money on hardware I can’t fully control and maintain. There is an interesting point here that it might be a good time to buy Framework motherboards in this respect while they’re still using non-Pluton CPUs - I just need that second battery for peace-of-mind. It’s also a strong argument against bothering making an AMD Framework laptop that would be infected with Pluton. I certainly would not buy one unless I can find strong assurance of being able to kill the intrusive Pluton featureset. Intel’s own Management Engine is bad enough - Microsoft’s Pluton is a straight-up deal-breaker if it can’t be neutered.
Framework staff, please take note. Features like support of Intel Management Engine kill will make me more likely to support your products. Anything with Pluton that cannot be disabled will be a hard pass, though - I will not buy Pluton-enabled products. It’s the wrong direction for the industry and I will never support it. I really want to see Framework become a strong right-to-repair-supporting competitor to Librem. Being mired long-term in hard-to-get batteries or processor-internal booby traps would be a huge impediment to that. Does Framework have a position on Pluton and especially disabling it yet? The more I look into it, the more I see it is a clear totalitarian enemy of Open Firmware, True Ownership, Right-to-Repair, me, Purism, and I hope also the entire Framework Team. Microsoft MUST NOT be allowed to gain total monopoly over computing, even if they continue to manipulate governments into effectively not enforcing monopoly laws.
More or less. I’ve had plenty of bad warranty experiences with other companies and Framework is new to me. I’m not depending on that, especially when I can’t get an ETA on public for-sale stock. The warranty is only 1 year and may or may not cover capacity loss I’d find unacceptable in practice.
With Microsoft, Intel and plenty of other companies doing what they’ve been increasingly doing for decades now, relying on any company to do the right thing on any but the most basic of business arrangements is… not something I’m big on anymore. Burned too many times. Apple especially has egregiously mangled the idea of warranty service in this industry being safe to fall back on, and Framework hasn’t been around long enough to earn a reputation to make them an exception… yet. I’d like to see them get to that point, but we’re not there yet.
What good is warranty service if the battery stops holding enough of a charge for my purposes when I’m 50 miles from the nearest city? Less than having a second battery with me that I can put in on-the-spot with just the screwdriver the laptop comes with. I’m not a fan of overcrowding or big cities.
I have a sense of humor as well as a keen interest in ensuring my hardware keeps working for me without any likely extended downtime or external interference. And I’d like to make a frame.work my flagship laptop if they end up offering the right conditions - which with the current model is basically just being able to buy a second battery on the free shipping with the laptop, just to be sure.
Speaking of which… anyone who’s bought an individual battery - does it ship in durable enough internal packaging to throw it in a backpack with the laptop+screwdriver+some portable solar panels and take it hiking in very rough terrain without damaging it? That something like that level of in-the-field repair should be practical is a key part of frame.work’s appeal to me. Try that with a modern Chromebook or Macbook, or even some System76s… ha! Captive screws? Low number of screws? Same type? Yes please!
Maybe consider an external battery pack as an alternative for this specific case?
I know it again is something you’d have to plug in but it would be alot less hassle compared to open the laptop in the middle of the wild and you wouldn’t the special casing to protect everything since you can already take a durable “outdoor” battery pack.
Also, are those portable solar panels strong enough to make a significant difference?
Last time I checked on them, they were only usefull if you got plenty of time on your hand…
The battery is currently available in the Framework Marketplace and we should be able to continue to get consistent supply. Framework | Battery
The bottleneck was actually the logistics path of shipping a large quantity of battery packs across the Pacific Ocean, which has stringent regulations that aren’t applied to other types of shipments.
Just a quick note about long-term battery longevity - BIOS version 3.07 includes a user-configurable battery charge limit.
And about Pluton and future AMD processors, all hope might not quite be lost if you’re OK with a lower-end model as there’s persistent rumors of an enhanced-12nm 4core Zen3+RDNA2 budget-oriented chip codenamed “Monet” launching later this year, my guess as a new Athlon. The idea here is that Pluton was introduced with Zen3+, so this budget chip being vanilla Zen3 non-plus theoretically may lack Pluton just like all other existing Zen3 non-plus processors.
One of the points made was around the availability of parts…when you need them. With the Batch 1 11th Gen Framework laptop coming to the end of the 1-year warranty, parts availability will now become a requirement for those units should they need any parts from the marketplace.
As of this moment, the battery is still not in stock in the Framework marketplace.
Well since you grave-dug it, I might as well update a couple of things regarding my post above.
#1. Monet seems to have turned into Mendocino which is a budget-oriented chip with four Zen2 cores and two RDNA2 compute units on 6nm.
#2. Desktop Zen4 lacks integrated USB4 into the SOC itself and it’s unknown whether it or not it has Pluton; these are key points because Zen3+, which obviously has Pluton, also has USB4 integrated into the SOC itself, so it’s extremely possible that Pluton could actually be missing from at least desktop Zen4 (and, let’s be honest - marketing usually likes to tout these sorts of “security features” that they have over their competition, and are also usually silent when such a thing is not present, e.g. you didn’t see Intel touting how they didn’t have Pluton - they just straight-up didn’t speak of it)
Furthermore, since desktop Zen4 chiplets are the same ones used in Epyc, I would not be surprised if integrated Pluton into the server platform is something that make little sense considering how many servers run Linux-based stuff - heck, it was discovered that you even have to disable a BIOS setting just to boot Linux on a Ryzen 6000 laptop (a setting that’s MS actually requires to be enabled by default; more info here: Booting Linux On A Modern AMD Ryzen 6000 Series Laptop / ThinkPad X13 Gen3 - Phoronix)
It’s also worth mentioning that a lot of coreboot development on Ryzen mobile processors is done by Google for use in chromebooks, and Google already has their own security implementation “Google TPM” that, well, takes advantage of TPM 2.0 instead. I wouldn’t exactly think that Google would want a competitor’s (Microsoft’s) security implementation to be present at all, and the Chromebook-specific versions of Ryzen actually get their own SKUs as well. Furthermore, at least when I made my last post, Google’s coreboot development actually skipped Ryzen 6000 and was only developing for Ryzen 5000 and 7000; I’m not sure if this is still true but it was interesting nevertheless.
Lastly, there’s also the Valve angle where, much like Google, I would expect them to also not exactly want Microsoft’s “security solution” to be present on any future APU used in any sort of future Steam Deck-like device put out by Valve considering how a large point of what they’re trying to do is break away from Microsoft’s ecosystem.
I remember reading the AMD marketing spiel about pluton (greatest thing ever, of course) some time ago, I don’t recall the exact wording but the language used gave me a distinct impression that epyc may well not have it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if enterprise-grade processors have Pluton, if only because the big sell with Pluton is providing hardware-based root of trust with strong cryptography, which gives high assurance that anything running on the system is signed and valid.
I built a Framework using exclusively Marketplace parts in July and still haven’t seen a Battery pop up after checking several times almost every day since (which is how I got an Ethernet Adapter during that short window on September 12th).
My Batch 1 (received August 2021) is now almost 15% wear with the charge limited in BIOS.
I think it is ridiculous that replacement batteries are still not available in the Marketplace. I signed up for notifications maybe 9-12 months ago - I don’t remember when exactly and none has been available in all that time. They must be making thousands of batteries. Surely some could be put aside for sale in the Marketplace?
I asked Support last month when they would be available and all I got was ‘Unfortunately due to several factors we are not able to provide a solid timeline on when we will be able to have it released on the Marketplace’.
My guess is that they haven’t figured out shipping regulations for bare batteries or something, but FWIW, when I searched for the SKU online (FRANBBAT01), I found a few places that sell replacements:
I must have missed your post when it first came out. I am surprised that the battery was available in March as I registered (using two different emails) to be notified some time last year and never received a notification. There has certainly not been a consistent supply and Support last month gave no indication of when I might be able to buy one.
I know transport of batteries alone is significantly more complicated than when in products but surely this should have been capable of being resolved a long time ago. As I have said elsewhere, the computer has been out since July last year - that’s 15 months!
Obviously not having spare batteries on Marketplace is completely off-the-mark for a company touting itself as focused on repairability. Like @Anubis says, if Framework didn’t sell/send me a replacement expedited if I ever had a problem I would be extremely upset. Hopefully service parts thru Support are different than general Marketplace … although I hope that isn’t naive hope.
If my laptop uptime was critical (it isn’t, it’s occasional use personal, not my daily driver which is my work-supplied laptop) I would take the approach suggested by @Hendrik_Warnecke and get an external USB-C PD powerbank – readily available with up to 60W. Perhaps even one that supports 120V/100W. Of course one of those wouldn’t likely be repairable (not from Framework!) but still seems to be more likely to have long-term-use than just buying a spare battery that sits around hoping to be used some day.
But it’s really disappointing that you’d need to do that … being able to get a battery from Marketplace next day is really why I bought the Framework in the 1st place.
They’re back to being out-of-stock … hopefully that’s a problem that gets resolved soon.
Actually, now that I think about it … if those batteries suggested by @lhl are compatible I would almost expect FW to endorse them and link to them whenever they were out of stock in the Marketplace. No offence lhl but I’d be hesitant to hook up a replacement battery based on your recommendation but would certainly buy them if they were recommended by FW.
