Canceling My Framework Laptop 12 Order

Framework Laptop 12
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Hey everyone, Just canceled my Batch 10 Framework Laptop 12 order.
After doing the math, I can’t justify this anymore. I calculated what it would cost to replace all the official parts. If you swapped out every single component, you’d pay nearly double what you originally spent (I mean the DIY edition).
Even being realistic and just replacing the motherboard, battery, and fans or so after 3-5 years, that’s still around $650 (I’m buying from Sweden where prices are kind of higher). For that money you can easily get a comparable traditional laptop, or something better at my original purchase price.
I was genuinely interested in Framework. I’m a DIY guy, love building and modifying stuff. But here’s what kills it, Framework has zero recycling program for old parts. None. Your replaced components just become expensive waste, you may even spend more money to pay someone to recycle it, which completely destroys my expectation.
I’m also pretty pessimistic about their future. Their market is Europe, North America, Australia and Taiwan. That’s already small. DIY enthusiasts within that market, people actually buying the framework, especially laptop 12, that’s a really tiny market. So with low shipping volumes, production costs will stay sky-high forever. I have zero faith in their supply chain getting better or cheaper (but maybe they build their own factory in the future, who knows). Yeah I know they’re doing enterprise stuff now, maybe that could be a life saver, but without parts recycling, this whole concept is still too expensive and not sustainable. If I bought this laptop, I’d maybe do one component refresh in 3-5 years and then quit, because what am I supposed to do with a pile of old parts that have zero(negative) value? At least with a regular laptop I can sell the whole thing secondhand. What’s left? Just liking the design concept, some emotional attachment, and the assembly experience. But how long does that last, especially with the emerging QC issues people are reporting now? So yeah, goodbye Framework. Call me when you figure out parts recycling.

btw, the last thing that killed me is the 4 hours or so battery life, I mean come on……

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Completely fine if it’s not for you. Only one thing I don’t get in your post. What makes you think you can’t sell the whole Framework laptop after a few years? I did exactly that with my FW13.

Personally I like the expansion card concept that allows me to always have the ports I need when visiting customers or when travelling private.

The main thing for me is official Linux support. With traditional laptops (especially the bleeding edge ones) it’s always a waiting game until all hardware is supported.

Then there is the thing with the bigger corporations. That don’t want us to own stuff anymore (repairability is only one aspect of that). Really prefer to pay Framework instead of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, etc.

Also cheaper hardware often can be cheaper because it’s subsidized. A ton of bloat and spyware.

And the official support and community here are great. Getting actual responses from humans that at least try to help. Much better than most vendors I dealt with in the past decades.

Not trying to convince you though. If there was a better battery, backlit keyboard, display, etc. I would happily get that myself too :slight_smile: So not all perfect for me either. Weighing all factors… it’s just that my scale clearly tips towards Framework.

Just thought I would share some aspects that are important to me that you maybe don’t care so much for. Maybe we’ll see you back one day. Happy to have you!

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This is the first time Tianhao_He has posted — let’s welcome them to our community!

Welcome!

So yeah, goodbye Framework.

Well, that was fast. Bye! :sweat_smile:

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I want to look into this example in particular and explain how Framework is good with this compared to other laptops.

You wouldn’t normally replace all three things at the same time, I think. You would first replace the battery when it wears out, then separately fans when they wear out. Then you’d get a motherboard as an upgrade.

Compare it to how it is for other laptops: when a battery goes bad in your Mac, you trash the whole laptop. When it goes bad in any other Windows laptop, you either buy a replacement on Aliexpress for a reasonable price but there’s a chance that the part is total garbage (half of the Dell batteries I got on Aliexpress/Amazon came at like 60% health after a month of usage, conveniently just out of the return period) or you pay way way more for a genuine part, which actually might not be genuine because there’s no way to get just the part from the manufacturer without paying for the human work of replacing it, so you again buy from third party.

So a different laptop basically becomes a desktop once the battery goes bad, way earlier than the useful life of the device. Same happens if you damage the laptop by accident, especially if you break the screen - any other laptop you just put into a trash bin, while Framework will let you get a screen replacement for a reasonable price reasonably quickly (Laptop 16’s screen is 300€, this is more than 200€ on Aliexpress for a similar unit, but to be able to repair it on a 2-3k€ laptop is honestly amazing). And while Framework has some premium on their parts, sure, it’s not as much as genuine parts for other laptops cost, and you’re 100% sure you’re getting a good part that fits your thing. (Whether they can stock all of the parts consistently for you to buy when you need them is an open question, though…)

Same for a motherboard. By itself, IMO, it’s pretty cheap for an upgrade. You pay less than half the price of the laptop but get all new guts in return. And you can sell old motherboard on used marketplace to someone who accidentally water damaged theirs and now they get to fix their laptop cheaply while you get to reuse your old parts, not even recycle.

But I agree, if you want to replace the whole guts of your laptop, it is expensive. 5070 + new top line mobo upgrade for Framework 16 is 2k€, which is the price of a new laptop. This doesn’t make sense to me, and so I’m not going to do that… but in a couple of years having an option to get a better graphics card OR a screaming new processor is pretty cool and isn’t too expensive… (Or get the prior upgrades used from other people for cheap when they are upgrading for even better value)

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That’s assuming it won’t refuse to boot without a battery present.

My surface for example, won’t boot if it doesn’t have a certain charge on it.
Once the battery is not charging anymore, or becomes a pillow, that device won’t be able to even act as a desktop.

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That I have never heard of… Even Macbooks don’t require a battery to work. I mean, I don’t know about every laptop, so I don’t doubt you’re right, but it’s news to me.

My dad’s got a 10+ year old laptop with a (kinda) dead battery and it works fine while I don’t unplug it. The same seems to be the case for my dad’s even older laptop, though I didn’t get to use it properly.

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I think older laptops are safe from this sin, specially the ones with removable batteries.

As for if it will work without a battery present for the surface go 3, while I haven’t opened to remove it physically, I can tell you it refuses to boot if the charge is low, even with the official adapter in. When it’s fully dead, I have to leave it at least 5 minutes on charge. So I’m not expecting it to outlive the battery sadly.

No big deal as I bought it refurbished and FW12 is the replacement anyway, but it’s still on it’s way to the e-waste pile sadly, while I could keep it running for some specific light work I do. I have another Surface Go that died, so I might be able to Frankenstein it a couple more years, MAYBE.

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in the bios you can disable the battery-test

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Thinking about it, I think you still might be right as the same thing occurs with the first laptop.

I think older laptops are safe from this sin, specially the ones with removable batteries.

That laptop is the most passively unrepairable (as in theoretically upgradable but practically not) thing in the world. It’s one of those Acer Aspire V Nitro BE, really elegant thing for a 17 incher in 18in shell, but no battery hatch. Accessing the components works via the top just like FW. But when I contemplated upgrading the memory, I saw that all of the 4(!) memory slots are on the bottom side of the mainboard, requiring a literal demontage of almost all components, even the optical drive.

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Yeah a lot of companies sell you cheap hardware in order to push you to buy expensive software later.

It’s a legitimate business strategy and it’s made me rethink my expectations for what a “reasonable” price is for hardware. Though I do think maybe framework marks parts up a bit much. I haven’t done the math though.

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No company sells spare parts really cheap. If you assemble a whole system of spare parts you always pay double the price or more. The difference is, most company’s don’t even give you the chance to change faulty parts in your devices. That’s not only for notebooks, it’s about all technical devices.

Nowadays it is nearly always cheaper the throw away and buy something totally new, that’s the way economy grew year by year. That’s the way waste around the world grew year by year… shipping our waste to other countries to pollute their countrys more and not ours…

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There is no such option in the Surface Go 3 bios, at least the version I have.

There’s a battery limit option, but that does something completely different (Limits the charge to 50%).

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I meant the FW12

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Ah yeah, I was actually defending FW12, that with FW is an option. And other devices are rendered unusable if the battery is not healthy.

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as others have said, full replacement of many major parts is not really the value proposition of framework. it’s the option to keep your framework chugging along despite life’s bumps in the road. spill your tea on the keyboard? replace the keyboard. under performing battery? swap it. oh, that usb-c port feels wiggly? replace it. cracked screen? no problem. and all of these fixes can be performed with a single tool or in the case of ports, just your fingers.

there is also, with framework, the option to purchase an os (windows) or bring your own to save money. one can choose to buy ram, nvme, and chargers from framework or bring your own. framework even offers official framework refurbished parts in the store for about half price. this is another nice way to save money on the purchase.

as for recycling, that really depends where in the world one lives. in the usa, recycling is with the individual states. the eu requires electronics recycling and allows manufacturers to either setup their own compliance scheme or join an existing collective scheme. i do not think a manufacturer can avoid this in the eu.

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Here in Germany any metal scrap yard will happily take any electronics/batteries you have for free and recycle them. They will actually pay you for bigger items like washing machines or a lot of led-acid batteries (form a car or UPS). I think, it’s very similar in Belgium and France. So in a major city you’re never too far away from a recycler.

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That’s so much nicer than in the US. Here, some regions (like mine) have free recycling of basic plastics, glass, aluminum, and steel, if you take them to the dump and sort them yourself. In other regions, one must pay high fees, typically $60–$120 per month, to be allowed to recycle a limited amount per week. Almost everywhere in the US, appliance and electronics recycling (of anything with a screen, battery, coolant, etc.) is quite expensive.

Here, the company my son works for sponsors free electronics and appliance recycling once or twice per year, for the whole community. People wait in line for literally hours to drop off items, because people don’t want to pollute. However, without this service, many would throw their items in the trash due to the prohibitive expense of recycling. The stuff we dropped off at their last recycling day would have cost me about $800 to safely dispose of otherwise. Yet, we wonder why so much ends up in our landfills.

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