Similarly here as before, I am very happy with my purchase of the framework, which I received about 2 weeks ago. Previously, I was rocking a Lenovo Thinkpad T440p, which I had purchased used, but the hardware basically is from over 6 years ago so there was definitely some speed up to be expected. Yet I was blown away by just how much faster and better the framework felt. The combination of framework + arch + gnome41 and how well the finger gestures work is stunning.
Putting the entire thing together was trivial, as only RAM and SSD need to be put in. It was really nice to get to see the guts of the laptop though, and I can’t express how much I loved being able to buy a laptop without having to pay for a fucking windows license.
The screen was a bit smaller than I expected, but the aspect ratio suits me as a developer very well, as vertical screen space reigns supreme. The screen in general is also very nice to use. Besides coding and compiling, I also played some light games. Basically if it’s anything 2d, you’ll be able to run it no problem. Stuff like Celeste, CrossCode, 1 step from eden run smooth as they can. For more graphically intense titles you’ll likely need to reduce the detail level a bit, the few I owned and that I tested I had to go to medium settings with. Which I’m perfectly happy with, given that I didn’t even expect to be able to do any gaming on it.
The keyboard feels perfect. On the Lenovo I had the occasional miss while typing. Here I often think I missed the key, only to find that I hit it perfectly. It’s ideal and honestly wowed me.
What I didn’t consider was that you don’t get fillers/placeholders if you do not buy expansion cards, which I had assumed I would. Which is fine, my bad, I’ll just have to wait until the marketplace in Europe opens to buy a few.
What I can’t quite get to work though is the fingerprint reader on gnome. I mean, it works, but whether it recognizes my fingerprint or not is very hit or miss, I’d say around 20% chance that it recognizes it correctly. I’m semi-certain though that’s either a software issue or a configuration issue which would be a problem on my end rather than the frameworks.
I’m slightly saddened that I seem to only get around 5:30-6:00 h of use out of the framework while under light usage (browsing + youtube), but it’s an “alright” amount of battery life to me overall. A drawback I happily pay for a product with a philosophy that I can support.
, I find that my fingers don’t slide easily on the surface, the framework is way more enjoyable to use for me.