We have a few big announcements to share today, but first, a recap of the pre-order campaign. It’s been just a month since we launched Framework Laptop pre-orders, and we’ve been amazed by the incredible response and interest. Batch 1 is sold out for the Base and Performance versions, and there are just a few Professional units left available shipping in July. We’ve opened up Batch 2 pre-orders shipping in August, with only a fully refundable $100 deposit due today. We’ve been busy staging material and preparing our manufacturing line for the mass production ramp, and we’re looking forward to building your laptop soon.
A core part of the Framework design philosophy is the idea that products should be deeply customizable to meet your needs, so we’ve built the Framework Laptop to be modifiable in ways no other notebook can be. The Expansion Card system is a perfect example of that. You can switch ports and add functionality to your Framework Laptop at any time by swapping out any of the four cards. We’ve developed a range of Expansion Cards ourselves, but the real magic of this modularity comes from opening card development to the world. We’re happy to announce the launch of the Expansion Card Developer Program to enable that. We’ve released documentation, CAD templates, and reference designs for Expansion Cards, all under open source licenses to make it easy for both hardware companies and individual makers to create new card designs. This is all downloadable today from our GitHub repository.
$100K in Grants, Discounts, and Hardware
To make it even easier to go from great idea to prototype to production, we’re funding $100,000 of grants, discounts, and hardware over the next year for Expansion Card developers to kick off the ecosystem. Developers who have a design ready for prototyping can reach out to us to apply for a grant to fund manufacturing of a batch and optionally hardware to use for testing. For prototypes that look especially promising, we’ll work with the developer to create a product page in the Framework Marketplace to capture interest and later even help fund mass production. We can’t wait to see the fantastic cards that come out of the creativity of the community to make the Framework Laptop even better.
Pre-Orders Now Available in Canada
Finally, Framework Laptop pre-orders are now open in Canada, starting at CAD $1,299 for the Base configuration with only a fully refundable CAD $100 deposit due today. The shipping dates are the same as for the US, with Batch 2 shipping in August and a limited quantity of Batch 1 Professional systems still available for July shipment. We’ll continue to add additional countries later this year. We can’t wait to get a Framework Laptop out to you!
I’m no expert but I think its to do with how taxes work in Canada, you’ll notice that almost everything is more expensive in Canada when compared to the US prices. I think it has something to do with the VAT they have but I’m not 100% sure on that one.
We don’t really have a VAT, at least not in the EU sense. There is a federal sales tax (the GST 5%) and various provinces (but not all) have a provincial sales tax (ie in BC it’s 7%). A little bit confusing is the fact that some provinces have combined the two into something called the HST (h is for harmonized).
Pricing is generally listed as pre-tax, so I expect to be charged tax on this CAD price. I chocked it up to a conservative estimation of future exchange rates since it’s been, until quite recently, not quite as good for Canadians as it is today.
For me since I am only 20-30 minutes from the border and my timeline is a bit longer, I might order and have it shipped to a company in the US (that does this kind of thing) and pick it up.
It needs to be declared returning to Canada and taxes are due, but may not need to pay (who knows why they might or might not require it though possible based on value of the goods - so I expect to pay) but since the exchange rate is currently favourable, I might just come out ahead (but it’s close either way, ~1700 CAD for the configuration I was looking at). Of course the border needs to be open
I would imagine its just as simple as setting the boot device in the bios or entering a one time boot menu just like booting from a USB on any other computer.
I am still unable to select anything but United States at checkout, the box is greyed out but I live in Canada. I’m trying to get the DIY edition, is Canada only getting premades?
Hi budys, how are you doing? How about developing an expansion Card to amplify the keypad with a numeric expansion card? Don’t you think it would be a good idea? Personanally, I would use it a lot, because I use too much Excel files, and so, I need a numeric keypad.
I would LOVE to see a way to integrate a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD/SSD bay into an expansion card, even if some of the drive itself sticks out of the side of the laptop somewhat. Or at the very least include a SATA to USB-C adapter so no one would have to toss out their old drives. Allowing the integration into an expansion pack would DRAMATICALLY decrease the amount of e-waste produced by the large amount of people that still have HDD’s and/or SSD’s using the SATA interface. Most people also don’t have access to actually free drive cloning software and don’t want to spend even more money on cloning hardware that they’ll barely ever use again. If FRAMEWORK is able to do this, then they would allow users to continue using their current hard drives and dramatically decrease immediate e-waste.
