Feature Request Megathread

I Second the Modern standby feature. I want actual S1, S2, S3 Sleep states! Not the garbage “modern” standby!

I have just bought a second hand X280, after avoiding Thinkpads for many decades because of price to performance.

I think this would be expensive, but with the the new BIOS firmware, can I request for something similar to Thinkpad’s UEFI diagnostic menu?

I kinda missed built in BIOS diagnostics. I use boot drives for stuff like memtest on my desktop when troubleshooting.

1 Like

As Framework adds upgrades, you should add ways of reusing that part. Obviously you guys already demoed a battery enclosure, but a display enclosure to make your old one into an external display would be great, especially if you guys make a touch screen. I wouldn’t want to upgrade my screen if it meant wasting a perfectly good piece of tech. Also an enclosure for the track pad and keyboard might be a good idea, maybe even the camera.

1 Like

Hi and welcome to the forum.

There are enclosures designs for

  • the main board to be used as a stand alone computer
  • and one for the battery.

The use of the word ‘should’ always presents a problem for me as if the person using the word wants another to be responsible for their wants.

I can’t imagine it would be profitable to ‘add ways of reusing’ the parts you mention, however if you search the internet and this forum you may find way to do exactly that.

This seems to focus on the screen. You do not have to waste it. If it usable you could find a way re-use, as I said, see what others have done.

You also have an option to sell it to another user. This has already been discussed where users are/want to swap the glossy screen for the matt screen and there are people who want the glossy one.

When you say waste, you may mean financially and not electronically, in which case you may not be happy to give it away and you want to have a housing for it.

But if it’s a financial issue wouldn’t this apply to all the parts you want to upgrade.

I.e. if you are not prepared to sell at a loss or give the parts away is rehousing going to be enough of a satisfaction for you.

I’m sure any parts left over can be offered free to avoid ‘electronic’ waste.

Still despite my sceptical view on suggesting Framework facilitate such, I still think there are options for the parts as you clearly want.

Hopefully if it becomes an option to upgrade to a touch screen you will find a use or to pass the screen you don’t want to someone else.

I would have liked a touch screen but will probably never upgrade now I am used to using only the input panel. So I forsee the only time I would upgrade would be if my screen breaks.

I consider any upgrade as a cost both financially and electronically, and any way to mitigate makes sense, and as you say having easy access to enclosures does make it all seem a little more attractive.

So I wonder what more positive responses you get?

All the best

Hey! New here.

Been eyeing FW laptops for a while, really like the concept. There’s one thing that’s making me hesitate on buying a Framework 13 – the lack of ports. I appreciate the customisation, however i think 4 ports is really too less. My current HP laptop for example has 2x USB A, 1x Type C, 1x HDMI, 1x LAN, 1x SIM card, 1x headphone jack and a couple of enterprise focused slots. My previous Dell also had 3x USB, a VGA port, headphone and mic jacks, LAN, and SD card slot. So I would like to suggest the following changes to the current 4 expansion ports available on the framework 13:

  1. Provide 2x USB-A ports instead of 1x on each USB-A expansion card. This will at least increase the density of ports. So e.g. 2x USB-C + 1x double USB-A card + HDMI could be viable for many people.
  2. Hardwire one USB-C on each side of the laptop, and then leave two more slots on each side for customization.

I think both steps together will significantly improve the situation (but there are probably other ways too). Otherwise at the moment it feels like I’m either going to carry around a lot of expansion cards, or just end up with 2-4x USB-C ports and carry around a multi-port hub.

Currently in my daily usage I might use 3x USB-A, 1x USB-C, 1x HDMI and 1x power connector simultaneously. Sometimes I may also want to read an SD card or connect to ethernet. So I’d want at least 6-8 ports on my laptop, and having to switch them out frequently would be a bit annoying.

1 Like

This has been suggested quite a few times and there’s actually a dedicated thread for it. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to preserve full functionality given the space restraints of an expansion card.

This would cause a couple issues:

  • The expansion cards don’t just serve to allow you to add functionality, they also protect the USB-C ports built into the mainboard. They sort of act as a sacrificial part so you can replace the expansion card if the port gets damaged rather than damage the mainboard.
  • It would require a chassis and board redesign, going against Framework’s principle of upgradability.

Take a look at the Framework Laptop 16! It was recently announced and will be launching sometime soon featuring 6x expansion card slots.

1 Like

Not to mention that the current 13" Framework laptops use up all of their PCIe lanes to allow all four ports to be thunderbolt 4, plus give lanes to the storage, so there aren’t any left for more ports.

+1 preferably a colored one…

I would like a fanless option that just has a lower running frequency or throttles it when it gets to hot.

I agree with other posts that having multiple ports or features on an expansion card would be nice; the sd card reader could add a usb port or add 2 usb a connectors per card.

256GB of RAM just as AMD 7040 CPU can support it.

It likely supports more once bigger ram modules come out. The max ram ratings of cpus are often based on currently available stuff, like the 6600u has a max rating of 32gb but does 64 just fine, it’s just that 32gb sodimms were not available when it came out.

I’m honestly quite confused by this practice, in theory 64-bit addressing allows for far more than the maximum memory supported on the manufacturers website.
Simply basing it upon the currently available DIMMs seems like such a horrible practice.
My confusion is immeasurable!!

There is a bit more to it than the cpu having enough address space. Memory controllers are freaking weird.

Memory is supposed to be cheap so it is very dumb and all of the complexity is in the memory controller on the cpu, if that has limitations there isn’t really much the memory can do.

1 Like

I think it has something to do with legal…

You can’t say something is ‘supported’ without having it being tested with first. ‘Supported’ can’t be theoretical. Also, from a product perspective, you also can’t claim that it’s ‘supported’ by a one-off engineering sample (e.g. self-made memory module), it has to be tested with available components from the consumer / target market audience perspective of what’s available to them.

2 Likes

I can kinda see both sides to that, for one if you say it supports xGB ram someone may think that it is possible right now and then complain.

There is also the point that they can’t test with more (apart from the pre production stuff they may have access to) and there may be gremlins in the memory controller that actually only show up with bigger modules so it’s also a bit of a cover your ass move.

Honestly I’d prefer if they’d rate the actual theoretical maximums but by the time I need more than 256GB of memory in my laptop the cpu will be quite outdated XD.

Yesterday I tried to run LLama30B model on my laptop and it used 20GB of RAM just to run it.
I couldn’t even try the 2x larger version because I only have 32GB at this moment.
Are you really sure that we’re not approaching the limits? We’re already here and by limiting RAM to 64GB laptops are already behind.

Personally I’d never buy FW16 if maximum RAM wouldn’t be more than 64GB because my current laptop already has this same limit.
But this is alleviated by the fact that motherboards would be somewhat swappable. So at least that means that down the line one could upgrade to a motherboard that would have design that supports CPU’s theoretical limit.

My dude we are talking about 256 not 64 and how that is probably not actually the maximum it’s capable of. 64 would indeed be a bit low. Who’s limiting ram to 64gb?

FW13 is limited to this number from what I’ve read in this forum and in the purchase page.

1 Like

Honestly, why are you doing that…
Running it in Software sucks already (PyTorch still doesn’t support Intel graphics), if you’re serious about AI, then use an eGPU connected to a card actually meant to run these things!!
Spending money on more RAM will be pointless for you.

Riight, kinda forgot the intel one exists there XD.

Pro: you can reuse the ddr4 you have, con: it’s ddr4