One subject our community has been tackling has been ethernet as seen in one, and two, but a height of roughly 6mm of workspace limits the options for PCB and parts.
Also, I find the current expansion card sizes a bit too constraining. Will (or would) there be a standard or reference design/guidelines for larger expansion cards in the future? Eg: double height or dual slot cards?
Hello! Batch 6 DIY owner here. I’m sure we won’t have a shortage of technical questions from the community, but I want to get to know the people behind Framework a little better.
To Anne Reed - What were the inspirations and decisions behind the visual language of the Framework brand? What was it like working with the team and what role did you play in designing the laptop itself?
To Bee Johnston - At present, the community is rich with technically-inclined and technologically-savvy members who are deeply passionate about their projects. What steps can the Community take to become more welcoming and inclusive of beginners and newcomers?
To Nirav Patel - If Framework were to fail, how and why?
Working in software development (Test engineer), I see it fairly often that a project gets planned, execution starts, and somewhere down the line we inevitably run into a problem that could have been easily solved if we had just done things a little bit different in the beginning. But now it’s a big pain.
Having been in the market for a while now, and expanded to a couple new territories: has there been similar difficulties where you wish you’d have known about X or done Y before? My personal bias is that this might be even worse for a hardware product than software.
The community has found a few quality control issues, for example there seems to be a relatively large variability in the screen hinge stiffness, the touch pad hinge and a few (minor) problems with the used chips, especially with replacement chips because of the chip shortage. Can you comment on how severe/widespread do you think these issues are compared to eg. laptops from other companies and if/how you’d improve these problems in the future revisions?
Another question is modularity/upgradeability vs. repairability. Of course these go hand-in-hand, but which is more important to you? Let’s assume you could make a future laptop revision that would be even more robust and/or repairable, but would be incompatible with older revisions, would you do this? Or do you value upgradeability/compatibility more? (I personally don’t see many users upgrade things, especially non-tech-savvy future users if Framework becomes more widespread. But repairability seems very important.)
Also why is the left Ctrl key labeled (english) “Ctrl” in the German layout while the right key is (correctly) labeled “Strg”? Was this a conscious decision or a weird accident?
The vast majority of the things I’d want to ask would be forward-looking (e.g. OLED, VRR, fan control, ECC, socketable CPUs even if desktop sockets, AMD, open firmware, how you’ll tackle “black boxes” like Pluton especially from a Linux perspective, etc)…
…so I’ll instead take this opportunity to ask two more minor kind of derpy questions that other people have previously wondered about but hadn’t gotten an response, plus a third one that I myself have wondered but nobody else seemed willing to try:
Is there a particular reason that the Windows key on the keyboard is in fact a “Windows” key rather than something more OS-agnostic such as, say, the Framework logo itself?
I can’t quite recall the thread, but it’s been reported that I believe the inside clamshell portion of the shell with the keyboard and screen seems to not actually be exactly flat but are slightly curved, but in a consistent manner that suggests that it’s an intentional design rather than just the usual manufacturing tolerances. Is this in fact intentional design?
With the current screen being 60Hz, is this a case of it will not actually operate correctly at any other refresh rate (higher or lower) or is it a case of the manufacturer simply setting the panel EDID to 60Hz because “it’s not a gaming display” and custom resolutions / refresh rates would actually work without issue? (even if something minor like 50Hz or 75Hz)
EDIT: So I accidentally lied and thought up two more questions with regards to the m.2 slot(s) and SSD.
(that being said, it’s at least theoretically possible to make a sort of PCIe 4x m.2 2280 riser that fits two m.2 2230 slots allocated with 2 lanes each)
This should probably answer your first question:
I recently had some trouble installing a matte screen protector on my Framework, to the point where I would have loved to pay someone to do it for me. Since Framework probably won’t add a matte screen in the near future, my question becomes:
If you should offer screen protectors yourself as you said you considered, would you also be able to offer installing them?
That could be a huge relief for customers and another source of profit.
How did you decide the size of the expansion cards?
How goes the Thunderbolt 4 certification?
What do you think about Dell’s Concept Luna repairable laptop concept?
Hello!
What are your plans with the current framework laptop’s compatibility with new products?
e.g, if you made a bigger laptop, would you be able to buy some of the parts from that laptop, and use some of the parts of the previous laptop to avoid having to buy a completely new laptop?
That one is easy.
The NVME drives on the market currently are setup as 4 lane devices, not 2.
So it would need a lot of custom work to get half the performance the drives are capable of.
Since the live stream starts at 3:30am local, I’ll have to watch it later.
The main thing I’d like to ask is about distribution. How are you going expanding into other markets. (Personally, Australia is top of my interests.)
The other one would be are you planning a first party full size SD card reader.
Hope you all have a great stream.
That is easy to answer. A mechanical eject mechanism takes probably too much space inside the expansion slot, is expensive, and requires a specific design like an eject button and a spring mechanism. It was much more straightforward and cheaper to simply include a standard microSD slot.
A pinhole doesn’t make sense to me. Are you trying to use the microSD slot as permanent storage? If so, why? The intended usecase is obviously quickly reading the data from a compact camera, a raspberry pi, or similar devices. Storing the card inside the laptop doesn’t make much sense to me.
In my experience. Micro SD is rarely used as a removable media.
Also an eject system wouldn’t take up much space in the card, there’s already a lot more room in there than needed.
Hi team! I think framework is a really great laptop and I am interested in its future.
Framework has disproportionately attracted enthusiasts/Linux users who care about repairable, upgradable and open hardware. More mainstream customers care about CPU/GPU/ram/screen/keyboard quality per dollar by sticker price, on which competing brands operating at larger scales are able to outcompete framework. A challenge to overcome in having framework appeal to a wider audience will be convincing people that they should instead be evaluating the total cost of ownership, which will be better on framework laptops (longer lifespan by replacing/repairing/upgrading parts).
Do you agree with the above premise, especially the part regarding widening frameworks appeal to a more mainstream audience?
Thanks
Hi!!
Have you guys considered recycling old products consumers may not need anymore?
I think it could be economically viable depending on how much can be salvaged and profited. Hopefully, it does not cause a deficit that would otherwise not be possible.
I might suggest incentivizing the consumers to send Framework electronic products (for salvaging) in exchange for discounts when buying a new one.
(Win-win for both Framework and customers.)
I hope this would be viable! No more e-waste!!
How many units have you sold?
What involvement has Linus Sebastian had since his investment?
Is there anything about your future plans you can share, other than expanding availability to new countries?
What was the single greatest challenge with the hardware design?
What has been the most surprising thing you have seen people do with the Framework or its parts?
How did the actual public interest & sales since launch, compare to your projections pre launch?
Is there any feature you wanted to include but couldn’t, and if so, why not?
Can BIOS updates and driver validation be more detailed/open about what the team is working on?
Such as:
What’s currently being worked on
What we’d like to work on
What we’re not working on
The why behind each of these would be helpful and insightful.
I am curious about the design compromises made in product development for the battery size, plausibly one of the toughest topics for the framework laptop with some ultrabook competitors offering double the useful battery life.
In the enthusiast DIY community, I could see a few people sacrificing the bottom facing external speaker modules for a larger battery stretching the entire front of the laptop. Eliminating the visual thinning of the floor pan at the front corners in the style more like a macbook pro than air would increase the space for a battery substantially, but might reduce torsional rigidity. How many units would such an option for a compatible floor pan design and battery need to ship via the marketplace to make it feasible?
Speakers might even fit into the long screen hinge, in the style of a lenovo Yoga 930C. A foldable version would obviously be the dream.
Edit:
Reading this again, I seem to be conplaining, why your product doesn’t hit all the points on my personal wish list. Your team will have considered all the ideas that a member of the public like myself could come up on the spot, already.
I am actually and genuinely more interested into the thoughts and sweat that went into tackling the different design, engineering and production challenges. Youtube channels like munro live give actual industry insight that is usually unreachable for us normal people and from their hiring spree seems to have raised the profile of their company, too. I’d be curious, how much community input will be possible, when you update your product, considering the form factor will have to stay largely compatible.