There’s a limit to what’s practical, and profitable.
fr I bought the top cover sticker but refuse to buy the premium kit unless they give customization options or the option to buy certain parts separately. Otherwise, that’s literally so pointless to have no option to buy expansion modules stickers when one of the best features is being able to swap them out
that’s true. I guess it just tastes extra bitter, when we used to have such great flexibility with their skins and then they took it away.
Also I have absolutely no idea of the logistics of a skin warehouse, but it just seems to me, that when grabbing some bags out of bins it doesn’t really matter if the skins in those bags all have the same colour scheme. Because surely they don’t cut-to-order. They must have hundreds of each device and colour variant lying around
I get your point, however the reality is the cost to process an order is fixed. It’s the same for postage stamp sized expansion module skin as for the 16" laptop.
They may well keep some stock of popular items, I’d expect the X-Ray skins to be printed/cut to order.
The modular laptop concept doesn’t fit Dbrand’s business model at the moment. Pick’n’Mix selections are likely uneconomic due to being labour intensive, and requiring a bunch of custom website programming.
To sum it up: dbrand is expensive and inflexible and should be avoided, if you want a skin tailored for your Framework Laptop 16. You can get enough raw skin to cover two of them, if you tailor it by yourself, for as little as $9.
Yeah, that’s such a shame. They refuse to sell expansion card skins separately… I suppose you could cut out 4 (?) squares out of the touchpad skin part yourself if you don’t plan using it.
Anyone knows any alternative to dbrand?
How is that labour intensive? DBrand is entierly run by robots.
Took far longer for someone to say that than I expected.
Thanks for the research! Seems like there is currently no true valid alternative.
I already submitted a request for Expansion Card skins addon to dbrand, let’s hope they listen us!
I already did that and received a negative answer, even though I offered to pay extra, hence my search for alternatives. Sadly, it looks like there’s only one alternative left: DIY!
Or there is another way: spam the dbrand support with enough demands that they will think again about not doing it…
^^
That won’t work unless almost all of the upcoming FL16 skin buyers boycott them, until they give in. One of the arguments for rejection was high enough demand as-is. I already bought the skin for ~$10, just need to tailor it by myself. Dbrand’s prices are exorbitant, so I lost interest anyway.
I had really liked the Obsidian or the dark skin, but then noticed a plastic white thin rectangle in the top cover of FW16 which is apparently for antennas, and all the dark dbrand skins have a cutout for it which looks odd to me:
I ended up ordering the X-ray variant, because for now they are including both Light and Dark versions of it in the same order which means I will get 12 skins for all my expansion cards. I want to apply the dark one on the laptop, but perhaps the light top or bottom cover can be cut and applied around the palm area to hide the spacers gap.
I first noticed it in the sponsor segment of the LTT review and i just checked in dbrand’s instructions video:
It seems that all of the skins in those videos don’t have a cutout, even though it is shown in every preview for every skin in their customizer.
This could mean that only the metallic skins have a cutout (though they say it shouldn’t have any effect on wireless anyway) or none of the skins have a cutout and the preview hasn’t been fixed yet.
Maybe someone about to order could check that with their support, or someone who ordered a metallic skin could give us feedback.
The video only has FW13 as demonstration.
Ah should have seen that. Still in the LTT video, I am pretty sure it also has no cutout
I’ll try to check mine tonight, I have a metallic and it comes with a non-metallic backup in case you experience wireless issues
That’s not an FW16.
I got my dbrand skin. In case anyone is wondering, the antenna cutout is scored so you can remove it, but you could also leave it in if you don’t mind the seam (some patterns would probably hide it completely)
In the LTT review, he just didn’t follow any instructions, so that is probably why there is no visible cut out. It just wasn’t removed and you can’t see the seam on the video