If you could make only 1 change to the Framework Laptop, what would it be?

General Topics
24

I wish I knew how to reply to a comment in this forum, but obviously I don’t have that capability :frowning:

This reply would be to the post where someone suggested a dock instead of a dedicated USB C port on the chassis of the laptop. My thoughts on that comment are:

With the current config, I need to carry a simple charger and a usb expansion card for when I travel - using a dock adds one more item to carry around when I travel. Putting a USB C port directly on the chassis instead reduces the number of pieces of gear I carry when travelling!

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25

Honestly I do agree with you, I think a port for charging should always be included-everyone needs one

I can see why that’s not the case tho-perhaps someone needs all 4 ports in non-USB C modes temporarily

I also think it’s important to play devils advocate sometimes

Oh, to reply would be to just type @name to notify me directly

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27

I have edited the poll to reflect popular choices.

28

I get what you’re doing, but I’m not sure the pill results will be as useful now since most people won’t revisit and vote again. My guess is now we’ll see new options overrepresented and old preferences underrepresented.

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29

I found the native 2256x1504 a bit too small too. So I set up my .xsession to do

xrandr --newmode 1920x1280  206.25  1920 2056 2256 2592  1280 1283 1293 1327 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode eDP-1 1920x1280
xrandr --output eDP-1 --primary --mode 1920x1280 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal

Seems to work fine, I haven’t noticed any problems.

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30

My change would be to offer a redesigned input cover. Bring back home and end keys, and take some inspiration from Thinkpads to have larger arrows with keys for page up and page down (mockup). And add physical buttons to the trackpad. Above or below (or even to the side maybe?) doesn’t matter to me, but it definitely needs to include a middle button. And while I’m at it, give me a led on the mute/F1 key to indicate muted status.

Personally I don’t care about a trackpoint, but throw that in too if it gets enough people wanting to buy it that the redesigned cover is economically feasible.

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31

Just note with that setup you’re just using hardware fractional scaling instead of software scaling, since you’re using a resolution that isn’t a multiple of the native display resolution and the display hardware has to upscale accordingly.

In the end you still end up with similar issues of blurriness and other visual artifacts.

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32

I haven’t noticed blurriness, so it doesn’t seem to be particularly significant. On the plus side, doing it this way avoids the incompatibilities in various toolkits and other software I more often see people complaining about when they complain about “fractional scaling issues” in Linux.

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33

360° hinges (+touchscreen) as 2-in-1 laptop

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34

Ortholinear fully programmable keyboard, similar to crkbd or planck.

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35

I surprised myself when thinking about this: the keyboard. Although I’m by no means upset about it, but I find most often that my fingers want to go to a pg up/pg dn/home/end key combo instead of using two hands to function-key it.

Other than that, I think this thing is nearly perfect for it’s size.

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36

+1 on resolution issues… My eyesight has gotten worse and its hard to make out the screen at its highest res. Scaling has its own issues in ubuntu

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37

I chose “something else”, although “touch screen” would solve my one big problem.

I have a really really hard time with touchpads under a keyboard; I’m constantly bumping them while typing and doing awful things to my work: usually just moving the cursor in the paragraph I’m typing, but sometimes selecting text (that the next keystroke overwrites) or clicking buttons (like “close window” or “undo”).

(I’m mostly a Linux user, but I’ve had similar problems when I’ve had to use Mac or Windows laptops with touchpads.)

I normally use a mouse, and then it’s safe to turn off the touchpad, but I still want to have some way to use a mouse pointer if my wireless mouse battery dies, if I forget to pack it, etc.

My workaround on the touchscreen Thinkpad I’ve used until now was to have an large labelled launcher in the always-visible panel that opens the “Mouse and Trackpad” preferences that let me turn on or off particular pointing devices. So I can turn off the touchpad when I have a mouse available, but if I don’t for some reason and I need to turn the touchpad back on, I can touch the launcher to open the pointer preferences, and touch the toggle to turn the touchpad back on, neither of which requires much precision.

I also have a GPD Pocket 2 itsy bitsy micro-laptop, which is too small to have a touchpad and instead has a little optical trackpad above the top-right corner of the keyboard which you use kind of like a trackball. I love it! (There are also physical left- and right-click buttons above the keyboard on the left.) So that’s an example of a compact input device that works well for me.

(Unlike a lot of your customers, I’ve never been able to use Thinkpad touchpoints; I find they require so much force to move that I can’t be precise with them.)

So I’d love a Framework with a touchscreen, but any alternative pointing device that I could use that would be guaranteed not to register spurious touches while I was typing, or a quick and easy hardware means of turning on and off the touchpad, would be great too, and probably cheaper (in quantity) than a touchscreen.

I would utterly love a full-sized laptop that put the touchpad above the keyboard! (But I’m guessing a drop-in input cover like that wouldn’t be possible since the height of the touchpad area has to fit with the battery, and the height of the keyboard area has to fit with the motherboard. Also, taking all the keyboard layouts you support and multiplying by 2 would be a lot.)

I just got my Framework a couple days ago, and the interim workaround I’m using is assigning the Framework-logo/F12 key to toggle the touchpad on or off. (XF86 seems to think that’s the “Audio media” key, but it doesn’t do anything by default in Xubuntu.)

(One thing a touchscreen would do that an optical trackpad, a touchpad that was above the keyboard, or a quick hardware way of toggling the touchpad on and off wouldn’t, would be to let me easily use handwriting input, e.g., for non-alphabetic scripts in Google Translate.)

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39

I chose “touch screen”, although what I’d really like is more in the realm of “something else”.

What I really want is a laptop/tablet hybrid, sort of like the Surface Book or Galaxy Book 360, that works with a stylus as well. Not a basic stylus, but a fully featured one in the realm of the Apple Pencil or S-pen.

It’s very niche, I know, but any laptop I get from here on out is probably going to be along those lines.

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40

More keys. I’d add Home End PageUp PageDown and the menu key. Cursor block would be full size. I’d maybe also add a 7th row above with all special keys.

Actually I will not buy the Framework because of this.

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41

I’m making the change I would like to see, and hopefully sometime in the near future I can reveal it to all. I can’t wait!!!

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42

I would also rate for touchscreen with high dpi screen (3000x2000 for the 13" and 3840x2400 for the 16") with stylus support with full 4096 pressure support. So like Surface devices, HP Spectre and so on.

Btw: Lowering resolution for better scaling on linux is a joke. If an OS can’t handle scaling, it’s not the problem of the Laptop. Then you should maybe use another OS/distribution. Actually quite weak for an OS, when it even can’t handle such a basic thing like scaling. So at least I personally would not use such an OS.

How is that very niche? 2-in-1 Laptops like the surface pro and others are very often used in university. It’s like the most used “special” feature ever.

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43

I would like framework to focus a little on audio quality. I have yet to see a PC Laptop with Macbook level of audio quality. It’s a small nitpick but it’s always been on my wish list.

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44

Better battery life all the way. I can already set the charge-limit of the battery as I please via the BIOS, so battery life itself is all that’s left.

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45

Tougher and thicker. I can handle an extra 200-300 grams. I’m not a marmoset.

I do not feel I can take the Framework out on my daily work. On knock and…gone I feel. The hinges and screen flex don’t help either.

Hence why I bought another refurb Dell banger for out on the road. Kind of made the Framework superflous now. Had it 18 months and if it was a car it would have 3000 miles on the clock.

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