Will this Chromebook finally get TB4 certification? How about our 11th and 12th gen laptops?
With tests coming from Google, this laptop is likely going to be the most polished version of the three. (e.g. power consumption at load and idle, USB over current protection trigger, suspend / wake handling…etc)
Money is a good motivator to getting things done [right]. And I guess Framework is seeing a lot of motivation from the Chromebook market.
@nrp, would the 1240p Chromebook still have the following TDPs or would that be capped to lower spec (by firmware or other mechanism)?
(Consumer laptop market have been filled with handicapped laptop models over the years for tier / pricing differentiation. e.g. a 12700H in one model does not perform the same as another 12700H model)
As someone who’s put in quite a bit of effort to de-Google my life, I have to admit this announcement initially made me cringe.
However, after giving it some thought I have warmed up to the news. Regardless of how I might feel about it, Chromebooks are here to stay as they are perfect for certain use cases and are likely going to continue getting better. The big win here is where a junky $200 Chromebook will probably see a year of use before hitting the landfill, this machine could potentially last five or ten years, or even more with proper maintenance and upgrades.
Not only does this directly curb senseless e-waste, but it also opens the door to more people learning to access, repair, and upgrade their devices instead of shucking them aside for something new off the shelf that is basically their same device but not broken yet.
So while this product does not interest me personally, I do think there is a real potential for good with this partnership. Well done Framework. *tips hat *
Well how would one help the other? If your getting help from Intel (probably not without strings) on hardware and software in the form of drivers and such how would switching to an open source alternative like coreboot require Google helping? Especially since this seems to be a new board tailored around support already existing for that particular hardware and chromebooks in general have very limited hardware support anyway. If they needed help with software then further stretching your resources supporting a, for now at least, one off product from the rest of your offerings seems counter-productive.
I too hope we at least get these two improvements out of this collab. I suspect this has more to do with trying to jump aboard the massive growth curve chromebooks saw during 2021. It may be too little too late though as sales plummeted 68% in Q4 2021 and continued declining in the first half of 2022. I respect the optimism though and hope to be proven wrong in this case.
While in theory that would be great I think the market for children asking for repair-friendly hardware over say an Apple product is even smaller than the already small market cap for $900+ chromebooks. Of the top 20 models sold on newegg (per their rankings) there is one in that price range and it’s number 20.
Google has a lot of devs working on that project. Basically all Chromebooks ship with Coreboot I think.
Not when they are learning things from the collaboration. Things that can at least be incorporated into new products if not backported to older models.
I suspect this part has less to do with pure money than it does on releasing a halo product. Most parents won’t spend $900 on a Chromebook or any laptop for that matter destined to a child (K-12). I wouldn’t. When it comes time to Google “Best Chromebook” what gets listed? Nobody cares about 2nd best. Framework doesn’t have much competition in this market segment, I’d guess this is just another way to get their name out there. I don’t know what Google had to do to secure Framework, but I bet it didn’t come cheap. FW has enough on their plate that I suspect convincing had to be done to make it worth doing for FW.
Seems like everyone has pretty well explored a lot of angles here that initially occurred to me. And so thoroughly in one day… Hot button topic I guess. The only thing worth duplicating, for me is: gimme coreboot plz
All and all, seems like a reasonable play. We can all see the pros and cons; the tradeoffs seems pretty worth it to me. Short of big G buying out FW entirely, I don’t really feel like there is much to worry about - and, personally, don’t really see that happening.
As someone that wants AMD for external display aspect ratio preservation reasons on Linux, could you spell out what you are seeing a bit more clearly? My initial impression was that there were headers or paragraphs beginning with A, M, and D but I’m not seeing anything like that…
You are welcome. I wish Framework’s success like many people on this forum. And I find updating the Framework’s Wikipedia page following Wikipedia’s rules is a good way for Framework’s success. I am sometimes motivated to update the Wikipedia page. And in the process of updating the Wikipedia page, I collect information sources like media articles first.
I’ve seen reports that Google is cancelling the Pixelbook line; there will be no future systems. Perhaps this is meant to fill the gap for people who are looking for a high end Chromebook. It’s not an expensive addition to Framework’s lineup (most of the parts are common with other Framework models) and they’ll get some press, so I think it’s a win for both Framework and Google.
Don’t want a Chromebook? The standard versions aren’t going anywhere, and you can run Windows or Linux on those.
Premium Chromebooks aren’t for everybody. They will always be niche products; most users in enterprises that adopt Chromebooks will be just fine with lower end models. But there are some people who will want them:
C-level executives at companies that adopt Chromebooks
Developers at those companies
Linux users and developers who will use the Chromebook primarily to run Linux applications
I was under the impression that Google is designing their custom silicon to follow in the footsteps of Apple, eventually with both phones and laptops, aka Chromebooks, using those chips (Google Tensor).
I have some thoughts about Google’s motivation to collaborate with Framework.
Google has grown by leveraging both public and private data. The data is the source of the company’s growth. When Framework grows, people open their hardware with the CAD file more, thriving user-driven ecosystem, there will be more data in this area.
This means Google can extend their boundary of business to the hardware world. Google sells their own hardware products now. But in the world where there are more user-and-company-driven open hardware ecosystems, it’s another level.
Ah that sucks. Perhaps they realise they are too far away from Apple (look at how good iPads are now, even the base models). Perhaps it will be revisited again if they can dial in for their Pixel phones, just like Apple making a switch from Intel.
Sorry, I don’t quite get your argument. What kind of data are they looking for that they can’t get currently?
To me, it seems there’s an obvious motivation for collaboration. From Google’s perspective, this (a) creates a flagship hardware product for their software product, (b) takes over the space the Pixelbook used to fill, and (c) can help get more people on their platform, funneling them into Google services, which serve the ad platform.
Not really directed at you, but I don’t really see how that data collection is very different than the telemetry Microsoft collects through Windows, since they are also in the ad business. You can see all the changes in W11 designed to funnel people into Bing services.
In my assumption or fantasy, Google wants the data of the CAD files (sources) for many hardware for Google’s long-term benefit. For example, Google currently can not get the CAD files of a Lenovo laptop, a Samsung display, a Sony headset, a Toyota car, or IKEA furniture. Because all of the CAD files (sources) are closed currently. But if people start to use open hardware sharing the CAD files publicly a little by little in their lives, Google (and other companies) can use the data.
According to the Alphabet’s finance reports, for example, the year 2022’s second quarter’s financial report is here. On page 2, “Revenues, Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) and number of employees” section. the revenue from the Google ad is around 80% of the total revenue of Alphabet.
Total revenue: 69,685 million USD
Google ad revenue: 56,288 million USD
56288 / 69685 = 0.807 => 81%
Of course, Google gets the revenue from the hardware itself. And I think it’s a little of the total revenue. I think Google’s services and products are frontend to make users use the backend services: Google search engine and Youtube that produce more revenues by the advertisement, and also to get user activity data for specific products and services. So, for Google’s short-term strategy, they just want to have a frontend service or product with high user activity and retention.
In terms of the user activity data from an OS, Windows, or ChromeOS, there is no difference. But I think Google has a stronger system to monetize user’s activity, Google Adwards for Google Search Engine, and a Youtube revenue program on Youtube (I am not familiar with Youtube). I am not familiar with Microsoft’s ad system on their search engine (Bing), and how much Microsoft depends on the revenue from the advertisement.
Google (and maybe Microsoft too)'s ad business is to create meaningful data for advertisers, then connect advertisers with users. The larger size of the data is more meaningful for advertisers. It’s not what many companies can do.
Back to the topic of why Google has benefits with product’s sources (CAD files), for example
Search engine to search specific parts of the CAD file. Google has a search engine for some categories, websites, images, scientific papers, and books. So, it’s a version of a CAD file.
Recommendation: Suggest generated CAD files for specific user inputs by machine learning.
Meaningful data: For example, a person who has trait A has a specific “hardware part” or “hardware” B. An advertiser wants to use the data for their advertisement.
Imagine Google’s offline store like Amazon’s 4-star store in the US. You go to the store. Then you say “OK. Google, I want a laptop”. And Google knows about you more than you. Google gives you the best laptop you want now, 3d-printing a generated new CAD file for you with some metal and plastic materials.
Chromebooks for me are meant to be almost disposable. You pay £250 and take it on holiday. If it gets trashed no worries. When it goes out of support after 5 years whatever, no worries.
This is way over specced. Why did Google hardly sell any of their mega top end Pixelbooks?
Lovely machines but overkill for what a Chromebook needs to be.
Many (most?) Googlers use Chromebooks at work, so a market of tens of thousands units at least for higher end machines and I suspect that’s a big part of the reason Google and Framework partnered. There are probably at least a few other corporate and educational deployments where some higher specced machines are needed (or desired), and also opens up more markets for future deployments (most companies wouldn’t even consider an enterprise ChromeOS deployment if only low-end machines were available for all employees).
The only other high end option, the HP Dragonfly Chromebook is pretty slick, but the Framework has a better processor and cooling, upgradable memory and storage, more flexible ports and is $1K-2K cheaper, and of course is easier to repair while basically matching almost all the Dragonfly’s other key specs.
