You are right. I was the early batch guy and I regret it.
I also think this is an issue, though.
Pre-orders are often needed to collect capital to fund a new product launch, especially a new chassis. If word gets around that being the early batch person is so bad - arguably worse than early batches of other products from other companies - then it is absolutely possible the sales and popularity of future preorders will suffer.
As for me, with all the compound problems I’ve had (everything from the original post, hinge creaking, now a bent chassis that makes the screen wobble and indecent thermals that make the laptop very warm to the touch even while idling)…
…while I love the mission, after enough back and forth, I have concluded that I will not go with Framework again.
Mind you, I like having a repairable laptop. But, now that it is over a year old, throughout this year, I have had to repair it way more times than my previous laptop, a €500 Dell across 7 years, which has been treated far, far worse than the Framework. Bit it’s somehow in a better shape still.
FWIW, I will be shipping it to yet another rodeo in Service Center this week as well. To be fair I think this unit has so many problems that the only valid solution is a full replacement. I only hope the repair center folks will be of the same idea. And, judging by how this first year of ownership went, I would not count of that.
In conclusion: Nobody should get first gen products. But if nobody does, who will? I think the solution and the conclusion here can’t be “eh, just don’t buy first gen / early batches”. Au contraire, the experience for a early patrons should improve, as should the treatment. I’m not a product expert or anything but I do have some ideas already, like, make early batch preorder folks go through an expedited line in the Support process. It’s known these devices are more prone to defects, so I think it makes sense to expedite the replacement process there.
Reiterating the same thing I said in a post in the community a year ago: either you improve the QA, or you improve the customer support experience, or you significantly decrease the price. The third is not feasible because the profit margin is low. You have to decide whether to put more resources on the QA process, or improving the warranty experience: less bikeshedding, less running around in circles, less several months long waits in the service center to receive the same laptop with barely any meaningful change. I’d to see way more proactivity in offering advanced RMAs / replacements, reducing downtime, and doing advanced hardware QA on the defective returned hardware on the company’s time, not the customer’s.
I believe I have quite a high degree of patience and leniency. I don’t want perfection. I want something to improve. Right now, it’s just not a good deal. Never again do I want to spend dozens of hours in a year doing thorough quality control on my own hardware, and have to routinely borrow old laptops from friends for when the laptop needs to end up for over a month in a service center with not even a temporary loaner provided. And before anyone thinks “this is the same with other companies” — at this price point, I could have bought a comparable ThinkPad with 3 years of next business day on-site support. Like, either seeing the repair person repair the laptop on my watch, or a complete replacement. This is the experience and the value FW needs to offer an alternative to, because this is the treatment other companies are providing at this price point. And again, it doesn’t need to be comparable, but it needs to be better than… whatever it is right now.
Anyhow, I will keep you folks updated. I do have a glimmer of hope that this one could end with a device replacement, and hopefully that will put the main problems to rest.
I got lucky to get out once. I’m not going back in!
It’s an easy fix and it doesn’t bother me that much. I might fix them at some point if they bother me enough.
Puts it at about on par with my aging desktop GTX 1080. It’s not quite the desktop replacement I had hoped for but, given how quick it is to boot and the portable-ness of it being a laptop it has mostly replaced my desktop for gaming aside from VR (which I don’t do that often anyway). I’m still hoping for a new GPU for it at some point.
