Don’t get me wrong, I’m in love with the idea of Framework. And do NOT take this seriously unless you want to, because I haven’t actually used one yet. If a fan gives you moderate to constructive criticism, that just means they love your stuff and want to watch it thrive greater than someone just saying it’s perfect. I do not mind these much if at all, but they can be improved upon.
Okay, now on to the upsetting stuff.
The expansion cards are nice to hell and back, but they are a bit bulky for some things, which can get pretty limiting. I don’t think an audio jack should be as wide as a full-size SD card. Maybe there’s no other solution that looks as good and works as well. But there’s not much else you can do about it other than copying Google’s project Ara but for ports.
I personally am not the biggest fan of the proprietary screws in the laptop. They work, but you could just use Phillips’ screws instead - they’re simple, and effective for keeping laptops shut with no clips. At least, I think. I’m not sure, maybe the Framework screws have some sort of magic in them that makes them more stable. Someone could hypothetically lose the screwdriver, or more likely a few of the screws, and they’d have to turn to Framework themselves to buy new ones. (Edit: Oh, they’re just Torx screws? That’s a relief. But not everyone has torx heads in their screwdriver kits, they’re better than being their own unique thing. Plus iirc you can get torx screws off with a smaller flathead screwdriver)
I am especially not a fan of the user needing to rip out the entire mainboard just to replace a CPU. I know there’s not much at all you can do to fix the “companies-only-sell-soldered-CPUs-now” issue, but maybe your team could solder the CPUs and the things they need onto a simple, socketable package? There’s reasons why this would fail and that’s acceptable, but it’s just a little gripe of mine.
The Framework 16 keyboard and trackpad style is perfect. Genuinely. So it’s mildly upsetting that the Framework 13 and 12 keyboards don’t follow a similar style. It might not even be possible to copy the perfection of the Framework 16 on such a small form factor though, and I understand, but if you could in there I’d be forever happy.
Remember, as a wise man once said, it’s better for people to have some negative opinions on your stuff than none at all.
Huh? Never heard of torx? You can get them anywhere. The patent on torx expired over 30 years ago iirc. And Phillips, I’m sorry but Phillips is horrid with it cam out. And it can’t tolerate the same forces. It just sucks by comparison.
At the speeds modern buses run at I believe signal integrity over a socket becomes such a huge problem that the engineering cost would be too much for Framework.
All the cards have to be the same size, so all the slots can be the same size and any expansion card can fit anywhere. If the audio jack expansion card were physically smaller, it wouldn’t fit in the same slot as the larger expansion cards, like the SD card reader. If they were all different sizes and only exactly as big as they needed to be, they would all need specially sized slots and that would defeat the purpose.
Torx screws aren’t proprietary. They may be slightly less common, historically, than Phillips, but they are extremely common these days, especially on electronics. And actually, if you walk down the fastener isle in a Home Depot or Lowe’s these days, a huge percentage of construction screws are torx now. They are much less likely to round off and don’t require the same kind of downward pressure to remain engaged while turning them.
Yeah, it’s unfortunate, but as mentioned, signal integrity across a socket is a challange. Also, a socket would add thickness, and it would probably be tough to design a socket that would work across multiple generations and such. Even when the manufacturers are designing chips to be socketable, they have to change the socket every couple generations and you’d have to swap the mainboard anyway. Again, just some thoughts.
Other than the arrow keys, the keyboard on my Framework 12 is extremely similar to the Framework 16 keyboard layout, including the key spacing, which is the same. Unless you are talking about the modular system? In which case, yeah, I’m sure it would be tough to fit a similar system in those smaller, thinner machines.
I agree on the expansion slots being a total mixed bag: sure, the idea of swapping configuration to have exactly the ports I need at that moment is alluring, but also, I’d rather just have more ports? And on the 13 configuration page they basically say: “Please, I beg you, you really want a USB-C one, you’ll need it for charging”, that makes me question if that port wasn’t better off soldered if they managed to figure out how to still keep 4 slots on there. Still, I don’t think I can form an opinion until my laptop actually ships and I use it for a while.
For the screwdriver, I’ve yet to see a screwdriver kit that does not include Torx, they’re a perfectly normal and accepted standard. And no, Philips screws suck. They are a nice upgrade to the slotted screws they replace, but let’s not pretend nobody came up with anything better in nearly 100 years since then. Torx screws don’t slip, and because they don’s slip, you don’t shave zinc off the head until it becomes unusable.
For replacing the CPU, you need to either find a way to fit a desktop MOBO into the laptop, or convince chip manufacturers to make mobile CPUs that don’t need to be soldered. The latter is a pipe dream, and the former, I have experienced too many “machine’s working perfectly fine, reboot, how is not not POSTing!?” when the ATX system is properly ATX-sized to wish for such a footgun, plus desktop parts aren’t as tuned for power efficiency, because they don’t need to worry about draining a battery or cooking your legs. The MOBO+CPU assembly being replaceable cross-generation is big enough win in my book, it still keeps the machine from becoming obsolete.
For the keyboard, personal preference does a lot, and it swings with the actual keyboard size, no wonder why it changes on every model. Full size was just not going to be a thing on a 13", it’s hard enough to find a 14" with a full size keyboard around.
Well.. One of the things with expansion cards is that you can replace them if they break. Soldered USB port is not easily replaceable. And you probably want the most used port (the one that usually has a long, dangling cable attached to it) to be easily replaceable.
Personally, I don’t mind large cards. Sure they could be smaller or utilized better (instead of 3.5mm jack on the PC - have one with USB-C expansion card, which is required anyways), but that said, I don’t use ports really..
For modulatiry they kinda have to be all the same size and imo they are even a tad too small.
Hard disagree, philips head is the devil and should go die in a fire (outisde of some single use construction applications where it may be a little faster).
The bulk of the cost of the mainboard is the cpu (or more accurately soc these days) and the rest of it is just pretty much soc specific support hardware so that really isn’t as useful as it sounds, sockets are also expensive, fragile and add z-height. For ram trading off some performance/efficiency/space for being able to upgrade it on the same board is absolutely worth it but for the soc it probably isn’t.
It’s way bulkier and more power hungry so I can understand why they didn’t do it on the 13. I personally also am in the camp of make it a bit thicker and add more stuff but the market as a whole apparently really likes their thin laptops.
As much as I’d like to have just an upgradable CPU (would lower cost for upgrade) I’ve noticed that the biggest upgrades to a computer are more than just a faster CPU. Upgrade from PCI-E 4 to PCI-E 5, Thunderbolt 3/4 to Thunderbolt 5, DDR4 to DDR5. All of those require the motherboard to be completely revamped and you can’t get that improvement from just upgrading the CPU. From that perspective swapping out the mainboard for a new one makes a lot of sense. Plus there’s the additional height and signal integrity that others have already mentioned.
The expansion cards are fine. I actually think they’re pretty tiny but it would be nicer for them to be just a bit bigger for some better use cases. As for the single headphone jack, which is pretty small compared to the expansion slot/card, I think it would be better for it to be doubled up with another port or like 2-3 3.5mm jacks. This would allow for connections to surround sound speakers or have multiple input/outputs.
I think my biggest gripe particularly relating to the keyboard/trackpad is that other than the expansion cards, there’s not much else that can be used between the different systems (the web cam/microphone is an exception that I know is between the FW13 and FW16, but not sure about compatibility the FW12). For the most part each system is it’s own “ecosystem” and there are few things compatible between them. I think it would be awesome to be able to use a FW16 keyboard in a FW13 (RGB FW13!).
Another example of incompatibility between the systems is the upcoming OCuLink Dev kit. I love the idea of being able to put my 7700S to use when I eventually upgrade it. Unfortunately, since it uses OCuLink rather than USB4 or Thunderbolt it isn’t really compatible with other FW systems. I’ve seen people wanting to use the FW16 GPU as an eGPU with their FW13 or FW12. I also don’t quite get using the FW16 GPU externally of the FW16 and sacrificing the expansion bay for just a connector. Personally I think it makes more sense to use the expansion bay for more storage plus the eGPU or to have a dGPU while attaching an eGPU. It does appear to have attaching a desktop GPU and I expect that to be the main way people use it. Then again things could still change on that before it’s released.
I’ve been building PCs for 22 years and my take is this: Even if the CPU was on a socket there’s only so much the chipset will support and so far PCIe (and thus NVMe) and memory standards will evolve around it and so effectively even with something like a long lasting AM4 or LGA775 you still more often than not end up upgrading your entire mainboard on a desktop PC anyway. And depending on what CPU you go for it might need different cooling and adjustments on the board as well, like they tried MXM for notebook GPUs which effectively didn’t really add any more benefit. So I’d say why even bother if you can shave a couple of millimeters off the thing for a slimmer cooling system.
Fyi - each framework laptop comes with a tool that fits all of the laptop’s screws (I.e. the included tool has a torx head, a phillips head, and a spudger). The tool: https://frame.work/products/framework-screwdriver
I agree on the expansion slots being a total mixed bag: sure, the idea of swapping configuration to have exactly the ports I need at that moment is alluring, but also, I’d rather just have more ports?
I’d totally take a fixed port spec on each device (i.e. 2 USB-C, 1 USB-A and a headphone jack) with then a single expansion bay so you could choose one more port like HDMI or DisplayPort (or even extra USB) as long as the fixed ports were on easily replaceable modules internally.
I’d then like the extra space saved by this to go to larger / extra cooling or an additional M.2 slot.
To me the issue is that 4 ports is tight: let’s say I’m gonna have 1 USB-C for the charger, 2 USB-A for peripherals, 1 HDMI for the monitor, and now I need to read a MircoSD too. The solution is a Dock, and I hate docks. If a USB-C and a USB-A were built-it, because nobody was not gonna have those, that might have freed the space for an extra expansion port, for a total of 5 ports instead of 4, still tight, but not as tight.
USB-C, one on each side, you can argue can be useful to most anyone. For charging.
But USB-A? No. There are significant number who rarely have need for it. I’d rather keep a expansion card or a cheaper, smaller adapter in my bag for the chance I might need one.
Who the hell does not need the most common port in the universe? Meanwile, I can’t think why I would need a second USB-C, just the first one would be there for the charger alone because it doesn’t have a barrel jack.
The number of times I wish I had a USB-C port and it wasn’t because I needed to charge a USB Mircro B device and I couldn’t find a Micro B cable is exactly zero. Which is less than the times I wished for the 4th USB 2 MOBO header in a desktop.
Former Mac user here… over the last few years I’ve converted pretty much every USB device I had to USB-C as that’s all some of my Macs had.
I do have a Logitech Bolt USB-A dongle, but to be honest, I mostly use bluetooth for mice etc… and I tend to carry a USB-C to A adapter with me (my FW13 Pro has 4 USB-C expansion cards) so I’m covered if I need it.
I get the idea, and it’s neat, but it’s not a big enough feature for me to select Framework over another vendor… and as others have mentioned, some 13 laptops now have 5 or more ports, so provide more functionality. I’d say as long as the repairability was there, I’d be ok without expansion card slots.
I’ve been through the pain… I also had the pain of the mark 1 USB A adapter in a Framework laptop draining a battery from 100% to flat overnight whilst in sleep mode… so I wasn’t keen to repeat that. For me, USB-C only is perfectly usable.
I too have been trying to only buy USB-C accessories. I don’t think USB-C is ideal. I think the physical strength of it is far from where it should be for being a laptop power plug. But everything is moving to USB-C, you can’t get around it. Between the slowly dying USB-A, and USB-C, I’ll take the latter.
Never seen or thought of the fact that some people may want or need to have their cables on the opposite side of whichever you prefer?
For me, I would be pissed if it was on the right side. Right-handed, and when I’m using a mouse I don’t want junk in the way on that side. Even a right-angle one, no thanks. But I have heard that some people are left-handed, I imagine some would feel the same for the left side.
So yea, a charge port on each side.
I don’t think anyone is saying “never”. Again, I have an adapter in my bag for the off chance I’d need it. Tiny, size of a fingertip up to one joint. Cost virtually nothing on ebay for a couple of them.
The point is, how you use your laptop, or how I use it, is not the same as how other people do. I have family who never use USB-A, haven’t for some years. Own zero USB-A devices or cables.
My airgapped systems that boot off of a MicroSD are not converting to an internal USB-C thumb drive anytime soon.
For plugging in a keyboard or charging my phone because the charger broke, A-to-C cable from Aliexpress is still cheaper than the C-to-C cable from Aliexpress (and, in my experience, the A-to-C cable is also more reliable).
The vast majority of thumb drives are still USB-A.
I still have to see a monitor with USB-C input aside from a tech bro’s Youtube channel.
But even if everything 10 years from now is gonna be USB-C and A is dead, RJ-45 is dead, 3.5mm jack is dead, HDMI is dead, DP is dead, SD is dead, all killed by USB-C and not by yet another standard (humongus X), which ports me from 10 years from the future needs is not my problem, at this point I know better than doing a speculative purchase.
Having the port in my preferred side is avoiding a minor annoyance, it’s not matter of “I need X or I can’t get Y working at all.” Sure, a dongle technically works, but then we’re introducing the “Did I remember to carry it?” factor, the “Did I drop it somewhere” factor and “Did it being in the bag 24/7 silently break it?” factor.
You just shouldn’t ever do that to begin with. Cheap cables are an excellent way to speedrun your way to a damaged/destroyed device when carrying power.
But the far superior option (albeit far more expensive now) is to slot a m2 SSD in an enclosure and use that. Bonus points if it’s an old Optane drive with petabytes of endurance.
So what? It’s just DisplayPort. I own a USBC to DP cable. I’m sure the inverse exists. The shape of the connector matters little when it’s DP because it’s trivial to swap between connectors.
USBC can do everything USB-A can do and more. You switch things over gradually and then it’s done. We’ve had this debate on the forum before at least once and I’m sure more than that.
My needs are not your needs and vice versa. The point of the expansion slots isn’t that they are the most space efficient solution, they obviously aren’t. Nor are they the most aesthetically pleasing (the Ethernet card is heinous lol). They even result in worse battery life. But the trade off is flexibility. That’s it, that’s the gimmick.
Yes they’re basically glorified dongles but ones you don’t have to think about bringing assuming your needs don’t change much where you need to swap expansion cards out.
