Hi, just found y’all and am very excited – have wanted this kind of laptop for ages!
I searched briefly, but didn’t see one extension idea I’d really like: Essentially a docking station with the same form factor, so it can just snap/clip/bolt/magnetize onto the bottom. A little like LINEDOCK 13" | MacBook Pro 13 Docking Station does.
Best thing is that it doesn’t require changing anything in the existing design.
It could easily connect to one of the existing expansion connections, and provide space for swappable “big” add-ons. Like a big or hot-swappable battery, DVD drive, or even a GPU card for gaming. Probably a fan, too. Point is to give people more space to customize.
That’s great. It’s like one big expansion card, that also fits many standard expansion cards and other things that cant be fitted in standard expansion cards. Good to know @Steven_DeRose
We definitely need something like this just think about the amazing versatility.
I’m envisioning something like this, but portable: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/513nvdH%2B-zL.AC.jpg
This merged with your idea, should be the holy grail!!
The only concern would be how can we attach this to the bottom case. But that could be fixed in several ways: sliding the pc in a case that has a thin bezel that won’t interfere with the screen’s gasket. Or a different bottom case that is having locking pins or something similar.
This would be really cool. Could probably have it attach to two expansion ports for stability, having one of them be just a passthrough for another module and the other be the thing actually powering it. Seeing how expansive usb c docks can get, I’d love to see several USB A ports, maybe even a CD drive, as well as DP / HDMI / VGA to free up other expansion slots. Oh and definitely a fan.
I don’t own a framework yet (my current laptop is still working ok) but one of the things I was selfishly personally disappointing by was that they went for the thin&lite design that I could never understand the obsession with. It always seemed to me like sacrificing so much for just not wanting your bag to be a bit heavier.
Of course I understand why they went for this market/design + being able to prove repair-ability can be done in this form factor is huge - so this isn’t a knock on framework, just not ideal for me.
Anyways all of this is to say that your idea here is exactly what I would want - an addon that turns a thin&lite into a workstation with ample ports + more (hot-swappable?) battery life + other possible workstation goodies!
I think having it come on top of the bottom cover is great for versatility like @Jack_Babinski said where you can have a thin&lite if you want for travel but can attach it for day to day.
At the same time I’m wondering if this could be made as an alternative bottom cover - saving the redundancy of multiple bottom covers essentially?
just think about the amazing versatility.