[POLL] Framework 16 Review Reception - How do you feel about the reviews?

[eso]

considering how large it already is without those, i don’t think that was a reasonable target for the space (pun intended) they were trying to fill with this model

[Kousuke_Nakamoto]

i mean it is workstation sized at 16 inch - surely they could fit in 4 ram slots and two 2280 slots if these features were prioritised.

[eso]

it’s already substantially larger to many similarly-spec’d competitors. the size of the display is far from the whole story.

the engineering choices they had to make to get it as modular as it is were straining the bounds of ‘portable’, and many people are finding it already borderline or even too large as it is. squeezing in two more sodimms, and changing the second m.2 to 2280, would have exacerbated those problems substantially.

[Jonathan_Haas]

@Kousuke_Nakamoto

surely they could fit in 4 ram slots and two 2280 slots if these features were prioritised.

Looking at the available space, I don’t see how. I mean, two additional SSD slots are easily doable in the expansion bay (if you don’t need the GPU module), but using up more board space for RAM would require getting rid of the expansion cards, using a much smaller battery, or getting rid of the heat pipes and having much worse cooling. Or making the board several millimeters thicker if you wanted to stack the RAM slots.

Do you really need more than 96GB of RAM? In that case you’re probably far outside the target group.

[eso]

@Jonathan_Haas

Do you really need more than 96GB of RAM? In that case you’re probably far outside the target group.

there’s a point where a small form factor computer, a rugged display, and some peripherals will be about as portable as a sufficiently immensely stuffed desktop replacement. and generally have better specs since it isn’t trying to fit in a single enclosure.

that said, i’m totally hoping 2x64 kits will manifest by the time my batch rolls around. do i need 128 gigs? no. will i find a way to make use of it? oh yes.

[ATi]

@Kousuke_Nakamoto

Hopefully the next iteration would include at least two 2280 m.2 slots, 4 so-dimms slots.

Unless further miniaturization frees enough space to make that possible, the second 2280 m.2-slot would come at the cost of leaving out the WiFi-module.
SO-DIMM is deprecated anyway and will sooner or later get replaced by CAMM.

[Adrian_Joachim]

@ATi

Unless further miniaturization frees enough space to make that possible, the second 2280 m.2-slot would come at the cost of leaving out the WiFi-module.
SO-DIMM is deprecated anyway and will sooner or later get replaced by CAMM.

Switching to camm may actually make enough space for as second full-size slot, asuming they are comfortable with moving components around a bit. Hell it may even enable 2 m.2 full size slots in the 13 (or at least 1 full and one short, or one full and one cellular modem) which would be pretty sick.

[Alan_Pearce]

@Kousuke_Nakamoto

i mean it is workstation sized at 16 inch - surely they could fit in 4 ram slots and two 2280 slots if these features were prioritised.

As others noted, just how much memory and disk space do you actually need?

Currently 96GB of RAM is available, with the expectation that 128GB would be available in the foreseeable future, and likely 256GB before CAMM becomes mainstream.

You can get 8TB in a single 2280 module if you have deep pockets, and add another 2TB in the 2230 slot, so how are you going to keep that backed up? It is a lot of storage to risk without backups.

[Aaron_Baff]

Also they have a reference design for the expansion that has space for 2 m.2 NVMe drives. Not sure if they’ll release it, although I presume they will in the next while.

[Alan_Pearce]

@Aaron_Baff

Also they have a reference design for the expansion that has space for 2 m.2 NVMe drives. Not sure if they’ll release it, although I presume they will in the next while.

I believe the files for the PCB are on the Framework Github site, but I haven’t verified this.

It is certainly an aspect i am interested in as well.

[Kyle_Reis]

@Aaron_Baff

Not sure if they’ll release it, although I presume they will in the next while.

They’ve announced it.

For storage, we have two M.2 slots, as well as the ability to add two more in the Expansion Bay for colossal storage capacity.

Source: Framework - Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive - Memory and Storage

But the pièce de résistance is Framework’s Expansion Bay, which lets you slot a entire discrete mobile GPU into the laptop — or, later this year, a pair of extra SSDs.

Source: The Verge - Framework Laptop 16: our exclusive hands-on

[Charlie_6]

@Cameron_Bosch

Installing Linux on Windows laptops? Been there three times; never worked.

That’s alarming. Where are the antitrust laws?

[James_Jarrett]

I wouldn’t think those laws would have anything to say about it. It’s more of a matter of the absence of coordination than the presence of coordination. Even in Windows-land, hardware doesn’t work correctly with Windows without focused effort on making that occur. Any hardware weirdness or driver variance vs standards, what have you, results in breakage. There are plenty of stories about Microsoft themselves picking up the slack from hardware vendors to make peripherals and USB components function where they’d have been broken otherwise.

The law would have to say “You shall, vendors, set your own money on fire developing Linux drivers, without regard for the whether or not you’ll make the money back in sales, and make sure you either open source them or keep up with the kernel” and I don’t see the law going that route. I wouldn’t agree with it if it did, even though I’m anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux, pro-regulation, etc.