Matte screen exclusively. As many people in Mate screen thread. Glossy screen is complete showstopper for me.
@Xavier_Jiang ~ SATA at all? Why is SATA even around anymore? 
I never even consider buying any m.2 drives with SATA. Legacy holdover from spinning disk days before NVMe came around. Now that NVMe exists, at any performance level (budget or premium), NVMe is the way to go. Maybe have one slot with SATA wiring, for compatibility with old parts… and even that’s a “maybe?”. But every option in your poll has m.2 slots wired with SATA. Why?
I’d opt to ditch the SATA controller completely. It’s 100% a legacy holdover from the spinning disk era, and in a laptop with no HDD bay, it makes sense to just ditch it completely. I haven’t bought/used a SATA m.2 drive in years - I bought a used one by accident, realized my mistake, and only ever touch NVMe since then (used and new).
Also, m.2 slots are used for WiFi primarily… so if you look at your list and replace “WWAN” with WiFi, it makes a bit more sense. WiFi is PCIe + USB - often the USB side is used to implement Bluetooth on a combo card.
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Also to back @Matt_Falcon up- at least in my part of Canada, SATA and NVMe drives are frequently very close in price in the WD Blue lineup. Its something like a $5 difference between a 500Gb SATA M.2 blue and a 500Gb NVMe that is 5-7x faster.
16:10 screen with 100% sRGB. Optional 1200p or 1600p.
AMD APU with 6-8 cores or socketed CPU.
100WH battery.
No dGPU (will make laptop overpriced).
PD charge for one Display Port Type-C.
I agree SATA is legacy. However, the reason they still exist (even in server applications where you would think NVMe is handy) is because … hmm. Cost?
Perhaps cost. I don’t know. Because people have been using them, I guess.
Because PCIe take more code to initialize and have a nigher rate of failure? The first part is true (since SATA I think was supposed to connect to the chipset directly and PCIe is … whatever).
I think the PCIe would be more general and not necessarily storage specific. Which means a system might need to pour over the (potentially) long list of
I have two stick of SATA m.2. One as I mentioned is the 860 Evo and the other is a cheap 128GB Lite On internal.
As I pointed out I’m surprised but not angered by the fact that Framework don’t have SATA support. Because you would expect a well-built system to be able to handle multiple protocols and not “cheap out” on parts.
My suggestion would be to have 6 card slots, but arrange them something like this:
[A|B] ° [C]
Here slots A and B are placed directly next to each other and share one shorter rail in between. This would allow us to fit either two standard cards or one double sized card that would occupy both slots. Latter option would drastically extend possibilities and simplify card design.
Imagine these as one double sized card to get the idea.
Having so much real estate would even allow integrating a deployable antenna to the side of wireless modules.
Of course, this would require rethinking the mechanics and the latching mechanism, so it is not a trivial change.
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SATA is handled by the PCH, which connects to the CPU with a special interface – not 100% sure on it (I think it’s proprietary to each of Intel and AMD, and they’ve changed a few times over the years). Heck, it may even be PCIe at this point. I’ve had a bit of experience in this over the years, sorting out what-means-what. For example, an i3 6th-gen I’ve got on the bench claims to have 16 PCIe lanes, yet there’s a full 16x slot as well as two 1x slots, 2 PCIe NVMe slots, and other accessories. Where would those come from? (Not sure, but a mux?)
Ditching the SATA controller likely simplifies the chipset design, especially in modern laptop designs with no SATA accessories at all. NVMe is indeed a PCIe interface, but PCIe is universal (you can get an m.2 to “full PCIe” adapter and chain a desktop GPU to your laptop if you’re wild enough!). That actually eliminates a translation step and controller along the way and connects the storage device straight to the PCIe bus, instead of PCIe->SATA->SSD.
As to the code to initialize, it’s not more, it’s just different – PCs that support booting NVMe simply have a module in the UEFI ROM that knows how to speak NVMe for purposes of initializing the OS - then the OS takes over and uses its own driver. Opposed to SATA, which simply employs a different module to detect, initialize, and transfer data to boot. That module can just be eliminated on a system with no SATA controller. I’ve modded a number of legacy systems (dating back to 2010, I think - any system with a UEFI BIOS can have an NVMe module injected into its ROM with some tinkering), and used a PCIe-to-m.2 pass-thru card to give old systems a speed boost 
(if you want to go reeeeal far back, you can boot any system like a Core 2 Quad with a PCIe slot from NVMe if you bootstrap it with a permanently-installed USB stick with the DUET bootloader – an age-old UEFI development tool to make an old BIOS system boot UEFI, which can also load the necessary NVMe UEFI module! I uh, don’t know how far I needed to take this side note)
Thus why I’m in favor of ditching, or keeping ditched, that ole’ appendage.
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There is no need to have a standard. For example: I use my work-iPhone with MS Teams for video and my work-Dell laptop for a desktop view with MS Teams in the same meetings. No standard needed, except to use MS Teams!
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I think we were talking about sharing the device display over wireless connections
You do have a few standards. Apple Airplay, Microsoft Miracast, Samsung Smart View, and stuff of that nature.
Miracast seem to be getting more traction, but it’s far from being a universal standard.
aha, yep. And Chromecast… I don’t think there will be a simplification/standardisation until the resolution arms race finishes.
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FWIW, most of those options that were mentioned are all based around DLNA, which is a standard. For example, VLC for Android implements screen casting without relying on the built-in libraries (otherwise, I don’t think it would be available on F-Droid), and there are DLNA-based programs on Linux that can cast to ChromeCast devices (pretty sure the others work similarly, though I don’t have any Miracast or AirPlay devices to test). There may be some ‘magic sauce’ to identify yourself as ChromeCast-capable or whatever, but the actual protocol, I think, largely follows DLNA (the main ‘ease of use’ stuff is based around device discovery and authentication and stuff).
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On the topic of numpad vs no numpad, it just occurred to me that with two styles of input cover, the rest of the laptop could be the same. It might even be possible to use the same keyboard in both input cover styles, just positioned in the center for one input cover, and off to the left to make room for a numpad in the other.
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Off to the left works for me. Numeric Data entry with a keyboard is more intuitive.
Currently, when I need to do a lot of numbers on a laptop without the extra keys, I connect a full keyboard.
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I was very surprised to not see antiglare or matte display in the list.
That is my primary requirement for a laptop, at least if I’m going to actually use the built-in screen.
Also, I don’t think the cartridge port adapters are that useful in the end. I just need a lot of ports. RJ-45, USB-A, SD, etc.
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So presumably, most thin-and-light laptops wouldn’t satisfy your needs and you would need a desktop-replacement laptop?
Personally, I’ve found that I mostly just need a few USB-A ports and USB-C ports for regular use. I have a USB-A-based (micro)SD card reader and I bought an HDMI expansion card for the rare case where I need to connect my laptop to a TV/external monitor/projector/etc. For anything heavier, I have my desktop with tons of ports and processing power.
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Ports are secondary to my display requirements. But I think the port selection on the Acer Aspire 5 is to something so aspire to:
- RJ-45, USB-A x 2, USB-C, HDMI, and a spare internal 2.5" SATA port. They’re only missing the SD card slot, which is not a deal breaker.
But the Aspire’s screen has bad sRGB coverage.
Laptop designers have to think about real-world use cases. Users have mechanical keyboards, a mouse, so that’s two USB-A; they may have a USB-C dock or power brick, so gotta have one of those, their monitor is likely still HDMI which is most common, and if they’re in an apartment or office they may have Ethernet.
I could do without an abundance of ports and just accept two USB-C’s, but only if:
A) the screen is right i.e. sRGB 100%, no PWM, matte/antiglare, and big like 16".
B) there is no coil whine anywhere.
C) & it runs a decent Linux without crazy stuff happening (like I saw with Debian).
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Most users don’t have mechanical keyboards or external mice to use with laptops (okay, maybe a larger percentage have external mice, but designing around mechanical keyboards almost always being present is just dumb, statistically speaking). As for USB-C docks or power bricks, sure, but again I’d wager most people don’t use those regularly. Same with monitors. I’d further argue that most people who want a ‘thin-and-light’ laptop are even less likely than the average laptop user to want or need all of those things (maybe with the exception of an external mouse).
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You have to remember that 4 expansion cards is the max not because of framework but because of the chipset cpu combo. It can only support 20 PCIE lanes, 4 for the 4 expansion cards ( which makes 16) and 4 for the NVMe. You would need a higher end chipset/processor to get there. The PCIe to thunderbolt chip costs around 30 - 50 dollars for 4 thunderbolt 4 ports so it would be an extra 50 bucks.
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That’s just an opinion though. Do you have any facts to back it up?
From an ergonomic perspective, using a laptop keyboard is just dumb. 
A real innovation would be to copy what MNT-Reform did and add a low profile mechanical keyboard.
Fewer people care about having an “ultralight” laptop anymore, thanks to some virus.
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Port 1. USB-C for a dock or charger
Port 2. Add a USB hub to provide up to four USB-A
Port 3. HDMI
Port 4. RJ-45
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