I just want to vent. I decided to pull the trigger and buy the Framework 13 since I needed a laptop for work and light gaming. First I was surprised to see it ship directly from Taiwan and was worried it was going to take a while to get to me in the US, but the ship speed was very fast and it arrived in 3 days. I was really excited and watched a lot of videos of the assembly and read all the documentation on the Arch Linux wiki to make sure I had all the info I needed. I even set up Arch on a VM just to make sure I had the process down for when it arrived (I wanted to set up an encrypted btrfs drive with hibernation support)
When it arrived, I assembled it and everything seemed fine, but after turning it I immediately noticed 25% of the display was black and the rest of the display had a lot of artifacts.
I’ve been emailing support about this, but they’ve been taking a long time to respond. So far there’s been 3 responses by them, each taking a full day. But their responses are just asking for simple things, like is the display cable correctly seated, does the laptop work with an external monitor, etc. I just feel like it’s a really inefficient process where each question takes a full business day.
So I decided I couldn’t wait and just ordered a display cable and paid for expediated shipping. I was really hoping that would work, but then I noticed the display cable didn’t have any serious issues and ordered a new display today, because I didn’t want to wait a week for the cable to arrive (from Taiwan) just to find out I needed to replace the display and wait another week for it to ship.
I’m just upset. My life is currently in a transitional period so I don’t have a good workstation (monitors, keyboard, desk, etc) and I was really looking forward to using this laptop, but it’s going to be at least a few weeks until I get a working display and I’m already several hundreds of dollars down from buying the replacement parts. If their warehouse was located in the US I wouldn’t feel so stressed but I feel like I’m sending messages to Mars and waiting for a response with their support, and trial and erroring replacement parts shipped from Taiwan to US on my own. All this direct shipping from across the world doesn’t seem good for the environment either.
Anyway I’m really hoping when the display cable comes that will fix it, and if not the extra display will fix it. and that I am able to return the components if neither of those work. I’m just pretty burnt out from life and I would have really liked to not have to deal with all this. I really enjoy setting up the software and assembling the components which relaxes me, but dealing with support and shipping so many things incrementally from across the world is really stressing me out.
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More pictures
I have a slight suspicion that installing the bezel might have damaged the display cable. I followed the setup instructions and everything seemed to have snapped into place. Nothing looked out of the oridinary, but when I tried closing it the bezel slightly snapped. It didn’t look like it clipped on the display cable so I’m not 100% sure if it actually damaged it, but I ordered a new bezel just to be sure
I can’t blame Framework too much because I think this is either an installation error on my part or just bad luck with components, but the slowness of support to respond with troubleshooting questions resulting in me just ordering new parts and paying out of pocket is really disappointing.
(It doesn’t help that support responds late in the night for me due to timezone differences, further delaying the message/response loop)
Ouch. I’d be upset too. 
I don’t have a Framework 13, but from what I’ve heard from videos about that model, that display cable can be easily damaged. I can’t quite tell from your message, you seem to be saying that you replaced it and that didn’t solve the problem?
I ordered a new display cable on Wednesday and it’ll arrive on Monday. I have a hunch that it could also be the display that is broken, so I just ordered a new display today (Friday) and i’m not sure when that will come. Probably impulsive on my part but I’m moving states in two weeks and I won’t have a primary residence for another few weeks, so I’ll need a working laptop on the road and I can’t afford to wait any longer if the display cable doesn’t solve the problem.
Makes sense. I suspect the cable will solve the problem. Good luck, and please let us know what you come up with.
I hope so too. I’ve been enjoying it despite being restricted to a crappy 12" 1080p external display.
Pretty happy to see that Arch Linux works without any hair pulling.
I installed Arch with an encrypted btrfs filesystem + swapfile. Had no issues with the graphics, and wayland/KDE runs smooth as butter.
Tested hibernation / resume and it was able to boot + decrypt + resume without any issue.
Wifi 6 is extremely fast. I didn’t buy the ethernet adapter (i have a 5 year old old usb-c to ethernet adapter), but after setting up the regulatory domain the wifi is actually multiple times faster than using the ethernet adapter. I was getting speeds of 80Mb/s when installing packages.
Also set up dual boot into windows with bitlocker. Booting into windows works without a problem, and games run smooth on modest settings. Was also able to run the installed windows on that partition in a VM as well.
Boot speed is also very fast. Can boot into either windows or linux in under 15 seconds. Was relieved because my previous ryzen system was a 3700x and the boot speeds were extremely slow (almost a minute). Apparently it was a common problem with ryzen systems but glad to see it’s not a problem with this generation
Overall extremely happy with the hardware configuration and hoping to be able to use this laptop for many years, upgrading and replacing parts as needed. Next steps would be to set up secure boot (kind of hard to do w/o a working display since the external display only works post boot), getting decrypt / account unlock working with yubikey (currently works, but for some reason systemd doesn’t “fall back” to passphrase decrypt if the yubikey isn’t connected. which is strange because that works on a VM / older laptop), and looking into using Qubes OS (and take advantage of the 64GB of ram), and installing Tails on the storage expansion card, and installing the clear keyboard (slightly disappointed that wasn’t an option in the DIY setup and that I had to buy it separately)
Nice! Very much looking forward to my Framework 16 arriving here… it’ll be a while though, I’m in a much later batch than what’s shipping now. (That’s why I’m answering random “help!” messages on the Framework forums – trying to ease the ache of waiting!)
I also have a Framework 16 pre ordered. “Batch 18 - Ships Q2” - do you know if Q2 means somewhere around June or will it be more like September?
The extra expansion slots, and extra m.2 slots will be really nice, but the thing I am most excited about is the QMK supported keyboard and macropad. Depending on my experience with the 13, i might either cancel the preorder or modify the preorder to transfer my ram/ssd to the 16 and give the 13 to a family member. Though if I can’t fix the issue with the 13 i may end up just returning it and canceling my preorder.
I ordered mine on February 4th or thereabouts, and was put into batch 17, which is also supposed to ship in “Q2.” Your guess is as good as mine about what that actually means, I’m hoping it means before the end of June. Interesting that batch 18 is still being given a Q2 estimated delivery date though.
Hi @Desmond,
I’m not assigned this ticket that you submitted, but I want to see if there is anything I can do to help out.
Looks like our agent has ask for photos (plural) matching the examples they provided. The one you provided shows the connector plugged in, which doesn’t allow the agent to inspect the connection points. I promise there is a method to this and it definitely matters so we can determine where the fault is taking place.
Our ticket volume is high, so it will take time to get back and forth. The absolute best, fastest thing to do is make sure the photos match what the agent has requested.
I also want to say I am sorry you had a bad experience, but we are here to do everything we can to get this sorted.
If have questions or need clarification, just tag me here and I will do what I can to provide any clarification on things. Appreciate your patience.
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Just replying here with 3 points:
- As @Matt_Hartley suggested, the best way how to make the support process faster is to provide what they ask for and not question their method, it has it’s reasons, even if you dont know or understand them
- The picture in https://static-community.frame.work/original/3X/a/8/a88c5ae3a5f8062c02e6fd5ebcdd100658b99ff5.jpeg shows the cable bent. While I cant say this is the cause, it does look like it could have a negative effect
- The overall impression to me is that the laptop could be years old. It wouldnt hurt to keep the device a bit more clean. (All those dirt particles, hair and even dust in the fan in a new laptop?)
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Yes my apartment is quite dusty and has a lot of cat hair. Thanks for the suggestion, i’ll de dust it the next time i open it up
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Update:
I installed the new cable, and that didn’t fix it. The screen still has the same issue as in the picture
I hope the new screen solves the problem then.
Probably a similar issue I had with my 13 DIY edition. A new screen did fix the issue, Framework did send a new one so I should thank them for that. Though with mine, the damage was much more isolated.
I didn’t see any real damage to the cable so following the thread I didn’t think it was that.
I suspect it’s how the DIY’s are packaged for shipping. Mine just had the screen, no bezel, up against a sheet of hard plastic which wasn’t even flat, form fitted to the interior of the laptop instead. I could hold the plastic sheet up and the contours matched up to the damage on the screen.
I think maybe a soft layer between the interior retainer sheet or a flat sheet would reduce the incidence of shipping damage to DIY edition screens. Even the thin felt-type stuff I’ve seen when unboxing many conventional laptops at work would be better than not having it between there at all.
Update:
New display fixed it! I guess the display was damaged during shipping after all
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