In a common notebook used in office, 3 ports are about always connected to cables:
Then remain about 2 or 3 (depend on brand) free USB-A for other devices.
With 4 slots of Laptop 13 you need always an external USB hub.
Please consider to put at least 6 slots on Laptop 16 to be more interesting
well done
I read now: “We’ve enabled three Expansion Cards on each side”, so are 6.
But also: “We’ve also replaced the fixed 3.5mm headphone jack”, so the list of dedicated ports in a common office notebook is:
This leave only ONE (TWO removing SD) free port, may be still too few
most use a dock in this case, because office work requires to move to a meeting and come back and not having to unplug/replug 3 cables at a time.
And with a dock, you use only 1 port of the laptop.
Highly recommend a good dock. I’m only using 2 cables on my framework now: one TB4 dock (USB peripherals, charging, headphones, SD card) and one eGPU for a monitor.
our small company has 250 notebook and no one has a dock
You can also try bluetooth mice. This frees one port.
There are also bluetooth earbuds/earphones, but I admit that one needs to be willing to accept a slightly lower audio quality for that.
Last but not least, you can expect expansion bays (the big modular thingy at the rear of the FW16) with ports, too. Not to mention that at some point in the future you could also have expansion cards with several ports each.
If it’s a small company, you may be able to justify the lower cost of a dock + a machine with fewer ports over the cost of a machine with as many ports as you need. Would also be more portable than a 16”, as it seems like these work machines are being taken from work to elsewhere regularly otherwise they would just be fleet desktops for easy provisioning and maintenance.
You can buy a small usb-c dock that does hdmi, ethernet and USB-A for pretty cheap. Under $30 for branded and under $10 for generic, even cheaper in bulk.
I think if this is a concern you may be a bit behind on hopping on dock life.
USB C docks for HDMI, usb, eth, audio, PD power… are dirt cheap, and it’s worth it for the quality of life improvement.
I think I’m the last one in the company to have a desktop so I have as many ports as I want, but keep in mind that decisions on hardware purchases are made by the ICT department, not the individual employee
This is precisely why docks are probably the better choice. A small fleet laptop with 4 or less ports is ~$1000, a larger machine with 6+ ports can be double that, a dock is $20-$400 (depending on protocol, display support, and ports they vary wildly). It’s more cost effective and familiar to just slap a bandaid fix on a number-of-ports problem.
My work has provided a laptop for me, first a MacBook Pro, then a Dell Precision “workstation” laptop. Both had the same or less I/O ports as the Framework 13 despite both being larger form factors. I’m not sure what you’re buying for your employees these days that has more than 4 I/O ports.
The industry has pretty much decided that if you’re going to be using a Laptop at your desk a dock is a perfectly capable solution for expanding to the I/O you need. And when you’re on the go you don’t honestly need to plug in that many things. I occasionally find myself wishing for one more port for my Yubikey but that’s mostly because my dock provided by work is a little inadequate.
I’m not saying there exist laptop with more than 4 USB-A ports, I’m saying that them has 4 USB ports plus some dedicated ports permanently connected to cables when in office:
If you remove those 3/4 dedicated/permanent connected connector, you have to increase the number of ports, at least from 4 to 7/8 to have the same versatility.
OK with an entry level notebook with only 2 USB ports (plus dedicated ports) you can buy a dock and solve the trouble.
And I’m saying you’re going to have a much easier time convincing a small company’s fiscally minded IT branch to do this than buy something with 8 (!!!) usb ports.
If they manage 250+ devices and have not issued docking stations, they may not be the most reasonable bunch around XD
One of the best thing about having USB-C docks is you can have all the above cables plugged into a dock. So all you have to do is unplug a single usb cable to take the laptop. Or plug in a single cable and everything gets hooked up at once.
On top of that, even without a dock, in a hooked up setting to a monitor, your hdmi/DP/USB-C sends audio out, and most monitors have 3.5mm ports or usb ports that you can plug into to get audio from.
I probably didn’t explain myself well.
In a common notebook with 3/4 USB-A, plus some dedicated ports. When used in office, you have:
so 1 USB-A port is always busy by the mouse, all dedicated ports are busy, and 3 USB-A are free for other devices.
With 6 slots and no dedicated ports, in Frame.work notebook you have:
This is only a comparison, if you are OK for a dock, this is perfectly legit in both situations, and probably a need in the second one.
When used in an office all of those can be connected to a dock using one port on the laptop, then when you actually have to use your laptop as a laptop you don’t need to unplug 12 things and then plug them back in later.
Before usb-c doeck were usually only on more expensive busyness machines and the docks only worked for certain machines. Now pretty much any laptop can use a basic dock and even the fancy ones are pretty interchangeable.
Having everything plugged into the laptop is pretty barbaric these days.
