That would be a better solution for affected customers but while it wouldn’t necessarily bankrupt the company flat out, it leads to a different problem, namely cash flow. Given that most of the install base is still 11th gen, that means that you essentially need to discount the boards to what is likely a loss for FW. The losses would again likely sink the company, just slower than option A.
Replacing boards as needed is still the cheapest option FW can implement and might even be able to write off the failures as a loss for taxes, idk. It isn’t pretty and they shouldn’t be giving this much hassle to customers but it is the strategy they are going with. As for the ethical concerns about informing customers…what would be the point now? This is primarily a problem with 11th gen boards, which are now EOL, except for refurbs and stock of boards on the marketplace, no new 11th gen laptops will be produced so no new customers will be affected. The pool of affected users is around zenith I would imagine and can be slowly shrunk as boards get replaced.
The workaround is fairly straightforward. People may not like it, but it is an option, and it works (defective boards excluded, obviously). The workaround that I follow with my very rarely used second machine is to set a charging limit and leave it plugged in. I haven’t had an issue with it failing to boot when I have followed that process. I did leave it for roughly three weeks without plugging it in to see how long it would go before the RTC battery discharged and it wouldn’t boot. But leaving it plugged in has allowed me to dodge the issue on that machine for now.
@Kamil_Hanus based on my reading of the thread, you essentially dropped a bomb on the process the second you threatened legal action. At this point anyone from Framework seeing this, and any support ticket you might have are now getting filtered through legal counsel.
As my comments are getting out of scope this topic, I will create separate one.
I do believe some of you guys will welcome that. As I am really frustrated from situation, I will provide full email communication with anonymized personal data. There is chance I personally miss something, however I still believe that my requests are legitimate.
Haven’t been engaged in this discussion for a while but have been checking in to read the lively banter all along.
I do think it’s a good point to repeat for those that are new to the topic and didn’t read all the way thru from the top that this forum attracts the people who have this problem so please be careful to assume that the sentiments expressed here are widespread. The =silent majority= have no problem at all.
I use my laptop very infrequently and have =never= had a problem. Earlier in this conversation I monitored my use and went something like 4 weeks, short power on, another 4 weeks and short power on, then 12 weeks where it wouldn’t power on. In that case it powered on when I plugged it in … and I’m not sure whether that was RTC battery or main battery (which was @ 20% when I checked it a short while later.)
Not mentioning this to brag – if you have the problem you should work with FW to get a replacement … the case where the replacement was worse than the 1st is certainly a crappy data-point but it doesn’t change the fact that most motherboards are working fine and some are definitely better than others.
My experience with FW is certainly that they care about the problems - YMMV, of course - and hopefully with time and patience they can resolve your problem.
One week later, is your Framework still behaving properly with the new CMOS battery? I just installed mine this morning and let it charge for 8 hours. I then shut off the laptop, let it sit for 10 minutes, and then turned it back on. Incredibly, it booted.
I know that’s such a low bar, but even that was impossible with my old coin battery. I can’t believe support doesn’t suggest to replace this battery, or even sell it in their market place. It’s such an obvious, low-effort thing to try in comparison to the never ending ridiculous tests they’re still asking for me to perform.
The bar is low, you’re correct, but I bring good news! I haven’t done any standardized testing procedure, but I did take it on a road trip where it wasn’t convenient to keep it plugged in. So far, I’ve had no trouble powering on. I haven’t had to perform a mainboard reset or needed to plug in to power on since the ML1220 was replaced. It’s only been about two weeks now, but I’m feeling much more optimistic at this point.
I’d still like to know what support thinks of this solution. They basically stopped talking to me after their first troubleshooting email, when they detected I was out of warranty. @Daniel_Agorander mentioned that support told him not to replace it:
But we don’t know the full context of this instruction, just that support said it to this user. It would be great if @FrameworkSupport could give us some guidelines on replacing the ML1220 battery to clear this up. I think we’ve got a decent solution for users hoping to use their laptop like a laptop again. An official thumbs up or thumbs down with explanation would be helpful.
Unless you’ve proven out that the ML1220 is faulty, we do not recommend replacement. As we’ve previously stated, the mainboard reset and a full trickle charge should resolve the reported issue. If anyone, after attempting the reset and a full 24 hour charge cycle, continues to run into issues where the laptop is not able to power on, as mentioned by our CEO/Founder, they are to contact Support and we will evaluate on a case-by-case basis. For those that do not want to perform the reset and are replacing the battery simply to have a battery with a full charge, you will likely run into the same issue down the road. If you are having RTC battery charging issues, more often than not, it could be a solder issue with the RTC battery cradle causing the RTC battery to not have a solid connection to the board. But again, this can only be identified by performing the reset and then allowing the existing RTC battery to trickle charge for 24 hours.
If you’ve performed all of the above, and you are still having problems with the battery, please contact Support. Also critical, if you disregard the above and purchase a new RTC battery, DO NOT use a non-rechargeable battery as the mainboard will attempt to push power through it as it is expecting a rechargeable battery.
Do you still recommend reaching out to support about this, specifically for users who are out of warranty? In my experience, after one troubleshooting email, support detected I was out of warranty and only suggested to buy a new mainboard or post about this issue on the forums. That was the end of their interactivity in our emails.
The possibility of CMOS battery replacement never came up, which (fingers crossed) ended up being the solution. While I will undoubtedly, as you said, run into the same issue down the road, it’s nice to use my laptop like a laptop in the interim, and ML1220s are relatively affordable.
It’s concerning that support didn’t explore whether the ML1220 was faulty. What I want to understand is, was it because Framework doesn’t generally recommend replacing the ML1220, or because I’m out of warranty and therefore not entitled to support? This is why I think it’d be helpful to create clearer expectations for out of warranty users than “contact support, we’ll evaluate case-by-case”.
Overall, there has to be a better way to handle this. The current solution of sending users to bumble around on the forums until they find @nrp’s post (prominently displayed 40 posts deep in a months old topic occupied primarily by malcontents) can be improved upon.
Very rarely, if at all, is the ML1220 battery faulty, but we have seen solder issues pop up on the RTC Battery Cradle. This is why we ask all customers to perform the reset and then charge for 24 hours. If they run into the issue AFTER the 24 hours of charging where the laptop won’t power on again, that means that there might be a problem with the cradle itself. While we can’t rule out a bad battery, it’s extremely rare, and while swapping the battery might temporarily mitigate the issue, it isn’t actually solving anything as the battery will continue to drain if there’s a trickle charge issue. Also, 3rd Party RTC Batteries are hit or miss as far as their performance and can cause issues. We have a very small stock of RTC coin cells at our repair center in the US, and we’re only sending those out after we’ve eliminated all other potential sources of failure. In most cases, we swap the mainboard and then evaluate the returned board for any issues (then refurbish it). For those just outside of warranty, we still recommend contacting Support and I’ll remind our staff to escalate should someone be outside of warranty. All submitted information will be reviewed at that time.
@Twistgibber - are the expected number of discharge-recharge cycles and/or expected lifespan by time (years, presumably) for the ML1220 documented someplace? Thank you.
See you there