Welcome! Please introduce yourself - 2nd edition

Hi.
I am living in Netherlands, and have not looked for the market of laptops since many many years.
Engineer and Tech enthousiast.
Recently I was looking for a laptop for my wife and started looking into YouTube videos. All the market looks so boring with only artificially made differences about esthetic and a repairability brought to almost zero. Common… it is simply an easier business model to sell complete machines as to sell components for companies.
Finally the video of josh on YouTube opened my view with a well thought concept and a positive review about framework laptop characteristics (a generous 3.2 screen, adequate noise, portability, state of the art choice of ports, battery life).
I am pushing back my purchase for a 15 inch model and an anti glare screen (or at least the day an anti glare foil will be available in the marketplace) but all in all I finally found a company that is doing what everybody is waiting for years : a no nonsense reliable repairable decently priced laptop line which focuses on the basic functions instead of esthetic or trendy selling bells.
Well done guys.
I hope to join the community of owners soon.

5 Likes

Hi everybody,

I’m from San Francisco and I found Framework through Linus’ Tech Tips. I was already motivated to find an alternative to my Mac Air that I bought in 212. Framework had my kind of values for a computer that you could upgrade and customize.

Although, I’ve really gotten my self into the mud as I’m trying to install Arch on my Framework Laptop through wifi. … So I’m hoping I can learn to get my Framework laptop up and running by the end of this month. :smiley: And then get to using it was a workspace.

7 Likes

hey y’all, i’m uno! those of you over on discord may already know me, but for those who i have yet to meet, i’m a pretty big general tech enthusiast, and i plan to upgrade to a framework laptop when my current device no longer works! i found out about framework via ifixit, and am super excited for the second generation to come out this summer! thanks!

7 Likes

Wow, finding out how to introduce oneself here as requested has been a tougher proposition than putting the DIY Framework together. Am I in the right place now?

Either way, I’m Chris Bidmead, seasoned IT journalist and one-time Doctor Who script editor and script writer. Joined the Framework community last week (although a member in spirit ever since I heard of Framework in early 2020) when the company sent my Web publication, Tested Technology, a DIY Framework laptop for use in conjunction with our series “Landing on Linux”.

I’ve been writing about IT for over 40 years and a good many computers have landed on my desk during that period. Some have been great (Canon Intel NeXTStep) some were deeply depressing (ICL’s One-Per-Desk). But this DIY Framework is something really special. I hardly need to tell fellow forum members that.

It’s currently running Windows 10 Pro for reasons (set out in “Landing on Linux”) so is in what I’m tending to think of as its “larval stage”. But the series is about to release the butterfly, already nascent inside VirtualBox, Windows version, in the form of Ubuntu 22.04 with some trimmings.

I’m finding myself in a magnificent venture and I hope readers get a sense of this. Thanks, everybody. It’s good to be here.


Chris

7 Likes

Hello world!

After thumb twiddling for about a year I’ve finally pre-ordered a Framework laptop!
This is actually the first time I am buying new hardware, apart from hardware that would be unhygienic / hazardous to buy second-hand.

Normally I’d have struck a bargain on a broken computer and fix it myself, but while studying computer science and electrical engineering is amazing, I’d like to spend time learning other skills and hobbies too. Especially those which allow me to be self-sufficient; gardening, woodworking, tailoring and more.

Other than that I like being outdoors, sports, playing music instruments, riding my motorcycle, philosophy, linguistics and many more things.

Feel free to send me a message anytime.

Regards,
Stefhen Beorn Heck

3 Likes

Hi there,

disclaimer: I’m not a Framework user yet, but am really liking what you’re doing, and thought it might be helpful to introduce my user experience.

I’m a Software Developer increasingly growing annoyed by Apple. Through the last decade I’ve used up multiple MBPs and iMacs just to find out they all suffer from rediculous bugs (for that price range at least), which made me consider switching to another platform altogether.

E.g. Google “mac screen flicker” and you’ll discover a whole niche-industry of 3rd-party services dedicated to fix this issue solemny caused by a buggy OS. I had this issue with multiple devices for the last 5 years. It’s mind bogging how the Company gets away with something like this, since they ruin their alledged edge in hardware-quality via leaky software).

My latest purchase, the M1 MacBookAir however is exactly what I’m looking for in terms of portability, form-factor, performance, battery-life and OS-based conveniances (and doesn’t have the screen issues… yet). I still have a MBP and an iMac in use and experiencing their recurrent, annoying issues (fan noise, heat, display issues, 1-2hrs of battery life) vs. the M1 MBAir made me remember what brought me to the Apple platform in the first place: the 2013 MBAir, which had the same qualities for its time as today’s M1 (in some respects even today: it still works, is fast, sturdy and has a long battery life, no fan-noise and no heat) .

A laptop with fans will make use of them and thus will routinely need them, meaning its getting hot all the time and thus inconvenient on your lap. If Framework would allow fanless cpus like ARM as an option I’d give it a try instantly.

Anyways keep up the good work!

2 Likes

Welcome to the community, Chris, and people! Yes, you are in the right place. I enjoyed reading your publication, Landing on Linux. Maybe I have been waiting for this kind of insightful article with Framework, that might be one of the connected dots in history, past, and future.

Let me clarify. I am not a native English speaker. Sometimes I have a challenge with English. Did the above mean “when the company Framework sent your Web publication, Tested Technology to you”? If it is, I am curious to know what the context is.

2 Likes

I used to love Doctor Who so much that I would cosplay as the 11th doctor… It’s an honor to have you on the forum. Your achievements are absolutely incredible :orange_heart:

4 Likes

Greetings Frameworks Community!!

I’m a South African English teacher / web developer / outdoor enthusiast / tree hugger residing in beautiful Taiwan. I became aware of Frameworks through LTT and was blown away by the company’s mission and what it will mean for the future of sustainable technologies.

I hope I can contribute in any way to help Frameworks realize its goals of creating a new paradigm in the laptop industry. I believe Frameworks will not only have a huge impact on the consumer industry but also on education. Taiwan produces some of the top engineers in the world and bringing the main prodcution facility here was a brilliant move ( it was actually the first thing I thought about while watching Linus’ YouTube video ).

Thanks to everyone at Frameworks!

3 Likes

Tested Technology is its own entity and has been running since 2014. It is deliberately unassociated with any manufacturer, receiving no income from ads, promotions or affiliate links. You can read about the basis on which we receive donations here.


Chris

1 Like

Steady on there, @FrameworkBee. I was just in charge of writing stuff for a team that made it work. And that was a long time ago.

The honour (we Brits stick in an extra ‘u’ to keep it classy) is mine to find myself on this forum.


Chris

3 Likes

Hello Everybody!

I pre-ordered a 12th gen Base model laptop from batch 2 and I’m excited to receive it later this year.

I’m a mechanical engineer in the energy industry focusing on sustainability. Right to repair, open standards, and even open source solutions are much better for the environment (and consumer) so I was really happy to find a laptop OEM build their brand around these concepts.

Thank you to the Framework team and their community!

4 Likes

I have a bad habit of never using the introduction threads on forums, but here I am this time… three posts late. I’m a PowerBook G4 user still, and I’m mainly looking for a potential successor because who knows how long mine will last or how friendly it is to remote work (though Amazon KDP works surprisingly well). I was drawn in by Linus’ video about Framework, and stayed because it aligns with many of the things I want in a laptop besides the amd64 architecture (repairable with as many sockets as can be gotten away with, 3:2 aspect ratio, pure laptop and not a 2-in-1), but even then it’s open hardware so anyone could come and develop a replacement mainboard with, like, a QorIQ T4080 or libre-SoC or the like.
I don’t have a FW yet, and I don’t imagine I will for the next few months, but in the meantime I’ll be around and excited to get my hands on it. I plan on using it as both a software testbed (I’m both BSD-curious and want to see how well it handles Haiku, Kolibri, and this is a real stretch, ReactOS) and a work machine while travelling.

5 Likes

Hi, William from Texas here. Soon to be the Philippines. Retired from 25 years of tech (mostly field service telecom), oilfield directional services and the last 12 years in OTR trucking. I LOVE the Framework and ordered a DIY i7 as soon as I became aware of them. I just loaded Linux Mint 21 Beta on mine and am very happy with the overall performance. So glad to have a repairable/upgradeable machine with a stable open source OS vs an expensive throwaway that you never really own. Framework has show all of the OEMs that such a machine can be made. My FW is barely thicker than my M1 Macbook Air. I like the MBA, but I feel like it’s designed to be a throwaway after a few years of service. Not so with the FW…

5 Likes

Hi, I’m in Taiwan and founded reveddit.com, a site that lets users see which of their content has been removed from Reddit. Reveddit brings transparency to over 500K monthly active users.

I’d love to buy a Framework laptop as a gift for my wife, unfortunately it appears it is not currently possible to buy from Taiwan. Perhaps in the future!

4 Likes

Hi,

I’m Sebastian, an it enthusiast from Germany.

I first read about the Framework Laptop in Feburary 2021 on the IT news portal Golem.de. I was quite excited to hear about this development, as the lack of repairability and upgradability of ultrabooks has been a big concern for me in the past years.

My first ultrabook an Yoga 13IKB from 2017 lasted for around a year, after which one of the hinges broke, which also damaged the screen. In the end, I was only able to save the camera and wifi antennas from the old upper assembly and had to purchase a new upper body and screen, as the hinges were glued onto the upper body assembly. Harvesting the camera and wifi antennas caused me quite some headaches, as getting out the old glued in screen was everything else than easy, even though it didn’t matter if I would break the screen further.

I’ve been “daily” driving an Dell XPS 13 9370, which is quite a rugged ultrabook, but a few months after the warranty ran out, the 4K Cinema Display started showing a vertical line. This is usually caused by a damaged connection between the display and the display driver assembly, which sits on the back of the display. This defect requires replacing the entire screen, which is glued into the upper assembly. I could either just purchase a panel from China and only replace the screen, but after my previous experiences with swapping out glued in laptop screens, I’d rather not perform this kind of surgery again. Therefore the only option which remains would have been swapping out the entire upper body, contain display, webcam and wifi antennas, which would have cost me almost as much as what the laptop is worth at this point, so that did not seem like an economic option to me, on a laptop with more than 4 year old hardware at this point. I’ve had some other smaller issues with the laptop aswell, with the WiFi for example, which could have been solved by swapping it out for a newer WiFi 6(E) based model, but unfortunately the card is soldered onto the mainboard.

After these experiences, I wanted to purchase a more repariable and upgradable laptop in the future, which could tick the following boxes:

  • Upgradable SSD, RAM and WiFi Card
  • Easily repairable display

And the Framework ticks even more boxes, I could have never imagined: The possibility to use a laptop chassis with a new generation of processors, just by replacing the motherboard, but still being able to keep most other components. Also having the possibility to swap out your I/O just as you need. Sometimes when I work on my home network I may need one or two RJ45 Ports, I can just swap in two expansion modules for this purpose. I’ll most likely be daily driving this machine with 2x USB-C and 2x USB-A Ports. But when the time comes and USB-A peripherals disappear at some point, I can go for 4x USB-C Ports. I’m very grateful that the laptop can be adapted to our needs now and we don’t need to adapt ourselves to the laptop anymore.

Back in late 2021, when the 11th Gen Framework finally launched in Europe, I was already looking forward to the 12th Gen Version. And when I was searching the web some day for laptop SoC boards, I came across the Framework website and discovered that they just launched the 12th Gen Boards including the 12th Gen Framework Laptop. I immediately placed my preorder on a i7-1280P DIY Edition.

Now I’m looking forward to my 12th Gen Framework Laptop arriving in the coming days.

A great thanks goes out to the people at framework, for demonstrating that laptops don’t have to be built as e-waste, which has to be disposed as soon as a single component fails, because a repair is less economic than buying a new laptop. Thanks for making laptops more similar to desktop computers (except the ones from some OEMs), where it has been normal for the past centuries, that mainboards, RAM, storage, power supplies and many more parts can be replaced individually when they fail or require an upgrade.

6 Likes

Hi everyone!

Aspiring thing-doer and 3d printing enthusiast here - found out about Framework through LTT and have been wanting a performant, maintainable laptop that perfectly aligned with what Framework set out to do.

I’ve ordered a 12th gen i7-1260P DIY and am waiting for it to be shipped as of now - but I’m looking forward to having my own Framework laptop soon. Hoping to run Linux on it but I’ll likely be running Win10 with telemetry removed and offline account etc because Linux just hasn’t gotten the compatibility with a lot of the software I need just yet.

- Arcturus

1 Like

3rd year CS Student and Software Engineer in the Philadelphia area.

I’m coming from a Thinkpad T430 and I loved the amount of upgrades I could do on that
laptop without much money. It was getting slow and the weight was hindering me after a while so I decided to get a Framework laptop, the size and upgradability were instantly attractive to me.

Discovered framework from a LTT video years ago but didn’t give it much thought until the past 3 months and then I bit the bullet.

4 Likes

Hello everyone!

I’m quite happy to a part of this adventure. I got the i5 version of the 11th gen model and am quite happy. Coming from an old thinkpad (W530), this device is a dream. Light weight, happily runs linux, and I can fix it!

I’m really looking forward to what Framework has in store for us. (Phone, maybe? hoping so.)

Happy computing to all!

4 Likes

Hello! I am a software developer from germany, using a framework for personal projects and linux exploration since half a year now! So far I really like it, besides some problems i am about to post in this forum… I hope this company will be an inspiration for other brands creating more sustainable tech in the future

2 Likes