Business hat:
Consumer hat:
A laptop with a larger screen.
Fair enough. In that case I’ll second a product running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 that is easy for Linux devs to use. So something set-top-box sized that isn’t a laptop would work. Or, you know, a toaster.
Cooling. (this is a laptop mod not a laptop:-)
A laptop cooling fan that actually works. Notions:
Human interface design for tech.
If the answer for this thread title is for the laptop, maybe a thread people can post is the Feature Request Megathread .
I just want to say that there is no need to police the content of this thread and put others down for recommending laptop things. I was trying to shift the topic back to non-laptop ideas when I saw a lot of talk of laptop things, but if Nirav or the mods were unhappy with the content of this thread, they would have said so. All ideas are okay as this is just a friendly discussion!
…and I’m ok with wasting time. Some say it’s good for the mind and soul to recharge…
None of us really have an 80%+ efficient use of time.
So with that, brainstorming for brainstorming is cool too… whether there’s an outcome or not.
Box fan + duct tape + MERV 13 pleated filter solved that one? So the key there seems to be to somehow create a market for an interchangeable filter that’s suitable for an aesthetically pleasing design.
that’s why I wanted to add that it wasn’t meant to police things, but to simply redirect people to talk more about non-laptop things, I don’t want us to fight about things, just to refocus people back to the original post!
a repairable, upgradable, programmable remote control with infrared, bluetooth and wifi capabilities
A Studio Monitor would be cool.
With a webcam maybe and 100 % Adobe RGB.
Also a (ergonomic) Mouse made of bamboo or recycled plastic would be nice.
Realistically anything beyond laptops, tablets, and phones is going to get progressively more niche. Like a repairable and open source printer would be amazing, but I’d never buy one because I have printed maybe 5 things in the last 8 or so years. Even buying and selling a home was all digital.
A dock would be great, changeable Io, power delivery, and connection would be really cool, but what percentage of people who have a laptop need or want a dock?
Game console would be an obvious answer, but Valve just dropped a strong entry with high repairability and support.
I really don’t know. I’d love to see more products, especially if you can get some cross compatibility on things like the expansion cards.
A fully repairable smartphone is the next logical step. Aside from fairphone, nobody else is really doing this and we have far more phone e-waste being generated year after year than laptop waste, since people tend to upgrade every 3 years or so.
I’m surprise a few mention wearable and smart home category.
There are some obvious category like Smartphones. I wouldn’t rush and buy a new phone just for the sake of reparability but might just for modularity and adding new features without replacing the whole phone or other electronics in general.
Wearables like smartwatch, smart/audio glasses keeps getting new sensor so you would need to throw away old ones for new once and battery is not user replaceable. Please prove industry wrong that if you want IPx8 you can only use glue.
Fun fact my Bose audio glasses broke after 1 year and it’s a common issue. Throwing away and buy a new one is the only solution.
Smart Home is another choice I rarely see people mention. I would like to add experience I got. I have been using Google Wifi (now Nest Wifi) for years. It’s mesh network so I bought couple of them. I plan to but the new Nest Wifi pro but I realized it is not backward compatible. I’m so shock of why Google advertise for sustainability? but I could see an upgradeable smart home without throwing current ones away. Also Matter standard just came out so all my smart home devices would go to trash if I want Matter standard devices.
Let’s end on fun idea VR headset I think a lot of framework employees came from oculus and my oculus quest is getting outdated. Again throwing them away and buy a new one is the only choice if I want to play the new Iron man VR game
Edit: Forgot to mention something to do with Interchangeable battery between devices. It would be nice to plug battery to laptop, phones, tablet using the same battery some might need more number of units. like phone use 1 unit of battery, laptop might use 5 for example
Edit 2: Just realized I want to see reparable NAS or compact mini home server with M.2 SSDs. Logic behind this is like building hardware that we can trust and easy to use like Google Photos/ Google drive or iCloud without monthly fee and will ensure that it will last for long time like enable raid by default. I used to have a NAS but it’s very hard to use and unrepairable.
Edit 3: To add from above idea. I saw a lot of people request for GPU so what about all in one repairable/upgradeable compact external GPU/SSD
Have you looked into setting up a TrueNAS box? Just install this on any ol’ PC and use standard components for the hardware from there. M.2 to PCI-E x4 adapters can be found all over Amazon for like $10 and you don’t really NEED new hardware for something like that. I have a TrueNAS running a Ryzen 3 1300X with 4 3TB spinning disk hard drives and it works just fine once it’s configured.
Have you looked into setting up a TrueNAS box? Just install this on any ol’ PC and use standard components for the hardware from there. M.2 to PCI-E x4 adapters can be found all over Amazon for like $10 and you don’t really NEED new hardware for something like that. I have a TrueNAS running a Ryzen 3 1300X with 4 3TB spinning disk hard drives and it works just fine once it’s configured.
@SteveHeist Thanks but I’m looking for something small like Raspberry Pi size since I’m limited by space. Maybe it would turn out to be external GPU/NAS combo.
I mean… you could always just ya know use a Raspberry Pi for that. USB to M.2 sleds can also be had around $15 on Amazon just from a quick google search. Just whack like 4 into the onboard USB ports on your Pi and go from there.
I think an open, repairable cell phone is the product most in alignment with Frameworks’ focus on repairability, and goodness knows there’s a market for it. But it’s historically been very difficult for new manufacturers to break into that market: I’d hate to see Framework pour money down that hole the way the Ubuntu and the Mozilla phones did.
I’d also love to see a good tablet. I’m not sure how repairable that could be made given how thin those tend to be, but just a well-performing, reliable tablet would be a joy.
The challenge I see with both these things, and with a lot of other suggestions, is that they require both hardware and a lot of custom software. Framework isn’t a software company and may not want to become a software company.
I assume that Ubuntu and Mozilla phones are open hardware or Linux phones? But it is not repairable, right?
My concern for creating the phone is that Fairphone and Shiftphone already exist in the repairable mobile phone market in Europe. What prevents these companies from doing business in the Americas and Asia? Are they not ready to scale the business yet? Do they have the challenge to be funded?
When the Framework Laptop was launched, there was no competitor in the repairable laptop market. I think the ideal situation is no competitor in a market, but there are potential needs from users.