Additionally, and non-trivially, the laptop's battery life is not good, and it drains very quickly on suspend. I have taken to leaving it plugged in when not in use. This may be a Linux issue, but still.
I agree with you: the idea is a good one, but my experience with the company has been not good.
1 - https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+...
This is awesome though, and exactly the sort of thing one buys a Framework for.
> the laptop's battery life is not good
Mine is great, I share a single USB-C cord among all my laptops (of which I have despairingly too many) and I often use my Framework all day while forgetting it's not plugged in. (Fedora, if the OS matters.)
No, it's not awesome. Upgrading ram and disk or replacing a motherboard, screen or battery is great. Repairing a badly designed motherboard with a soldering iron is not great. In fact, it's bad. I think there's a good argument that it violates (warranty) law. If a car company sells to you based on "right to repair" and then it turns out there was a design defect in the engine, is it "awesome" if they tell you you need to pull the engine and rebuild it?
Glad your battery life is good. I notice you didn't mention it losing power when suspended. Curious.
Are you using a kernel > 6.8? It got (much) better.
It is certainly awesome for those that can, of course!
Drain on suspend in particular has largely been resolved on newer mainboards, firmware, and kernel updates, though I don't have an 11th-gen Intel and haven't run Ubuntu for a long time.
Kernel updates fixed this on my 12th-gen, firmware updates fixed it on my 7040, and my Ultra 7 155H never experienced this issue.
I'm very happy with my framework!
If you spilled your drink on your Framework keyboard from your 13" system that you bought 5 years ago and you bought a replacement from Framework, you'd be getting a better and improved model of the keyboard. Same deal with issues like cracked screens, webcams, and batteries - since the original Framework came out, the company has upgraded those parts, and makes them available to people who bought the original system.
AliExpress 3rd party battery replacements are basically never as good as OEM.
That level of support is is unique and you are trying to downplay it as something that other OEM offers, and I think that's a little bit facetious.
In the end, I think the Framework is worth it if you have a desire to support the company and the mission, but I think most people should go refurbished if they only care about value.
I want something that can run an Linux, IDE and some tooling that I can stick in my bag and not care too much about it so I buy refurbs. Often there isn't much wrong with them other than minor cosmetic damage.
I always go for Dell Business or Lenovo Thinkpads. There are plenty of spare parts available online. They typically work well with Linux & BSDs. I can get a laptop that was a flag ship a few years ago for like 1/3rd the price and often it is more than good enough.
Buying a brand new Framework tend to be more expensive then a ~ Chinese Laptop.
*New vs Upgrade*
In general, you can sell a second hand laptop at around 50% of the original price, about 2 years down the line (assuming you did not damage it).
So a new upgrade will be 50% cheaper. For that you tend to get (depending on the generation jump), more storage, more memory, potential better screen, faster CPU.
While a Framework upgrade may mean you gain a new Motherbord+CPU for the price of that equivalent laptop. But here you run into another economic issue. Sure, you can transplant your 2100mhz memory but what if 2660 is the standard. So you CPU upgrade is going to get throttled.
*Changes*
What if memory changed with a inner generational. So now that memory you had before is useless. You can recover some value, but are still forced to buy the generation memory.
That wifi card, 5e ... great, but now your getting maybe 6 standard in a new laptop.
Also do not forget, your laptop will have more wear and tear vs a new device. Keyboard may become a issue. Your oled screen may have reduced coloring after 1 or 2 generation of usage (oleds suffer from high screen brightness, and laptop are more often in locations like outdoors that run at 100% brightness).
*Compatibility*
What about compatibility? Maybe you had a Intel based Framework laptop, with a intel wifi card. The problem is, some intel wifi cards need specific intel instructions onboard the CPU. So now you upgraded to AMD but your wifi card becomes useless.
Yes, a new laptop is rolling the dice regarding defects or other issues. But so is upgrading a framework. The problem is, your getting all the not so fun parts of a desktop's upgradability, without the cost saving potential of a desktop.
*Resell issue*
Selling your framework memory, wifi card etc will not be a big issue. But the moment you want to sell a older part, now what? Great that you upgraded from 1080p screen to 4k by yourself, but who is going to buy your 1080p screen? Your at best looking at a small market of framework owners, and a even smaller market of framework owners that need a new screen (maybe to replace a damaged one).
What about the bezel changes? What about the keyboard? What is your buyers market. Sure, maybe you can sell your old MB/CPU but even that is a VERY specialized market of people, who maybe need one to repair their framework, or want a custom nas (cheaper to just buy a mini-pc from the dozens of Chinese brands) or the few people who run a very old framework mb, and upgrade (what about their selling 2+ generation old MB/CPU combo).
*Buyers*
Framework really is for people who do not like to change laptops / get used to new ones, and who have no issue taking in the extra costs of those upgrade potential. But then again, i see people running macbooks M1's still (darm good laptops), for 5 years. They did not need the upgrade path.
It really depends on you, what you really value. But from a economic point of view, your not going to be cheaper in the long run with a framework, and that is not the selling point also.
Plus, I suspect System76 would want to have a lot of control over the design that they would end up on the hook for.
If you want PopOS and/or System76 support, they're right there. You can just buy and use their kit.
Maybe Framework could be another System76 ODM, though.
It depends on what you want.
About a week ago I got a new 15" laptop with a Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads) | Radeon 680M | 32 GB of RAM | 1 TB SSD | 1080p IPS panel for $570 USD. That 680m is an integrated GPU that can use up to 8 GB of your system RAM for its VRAM.
I put Arch Linux on it and it's quite nice. Things are very snappy.
A Macbook Air is almost 4x the price with the same memory / storage or 2x if you're ok with 16 GB of memory and a 256 GB SSD. No doubt the Air is going to be lighter, have better battery life and be quieter but this other one isn't too bad. Sure it has fans and sure it weighs 4.5 pounds but it's not a deal breaker.
I guess we could do an apples-to-apples comparison (Linux or Windows performance on Macs that have it). Not sure how that works out, though.
It was surprisingly not as expensive as I thought it would be. There are also 3rd party options that will swap in parts for you or try to repair things.
It’s not as satisfying as ordering the parts and changing it out yourself but at this point I don’t prioritize repairs or failures in my buying decisions any more.