https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u01AbiCn_Nw mental outlaw video:
hi everyone, i was planning on getting a new laptop cheaply for about 500ish but then i stumbled upon this near-totally modular laptop rhat starts out at above 1000 bucks. do you think the cheaper laptop in the long run is just a false economy and i should go for the framework or what? if you want to ask questions go ahead but im mainly concerned about the longterm financials (and how well it will keep up over time)
I’m seriously thinking about investing in one…I really like the idea of being able to upgrade and change the system and I/O ports. I also am beginning to think I want to switch to Linux over Windows as it gets more and more invasive.
For 1600 hopefully you get a frame and a long term use repairable machine you can upgrade as needed for years.
I’ve been happy with mine for a while. I’ve had some minor hiccups, but I blame myself for those because I choose to run arch on the thing. The swappable ports are a game changer for me, but that depends on the user.
When I bought it I didn’t need a powerful laptop, but I may in a few years, so it made more sense to buy something for a bit more upfront. The upgradable mainboard is a crazy value add.
I’ve also been the unfortunate owner of multiple laptops that became unusable because of a broken part that was impossible to source for replacement.
No.
I don’t trust a single modern platform to last long enough to justify an investment - the company will be acquired and shuttered or the base platform will be upgraded and the current deprecated. The company today can full-throatedly promise you the world, but they know they won’t be here tomorrow to answer for those promises and there are no consumer safeguards in place to hold the future leaders accountable should framework show profit potential and therefore become a target of acquisition to exploit that potential or to squash competition.
Framework is a fun, marketable idea, but Phonebloks / Project Ara me once, shame on you…
Huh, that’s a good take! Didn’t think about that.
It kind reminds me of the Oneplus brand. I loved the one plus (1) so I bought a Oneplus2 only for it to be put aside fairly quickly. I remember I used to suggest Oneplus to everybody, eventually I told everyone to stay away… Eventually the brand just lost it’s focus imo… Instead trying to pump out as much overpriced garbage as possible…
It’s a subsidiary of Oppo, they just tried different brands to corner the market. OnePlus attracted the purists but money reigns and they thought they had a loyal fan base and started changing. Most people would probably say stick to pixel phones for the stock Google Android experience. I liked my OnePlus 5, it lasted for a long time. Never smashed despite being dropped all the time. Just the usb c port lost its connectivity after a few years and needed replacing.
Yep I moved from Oneplus to Xiaomi and I can’t day I’m disappointed but I’m feeling they are charging more and more and then phones aren’t getting that much better. I think my next phone will be a pixel. Mostly for the camera. As I’m getting older I notice that I don’t use my phone for too much other than photos of traveling or just messaging my friends and family on WhatsApp. Games on phone are absolute cancer anyways…
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I never really saw a computer as an “investment”. They’re pure expenses as far as I’m concerned. Any of the ones I buy could break tomorrow. I don’t buy extended warranties, so outside the legal coverage, I’m SOL if something goes wrong anyway. Considering how bad repairability is with other brands anyway, it’s not like you’re throwing away much. Many of the components are just standard hardware, too - RAM, SSD…
Considering this, I don’t really see why I would deprive myself of buying something rather novel I’m interested in, given the product already showed some reliability, in fear of some potential hostile corporate takeover. YMMV, of course.
I agree. $500 to $1200 is the range at which I would not buy a warranty beyond the initial 12 months. I have purchased (and used) warranties for Mac laptops or PC desktops for work that cost over $2k. I can justify it on the Mac because there is usually one recall issue that needs repair (eg weird keyboard issue) but they otherwise have a long life. I’m at 5 years on my current machine with no plans to update. So many of the existing Framework laptops don’t have GPUs that I can’t understand why anyone would be excited about it. It’s a fun idea but feels like you’re paying a lot of money for the opportunity to pay more in the future.
Eh, I’m a fan of the principle that things should be serviceable. Framework is great in that regard. As for GPUs - my laptops are mostly work machines, and I don’t really need one past just displaying on multiple monitors and UHD/4k support, so most iGPUs are just fine for me. When it comes to laptops, tons of RAM+a decent build quality >>> most other things for me.
I’m in a similar situation as you are though, my current laptop is from 2018 and I don’t have any plans to upgrade short-term.
I think the best part of the Framework is that the parts are replaceable for sure. The keyboard replacement I got was free but if it weren’t it would be several hundred dollars. My dad had a key broken on his laptop and they asked for $700 to fix it. Absurd.
I appreciate the healthy skepticism of typical business cycles, but at the same time - why would you buy the company and not sell upgrade parts to previous customers? If you didn’t, you’d just own an overpriced laptop company amongst a dozen other cheap laptop companies.
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As others have pointed out, to kill competition and about paradigm shift. All, from their broken POV, so you can ideally eventually sell cheap laptops/phones shitty enough to warrant annual refresh (aka, the holy grail)
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Ara was the kill, Phonebloks was first hope and the actual promise that was suffocated by Google in that instance - we’ll absolutely count this here.
They’ve kept up for three generations, I don’t see why they’d stop now.
Even if you just got one upgrade out of it, it’s probably worth the cost of entry.
They have been here tomorrow for people who bough one with an 11th generation Intel CPU in 2021. I don’t think they are looking to get acquired either.
Companies that are looking to get acquired don’t hold press conferences to announce, “we’re now ready to be acquired”. They typically build and acquire press wins to get attention until they are a thorn in the side of a market leader who then takes a meeting with them. It’s a quiet process, but the initial conversation is almost exclusively, “we’re building this for the long term and we plan to be around for a long time”.
Just like all the products that promise long or even “lifetime” warranties - for most of these tech startups, they are well aware that lifetime means “OUR” short lifetime as a company and not your lifetime as the consumer.
You can look online at what the upgrade parts cost. If you were upgrading to the AMD main board you’re looking at $450-$700, versus $1200-1550 buying it new. The Intel i5 components are similar but i7 are a bit more expensive. Thus far they have been consistent about releasing upgraded components. You are locked in to buying from them though - so if they stop releasing upgrades you’re out of luck.
If you don’t need the latest and greatest, going used is going to still be a better value proposition.
No.
For it to be a good investment it’s value would have to go up over time or drop at a slower rate than other comparable things.
A mac is a better investment (but still not “good”) not only because they tend to hold more value over time but the used market has higher volume so there’s less chance you need to price it low or wait a long time when you’re ready to sell.
If you’re worried about the value of being able to fix it, spend less than your $500 budget on a used t480 with the processor you want, upgrade the ram to 16, 32 or 64gb, install at least one ssd and be glad that there are literally millions of inexpensive spare parts on the market and will be for at least a decade.
What framework does uniquely offer is the ability to change your complement of ports. That’s either a useless novelty or a powerful tool depending entirely upon weather you consistently swap them out and can find all the ports you need as expansions or not.
Is it worth it to not be carrying around some dongle? I don’t know.
E: the processor to get on that t480 is one of the intels.
I seriously looked at them, but in the end, it was too expensive, especially over last years’ models on sale- which were also very repairable. Not quite as much, but damn close, and with a dedicated GPU and better IO.
I like what they are doing, but they aren’t quite there yet. The best long term investment IMO is a PC, since it can be easily upgraded independent of any one company. And the parts are much easier to trade, resell, etc.
Since no one asked… What are your use cases? Do you need a discrete GPU? Something lite? Something with lots of ports?
If you can afford it easily and used 500 bucks as a random number sure no problem, but othewise I don’t think it a Framework is a good idea.
i was planning on getting a new laptop cheaply for about 500ish
What are you hoping to do with it? I got a used Thinkpad T480 that was like new for €180 and added a couple of upgrades to it (1TB NVMe, 64GB RAM, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi card) that cost me €137, meaning a total of €317, and I’m very happy with the laptop right now, it’s very responsive with Arch Linux and an i3 desktop and I think this baby will be good for many years.
Found it! surprised this wasn’t the top comment
there will always be a Thinkpad nerd to do the shilling in a laptops thread, just doing my job 😎
based and thinkpilled
I third that motion. Doing similar with a T440p. I’ve spent $400 total between upgrading the CPU to a 4712 and putting 16g of RAM. Running WoW happily every night on Debian. Second hand Thinkpads are the way to go.
Congrats on still rocking a laptop that’s 10 years old!
whats so good about arch? is it faster?
It’s just another distro that has gained a following more because of some perceived superiority than any truly practical reason. If you’re new to Linux I wouldn’t recommend it.
What’s good about it is that if you know what you’re doing you can install only what you need and keep your system small and tidy. Also, since it’s a rolling distro, updates become available really quick and sometimes some of the updates introduce optimizations (meaning more performance) or better power consumption. And finally of course Arch has also an amazing wiki, they have hands down the best Linux documentation along with Gentoo, and they even have a page about Thinkpads: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
due to the nature of arch and its rolling releases, it tends to get bleeding edge updates/features rather than having to wait for a major update to iron itself out then get rolled out. If you’re a gamer for example, if Valve fixes a bug in the gpu driver, then Arch would probably get it asap (especially given that Steam OS is arch based)
but cant you customise any distro yourself?
Yes, but with arch you have to because you have to set it up yourself. In all seriousness, arch is a great base but unless you have the patience and knowledge to set it up yourself, staying with arch based distros (like Manjaro) is much easier. And if you’re new to Linux in general but actually wanna try it, start with something like Mint. It’s fast, stable, easy to work with and this a good entry point
but cant you customise any distro yourself?
Yes, but that’s not the same thing as “all distros are really the same” just to be clear.
Some folks would have to spend so much time ripping things out of Ubuntu or Fedora etc that it’s much easier to build Arch with only what they want.
There are other benefits, but like everything else, not everyone cares about the same things.
If you feel like no distro does things the way you’d prefer, Arch may be for you. If you have no complaints about whatever distro you use, there’s probably not any reason to jump ship to Arch.
Here are a few articles.
https://www.systranbox.com/an-introduction-to-arch-linux-exploring-its-features-and-benefits/
https://linuxiac.com/archlinux/
Seconding a used Thinkpad. They are plenty modular/repairable compared to other laptops. I’ve got an X270 and it’s a great little machine.
where do you find used thinkpads online?
Amazon sells used thinkpads other than general age of the hardware love mine that I got for about $300
There are various ebay sellers who carry certified refurbished laptops with warranty included. You can also buy some directly from Lenovo.
Seconded, I have been very happy with my last 2 purchases of Acer refurbished laptops from the official Acer store on eBay.
I’ve bought about a dozen from friends and family.
Search on eBay.
Find a seller with many of the same model. These are tech contractors offloading the laptops they just replaced under some contract - you’ll get a laptop that’s been sitting in some managers drawer for the last 3 years.
Next go to the contractors own website, not ebay. See what stuff they have.
I usually email them and just try to express interest in buying 2 or more laptops, ask what peripherals they have - get a dock or something. Ask about RAM or SSD upgrades, things like that.
You’re helping them offload their second hand stuff, avoid ebay fees, not being a dick.
Got mine on Ebay, and you usually have to be careful like with any purchase of a used item: ask for detailed photos if you can’t judge the state of the item from the photos that are there, ask questions about things that were left out in the description, look for sellers with very good ratings and look at their reviews, see if you can return etc…
Amazon also sells refurbished ones, but so far I’ve seen the best deals on Ebay.
EDIT: important, make sure the BIOS is unlocked.
I’ve got a X270 and it’s a great little machine.
Same. X380 here. Cost ~$200 refurb a yearish ago. Love it so much I steered my mom onto one a couple months back, and she’s been loving it too. Manjaro on mine and Win10 on hers, both great little performers. They fall short on tasks you expect to need some grunt for, but are great for everything else. I recommend it for anyone who will listen.
Having said that, I really am eyeballing the framework to be in the running the next time I’m in the market. Whenever I reach that point I’ll need to do some comparisons. I could theoretically be convinced to spend a bit more to enable ongoing piecemeal upgrades, desktop-style.
That’s amazing, but not reasonably indicative of the specs we’ll normally find for that price.
The specs that I have now are due to the upgrades I’ve listed: the NVMe is a WD_BLUE SN570 1TB, and the RAM sticks are Patriot Memory DDR4 3200Mhz, both bought new on Amazon, and then there’s the AX200 Wi-Fi card that I bought used (you could also spend €5 more and buy it new but I didn’t see the point in doing that).
The base laptop (the one I bought for €180) has an 8th gen i5 and came with 8GB of RAM (single stick), and you can find these specs below €200 on Ebay (very good chance if you also participate in the many auctions that are there, as an example here’s one if you’re in the US: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266452790554).
This is the answer OP. Or similarly, I lined up a T14S Gen 1 for $299 with a 2 year warranty included on eBay. 10th gen i5, 16GB RAM, 512GN NVMe.
Here’s a random one I found. Touchscreen too if you like that, but slightly over $300.
I’m interested in a framework laptop for the environmental perspective, but I also think a pre-owned high end device would be faster and with smaller impact.
This question comes up for me quite a bit. It’s great that project like this exist, but if the project fails, does the environmental impact of the parts become just as bad as any other electronic device because there’s no longer a project coordinating the manufacturing of replacement parts?
Additionally, refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads, while obviously not nearly as customizable/modifiable, may (emphasis on may) have a longer shelf life due to build quality (as well as general care and maintenance by the user), and are probably easily repairable by hardware repair shops.
Environmental Impact, Longevity, and Cost should be the major priorities for the conscientious discerning tech consumer, and imho in that specific order.
The environmental impact of the parts is already just as bad as any other laptop.
Pollution happens at the point of production!
If a person were worried about the environmental impact, a glass and aluminum mac would be the better choice. Replacing a bunch of plastic with easily and efficiently recyclable metal and glass has a huge impact.
In my opinion, the Framework laptop is great for people who want the newest and fastest CPUs, whule also getting the customizability and repairability. I mean yeah, I’d buy an older Thinkpad, but programming in C doesn’t require much compute power or RAM. However, my graphic design and video editor friends won’t make a living using the same machine as I do. For them, the Framework is miles better than any other brand new machine with the same specs (if they want repairability, etc.).
Simple answer yes long answer maybe
Warning: This comment contains small sample sizes.
In my adult life, I have owned two laptops. Both were bought brand new, both were relatively high end machines that cost more than $1000 each, plus accessories and the maximum extended warranties they offered. Both lasted 8+ years in service. The second one (a 2014 Dell Inspiron) is still in service, though I need to upgrade the OS on it.
Both machines required warranty service fairly early in their lives(the Dell egregiously so; very long story very short, they sold me a lemon and after replacing practically everything in it at least once they eventually replaced the machine outright) and received repairs/upgrades around the 4 year mark. The Gateway got its fan cleaned and the RAM replaced/upgraded from 1 to 2 GB. It also required frequent adjustment to its display hinge. It was running okay if slow by the end of it; a Centrino Duo running Vista was kind of sluggish in 2014. The monitor died in a way I couldn’t fix, and replacements were unobtainable, so that’s what finally did it in. The Dell got a fan replaced, the battery replaced, and the HDD replaced/upgraded to a SATA SSD. It is still running its originally installed 16GB of DDR3 RAM. It’s slightly sluggish running Windows, but feels very responsive running Linux. I intend to keep it in service until Linux Mint doesn’t support it or something breaks that I can’t fix.
On both machines, the I/O didn’t age particularly gracefully. The Gateway only had a VGA connector well into the era of HDMI and DisplayPort, the Dell has USB 3.0 and no USB-C connectors, no Ethernet and a proprietary barrel jack charger.
Both machines showed scuffs and scratches by year 8 but the chassis held up and were/are still serviceable.
Given my history with laptops, I see a Framework as pretty much the same “investment” that my Gateway and Dell were. I would not anticipate upgrading the mainboard; I don’t think they’ll keep making mainboards compatible with the current issue chassis a decade from now, and the chassis will probably be ready for a replacement by then anyway. But, I anticipate replacing the battery, SSD and probably a fan or two at the 4 or 5 year mark, likely out of warranty, and it looks like Framework would be above average for that.
My next laptop is likely to be a Framework simply because they’re one of the few companies that A. still exists and B. hasn’t pissed me off yet.
It can be a long term investment in the same way a car is a long term investment - you can tune it up over the long term to extend it’s life but at a certain point you’ll likely have to replace some key components. The theory is that the cost of those repairs will be less than buying a whole new laptop though.
I’d get a cheaper laptop for $400 or so (Walmart/BestBuy have those with decent specs), add in some more RAM and swap the NVMe. True, no Coreboot (wait, do you get Framework laptops with Coreboot?), but otherwise better value for the money
Module laptops are a niche gimmick and a waste of money.
Hi, Framework laptop owner here!
I love my laptop. I got it back in June (13th gen Intel) and have used it near-daily ever since. It’s got a nice build quality, I like the way it looks, and the modular slots are a nice concept (though I haven’t seen a need to swap out mine- I elected for 2 x USB-C and 2 x USB-A. You also need to pay attention to which ports go where because not all the slots support USB charging). I bought the barebones laptop, and added my own RAM and SSD to it which was significantly cheaper than getting it from Framework. I currently dual boot Linux Mint and occasionally Windows 11 and have had no significant issues with either, but there are a couple of little annoyances with Mint- the light-sensor to automatically adjust the brightness and the brightness keys conflict, so one or the other or both may not work correctly.
To your real question, is it worth it? Honestly, if performance is your sole metric, then no- there are cheaper alternatives out there for comparable performance. The premium you pay for a Framework is an investment in repairability and customizability- investments that may not pay off if the company doesn’t exist in the long term. All the promises and commitments in the world to letting users have the right to fix or modify their own hardware mean nothing if there’s no one to supply parts. I was aware of this before buying mine, so I was fine accepting that risk- after all, at one point in time Tesla was risky too but now it seems they’re poised to be the charging standard for EVs- and there are a couple of higher-ups at AMD who like the concept and are invested in Framework, which means it may be around for a while. But that’s still something you should keep in mind.
That said, you said you were looking for a $500-ish laptop, and are now asking about one that will cost you over double that? It’s not for me to tell you how to spend your money, but it sounds like you saw a cool idea and want to jump on the bandwagon. You should be extra sure that what you’re looking for fits your needs within your budget and you’re not just trying to “keep up with the Joneses.”
TL;DR: If you have the money, and are okay with the risk of a small company existing long-term, and it has the performance you need, then yes, I think they’re good buys.
do you need to biy usb c modules as theyre already 4 usb c’s built-in. also, how do i check if a memory stick will fit in befroehand
Expansion cards: In theory, no, you don’t need to buy USB-C modules but it’s highly recommended. At the back of each expansion card slot is a fully functional USB-C port that the card plugs into and if you need to, you can plug cables directly into them. But because those port are, as said, at the back of the expansion card slots, this means you’d have to turn your laptop upside down every time you want to plug something in. Also, accessories that are thicker than just a cable with a standard plug (such as USB-C flash drives, card readers, and so on) probably won’t fit. Another downside is that having four expansion card sized gaps under your laptop is just ugly.
I would highly recommend that you pick up at least four expansion cards so all slots are filled. My standard setup is 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A and 1x HDMI. I have another 1x USB-C, 1x USB-A and 1x ethernet in my backpack in case I need to swap something.
Memory: The type of memory you need depends on the mainboard you choose. The intel ones need DDR4-3200 SO-DIMMs, the AMD ones need DDR5-5600 SO-DIMMs. Note the difference between DIMM (physically larger, for desktop PCs) and SO-DIMM (physically smaller, for laptops). Capacity-wise, they all have space for two sticks of memory with up to 32 GB each. If you’re unsure, you can buy framework laptops with the RAM included. It’s a bit more expensive than buying separately but you can be sure everything fits.
The memory modules are standard laptop SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 for the 13th Gen Intel (though the AMD version launching later this year will support DDR5). The storage slot is a standard M.2.
Do you absolutely need to buy the USB-C cards? Probably not, since the motherboard connections are USB-C. But you’re gonna have four gaps on the bottom of your laptop, it won’t be easy plugging or removing cables, and as someone else already said, the weight of a cord will put strain on the slot whereas the expansion cards put that strain on the case itself instead of the motherboard.
But they’re also only $9 each. The laptop itself is $1000+ and you wanna skimp out on $36 for expansion cards? If that’s where you’re looking at saving money, I’m seriously gonna suggest you look at other laptops that are much cheaper.
investments that may not pay off if the company doesn’t exist in the long term
FWIW, framework has open sourced all their schematics for building parts for their laptops. So in theory, even if they go under, other companies could continue building compatible parts.
