Frame.work modular laptops

[rushboarduk]

Summary

Frame.work is an emerging company with offices in California, and Taipei, developing a laptop where you upgrade almost everthing yourself.  Coming in two flavours - either built-to-spec, or available as a kit - these include a 1-Year limited warranty, a 2256x1504 400-nit sRGB display, up to 4.8GHz CPU, M.2 storage up to 2TB, a fingerprint reader, 4x user-selectable expansion slots for ports/additional storage (others are planned), and more.  With electronic waste drastically increasing every year, Frame.work wishes to redefine the computing industry to be more sustainable, without forcing high tarrifs on the consumer:

 

Quotes

Quote

" We create over fifty million tons of e-waste each year. That’s 6 kg or 13 lb per person on earth per year, made up of our former devices. We need to improve recyclability, but the biggest impact we can make is generating less waste to begin with by making our products last longer..."

 

Quote

"The conventional wisdom in the industry is that making products repairable makes them thicker, heavier, uglier, less robust, and more expensive. We’re here to prove that wrong and fix consumer electronics, one category at a time."

 

My thoughts

I have been interested in modular solutions for some time, with projects from comanies like Kano, but these have been limited in assembly and customisation.  Since I started my own social enterprise, I have followed suit in developing modular products. It is only 13.5" for now, and only available in some countries, but this is expected for a first product, and offers a good idea of what we can expect in the future.

 

Sources

https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-edition

https://frame.work/about

[suicidalfranco]

Cool

Will probably meet the same fate as phoneblocks

Still cool idea though

[BondiBlue]

Modular device design isn't new, and neither is Framework. I hope it works for them, but they'll have to work very hard to make that happen. 

[Murasaki]

is this an ad

[Blademaster91]

This is really neat, and I hope they're sucessful, but unfortunately not enough people probably care about making their laptop last longer by having the option to upgrade their RAM or M.2 SSD.

And it shows how bad the laptop manufacturers have gotten when being able to upgrade your own laptop is a selling feature.

[DrMacintosh]

Modular laptops are inherently not profitable and all "modular device" concepts have always failed.  

[ShutterAnt]

Honestly if I didn’t need a dedicated graphics card for video editing this would be my next laptop. I’m already on the mailing list for updates and am so eager to see it pan out. The fact that you can pick your ports, replace components with ease yet still get a QHD 3:2 display and tiger lake chips in a thin and light clamshell is brilliant. It’s going in a roundup video I’ve scripted on ultra books.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Will likely go the way of PhoneBlocks, but if it's successful it'd be very cool

[rushboarduk]

There are a lot of modular device projects out there that actually are successful, but most are isolated to the education sector (namely electronics kits for classrooms or home use).  The really successful product to date has been modular keyboards.

 

May this take a couple of years to gain traction? Probably.

[Forbidden Wafer]

Choosing ports is kind of weird, but everything else just seems like a very repairable notebook.
The idea of replacing the main board with a new CPU/GPU but keeping everything else also is pretty nice.
It means most people that take care of their stuff can save up some money in the long run if they're satisfied with their keyboard/touchpad/screen/battery/ports.
The cooling seems very lacking though.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Laptops and Pre-Build Systems

 

This does not follow guidelines for Tech News. This section is for news articles which are already published by known and trusted sources.

 

So this is more like ad or "what do you think about this cool thing I found" and so doesn't belong in TN.

[Kev]

Adding some new info. They've sold out of US preorders (for the base model) and have opened preorders in the Canadian market. From the start Framework's proposition is less complicated then Phone Blocks. Laptops are already semi-modular but building an entire ecosystem for mobile phones from scratch years ago was something else entirely (Framework's module system is build on top of existing USB-C standards vs something Phone Blocks invented, or planned to invent.) The comparison to Phone Blocks is apt but Framework is much closer to being a real product you can buy then phone blocks ever was. In fact the first batch is due to start shipping out by the end of THIS month. If you check out the community section you can see they make regular posts, updates, and answer questions, something Phone Blocks never did.

 

https://community.frame.work/t/expansion-card-developer-program-canada-launch/2263