A COMPLETELY Upgradeable Laptop?

[rpmm24]

34 minutes ago, Jaegan said:

I hope for a followup video talking about how well compatibility is for linux.  I love the modularity of this, but have no desire whatsoever to run Windows.

same im also interested in how well it will work on linux it seems like a perfect fit an upgradeable laptop with an open source os

[Lurick]

6 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

My current laptop is a refurbished HP Probook from 2012 I got for $150. Before that, it was a Gateway T6330u from 2008. This is in no small part because I don't want to invest a decent amount of money in something where, if one part fails, the whole thing is a brick.

 

My last modern laptop was an Asus one I bought in 2013. The internal power delivery failed right after it went out of warranty. There's no fix for that. I just had to salvage the RAM and HDD and move on. I went to a desktop and just used my old Gateway (thanks to Linux) when I needed something more portable.

 

I'm going to have to do some more research (once their site is back up - GGWP LTT, you broke it!) but if the price is reasonable, I think I'm going to get a modern laptop for the first time in 8 years.

Being a floatplane member has it's perks since I saw the site before the YT video went up and crashed it XD.

There are 3 tiers of pricing for the models, these are all pre-assembled prices:

 

 

 

DIY Edition Pricing is about $250 ($749 starting for Base) cheaper for the Base and I think Performance and Professional tiers as well but the site crashes when I try to access the DIY portion.

 

 

Edit:

DIY Prices varies depending on configuration but all options shown:

[NiregoRedd]

46 minutes ago, 7heo said:

stuck with very old machines

My 10 year old Aspire 5552 for example:

A couple of catches et voila! There's your battery,

A couple of screws and a panel comes off giving you direct access to play with your RAM and HDD. 

 

Right there are the three things most people are likely to be most interested in for servicing/upgrading. Switching out ports and screens is a little more "pernickety techie" type, but undoubtedly great (and the three above still apply!). 

 

A few years later and another laptop I have here is an Aspire E15. Currently not usable w/o peripherals, because I snapped the clip holding the keyboard ribbon on when trying to access the RAM. The RAM is on the wrong side of the mobo so you have to pull out the disk drive, HDD, and WLAN card to get at it. Oh and 17 screws before you even get inside...

[manikyath]

to be brutally honest... if you ignore the builtin type c dongles (yes, i'm calling them type c dongles, it's not because they're builtin that they're not the same idea.) they basicly made an HP EliteBook with worse warranty and parts availability.

[WalterUnderwood]

54 minutes ago, Jaegan said:

I hope for a followup video talking about how well compatibility is for linux.  I love the modularity of this, but have no desire whatsoever to run Windows.

Yes, the question is NOT, "Can someone make linux drivers at some later date." The question is, "If I order one this year, will it run Linux without spending three days trying to find hacked drivers." 

[Final Blade]

Retyping this because I did not post.

This is amazing.
With a diagram to make an external enclosure for the motherboard. Does that mean the motherboard is modular?
In the future when I want to upgrade this laptop can I just put the current motherboard into an enclosure and then buy a new motherboard and put it into the laptop frame I had the first one in?

This gets rid of the e-waste of all the parts that cannot be transferred to new laptops.
 

The old motherboard can be used and Electronic Whiteboards for notes, messages, whatever I need it for at home.

This makes laptops so much less of e-waste if I can replace any part with newer better parts, including the motherboard.

[allenh]

I don't have much to add and I really just created this account to say you all gave their website the hug of death and now I can't order this laptop.  :(

[darwin006]

1 hour ago, just_dave said:

In this case, the push for repairability hurts performance, Tiger Lake chips (all laptop chips nowadays but these the most) need as much RAM bandwidth as they can get for the GPU to perform well. This laptop uses regular DDR4-3200 which has less bandwidth than the soldered-only LPDDR4X-4266, not even mentioning DDR4 needs double the power. 

 

You are splitting hairs. No one is going to notice the difference in the real world between the two. What you are talking about only matters in synthetic benchmarks.

[MrEleventy]

Framework Laptop first popped up on my radar a couple of months ago on Adam Savage's channel.

Check out the vid for a more detailed breakdown. Pretty interesting stuff. I like the direction and wish them success.

 

 

[Stadiz]

As a member of this community I am sorry.
 

[Jaofilipe]

39 minutes ago, manikyath said:

to be brutally honest... if you ignore the builtin type c dongles (yes, i'm calling them type c dongles, it's not because they're builtin that they're not the same idea.) they basicly made an HP EliteBook with worse warranty and parts availability.

It may be an HP EliteBook with worse warranty BUT in the Adam Savage’s Tested video the Framework CEO said they were just regular usb type c ports! And that is awesome!

That means anyone can design their own dongle (based on the CAD models of course) or buy an aftermarket magnetic charging port as Linus said 

You get endless configurations all while avoiding that thicc toughbook size.

Need a serial port? Slap in a module and you are good to go.

Need some obscure interface? If it works with usb, you know what to do.

I really hope they broaden the cpu offer in the future, but damn, i currently have a gen 6 intel i5 (and will keep it until it dies on me) but if i had the chance back then, i would have bought the framework laptop for sure.

Edited July 26, 2021 by Jaofilipe
MoDuLaRiTy

[Hugo-Leung]

53 minutes ago, WalterUnderwood said:

Yes, the question is NOT, "Can someone make linux drivers at some later date." The question is, "If I order one this year, will it run Linux without spending three days trying to find hacked drivers." 

It will also be nice if Framework publish the drivers. If they publish the source code, they each distro community can package into rpm or deb.

[NiregoRedd]

4 minutes ago, Hugo-Leung said:

It will also be nice if Framework publish the drivers. If they publish the source code, they each distro community can package into rpm or deb.

They're working on Linux as per their FAQ, so I would hope at least whatever they confirm is as user friendly as everything else.

 

TBH, finally managing to look at the website and pricing (although I'm not US), I'm most impressed with the array of "bring your own" options, but pricing generally doesn't feel too out of whack for the performance and spec levels. International shipping costs at the moment though... 

[rushboarduk]

At least we don't see the laptop hit the deck. That's a good sign.

 

Designing your own chassis is something I didn't know was on offer, so I definitely want to explore that (or see it explored by LTT as a swatch pack).  As to the CPU being soldered, does that mean you could buy the next MB with a newer chip if you wanna upgrade?

 

I would like to see more expansion cards. You could probably have two USB Type-A/Type-C ports.  I think a full SD might be more advantageous, since anyone with MicroSD/TF could simply slot that into an adapter, and then into the drive.  A Compact Flash expansion (if small enough), SIM expansion, or even a PCI-E expansion would be interesting as well...

 

I also still want to see at least a 15in variant. 17in may be something they don't wish to pursue, due to the hassle of size.  But a 15in is still a decent compromise if they can support larger GPUs and storage.

[Nystemy]

A laptop like this is a fairly nice concept to be fair.
Personally have a few minor complaints though.

 

It would be wonderful if the base unit had a USB-C port or three on it as standard beyond the modules. (Even if the modules are technically just USB-C ports in a fancy recess)
Since I think almost everyone can agree that it is a bit of a waste to put in a module to get a port that everyone will need. So having 1 USB-C port on either side, and preferably one on the back too would be wonderful, instead of wasting a module on it.

 

Secondly, it would be nice to see a module on the backside of the computer, for people that don't want ports on the back, they can use it for storage, but for everyone that wants ports on the backside, then this is a killer feature. (From a cable management standpoint, ports on the back makes a ton of sense in some areas.)

 

But interesting to see where this company ends up going in the future. But given the fact that their website has gone down, then demand seems to be high.

 

If I were in need of a laptop myself, then I might actually buy something like this. (hopefully a serial port module will be available by then, always wonderful to have such when doing more industrial work.)

[MrEleventy]

28 minutes ago, rushboarduk said:

As to the CPU being soldered, does that mean you could buy the next MB with a newer chip if you wanna upgrade?

That's what the CEO is claiming / aiming for.

[Mrgamerz]

we killed it! with support!

[Luscious]

It would be interesting to see if they can do this in a larger 17 inch model and a smaller 13 inch ultra portable.

 

As a startup though, I'd be hesitant to place any faith in them (down website???). Very few companies out there have succeeded by having JUST ONE product to sell, especially tech companies. The things that fail in laptops the most (battery/fans/RAM/storage/display/wireless) are mostly swappable in a lot of machines now - that is after all how the manufacturer can still offer the end user a warranty and keep it "fixable".

 

The things that make a laptop a throwaway (slow CPU/GPU, chipset limitations) are what you would REALLY want to be able to replace to make the thing relevant again instead of a technology relic. Unfortunately even on machines with socketable processors there's only so far you can push it - same generation or if you are lucky you get two generations of processor IF the socket and chipset support it.

 

Even socketable graphics have been done (MXM) and the ability to swap is limited by the system board and the chipset. And that's assuming the shell has the cooling headroom built in to run a next gen GPU. You also lose that sexy slim profile because a proper "modular" laptop NEEDS ROOM to fit not just socketable components, but the beefed up cooling (fans/heatsinks) to accommodate.

 

Would a full system board replacement then be an option while keeping the rest of the laptop (display and battery)??? Not even Clevo designs their systems like that, and making system boards that fit the same shell (or multiple shells that can fit the same system board) would be a monumental engineering and cost challenge. You are slowly getting to the point of it being a GIMMICK rather than useful.

 

That also brings up the issue of backward compatibility. There's only so far you can go before it just doesn't work any more, and the same rules that have applied to desktops also applies here. Yeah, you can stuff a 6800 Ultra in a modern i9 mobo, plug a 1080p monitor into a 3090 or run an 8K display off integrated graphics on a system that's got only a quad core CPU in there. The experience is going to be horrible and there's just no point doing it. At that stage instead of backward compatibility you want to be able to replace all the other parts that are holding you back too.

[Final Blade]

3 minutes ago, Luscious said:

That also brings up the issue of backward compatibility. There's only so far you can go before it just doesn't work any more, and the same rules that have applied to desktops also applies here. Yeah, you can stuff a 6800 Ultra in a modern i9 mobo, plug a 1080p monitor into a 3090 or run an 8K display off integrated graphics on a system that's got only a quad core CPU in there. The experience is going to be horrible and there's just no point doing it. At that stage instead of backward compatibility you want to be able to replace all the other parts that are holding you back too.

Yes trying to run 8k off the integrate graphics will not work well. Duh. That is something current integrated graphics cannot do. Oh a old integrated graphics cannot run what current integrated graphics still cannot do. That means it is worthless is not a discuss it shows your ignorance.


i9 is from 2017.

I am running amd fx-8120 released in 2011.

 

I luckily got myself a graphics card at MSRP. An AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (Midnight).

I can play games just fine at higher resolutions and faster, and more powerful than any computers than existed at the time my motherboard was released.

Yes my graphics card can handle pcie 4.0, and it is in a pcie 2.0 slot.

Still works, still plays games, all is working.

 

 

[Quackers101]

"starts upgradable chassie to these ones too with PCIe extension support!"

"just remove the bottom, add laptop GPU board to PCIe with the new bottom chassie or new walls to make it thicc with more performance!"

*needs some adjustments and becomes super powerful with added cooling on the board and power connector for just the GPU board*

 

but nobody wants to develop boards that can be that modular ;(

[AnonymousGuy]

My HP laptop from 2008 had a 300 page service manual with diagrams and instructions and shit for taking it apart.  The dongles are neat but 99% of people are probably going to buy 1-2 of them, install them, and then never change them making the "modular" pointless.   We'll see what happens with long term reliability.  A lot of startups end up getting fucked by their suppliers dumping garbage on them knowing they won't be able to pre-validate it, don't have resources for hotfixing problems, or means of dealing with warranty.

[sub68]

This is up there with a thinkpad for me to buy.

Than he goes pixart and liton.

I have salveged liton PSU's they ar e ok, but a pixart trackpad thats a good unit.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

3 hours ago, Jaegan said:

I hope for a followup video talking about how well compatibility is for linux.  I love the modularity of this, but have no desire whatsoever to run Windows.

These days, it's pretty challenging to find something which is NOT compatible with Linux. Especially since they're using all the standard components. I've changed a handful of laptops, and the only one I had issues with on Linux was Microsoft Surface.

[manikyath]

2 hours ago, Jaofilipe said:

said they were just regular usb type c ports! And that is awesome!

that's exactly my point.

 

the only groundbreaking thing here, is that the dongle is now inside the laptop instead of outside the laptop.

 

yes, it's a huge leap forward for the public image of repairability, but we really shouldnt praise them as the new kings, without calling out the old folks have been doing all but the dongle concept for their business customers since the dawn of times.

 

- repair instructions for everything but the mainboard itself? HP EliteBooks have it.

- parts availability without questions asked? (well.. support will be asking a lot of questions, but you get the part you want..) HP EliteBooks have it.

- upgradeability? well.. SSD, battery, memory, wifi card, 4G modem (yes), etc.. HP EliteBooks can do it.

 

now.. there's upsides and downsides to the dongles being usb-c.. but to me it mostly seems like a very cheap solution to a problem that shouldnt be created in the first place.

 

it is probably more infuriating to me than it should be that they dont, for example, have a dongle with two usb ports, because the best you can do in terms of connectivity still remains disappointingly "on par" with your average EliteBook.

 

to me, it would have been much better if they got rid of the 4 modules, made room for a second M.2 slot internally, and did crap like "bigger battery <=> smaller battery plus 2.5" bay" choices.

whichever combination of modules you may want to do, it's all worse than just sticking a mixture of USB ports and a displayport port on the laptop.

also, a lack of ethernet infuriates me. it's the one port i cant get right now, and appareantly i cant get it on "a modular laptop" either.

[IAmAndre]

Does anyone know if they ship worldwide?