Those things are too rich for my blood, but it seems to me like the concept is a great idea, and it would be nice if something like that became cheaper and standardized across brands.
I’ve always been really annoyed by the fact that laptops with socketed CPUs disappeared a decade ago. And these days a ton of laptop manufacturers are very eager to solder the SSD and RAM as well. This occasionally goes as far as laptops with permanent, soldered single channel RAM, and that’s horrifying. These things are destined to be e-waste, ending up in landfills far sooner than typical for equivalent desktop components.
When you upgrade a desktop you have so many more options that will save you money over buying a totally new system. GPUs are essentially plug 'n play. You can often upgrade the CPU just as easily, though every once in a while you’ll need to replace the motherboard. Same goes for RAM. Everything else can almost always be reused: the case, the fans, the CPU cooler, the storage, the monitor, the mouse, and the keyboard. Even the PSU if you’re not getting a significantly more power hungry CPU or GPU. All of that can add up to a ton of money.
Socketed CPUs in laptops are probably never coming back due to how much space they tend to take up. And laptop GPUs will probably never be socketed in the first place for the same reason. But if you could buy a standardized chassis and simply swap out entire motherboards that come in a standardized laptop form factor, upgrading would be so much more cost efficient, as would laptop repair. Also, lets bring back easily removable and swappable laptop batteries while we’re at it.
Unfortunately, this all flies in the face of the inherent capitalist enshittification going on with consumer electronics, and I’m skeptical Framework will ever be anything more than a very expensive niche for enthusiasts who like to tinker with their devices. But I don’t see any technical reasons why something like this wouldn’t be possible and practical.
I’m so out of touch with electronic prices. All my shit are either bought used or given to me as hand me downs. So when I see laptops going for $1000+ and it looks like the end user is just a pencil pusher punching numbers into excel, I get a bit of whiplash
Old ThinkPad gang.
And here I am considering buying a framework because it’s cheaper than a new MacBook… it’s been a while since I bought one new either. Had a desktop for the last ten years and would have kept it running except I got a free used desktop, then got a cheap used MacBook and figured I’d get rid of the big boys. Now the MacBook battery and SSD are failing and it’s very difficult/expensive to fix (plus the RAM is soldered) so I’m considering the Framework as a more upgradable option.
Most of my tech is a few years outdated. But I plan on using them till they die out lol. Maybe by then I have enough money where $1500 for a new phone is the equivalent of of $700 for a new phone
I bought a 13 recently and I love it. There’s really only a slight premium when you look at comparable laptops in terms of size/weight, screen quality, etc… but that premium is exactly why it’s feasible. They can sell laptops for $600 because they know you’re going to buy a brand new one in a few years. With Framework you can replace whatever you need to so long term maintenance becomes less expensive.
Keep in mind 2000s laptops were super thick and very annoying to disassemble.
Something like nvidia mxm for cpu and gpu would be pretty pog.
But yea the premium on Framework stuff right now compared to less repairable laptops is too high. Maybe with increased production they could get better like how Fairphone did.
Old Fairphones were super mid and costly. Now it’s got decent socs and Oled displays. Though you can still see some enshittificiation seeping through with removal of headphone jack to sell their own earbuds. Still, pretty alright.
Buy used components. What’s the point of this sort of build-your-own laptop with independently swappable parts if you don’t buy used parts once certain-afflicted people upgrade to Latest Thing? I feel as though that’s most of the benefit and a great aspect of desktop computers generally.
laptops when?thicc laptops
I have a thicc Toshiba laptop from around 2010 that has easily removable panels to access the optical drive, hard drive, and RAM. One of the best laptops I owned.
Dropping optical drives killed things, though. Manufacturers immediately went into a race to make everything thinner, and that’s what we’re stuck with now.
The thickness of that Toshiba was fine. It’ll fit in my bag without a problem. Going thinner is just showing off, and repairability suffers.
I agree, they are way too expensive to be even considered as a laptop. Generally for me, laptops should be $600 or less, and 600 is a generous limit. I don’t feel comfortable carrying such an expensive machine around with me. I read a quote from a framework laptop video that framework doesn’t produce the best laptops in the market, but they are the best laptop producers. Maybe that’s true, but it’s going to be a good couple of years (probably a decade) before these machines get to a comfortable consumer price range.
It’s also a large part of my complaint against manufacturers like System76 and Tuxedo whose laptops also suffer from being way too expensive.
the refurb last gen frameworks were almost in your price bracket back when they sold them I think… laptops are kinda a racket tho in general. performance and battery life always seems to nosedive in short order
Used M1 MacBook Air running Asahi would be the move if I were in the market for a laptop at the moment imo
I’ve always thought of that, even more now considering that Fedora Asahi Remix is out. I still worry about switching from x86_64 to ARM, but that will change now that Fedora is backing the project. Still waiting for the price to go down even further.
I’m just waiting for Plasma 6/Ubuntu 24.04 to come out to really consider upgrading.
There are Clevo laptops (I think Clevo basically manufactures stuff that is whitelabel and sold by someone else) that have card slots for GPUs, but I think they’re not a standard form factor. That’s most likely what you’d find instead of a socket, less because of space concerns (because the GPU has a bunch of required hardware that has to go somewhere either way and the port is not that big by comparison), and more for reducing latency for the memory. Look up a picture of an A100/H100 SXM, that’s essentially as space efficient as a socketable GPU can get. And those use HBM which is currently way too expensive and hard to manufacture to go in any consumer GPU, so there needs to be space for the VRAM which takes up nearly as much space as all of that power infrastructure.
