The Framework Laptop

Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we&#x27;re working on it), so to see the rest of the comments you need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26263508&amp;p=2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26263508&amp;p=2</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26263508&amp;p=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26263508&amp;p=3</a><p>Apologies for the annoying repetition. It will eventually go away.

Ars Technica has a sceptical but optimistic&#x2F;hopeful take on it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;framework-startup-designed-a-thin-modular-repairable-13-inch-laptop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2021&#x2F;02&#x2F;framework-startup-de...</a><p>Edit to add quote from Ars article:<p><i>Framework is promising an awful lot in its very first product—&quot;thin as an XPS 13, repairable as a custom-built gaming PC&quot; is a pretty tall order to live up to. We very much want to believe, but it&#x27;s going to take a full Ars Technica teardown before we&#x27;re completely convinced.<p>Although we&#x27;re skeptical, we are hopeful—the fledgling company does have a pretty solid pedigree. Framework founder Nirav Patel was Oculus VR&#x27;s head of hardware from 2012 to 2017, and he was a Facebook director of engineering beyond that. The company&#x27;s team also includes design, engineering, and operations people hailing from Apple, Google, and Lenovo.</i>

I don&#x27;t see any mention of the firmware and drivers efforts for this. Firmware and drivers always end up more difficult to deal with than expected.<p>The Fairphone company was surprised by difficulties upgrading and patching android without support from their BSP vendor, causing many months delays of updates _and_ years shorter support life than they were planning for their earlier models.<p>I purchased the Purism Librem 13 laptop from their kickstarter, and they had great plans for firmware and drivers, but also great difficulty following through. The trackpad chosen for the first models took much longer than expected to get upstream linux support, and it was never great (it turned out to be impossible to reliably detect their variant automatically). They finally hired someone with sufficient skill to do the coreboot port _months_ after initial units were delivered, and delivered polished coreboot firmware for their initial laptops _years_ after they started the kickstarter.<p>So, why should we have confidence in the firmware and drivers that Framework will deliver :)

I don&#x27;t see any information on the licensing of the adapter card &#x2F; inter-module interfaces.<p>Can others build a Framework laptop without approval? Can others build cards without approval? Will it be a platform?<p>Tell me how this isn&#x27;t a Nespresso machine for silicon pods. :-)<p>Edit: To be clear, even a &quot;we have a generic base laptop and you can pick your I&#x2F;O&quot; concept is potentially a nice value prop, but it&#x27;d be good if the picture (and roadmap) was clear.

One of the repair challenges is access to old parts. The drain hose on our three year-old washer sprung a leak. When I called a repair man, he at first said that Samsung doesn&#x27;t make that part anymore. Fortunately, he was mistaken, but if that&#x27;s something that happens for a simple hose, imagine trying to replace the &quot;high-end headphone amp&quot; expansion card on this laptop five years from now.<p>Even if I&#x27;m not too excited about the proprietary expansion card system, which will last as long as the founders&#x27; attention spans, if it gives access to standard memory and storage, that&#x27;s an improvement over the current trend.

What is really needed is a common chassis. A common carcass that allows me the put whatever I want inside it. If I want a pinebook[1], I want to be able to put pinebook guts inside it, if I want a mnt reform[2], I want to be able to put mnt reform guts inside it.<p>Too bad eoma68[3] is still sci-fi.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;pinebook-pro&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;pinebook-pro&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mntre.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;reform_md&#x2F;2020-05-08-the-much-more-personal-computer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mntre.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;reform_md&#x2F;2020-05-08-the-much-more-p...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdsupply.com&#x2F;eoma68&#x2F;micro-desktop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdsupply.com&#x2F;eoma68&#x2F;micro-desktop</a>

I really want to buy hardware that allows easy repair. That goes for laptops and cellphone in particular.<p>Laptops used to allow easy replacement of battery, memory and hardrives at the very least.<p>All that sacrificed in the name of making the devices &quot;thinner&quot; and the design more attractive.<p>What bits me most is that a lot of younger friends I have, have no such expectations.<p>Talk to them about a cellphone the answer is usually &quot;well if you have had it for 2 years it is probably time to buy a new one anyway&quot;<p>Apples wireless earplugs are use and throw away. With a life expectancy of a little over 2 years from what I have read. No way to swap the batteries. I do not know if that figure is accurate.<p>I live in Norway now and the government is doing all sorts of things &quot;for the environment&quot; but have no interest in laws to force hardware makers to sell equipment that can be easily repaired.<p>Not that it would matter much for Norway, hardware makers would just pull out and the citizens would be very angry at the government.<p>If the EU and the US could join forces on it there would be repaid change.<p>I wonder if a latest generation Apple Air would be &quot;easily&quot; updated by Apple to allow end user replacement.<p>I doubt it.<p>Let say such a law could be passed, and it mattered, how much thicker and &quot;less&quot; attractive would things get. I wonder what engineering could come up with.<p>Buying less, keeping things longer, and making things repairable should be at the very top of the green agenda. That would all results in less sales so no major government seemsm to go that way.

Honestly this is exactly what I want (quality, repairable, upgradable), but I&#x27;m not all in yet. I feel like this space is extremely hard to break into, and I&#x27;m worried about their ability to pull it off. Is there massive capital in this corp? Will the price be really high? I&#x27;d pay a premium for this kind of thing, but if they start crowd funding it&#x27;s gonna seem like a red flag.

Hi,<p>When I saw this announcement I was hoping that I could finally buy a laptop with a good trackpad, with buttons, and a good keyboard again. But looking at the announcement, it seems like trackpad and keyboard quality are far from anyone&#x27;s mind, and it just looks like the laptop is copying Apple stylistically like everyone else, which means it is going to be kind-of unusable and I won&#x27;t want to use it. (Especially when running Windows, those kinds of giant Apple-esque trackpads are death, because you&#x27;ll keep accidentally moving files into places you didn&#x27;t mean to, and then of course there&#x27;s the general unresponsiveness once you add all the PalmCheck and turn-off-trackpad-for-n-secons after typing junk).<p>I like the idea of a laptop built for quality, but for me the #1 determinant of quality is my area of constant physical contact with the laptop, the keyboard and trackpad. And sadly, those look like afterthoughts here.<p>(For context -- I have bought and heavily used an average of more than one laptop per year, every year, since 1998, and have been dismayed to watch the quality trend constantly downward over that time).

Reading down the proposed spec sheet, I&#x27;m starting to see how crappy the competition is!<p>* Apple MacBook - Nothing configurable. Expensive and not build to be repaired.<p>* Microsoft Surface - Much the same, but with Windows<p>* Lenovo Thinkpad - A little more configurable than a MacBook, and much better value, but still difficult to repair. Missing premium features like an Aluminium case.<p>* Dell XPS 13 - Much like the Lenovo, but the Linux option is nice.<p>If they pull this off, developers are going to love it. I really wish them the best.<p>My advice? Make sure it works _flawlessly_ with the top 3 Linux distributions.

Well, HN will love this. Moddable laptop with a good webcam? Nice.<p>But:<p>- I really dislike the arrow keys not having the air gap above left and right. You’d think they’d learn that from the MacBook butterfly keyboard era.<p>- it’s a little disingenuous to say “no adapters” when in fact their little expansion cards are merely adapters that insert into the chassis of the laptop. Only four I&#x2F;O ports is a little tight (despite Apple deeming it to be “enough”)<p>- that laptop looks pretty thick and heavy by today’s standards.<p>It’ll be interesting to see how people respond, when many (especially in this crowd) have been clamoring for this kind of thing. How many will actually vote with their dollars, and will that be enough for Framework to survive and become a viable competitor in the laptop space?<p>I hope so, as I welcome the diversity and innovation that would represent. But I admit I’m skeptical as to their chances.

I’ve added my name to preorder list, happy to pay premium for a laptop with high build quality and hardware. Please don’t screw up the keyboard. Please. And a fingerprint reader would be welcome addition if possible.

What led framework to choose Intel CPUs over AMD ones? Did it simplify the design of the system?

I wish new laptops would follow the form factor of the old Thinkpads instead of Macbooks. I realize that most people like trackpads and can&#x27;t stand the trackpoint, but as someone who has used one for so long it would be fantastic if something like this existed.<p>That being said, this is a great project and it looks like it should be successful - having a laptop that is built to last with interchangable parts is a great idea and should&#x27;ve been done long ago.

Fairphone is doing interchangeability for... phones <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a> Although the feature&#x2F;price is a bit below average brands, they are greatly priced if you take into account the sustainability. I Hope more brands will go this way so concurrence could help get better products and reduce electronic trash.

I&#x27;m a Mac user, mostly because I like the simplicity of the hardware.<p>If&#x2F;when I return to Windows, a Framework laptop is definitely appealing. I&#x27;d rather change the ports than deal with a handful of dongles and adaptors.<p>One thing to consider:<p>I really want to try a laptop that comes with a good, well-supported Linux installation. (I haven&#x27;t tried desktop Linux since the early 2000s.) I&#x27;m less concerned about &quot;distro of my choice,&quot; because I really just want something that works well out of the box and is easy to learn.

2256x1504 resolution<p>Finally, someone that knows about the sweet spot between fuzzy looking FHD and inevitably slow 4K. I&#x27;d buy this laptop just for that bit of (nowadays rare) common-sense thinking.<p>Webcam is just icing on the cake.<p>Hope the keyboard is more similar to a Thinkpad rather than a Macbook. Even if not, I&#x27;m sure that will become an option soon if the project is a success

Great initiative, but the proprietary expansion cards are entirely counter-productive to maintainability.<p>The expansion cards will only be available for as long as your company provides them. Using the most-commonly used, mass-manufactured standard interfaces for components would provide more long-term repairability and upgradeability.<p>The trade-off would be in design resulting in more bulk and in the economics of your company, of course. It seems cynical to me to sell maintainability while starting a walled-garden ecosystem of proprietary hardware.

The port design is intriguing. My concern is your main competition, at least from me, is against Lenovo. Their thinkpads don&#x27;t offer the modularity of IO ports, but instead simply offer &quot;one of everything&quot;, with user-replacable SSD, HDD, and RAM modules, which is enough for most users. Swappable screens might be enough of a selling point, but, I&#x27;m holding out for the actual final specs. It doesn&#x27;t look like it can fit a dedicated video card, so it&#x27;s no competition for the Legion line, but it might stand up to the Thinkpad line.

Lot of optimism in the comments, but unless they have their supply chain pinned down I really really doubt that it will ship in any significant quantity in Summer 2021.<p>The truth is that right now most components are insanely hard to get, not just GPUs and they will have to play the bidding game (which will make their laptop significantly more expansive) or delay. For a small volume like theirs, there is a non zero probability that they will get dropped by their manufacturer completely.<p>I&#x27;d love to get my hands on one of their laptop though!

This is a little off-topic, but it makes me proud that HN can have two major IPOs (one coinbase!) on the front page, but the top story is a damn-cool laptop we all want to tinker with.<p>We have not been subsumed by The Man yet :-)

Do physical units exist yet? Where is the manufacturing done? It looks expensive to manufacture in small quantities. I do like the idea, but I&#x27;m afraid that this will become e-waste if Framework doesn&#x27;t exist, grow, and succeed for years to come.<p>The MNT Reform also does the &quot;sustainable laptop&quot; thing, via an open source approach. It&#x27;s a lot simpler to manufacture and easier for end users to modify, and its longevity doesn&#x27;t necessarily rely on MNT Research continuing to exist. I feel that&#x27;s the safer approach.

Hey wow, I love this idea, this design philosophy, and this commitment to reuse. It occurs to me it may also solve another complaint I&#x27;ve always had with laptops, that you have to find the machine whose screen, trackpad, keyboard, weight, etc. ALL match your wishlist (with a desktop you buy the display you want, the external keyboard you want, the external mouse&#x2F;trackball you want). This device lends itself to customization, almost like an ecosystem: hopefully some day they will offer a Dvorak, Workman, and Colemak keyboard variant, or similar customizations. Better yet, open it up to niche customized hardware manufacturers and make it a market. Suddenly it becomes the substrate for an ecosystem of customized components. I love this idea. (For reference, my current approach to hardware reuse is to sytematically only buy used laptops. I save a ton of money too).

I was dreaming about such a laptop only a few days ago (admittedly with an IBM&#x2F;Lenovo-like keyboard). Do you offer ANSI keyboards for European countries? It would be great if a nordic keyboard layout was an option and easily swapable.

Nice project. However I see no Gigabit ethernet port. USB dongle for the one of us that prefer the performance and the predictability of a cable over Wi-Fi&#x27;s whims?

Another laptop with arrow keys so small they&#x27;re unusable. No usable arrow keys means useless computer. What is wrong with laptop manufacturers making these broken keys standard? There&#x27;s hardly any laptop left I could buy. A bit longer and I will have to drag an external keyboard everywhere just to use my laptop. Or just forgo laptop at all and start carrying some miny PC. It&#x27;s insanity.

This looks great, I _really_ hope this becomes sustainable and a long running model.<p>I&#x27;ve upgraded my laptop just in 2020, but when Ryzen-based mainboards and some high-bandwith plugins (10 Gbit SFP+&#x2F;RJ45 or Thunderbolt) become available, this will definitely go on the list. So best of luck to you to become mainstream, so that these niche-parts can be cross-financed ;)

I always think of The Sandbenders from William Gibson’s Idoru when I see projects like this.<p>It might be worth publishing enough of the internal CAD measurements as specs so that artists could create their own enclosures &#x2F; cool addons and be sure that they will have parts access.<p>Anyway, my first thought was ‘will an m1 board fit in there?’ so I am looking forward to seeing your release!

This actually looks promising but I wonder if I&#x27;m really the target group. While I do build custom computers every now and then i also cherish the &quot;completeness&quot; of the unibody design that my MBP has. I also wonder about the availability of parts...<p>Also, big up for the 3:2 screen.

Please consider making the left and right arrow keys half-height, so you can easily feel them out by hand. Macbook recently made this change with good reason. I’ve got the older model, and it’s hell if you’re used to a standard keyboard.

it seems like nrp is answering questions around here, so here&#x27;s another one: will you be shipping to the UK and &#x2F; or continental Europe?<p>Edit: found the answer: &quot;We&#x27;re shipping in the US and Canada this summer and opening up additional countries in Europe and Asia before the end of the year&quot;

As someone who swaps laptops out a lot, I&#x27;m down to get one. I&#x27;m also the same kind of person that buys an X1 Extreme for it&#x27;s ability to be repaired. I&#x27;m also curious about price, but I&#x27;m assuming that hasn&#x27;t been decided.<p>That said:<p>&gt; Founded in San Francisco in 2019<p>I&#x27;d love to see these kind of companies founded outside of this area in the future.

Intel based? That adds a 35% markup. AMD or ARM I would think would be platforms one would invest in if making something new.

Add:<p>* An option for a good quality trackpoint and 3 buttons<p>* A possibility to order a fully assembled model without an OS<p>And you will quickly get a significant share of buyers from the ThinkPad&#x2F;Linux crowd.

Neat - I wonder how it’ll turn out.<p>It’s weird how little there is in the laptop space that’s actually good.<p>Macs, Thinkpads, maybe Dell XPS?<p>Everything else sucks. It’d be cool to have another high quality option.

&gt;Designed for the future of work with a 13.5” 3:2 screen<p>Yes 3:2! Really wish Apple took this direction. But instead it was the PC industry moving towards it. For Desktop or Laptops that no longer has Gaming or Media consumption as their priorities, 3:2 is just much better for productivity.

Love the logo on the back of the screen. No stupid slogans, just the cog, looks great! It makes no rational sense, but I&#x27;d want to own one just for that.<p>Hope there&#x27;s gonna be a touchscreen version! After all, a UI that you can&#x27;t touch is like coffee that you can&#x27;t smell.

I would love a 15&quot; (or larger) version of such a laptop. I hope this comes soon.<p>Also some other options for CPU and GPU would be nice. (AMD CPU. Maybe Nvidia GPU for CUDA. Or maybe even some ARM CPU?)<p>How long does the battery last in this?<p>Will this be available in Europe? (Or rather when?)

The page about smart TVs makes me wonder if anyone has reverse-engineered the interface between a Samsung Frame TV’s main controller box and the panel that goes on the wall (it’s a remarkably thin cable that carries both the signal and power and can easily be fished through the wall). I absolutely love the panel itself with its wonderful display characteristics, but the software that drives everything from the main controller box is such trash that I’ll probably never buy one again). I’d happily buy a 3rd party box that would drive that display panel and be free of the buggy, spying, shitty UX that Samsung provides.

Is the upgrade system proprietary, i.e. will I be able to get in new parts besides RAM and disks when Framework is no more?<p>Will we ever get a laptop component system that&#x27;s as robust and modular as the desktop ecosystem?

I&#x27;d love a laptop where the keyboard is a removable PCB with low-profile switches and integrated USB connection so you can make a custom layout, like the Mitosis or ortholinear or anything you please.

I upgraded my five year used laptop just last month, and this would have been an ideal one.<p>However, lack of an AMD CPU is a kind of deal breaker for me, even if it means I wouldn&#x27;t get USB 4.

I know trackpads won, but would love a trackpoint. I keep buying Thinkpads solely for that feature.

A big part of reparability is how readily available parts are. Using commodity parts available to anyone really helps with this, and so hopefully for parts like the battery module and the screen, they are off the shelf items. It sounds like the team at Framework have that in mind, so I am hopeful.<p>Also, this is a very small niche, but it would be rad if down the line they came out with a ruggedized chassis upgrade. A repairable laptop that can be used in the field? That would be a dream.

Yes, this is so needed in the era of SoC notebooks. As much as Apple M1 is a leap forward we still need systems similar to frame.work notebook.<p>A relatable story - I have an Acer notebook from 2013. I bought it from Microsoft store in Valley Fair mall in San Jose, CA. Over the years I have upgraded its hard disk to ssd, RAM and more recently wifi card to wifi 6 (learnt not to buy before opening the notebook. I bought an m2 card while in 2013 half mini pci cards were all the rage)

They look pretty good to me, I just shelled out for a laptop but would love to see the concept take over.<p>The build quality is always the most essential: - monitor - this is what we look at for hours on every day - keyboard - I personally like macbook&#x27;s perhaps is just being used to them (pre and post butterfly, that one I haven&#x27;t tried) - trackpad - every other trackpad I tried besides mbs feel always a bit plastiky, also, no outside keys for the trackpad<p>Good luck

I dig the concept, just hope the utilization pans out.<p>I’m holding out for an arm based Linux laptop which can handle Blender without too much fan noise... I would love to get a system76 laptop but I have doubts about the build quality. But they say that they are on tract to manufacture their own laptops this year. How does a framework laptop compare to System76? (Let alone a Lenovo or Asus.)<p>Any chance you guys could make your own distro in the future and brand it Lapdance?

Looks like it&#x27;s still tapering off towards the edge.<p>Feel like they might&#x27;ve been able to fit slightly more space for port swapping if they had gone for the uniform aluminum slab design of the Chromebook Pixel, which, to me, is still beautiful:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;regmedia.co.uk&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;google_pixel_chromebook_hero.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;regmedia.co.uk&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;google_pixel_chromebook_he...</a>

This looks like a fantastic, albeit potentially costly, product, and I&#x27;m excited to see where it goes. For those of us who are happy with our current laptops but are still excited by the customizability of the Expansion Card system, are you considering creating USB-C hubs designed to work with the modules? The Cards obviously already adapt to USB-C but it&#x27;d be nice to have a dedicated hub to stack them and save space.

A bit like the comments about incongruous items in the recent Apple lab video, I find the presence of a Pocket Operator on the video demonstrating ease of assembly rather amusing.<p>They already ticked the expensive camera box, but for proper hipster bingo success, you would also need: some kind of branded grid paper notebook, a metal mechanical draughting pencil, a teapot with loose leaf tea, audiophile headphones and a 40% mechanical keyboard.

This looks absolutely fantastic!<p>Any plans for a larger version, 14&#x2F;15&quot;, or maybe even 16&quot;?

Looks very interesting. Hopefully the pricing isn&#x27;t ridiculous, and come with empty SSD&#x2F;RAM so users don&#x27;t waste money on a basic build. I have concerns about the port modules, as they are &quot;mechanical moving parts&quot; that I don&#x27;t have good experience with, but definitely a better alternative than dongles in a lot of use cases. Signed up subscribed. Looking forward to see it in action.

I’m definitely down with laptops that have parts that are fully replaceable. It’s not something you really think about until it’s too late, and as such can really land you in some serious issues depending on where you are located in the world.<p>On a related note, why is it that Linux desktop hardware compatibility is such a hit or miss affair?<p>I would have thought that given the ethos of the platform and the sheer number of people using Linux worldwide this could be a solvable problem.<p>I read about VLCs 20 birthday recently and one of the things that made it such an amazing piece of software was that it came bundled with every single codec imaginable. It was revolutionary at the time that it just played literally every single video file you had in your computer. My point is, that it is possible.<p>If there was a website a bit like caniuse.com, that listed every Linux distro and test results with various hardware. People could register to be ‘drafted’ to test new releases, and there could also be associated discussion forums for workarounds etc.<p>Even if it was just for laptop hardware, it would be amazing. Not knowing if an expensive purchased laptop will work or not is such a big barrier to entry.

This looks really cool. I&#x27;m especially loving the weight. I really dislike a lot of recent laptops for their fragility and lack of upgrade capacity, so currently I&#x27;m using a T440P which comes in around 2.26kg - so if this is 1.3kg that&#x27;s nearly a kilo of weight savings.<p>The replaceable battery is great, the weight is great, the design is pretty good, and the keyboard seems fine - 1.5mm of key travel is usable. (The T440P has around 2.2mm, and according to [0] all current Thinkpads are 1.8mm except X1 Carbon&#x2F;Yoga&#x2F;L14&#x2F;L15 at 1.5mm)<p>My big question, though, is the durability. If you drop this thing a few times, will I have any problems? What about water damage - have you tested anything (intentionally or unintentionally?) Any drain holes? If I was to spill a decent bit of water on the keyboard, would that have a 10%&#x2F;30%&#x2F;80% chance of killing it?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;thinkpad&#x2F;comments&#x2F;jhay05&#x2F;which_current_thinkpad_has_the_most_key_travel&#x2F;g9x6sj5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;thinkpad&#x2F;comments&#x2F;jhay05&#x2F;which_curr...</a>

I feel horrible whenever I end-up damaging an electronics product in such a way that repairs do not make any monetary sense. Mostly this is because the manufacturer doesn&#x27;t bother in building out a healthy service network for their product because they&#x27;d rather force you to buy a new model.<p>If priced right, I&#x27;ll buy this as my next laptop. And the next phone as well -- if they ever launch one.

This is something i need. I just can&#x27;t bring myself into purchasing a laptop of any brand due to the black boxing and lack of upgrades. Sticking to desktop until this stagnated market exist the cave.<p>In terms of design i value optimal decisions without going into extremities such as thinnest possible at all costs. Logo on the CRT-level of thickness bezels - nonsense.<p>Bookmarking this and waiting for the reviews.

No information about pricing?

Looks like a great machine! I wish it had Ryzen 5000 option instead of Intel.

Looks nice from the images, but personally I&#x27;d like to see those port adaptors house a combination of multiple sockets, not just one per module. That&#x27;s going to be a PITA to keep swapping them out.<p>Also the thermal management doesn&#x27;t look amazing, but I guess they aren&#x27;t looking to have big GPUs in them etc.<p>I really like the idea though, hopefully these guys do well from it!

&gt; Designed for the future of work with a 13.5” 3:2 screen with 2256x1504 resolution<p>I approve of this. 16:9 computer screens are an abomination.

Remember that one time when someone tried to do this with mobile phones and then Google bought it and killed it?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onearmy.earth&#x2F;&#x2F;project&#x2F;phonebloks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onearmy.earth&#x2F;&#x2F;project&#x2F;phonebloks</a><p>I really hope this is actually successful.<p>I&#x27;d love a version with a larger screen as well.

Love what you are building and rooting for this. I&#x27;ve been waiting for something like this for atleast 10 years

They have my attention here. As a long time thinkpad x220 user and tons of mods and upgrades in it I like the repairability approach. As a linux user I would prefer if they had an all AMD option.<p>Congrats on this project, I hope you folks succeed and bring more companies to make laptops&#x2F;hardware with the same approach.

If they release 3D CAD models, connector part numbers, and circuit schematics, I&#x27;m buying one as my next laptop (when my current one fails or goes obsolete; not as soon as it&#x27;s released). I expect, if history is any indicator, that they&#x27;ll be out-of-business by then, though. I&#x27;d want to know:<p>- How parts connect at a modular level (e.g. pinout and signalling between LCD and motherboard, how the battery communicates, etc.). I don&#x27;t need to know e.g. motherboard schematic &#x2F; layout<p>- Mechanicals (enough to 3d print things which fit)<p>- Ideally, as much firmware open as possible (esp. places like battery)<p>.. and so on. I&#x27;d pay a pretty good markup too.<p>I do agree with many posts. I&#x27;m not obsessive about laptop size and weight. I want something sturdy and which works well for work. Battery life, cooling, robustness, etc. all matter a lot more than weight.

To people hoping this will succeed (which I would very much like it to, personally), think about this:<p>1. Do you patch your socks, shirts, pants, jackets? Do you know regular, passive folks (so not the standard HN overachiever) doing this? I don&#x27;t know anyone doing this.<p>2. Do you repair your home appliances? Same thing, I don&#x27;t really know anyone doing this.<p>Of course, this being the internet, someone will reply &quot;yes, I do this&quot;, but my reply to that: &quot;of course someone does it, but it&#x27;s not a real market, there isn&#x27;t any money in this&quot;.<p>Poor people tend to repair their stuff, well off or rich people don&#x27;t do it because it&#x27;s a negative status symbol. And poor people can&#x27;t afford expensive stuff, which this will probably be. Poor people can&#x27;t afford high up-front costs, even though TCO might be awesome.

Just two months ago I posted this comment here on HN, bemoaning the state of laptops: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25565148" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25565148</a><p>You all have made me very, very happy this morning. This is an amazing start!

I don&#x27;t see the point.<p>I get myself a new ThinkPad every 3-6 years. The devices are completely repairable, every part can be exchanged. After the warranty period though, a lot of repairs don&#x27;t make sense any more.<p>After my usage period of a few years, nearly every part of the device is worn out. The case is scratched and sometimes broken. The screen too. The battery (probably the 2nd or 3rd) reached the end of its life. The logic board including CPU and GPU is not strong enough any more for the newest software. I don&#x27;t want to continue using the SSD, because the wear level went up, and I don&#x27;t want to lose my data.<p>Normally I give away the device as a present, for some one who has less demands in a laptop than I do. I probably could also sell it to a refurbishment company.<p>So what would be the benefit with that laptop?

Honestly I can&#x27;t wait. I&#x27;m a long time Windows and Mac user and believe me if I can hackintosh this I will (definitely need help from the community). Is there still time to make your packaging reusable in the style of Samsung&#x27;s boxes (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwidxu6H5pPvAhXIfMAKHSzeBs8QFjAAegQIARAD&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.samsung.com%2Fglobal%2Fsamsung-to-introduce-eco-packaging-for-its-lifestyle-tv-lineup&amp;usg=AOvVaw2V2iuvtTcd2NPlgttHz_Iu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;c...</a>). This will be a big help for nature

If this gets industry-leading battery power, it sounds like an excellent option. Would also be fascinating to see a wrap-around screen someday :)<p>Only one major request: reconsider the arrow keys to match the current generation MacBook Pro. That space above the left and right arrow keys is priceless!

This looks so interesting. A modular laptop that looks great? I’m a Mac guy and this still has me hyped!

It&#x27;s 2021 and I can&#x27;t believe we have to recycle perfectly good laptops because of swollen batteries or other replaceable components not easily serviceable. That was not the case for my 1983 Apple &#x2F;&#x2F;e. And now Chromebooks EOL, sealed Macbooks, the next best Surface? Computers have become appliances for the landfill after data extraction from the platforms. I hope frame.work marketplace thrives, consumers need freedom from the tyranny of convenience. 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste and going <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;26e1aa74-2261-11ea-92da-f0c92e957a96" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;26e1aa74-2261-11ea-92da-f0c92e957...</a> We need a different mindset.

How does this have 1400 upvotes. It&#x27;s literally just a landing page for an unshipped laptop

Exciting news on my bday, I signed up to be notified when this launches. I view this as progress in the right to repair vs youknowwho and I&#x27;d like to give this product a real shot. Bring on change and give the consumer options to customize, nice work.

How much overhead will there be from having USB-C connected &quot;Expansion Cards&quot;?<p>Will there documentation or support for enabling people to create their own expansion cards (for ex. like S&#x2F;PDIF)?<p>Will there be any support for high-end processors, perhaps in the absence of a dGPU? Dell Latitudes 14&quot; laptops have an Intel i7-10850H which has 6-cores&#x2F;12-threads, 2.70 GHz base, 5.10 GHz boost clocks. In addition, will cooling be customizable? The Latitudes run pretty hot.<p>Finally, is there a ball-park on the price range we can expect on pre-orders and say 1 year from release? $1,000? $2,000? Will it also be a high upfront-cost, but low replacement parts cost? Will they both be relatively high? Both low?

You have my attention. Will there be support for other processor architecture&#x27;s at some point?<p>Assuming this isn&#x27;t vaporware, and is near as good as it sounds, this checks all the boxes I&#x27;d like for a laptop, esp. if it gets ARM and&#x2F;or RISC support.

I like the idea of a repairable&#x2F;upgradable&#x2F;modular laptop. However, to really buy in to the idea I want more than a promise of future upgradability. I&#x27;d really like to see a company roadmap that shows expected future dates of upgrade releases.<p>Show me if you&#x27;re expecting to put out new CPU upgrade parts every 1, 2, 3 or 5 years.<p>Show me what type&#x2F;generation of graphic card is available and your expectation of how far behind graphic card modules will lag behind current gen cards, 1,3,5,10 years?<p>Show me how long I&#x27;ll expect to have to wait to double my storage, or ram.<p>And most of all, what are the target price points of current and future upgrades.

This is really cool, but I feel like the industry is missing something like ATX for laptops.<p>That&#x27;s what I really want. And hell, come out with a mini-ATX for laptops if you&#x27;re concerned dimensions won&#x27;t end up competitive.

This would be perfect think to spin off your own machines. Imagine downloading a Kicad files for motherboard, adding your own stuff, sending off to JLCPCB or similar for assembly and then stuffing into the laptop shell.

How much linux support are you going to be providing?<p>Eg S3 sleep and fingerprint sensor drivers?

This is a great example of a problem where Apple has placed their own financial interests above their users.<p>They could make their computers and phones highly upgradeable and repairable, they&#x27;re brilliant at these kinds of engineering challenges, but they <i>choose</i> not to because they would (presumably) not make as much money as they currently do.<p>But that leaves an opportunity for others to come along, like this company, and serve the market better than Apple.<p>I hope this company succeeds at least enough to force Apple&#x27;s hand, in the way Tesla forced automakers to move to EVs.

Look at the older Lenovo workstation laptops for an example of something similar.<p>I have a P50 -- a 3840x2160 15&quot; screen, 32GB of RAM, Xeon E3-1505M v5 @ 2.8GHz, and a removable battery. It also comes with space (easily accessible!) for extra drives, ram slots, etc. Even with the overkill Xeon CPU, I still get ~5hours of battery life on windows under moderate load.<p>Most importantly, the service manual is a thing of beauty, and has detailed instructions for almost any replacement. This is a laptop designed to be used, upgraded, and used again.

&gt; <i>Our Expansion Card system makes adapters a thing of the past, letting you choose exactly the ports you want and which side of the notebook you want them on</i><p>PC Card, is that you? Long time no see.

&gt; install your preferred Linux distribution.<p>Where do I sign? I can&#x27;t help but wonder if those won&#x27;t be more expensive than a same specs Laptop. It would totally be understandable but still...

@dang<p>&gt; Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we&#x27;re working on it)<p>I have a very meta interest in the tech&#x2F;design&#x2F;implementation behind HN. I&#x27;ve built a dark mode theme for the site because you asked the community to fill that gap. I&#x27;m wondering if whatever work goes into this perf improvement might be something y&#x27;all could talk about when it&#x27;s ready? I&#x27;d love to know more about what&#x27;s behind the incredibly 1999 frontend, and how it keeps up with the huge volume it gets.

One of the few things I like about my 13&quot; MacBook Pro is that it isn&#x27;t wedge-shaped, and the exterior design minimizes the number of lines and shapes a user sees from the outside. The chassis used in the Framework laptop is busy in comparison. I hope they decide to simplify the external design - this one is too busy, so I won&#x27;t buy it.<p>I don&#x27;t like the way Apple is so user- and programmer-hostile, so the Framework laptop does have that going for it. I&#x27;m interested in this concept!

Interesting tie but:<p><i>Approximately 75% of the aluminium ever produced is still in use today as it can be recycled endlessly without compromising any of its unique properties or qualities.<p>Aluminium’s life cycle provides significant benefits through recycling, saving 95% of the energy it would take to make new aluminium metal.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aluminium.org.au&#x2F;sustainability&#x2F;recycling-sustainability&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aluminium.org.au&#x2F;sustainability&#x2F;recycling-sustainabi...</a>

How does this charge? Looks like it has 4 fully swappable ports, plus a headphone jack. Where does the power go?<p>Do I need to always have a USB-C adapter in one of those slots, and it charges through that maybe? That sort-of defeats some of the swappability though, if one port is effectively unchangeable. Might as well have a fixed USB-C port, since that&#x27;s simpler and more space-efficient. Or is there another port or something planned that&#x27;s just not shown on these prototypes?

I can&#x27;t imagine the stress of launching a &quot;sustainable&quot; tech product like this, knowing every aspect of the product and business will be ultra-scrutinized.

If I have to install Ubuntu Desktop or god forbid Windows to use your laptop you already lost me. Why doesn’t someone try to tackle the operating system problem first? I literally don’t care about the physical laptop as much as the software running on it. Also everyone always says hardware is hard so why not focus on a software solution for existing laptops? If there was an operating system half as good as Apple’s I’d never buy a MacBook again.

For a laptop mainly targeting power users, I think it lacks several features for it to be a game changer:<p>- trackpoint - real mouse buttons - exotic keyboard layouts (i.e ortholinear)

Great. Another laptop with 1&#x2F;2 arrow keys. Such a shame.

Hints of the Sandbenders stuff from gibson&#x27;s Idoru. But like the modular smartphone products (fairphone, essential phone, etc) probably doomed to failure.

The spec says &quot;Intel Xe Graphics&quot;. Any more details on this GPU? Is it this one - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ark.intel.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;www&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;ark&#x2F;products&#x2F;211013&#x2F;intel-iris-xe-max-graphics-96-eu.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ark.intel.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;www&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;ark&#x2F;products&#x2F;211013&#x2F;...</a> ?

Will you support Thunderbolt 3?<p>The use of going portable and then docking in with a top of the line video card, monitor and proper keyboards is so exciting.

I’d buy a well built machine even if it was 3x as thick and 3x as heavy as other laptops, with 1&#x2F;3 the battery life. I just need a movable machine, not an actual “laptop”. Many of us from home with our machines plugged to the wall 98% of the time, yet the thermal and power design is for a thin battery powered device. I want a 150W laptop with a 120mm fan.

Is the Laptop also available with a AMD ryzen CPU?

I love the idea. My suggestion: To make the laptop “you” as the site says, you need to make the laptop outwardly expressive. Nothing is less unique than a apple logo on the lid. Zune did an amazing job some time ago with custom engraving artist designs and patterns on the back of their MP3 players. Maybe Framework could do something similar?

Any chance of thunderbolt 3 support? If the module port adapters are just (port) to usb-c on the inside then this seems unlikely

Note that while such projects are very promising, you can already get many customizations at buying time for regular laptops if you buy them on platforms such as <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hidevolution.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hidevolution.com</a> It allowed to change the RAM &amp; Disk but more customization are possible

Cool idea. Reminds me a lot of the earlier Thinkpads which had legendary swappability of components between models. For example, it was trivial for me to swap the superior keyboard on my T60 for the one on my T500.<p>Not seeing anything about the ability to swap out the display, however... You seem to lose a bit of flexibility when embracing the unibody chassis.

Worst case it fails as a product but succeeds in increasing knowledge to help move us away from throwaway electronics culture.

I like the idea, but I will 100% not buy it for these reasons (most important first): 1. Bad keyboard layout: Small arrow keys, lack of dedicated home&#x2F;end and page up&#x2F;down. 2. Screen is too small. I need at least 15.6 inch. 3. Replaceable ports are a gimmick. They waste space. Just put the ports there directly. 4. Intel CPU.

Will it run with completely free software? The limiting factor for lasting is not hardware but required proprietary software.

Looks great. I&#x27;d love something like this. I assume it charges over USB-C? Any chance we can get a video of the laptop in-use, and maybe a few shots of it next to other popular laptops?<p>Great design&#x2F;hardware. Specifically the high res 3:2 display, camera privacy guard, and the weight. And the repairability &#x2F; upgradability is awesome.

Since we have the designers lurking in the thread, I may venture to ask something I have been wondering for a while: would it be possible to use the lid (back of the screen) as an additional radiating surface to improve thermal dissipation of the internal components (CPU, GPU, ...)? Or is it an intractable mechanical problem?

After looking at this, I thought of another approach to achieve somewhat similar goal. Anyone interested in exploring the idea? I am a software engineer. So a hardware engineer and an industrial designer would be helpful to punch hole into my idea. Let us connect and explore some possibilities. My email is in my profile.

I use a 5 year old IdeaPad 510S with a Core i7 and SSD, and I have no reason to replace it yet. I <i>did</i> upgrade the single 8GB stick to 16GB just for the heck of it. But I can&#x27;t imagine needing a new one for another few years at least, it feels plenty fast (and I&#x27;m the nutter with 80+ tabs open)

This is the wrong way to go.<p>Put together a battery, monitor, keyboard and pointer in a foldable package, with an open space to drop-in and connect one of the many mini PCs out there. The &quot;laptop&quot; part could last for decades, while the customer just swaps-out the mini PC inside it every couple years to upgrade.

I&#x27;d be keen to make an FPGA based custom cpu board to go in, presuming they release port pinouts, timings and signalling details. This could be used for hardware laptop versions of legacy computers - Amiga, ST, Atari 800XL etc. Particularly if there is a slot for custom external ports to be exposed.

13 inches simply isn&#x27;t enough for what I need. I&#x27;d consider this today if I could get a 15 inch screen.

I think the best comment is this in Ars:<p>&quot;The reason stuff like this doesn&#x27;t succeed isn&#x27;t because you can&#x27;t do it, it&#x27;s because few people are willing to pay for the increased costs or other tradeoffs to get something repairable&#x2F;configurable&#x2F;upgradeable.&quot;<p>Which is a same, but it is what it is...

Will it be available in the EU or US only? Buying from the US not an alternative considering toll fees, VAT etc.

This seems to be a really great product. I understand many of its features may change in the future. However, I would like to see a spec sheet in the website. Also, I wonder what is the difference between the standard model and the DIY version.<p>On the other hand, the interior and exterior of the laptop look gorgeous.

FTA :<p>&gt; Most consumer electronics devices are disposable one-offs by design. The single best way to reduce the environmental impact of electronics is to make them last longer.<p>Yes. And I really don&#x27;t see why a framework PC can help with that. If you want to make them last longer, then make hard drive that last longer, motherboards that last longer, etc. Also, make sure the user needs stay the same for longer (for example, as a Linux user, my needs have been fullfilled by my PC for about 12 years now, I just added a bit more RAM (4 gigs) and a new low cost gfx card; notice that upgrading my Debian never resulted in more hardware needs)<p>&gt; In addition to enabling longevity, we’re focused on improving sustainability across the life of our products.<p>Just don&#x27;t produce them. It&#x27;d be more helpful if those brains would help big companies to do things better. No, instead, they think they&#x27;re smarter, and that being smarter, somehow, translate into money making.<p>&gt; The Framework Laptop is made of 50% post consumer recycled (PCR) aluminum and an average of 30% PCR plastic.<p>Count how many grams that is. Compare that to a car, which you change about as often as a mobile phone or laptop.<p>&gt; Our packaging is fully recyclable with no single-use plastics,<p>And who&#x27;s going to take care of those plastic. Me ? Just don&#x27;t use plastic (and if you&#x27;re so smart, then figure out a way to not need plastic in packaging)<p>&gt; and all of our product shipments are carbon offset.<p>Yeah, and what about the other part of the iceberg, ie, the carbon produced while producing your laptops ?<p>I&#x27;m all for ecology, reuse, etc. But at some point, if you&#x27;re smart, you must realize that all of that is pixie powder.<p>As I said, I&#x27;d much prefer :<p>- if hardware producer would guarantee a 20 years+ longevity - would reduce the number of form factors (so we can have less production lines) - would optimize for energy consumption (hey, my washing machine comes with a nice card explaining how much energy&#x2F;water it consumes) - would create less market segments. We don&#x27;t need a new CPU model every year. Look, my kid changes its game console (not exactly ecological either) every 5 years, so it&#x27;s perfectly doable. - OS producer would make sure OS upgrade doesn&#x27;t require hardware upgrade<p>All of that is way more political than technological.

I really hope this is successful, and that I could afford one of those some day, even as a pre-owned!

I hate to be negative, but the market has decided it wants un-repairable and un-upgradeable devices.

My naive question is &quot;how do you guys manage profitability? and hence survive as a company&quot;. That&#x27;s the one point that I can&#x27;t explain to someone when I rant about companies making devices that cannot be repaired and would last an average 3 years.

&gt; The Framework Laptop is made of 50% post consumer recycled (PCR) aluminum and an average of 30% PCR plastic.<p>Like others have mentioned, I&#x27;m immediately thinking of Fairphone. Definitely going to keep an eye on this and hope it&#x27;s still on my mind when I&#x27;m next in the market. Until then, I&#x27;m hoping they&#x27;ll looking into responsible sourcing of conflict minerals [1] [2], possibly in partnership with Fairphone.<p><i>Edit:</i> Hmm, can&#x27;t find an RSS feed. Anyone know if there&#x27;s one I can follow somewhere?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;impact&#x2F;fair-materials-sourcing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;impact&#x2F;fair-materials-sourcing&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;01&#x2F;fairer-materials-a-list-of-the-next-10-were-taking-on&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;01&#x2F;fairer-materials-a-l...</a>

That looks a lot like my first laptop, the Sharp Actius MM10. I&#x27;d get one of these on that basis alone.<p>The Ars article says the body is aluminium, but if I recall correctly, the Actius was a mag alloy of some kind (which I&#x27;d prefer). Either way, I&#x27;m curious.

I love the concept. Finally someone gets what matters in a laptop. Other companies have made similar products (I have an ultralight Samsung that I love) but they always seem to lose interest and the next year&#x27;s model comes out bloated and heavier.

Not a terribly important question in the grand scheme of things, but what&#x27;s the rationale behind making the \ key and the Enter key touch each other? I&#x27;ve seen it on other keyboards as well and cannot imagine what&#x27;s gained by doing it.

Wow, I would love to try this out. If the folks nail the hardware aspect, this is my future.

I give them credit for an interesting attempt. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m the market, but.

It&#x27;s cool but the MNT reform goes out of its way to be way more open.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mntmn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1365060706723393536" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mntmn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1365060706723393536</a>

reminds me of this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;b&#x2F;CardBus-Laptop-Port-Expansion-Card&#x2F;42323&#x2F;bn_635538" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ebay.com&#x2F;b&#x2F;CardBus-Laptop-Port-Expansion-Card&#x2F;42...</a>

It’s funny that the design is basically a macbook clone. Apple is way ahead with the M1, they will get rid of cooling, get massively better battery life and better performance.<p>But I am angry too at Apple for their high price and upgrade looked systems.

This is awesome, has the same &quot;spirit&quot; of the Fairphone. I think this is the direction the industry should be moving. However it will not be easy to break this vicious and wasteful cycle that feeds many companies nowadays.

&quot;Founding news&quot; like these aren&#x27;t really that exciting -- I&#x27;ll be excited once one of these &quot;modular laptop &#x2F; phone&quot; companies manages to last a few years and actually deliver on their promises.

this is a fantastic concept.<p>also, this look like a realistic way to tackle e-waste (not the apple-esque BS)<p>I understand that most of the e-waste is in the motherboard and the battery, but still, it&#x27;s something. It&#x27;s a huge step in the right directions.

Hmmm nice idea but they left some obvious gaps.. With custom port selection, there should be more port options, like ethernet. The chassis is thick enough to support one of those collapsible sockets at the very least.

Seems neat but using Intel chips over AMD is an immediate deal breaker for me.

are different keyboard layouts even considered?<p>I hate those small up&#x2F;down arrows.<p>Would also love to see the keyboard layout with additional column on the right (with PgUp, PgDown, Ins, Del etc. keys) like Mech-15 from Eluktronics have.

This will only be &quot;real&quot; if an when there&#x27;s an ecosystem of clones as happened with the original IBM PC. But it&#x27;s definitely about time that we had such standards for laptops.

My dream is to have this one but running Mac OS. Or a Macbook having this upgradeable features, where I know it will not happen soon as it&#x27;s against the planned obsolesce of the industry.

I hope it tries to follow a minimum of high standard for dust, humidity and heat, a little like thinkpads do.<p>There are military standards for this, and I think it helps a lot to have a laptop that is durable.

Wake me up when&#x2F;if they do AMD version with verified ECC support.

That recessed port trick is something I&#x27;ve thought about every time I snag my Logitech universal receiver on my laptop bag. Only difference is that USB-C puts that idea on steroids.

This product would make more sense if they defined &quot;consumer&quot; as &quot;engineer-inclined consumer&quot;. Swapping parts will drive the everyday consumer away from this product.

I looked at this yesterday and loved the slide out adapters, then last night I had a dream my macbook had them. Haven&#x27;t loved a concept so much it crept into my dreams via HN ever.

Part of me feels like by the time we get an interchangeable laptop&#x2F;phone, it will be a bit like the PC where interchangeable parts were used off-the-shelf instead of custom made.

This looks great. Would like to see a model with a Zen 3 or ARM processor, as buying Intel hardware in 2021 is a bit of a hard sell for me.<p>Outside of that, anything modular&#x2F;repairable gets an A+.

It’s really refreshing initiative in the laptop market. But how are those planned to be distributed outside the us?<p>Will they use local distributors like other companies?<p>Are they expect to have international warranty?

Just add a GPU please. A whole community of people buy windows laptops just so that they can game on it. For work, Mac&#x27;s are still best choice.<p>But hats off to the initiative. Wee needed this.

I was just this hopeful of Project Ara as this one. Really hope it can make it. Hardware is hard and expansion cards make it a lot more harder. All the best to the team! Hats off.

I love the initiative! It&#x27;s in line with the right to repair movement which, considering the HN crowd, is more than welcome these days.<p>I wonder though are there any plans to support coreboot?

Nice project, even though I only buy second hand thinkpad.<p>I would be more interested in a more innovative approach regarding the keyboard than the ports. This was solved with usb3 for me.

&quot;designed to last&quot; sounds great, but it can also be an empty promise without any contractual guarantees. What&#x27;s the warranty going to be on this product?

It’s too bad it doesn’t have buttons for mouse clicks. I can’t do precise mousing when the touch pad is also the mouse button. Too bad so many laptops do this.

Reading about the project reminds me of Project Ara by Google as they were going to introduce modular phone where person can take on and take off the parts

Really interesting, but I wish the decision had been to go down the path of using AMD Ryzen rather than Intel: Cheaper, faster, and better battery life.

So a ThinkPad in Mac shell? Is the framework flexible enough to switch an Intel processor for AMD Ryzen without having to replace the entire motherboard?

Why are these interesting niche laptops always so small?

&gt; with the ability to choose Windows or install your preferred Linux distribution.<p>10$ says it’s going to be quite an effort to run Linux on it. Nice idea though.

Who actually makes the boards for this? I want to believe here, but I need to know a little more about the supply chain before I’ll pick one up.

This is really a great idea! Congrats to the team.<p>I didn&#x27;t read the entire text, but here&#x27;s my question: do you have in your plans to ship worldwide.

The only thing I don&#x27;t love about this is that it&#x27;s Intel and not Ryzen 5000.<p>But if the promises hold true, this will definitely be my next laptop.

Thank you so much for doing this. It&#x27;s really needed.<p>I once had an HP Envy laptop which was so poorly made that I refuse to buy anything from HP again.

Wow this sounds like an almost perfect laptop for me

“At Framework, we believe the time has come for consumer electronics products that are designed to last.”<p>Is this another way of saying Moore’s law is dead?

They should send a model to Louis Rossman. He’s a MacBook repair guy who’s big on Right to Repair, and has a sizable audience on YouTube.

Why not have a pointer nib, its <i>the</i> reason I&#x27;ve continued to use ibm and now lenovo laptops. Trackpads are RSI inducing.

This is really cool. What does 1.5mm keyboard mean ? Does it mean 15mm, because 1.5 mm is too small to feel at the fingers.

I&#x27;ll be interested when I can click on &quot;Buy&quot; and it has a price. Otherwise, I would be very interested.

Finally! I hope this company will be insanely successful. We need more companies like this focusing on repairability.

Looks wonderful! Just a quick question - is Thunderbolt or USB4 support provided? I havent seen a mention of it on the site yet<p>Thanks!

How many dongles can one install simultaneously? I see only 2 in the video. Are there more on the other side?

Just curious, why Intel over AMD? AMD has been dominating the CPU market lately in price for performance.

This is just great and I wish then the best of luck. I will seriously consider them for my next laptop!

Huh, not sure but site was not available through my company&#x27;s VPN. It works though outside of it.

Love seeing a startup focused on hardware. Skeptical about the success but bravo to their efforts.

They claim &quot;100% Yours&quot;, does that mean they managed to do away with the Intel Management Engine? I somehow doubt it...<p>For the rest I see a lot of proprietary modules. I somehow can&#x27;t help but be a bit sceptical. It smells like proprietary lock-in sold as &quot;freedom&quot;. I think I&#x27;ll keep waiting till Pine64 comes out with a RiscV based PineBook Pro.

With an aluminum rather than magnesium or other body, how bad do you anticipate the flex will be?

looks awesome!<p>but will take the opportunity to be a know it all critic from the peanut gallery to be annoyed by the schmarmy &#x27;made with ♥&#x27; that i see on everything these days.. is anyone else as annoyed by this as I am? hmm...<p>wouldn&#x27;t stop a potential purchase though. kudos!

&gt; Designed for the future of work with a 13.5” 3:2 screen<p>I wonder if the &quot;future&quot; this laptop is designed for was canceled by COVID. Now that so many of us are working from home, maybe we should optimize more for a stationary work environment with no compromises on input or output. That is, a desktop machine with unconstrained monitor and keyboard sizes.

Yeah, let’s pretend that firmware isn’t a thing and RYF certification isn’t important. &#x2F;s<p>I only care about repairability when it affects a product’s <i>longevity</i>. And if the drivers are proprietary and will be unsupported after the warranty runs out, who cares if I can repair the hardware? It’s useless anyway if I can’t get security updates to the thing.

How about an option for actual damn buttons on my touchpad so I can tell where right click is?

Which OS will you be able to run?

This is super cool! Any plans to release a trackpad with the classic 2 physical buttons?

I&#x27;m just gonna say it. The design looks like a hard copy of the Macbook Air.

Expansion cards = square dongles with USB-C connectors that plug into the frame.

I love that it&#x27;s repairable and upgradeable but that Intel chip has to go.

These things never work because consumers care more about brands than rights

My current work laptop has ports that get blocked when docked. Don’t do that

This is excellent, would have loved swappable 18650 based battery packs too!

Very disconcerting to launch a laptop without any mention of battery life.

The problem is that non-repairability has an economic logic. Essentially, you make a machine with a rather predictable lifetime. It is the equivalent of renting the machine out. You&#x27;re can then offer support for that time period. If the time period is long enough, customers will want to upgrade the whole caboodle at the end. Everyone&#x27;s happy. And with the focus on a single product, you have the scale to pour resources into product design.<p>This approach will attract demanding customers - like the hn crowd - who will put demands on support as they customize and tinker. Then, if they extend it a lot, they&#x27;ll likely buy from other suppliers who free-ride off your development work. So you lose repeat custom.<p>Tl;dr: there&#x27;s a reason why modern cars don&#x27;t have easily accessible engines, and do come with fixed-term support packages. Bundling works. It may even be best for the consumer.

This all sounds great, but I suspect this will be VERY expensive.

&gt; 2256x1504 resolution<p>This seems like a dealbreaker for me. No 2160p option?

Will there be a version of keyboard without the Windows logo?

&gt; We’re here to prove that designing products to last doesn’t require sacrificing performance, quality, or style.<p>Mmm conspicuous omission of price. Still, the end of Moore&#x27;s law does make this sort of product make more sense.

If this works nicely with Linux I&#x27;ll buy it day one.

I would love to see an e-ink display upgrade for this!

How much would this thing cost? Can it run an RTX GPU?

<i>Shipping Summer 2021</i><p>Does it actually exist?

Are the privacy switches hardware or software based?

No powerful GPU seems to be planned, though.

Can we replace the Windows key by a Tux key?

This is the machine I was dreaming to have!

Wait what operating system does it use?

I love it guys, please take my money!

what happens when you want a new CPU of a new socket type? what happens when you want 8k screens?

So its now innovative to get back to 2010 and re-create old ThinkPad laptop with unusable &#x27;island&#x27; keyboard? :)

man if you&#x27;d only squeeze mech keyboard in this shell or a little thicker.

The year of the linux laptop?

sign. me. up. especially if they go core boot or similar.

the only thing I&#x27;d ask for is a no fan version

This won’t fly...

how about a microphone hardware switch?

No pointer nib, no buy.

pricing?

Looks promising, but having AMD chips would be killer.

As cool as this is, it&#x27;s a DOA product with no real market outside super savvy consumers. Uninformed consumers already buy the cheapest laptops they can find on Amazon or in the store.<p>If repairability is super important to someone, what incentive is there to buy this over a used thinkpad? You can get skylake thinkpads for less than $200 on ebay - replacement batteries and displays cost less than $100.

Nirav, I don&#x27;t want to be the guy but yeah. One the one side, I like that somebody finally takes care of products we really need—notebooks. That somebody enters the hardware game, one of the hardest spaces to conquer. On the other side, I am a bit underwhelmed.<p>I mean this must the dream of every engineer, designer and 13-year old. Designing your own notebook. And what&#x27;s the results? It&#x27;s good, I would buy one, maybe. But is it a gadget I think of before I fall asleep?<p>This logo, then the centered trackpad (are you serious?), huge clumsy bays nobody asked for and a non-centered displays. Worst, a design that doesn&#x27;t dare, that is afraid to go beyond the Macbook comfort zone, something that wants to be liked, something Chuwi and BMAX, two low-end Chinese brands, would have designed better. Btw, celebrating this reparability feature, maybe you should check out what Schenker&#x2F;XMG&#x2F;Clevo or the Thinkpads do for years. Not that all of aforementioned are dealbreakers but IDK, let&#x27;s says they do not make a good first impression.<p>Look at following non-iconic notebooks[1]—I don&#x27;t compare yours with iconic brands, this wouldn&#x27;t be fair—but look what other non-premium brands are able to create. These are gadgets I dream of and you should think of restarting the project, seriously, I mean are you happy with this yourself or would Jobs be?<p>[1]<p>Brand new Chinese Yoga 14S <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AMDLaptops&#x2F;comments&#x2F;kifq5i&#x2F;lenovo_yoga_14s_2021_arrived_in_time_for_christmas&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AMDLaptops&#x2F;comments&#x2F;kifq5i&#x2F;lenovo_y...</a><p>Brand new Asus Flow X13 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;eGPU&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l5fq7a&#x2F;asus_rog_flow_x13_egpu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;eGPU&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l5fq7a&#x2F;asus_rog_flow_...</a><p>Razer Book 13 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.razer.com&#x2F;productivity-laptops&#x2F;razer-book-13" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.razer.com&#x2F;productivity-laptops&#x2F;razer-book-13</a><p>Asus G14 ACRONYM limited editon, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rog.asus.com&#x2F;microsite&#x2F;ROG-ZEPHYRUS-G14-ACRNM&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rog.asus.com&#x2F;microsite&#x2F;ROG-ZEPHYRUS-G14-ACRNM&#x2F;</a><p>---<p>PS: If anyone disagrees, pls comment and let me know where I am wrong thanks.

The website says that it’s by members of the founding team from Oculus. You know what else is from the founders of Oculus? A company making AI-directed killer drones and other toys being pitched as essentials for World War III.<p>In 2021, the ethics of your products are as important as the products themselves. And yes, there’s a ton of hypocrisy if we compare to $BIG_CO, but that’s one of the tough parts of being young and new in an era where the young new guys have gone from 0 to 100 and gotten old and evil real quick.<p>Sorry to be so harsh, but Oculus connection that wins you VC dollars will get in the way of a lot of other things in unexpected ways if you want to tap consumer &#x2F; prosumer. If you go after the defense market, however, you’re golden! Not kidding. Call me crazy, though, but I’d rather have my dollars end up as far from war lobbying as possible.