It's a company making a laptop with all components easily accessible and replaceable, in ultrabook form factor. They're releasing their schematics and diagrams to the public so the maker community can enhance the laptop with their own customization, and are planning to extend their storefront to support partnerships with really good maker projects. They currently sell replacement parts freely to whoever in their marketplace.
It's a startup and it's a capitalism so it's inherently bad, but god damn have I been wanting a laptop that doesn't have the battery glued down so my grubby mitts can replace it. The whole company is oriented around the rightful belief that planned obsolescence is a fuck and people shouldn't have to throw out thousands of dollars of electronics containing all kinds of poisons every three years.
The only thing you should be thirsting for is the lord's forgiveness. Amen :jesus-cleanse:
:jesus-cleanse: :policing-brain:
Yagami Light x Jesus Christ cbt enemies to lovers
company will bankrupt within a year because can't compete with planned obsolescence, good luck getting upgrade support then
I just wanted to point out how pointlessly negative this is. Planned obsolescence might/will play a long term impact but will not be impactful in the first year. This reads like you came here just to shit on something they're excited about.
It's bleak, but I've seen this happen over and over again. Maybe they'll last longer than a year, but they will struggle raising capital, expanding operations, optimizing supply chains, integrating components with competitive performance, marketing, etc. I've been waiting for open hardware consumer electronics for 20 years. I bought the first generation OpenMoko Freerunner. I've followed many similar attempts at bootstrapping open hardware companies.
The truth is we really do need to sieze the means of production.
The title is literally "validate my thirst" so I think shitting on it is merited. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. How could we have a thread that is literally just free advertising for some random company?
I did mention capitalism bad in the OP, but critiquing it for being an ad is fair, I suppose. I'm just excited for a machine that's actually designed to be repaired after years of dealing with the fuckery of planned obsolescence. And if the company goes under, it turns from a repairable laptop to a laptop with some extra resiliency to failure. Many modern laptops have hardware switches that prevent components from running outside of a chassis. This one lets you pull the mainboard and use the computer even if the rest of the components all crap out.
Of course, in another comment in this thread I told a comrade that the best decision is to use the machine he owns until it's beyond recovery and only then replace it. No ethical consumption, so it's best to minimize the absolute footprint. For people like myself that are going to be out a computer in the near future, I'd rather folks are aware of good alternatives to the crapfest out there.
within a year is definitely an overly pessimistic prediction, i think they're getting enough traction to get some investors their way for a couple more years at least, but yeah, realistically i expect them to go bankrupt eventually.
They're so fuckin' cool. If I didn't just get finished paying off a laptop, I'd be all over one of these.
The best decision is to use the things you own until they're unrepairable, then look into a good replacement, so you're making the smart choice there.
For sure. From what I understand they're currently pursuing Thunderbolt certification, and AMD CPUs don't currently have that native support? Idk. I'm also kind of leery on first gen stuff but I want to get the word out because Right to Repair is honestly critical when you consider how much e-waste is produced globally. I might get onboard with the 1st gen laptop just to help support the startup (and because I'm about to not have a laptop lmao). If/when they expand support with more parts I know I'll be able to replace my old ones as necessary in a few years.
Save your money, OP. Making a repairable laptop is a realistic and admirable goal, but modularity/upgradability is a scam.
There have been a few laptops that claimed the CPU would be upgradable, and as far as I know, none delivered. But consider what that would be like even if it goes as planned. A few years from now you spend like 80% of the cost of a new laptop to get a marginally faster CPU and just chuck a perfectly good motherboard and CPU in the trash. When is that going to make sense? It's not like you'll have the option to put a GPU in this thing in the future.
As far as the modules go, they're just USB-C hubs that slot into the case. All they offer now is rearrangable ports, and realistically, what else could they offer?That's actually something that's been addressed by Framework. They've worked to make the mainboard operable outside of the chassis, so if/when you upgrade, you can still use the old part externally for whatever.
In terms of the modules: they do use USB-C as a parent I/O, but the hubs offer conversion to DisplayPort, HDMI, microSD, and the other USB forms. They're also Thunderbolt capable, with official Thunderbolt support coming once the certification process is complete. That will allow things like external GPUs for people within that niche. I understand that there's also other modules in the works, but as a startup this is their minimum viable product.
Good critique though, helps to see what people outside the Framework & maker community think of this.
