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This device is seriously the answer to all my laptop problems. I really like the form factor of the XPS 13, but now I'm stuck with the complete inability to up

This device is seriously the answer to all my laptop problems. I really like the form factor of the XPS 13, but now I'm stuck with the complete inability to upgrade RAM. In what universe is that normal? Then I accidentally nuked the USB-C ports on the left side when it got wet, and now I'm left with a single port for everything, including charging. What!? Why? I tore the entire thing apart and there's just no way to replace anything besides the SSD drive, everything else is soldered on. I'm in Batch 1 and can't wait to get my full purchase email. I seriously see this as an investment. I'll pay full price for a laptop once more, and then every other incident like this will just be parts and labor to get things back to square one.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>but now I'm stuck with the complete inability to upgrade RAM. In what universe is that normal? Apple's? And Dell's? And Lenovo's? And every other electronics manufacturare who benefits form planned obsolescence and selling more hardware.
- victor9000 5y ago
  Common? Yes. Normal? No. RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. >It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires. Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?
    - amelius 5y ago
      "Make a system that even morons can use, and only morons will use it."
      - tpush 5y ago
        That’s both condescending and evidently not true at all.
        Aeolun 5y ago
        Relatively speaking I guess it is true? If your system is so hard to use that only power users consider it, you’ll only have power users, but those represent less than 1% of the population. If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      There are companies who's livelihood is replacing a 4 cylinder engine in an MX-5 with an LS V8.
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        Yeah, but we were talking about "user upgradeable" here. Even my local dealer won't upgrade engines and most car owners have no idea how to change their oil or a tyre, let alone perform engine transplants. One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
        eptcyka 5y ago
        Yes, but a lot of car owners do change their own parts, replacing various filters, adding bolt-on parts, changing out suspension, tyres and the like. Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. Cars are built to have replaceable parts, why can't laptops be the same? There are issues with the M1 equipped macbooks burning through flash due to users swapping out of the 16 gigabytes of memory that are not expandable. I don't want hardware designers to be legislated out of being able to do interesting things with packaging, like with what AMD is trying to do with integrating memory chips vertically on top of their SoCs, but I would appreciate if there was less hardware turned into e-waste due to a single formerly-user-replaceable chip failing or being deprecated. Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
  - spijdar 5y ago
    Does the analogy really work, though? Is RAM more akin to tires or some other component like the fuel tank? I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist. For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    As the comment above states, LPDRR RAM is apparently not sold in DIMM form.
  - Google234 5y ago
    Tires are more like the plastic rubber things on the bottom of the laptop. What you want is to upgrade the engine.
- the_biot 5y ago
  What a bunch of nonsense. These are tiny laptops, and every bit of space inside is used. Soldering on RAM chips is an obvious optimization to make the laptop thinner. What were you expecting, a DIMM slot that's taller than the actual laptop body?
  - plater 5y ago
    For the very thinnest of laptops it's probably difficult without soldering the chips on board, but many users would prefer a slightly thicker laptop where you can replace the RAM, SSD etc. I have never had a laptop where the thickness has been an issue and I have done a fair share of traveling while working in sales. It's like a thoughtless race to make the thinnest laptop as if that is something that is useful. I bit like the megapixel race a few years ago. "We do it because it's difficult, but we can" kind of thing. And then we have the aluminum body used on higher end laptops. Is that really better than high-end well designed plastic? When using my wife's Macbook Air M1 I suffer from the razor sharp edges while typing. (Maybe not related to it's thinness or aluminum body, but a big design issue). Has anyone noticed on the Macbook Air M1 the small vibrations it causes in the hands/palms when you slide them over the palmrest ever so slightly? Extremely annoying.
    - kaszanka 5y ago
      I bet these "small vibrations" are due to some kind of coupling between the mains and the case. Dunno, not an electrical engineer. See if it still happens on battery power.
      - plater 5y ago
        No, it's nothing electrical. It's all mechanical. It's the surface which is slightly striped or bubbly or whatever and when sliding the hand or finger lightly over it, it generates a vibrating feeling. It might be less now after some months of use. Maybe the small cracks are filled with finger fat or something :). The sharp edges are still there though.
        5y ago
- tootie 5y ago
  I bought a few Acer's for my kids and upgrades were still really easy. I actually bought extra RAM and an SSD and had my daughter install them and it wasn't difficult.
ribit 5y ago
> In what universe is that normal? In a universe where you want high-performance energy efficient RAM. Premium ultracompact laptops have long moved to LPDDR which is both faster and consumes significantly less energy than regular modular DDR. And LPDDR does not come in DIMMs. And then you have Apple who are using custom package technology with custom RAM chips to cut down RAM power consumption to under one watt active, delivering close to 20 hours battery. You simply can’t have this with socketed RAM. Modularity is not a free lunch, as much as some people like to pretend.
- nspattak 5y ago
  Can you please point us to some technical report or something where they document the energy saving of moving from dimm slots to soldered ram/ssd ?
  - ribit 5y ago
    Unfortunately, I am not aware of any document like that. There are some papers comparing everything efficiency of different types of RAM, and there is of course indirect evidence of premium notebooks having significantly improved the battery life after moving to LPDDR.
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      LPDDR does many, many things to reduce power consumption (the current version even does DVFS, which I think is a first for main memory; graphics cards have been doing interface DFS for a long time, but a high end graphics card will burn around 30-70 W in the memory chips, and uses extremely high speed PHYs running at around 20 GBit/s per pin in the current generation). The only thing that really changes between DIMM and soldered on is a somewhat increased trace length. That accounts only for a very small increase in power.
      - foldr 5y ago
        > That accounts only for a very small increase in power. What are you basing this statement on?
hughrr 5y ago
Realistically 99% of the corporate and consumer laptops I have been party to are built to order with the right amount of RAM in and never upgraded. Those of us who actually upgrade are an insignificant minority at this point or pulling them out of the ex corp recycling lifecycle. Another point is stuff that is soldered in is a lot more reliable as a whole. Amazing how many old machines can be resurrected by reseating the RAM. Really I'm on the fence. I'm sitting here on a 16Gb M1 MBA also. Now what I really want to see is replaceable USB-C ports. Those have a massive repair and replacement risk over the normal lifetime of a laptop. Lenovo / Dell etc solder them directly to the motherboard. One bad knock and the whole thing goes in the trash. At least Apple stick them on a daughterboard.
- jarcane 5y ago
  The Framework's ports are all on user-selectable, replaceable expansion modules. If one of the USB-C ports dies, you just unplug it and install a new one.
  - ttraub 5y ago
    What happens if the expansion port itself becomes damaged? Would you need to change out the motherboard?
  - james_pm 5y ago
    AKA square, flushmount dongles.
  - wffurr 5y ago
    The expansion modules themselves are USB C dongles designed to fit flush in the case If the internal USB C ports get damaged, presumably the device can be opened and repaired.
    - jarcane 5y ago
      They mention that several other such ports like the audio and power are easily replaceable so that seems a fair assumption. The modules are also track-mounted and appear to lock into place somehow, so it seems unlikely that the internal connection will suffer the same kind of torture an external port would.
raffraffraff 5y ago
This reminds me of the day I dropped my new HTC One M8 into water. I grabbed it out within a second. The screen was still on and seemed functional, but rather quickly it started behaving erratically. The little motor that handles vibrate was constantly running. The device was getting hot. I couldn't power it off. The battery couldn't be removed. In fact, the entire case was sealed shut so I couldn't even expose the internals to dry them out more quickly. I basically had to sit and watch as it buzzed away and finally died. I swore I would never again buy a phone that couldn't be opened up. My next phone was the Fairphone 2. I replaced the battery a few times over it's lifetime and upgraded the camera. I bought the Fairphone 3 as soon as it came out (and I'm still using it happily). My wife switched to the FP3 shortly afterwards. We both bought the camera upgrade and spare battery.
- Google234 5y ago
  New phones are water proof now which is something that modularity generally doesn’t allow.
  - neop1x 5y ago
    I never had a need for water-proof phone. I am not diving or bathing with the phone...
    - Idiot211 5y ago
      Sure, but the reason they're nice to have for that one time that an accident occurs, whether a drink is spilled or you drop it in the sink or whatever. It's a pleasant nice to have if it is waterproof.
      - input_sh 5y ago
        That's just splash damage, which doesn't really equal waterproofing. There are different IP ratings for the two. Splash damage resistance is significantly cheaper and you'll find plenty of models that don't claim to be waterproof, but are still splash resistant. In other words, IP52/IP53/IP54 instead of IP63/IP64: https://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/ https://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/
audunw 5y ago
You better get used to it. RAM is going to move closer and closer to the CPU for speed and power reduction. And every major laptop manufacturer will move that way to compete. Especially now that the M1 Mac has shown what’s possible when every part of the system is optimized for low power. What we can hope for is that SSD acts more like RAM. Maybe it could have a decent sized RAM chip that the OS can dedicate as cache for virtual memory. There’s a chance that at least some hardware manufacturers will continue to allow for replaceable SSDs.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Yeah, I’m really curious where they go from here because it seems like the lesson is that modularity has a major performance penalty.
  - ribit 5y ago
    Once you get to a certain stage, yes, modularity becomes very expensive. I do believe that things like SSDs or WiFi cards should be modular, because there is no reason for them not to, but RAM? We are moving towards high-bandwidth on-package RAM, why would I want to sacrifice 100Gbps of performance and 5+ hours of battery life — not to mention also paying more — just to have an option of upgrading the RAM some time down the line?
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      Right, and then even if you can upgrade the RAM, the machine may not even be compatible with the best RAM down the line anyway. It's hard to imagine another drop-in upgrade that will be as big as putting SSDs in old machines was.
intricatedetail 5y ago
Soldering is not a problem. Your average tech should be able to rework most of the things, maybe except BGA stuff. Problem is no access to spare parts.
- neop1x 5y ago
  Almost everything is BGA now, including RAM and data flash chips. Just bios flash chips are still often (not always) SOIC. BGA soldering is possible with more expensive IR or convection-based stations and a bit of skill too. But yes, parts are often not available at all or from unreliable sources with dubious quality.
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    Plenty of QFN chips that die often e.g. charging chips. They are extremely easy to replace.
sydd 5y ago
Its great, but I really don't understand why they cannot ship outside like 2 countries (?). Its always such a let down to see a company in 2021 that doesn't offer worldwide shipping, and sells its products just in the usual 2-3 countries (USA, Canada, maybe UK). At least give some FAQ with reasons or ETA when you will be shipping outside the US
- Karsteski 5y ago
  They are working on EU right now. I imagine it's quite difficult for a startup to get licensing and shipping logistics done for multiple countries, and since NA is their biggest and easiest to target market, that's usually where they start. I understand your frustration. I'm from the Caribbean, we get nothing, ever :`)
- heywherelogingo 5y ago
  Have to manufacture different keyboard layouts for one. That layout in the pics looks unpleasant to my UK eyes.
  - nrp 5y ago
    We have an ISO layout for UK English and other languages tooled and in testing. There are an enormous number of hurdles to shipping in each new country, across currency, language, customs, fulfillment, support, certifications, compliance, taxes, duties, business registrations, and more. We're working through them as we go, but as a startup we had to focus and pick a couple of countries to launch in first (the US and Canada).
  - javier2 5y ago
    Don't have to, I'm from EU and want the US keyboard layout.
- javier2 5y ago
  Yes, I was sad when they wouldn't take orders to my country :( I thought shipping was mostly handled by postal companies anyway?
dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
I’m not advocating for any particular build paradigm but there are shops, at least in New York and here in Baltimore that will repair/replace soldered-on parts for you.
zzzeek 5y ago
XPS13 here also, I love everything about it except my fingers have totally chewed through the keyboard and the keys are all popping off all the time now. you can't get replacement keys, I've tried ordering from those scammy places and what they send you is not exactly the right fit. broken keyboards / trackpads is why i keep having to throw out laptops and get new ones. so I am very interested in this laptop if they are actually going to make working keyboards / keys / trackpad replacements available.
- nrp 5y ago
  Yes! We've designed the keyboard, the touchpad, and the full input cover to be replaceable modules. We've published guides for these: https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop We'll be making the replacement modules themselves available later this summer.
thaeli 5y ago
How long do you plan to keep your laptop? For my "carry with me" laptop, I just plan to replace it every four years and buy four years of accidental damage coverage. I break the ports or the screen, Dell comes out the next day and replaces it. For the machine I use to do my job, that's a great thing to have. I can see the advantage of fully serviceable if you're on more of a 7-to-10 year cycle, but then you have parts availability. I trust that Dell will still have service parts four years from now. I don't really have any reason to trust that this company will still exist four years from now, let alone still make a full line of upgrades. (Ironically, I've found that an old, out-of-warranty Dell is actually affordable to do major component repair on - because there are cheap screens, keyboards, even motherboards readily available. That sweet spot where a bunch of business machines are coming off-lease is when you can get a new screen for $35.)
Naracion 5y ago
I am also very excited about this, but the Verge review says the build quality isn't great. We'll see I guess. I just hope that they release the next gen motherboard when it launches. Intel 12th gen, DDR5 RAM. I'm waiting for that big generational jump before making a purchase, and I really hope I can get a Framework.
riedel 5y ago
Give me a keyboard with a trackpoint and I will give up thinkpads for the exact same reason.
- wnolens 5y ago
  Not integrated into laptop, but since 99% of my laptop time is spent docked, i'm using https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>but now I'm stuck with the complete inability to upgrade RAM. In what universe is that normal? Apple's? And Dell's? And Lenovo's? And every other electronics manufacturare who benefits form planned obsolescence and selling more hardware.

victor9000 5y ago
Common? Yes. Normal? No. RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >RAM is sold by the stick in any configuration you can imagine, yet these products are designed to prevent the simplest of upgrades. Of course, but most consumers outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea which stuff in their laptop is upgradable, even when it is, so they just buy a new device whenever they want to upgrade, because that's how they've been conditioned by the industry. >It's like being told that you need a new car because you want snow tires. Let's not give Tesla any ideas now. Joking aside, your comparison is not apples to apples. You can't easily upgrade the engine of your car from a four cylinder to a V8 if you need more power down the line, can you? Come to think of it, even upgrading the multimedia unit is a hassle in modern cars as each unit is locked to its production vehicle. On this note, when do we go after car manufacturers for this anti-consumer practice?
  - amelius 5y ago
    "Make a system that even morons can use, and only morons will use it."
    - tpush 5y ago
      That’s both condescending and evidently not true at all.
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        Relatively speaking I guess it is true? If your system is so hard to use that only power users consider it, you’ll only have power users, but those represent less than 1% of the population. If you make it simpler, you’ll get all 100% of users, but now 99% of them are evidently less capable of using the system.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    There are companies who's livelihood is replacing a 4 cylinder engine in an MX-5 with an LS V8.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Yeah, but we were talking about "user upgradeable" here. Even my local dealer won't upgrade engines and most car owners have no idea how to change their oil or a tyre, let alone perform engine transplants. One-off custom cars are a different thing same how there are YouTubers putting headphone jacks in their iPhones or upgrading the soldered VRAM of their Nvidia graphics cards.
      - eptcyka 5y ago
        Yes, but a lot of car owners do change their own parts, replacing various filters, adding bolt-on parts, changing out suspension, tyres and the like. Just because most people do not do this, doesn't mean that this is something that should be forbidden or designed against. Cars are built to have replaceable parts, why can't laptops be the same? There are issues with the M1 equipped macbooks burning through flash due to users swapping out of the 16 gigabytes of memory that are not expandable. I don't want hardware designers to be legislated out of being able to do interesting things with packaging, like with what AMD is trying to do with integrating memory chips vertically on top of their SoCs, but I would appreciate if there was less hardware turned into e-waste due to a single formerly-user-replaceable chip failing or being deprecated. Likewise, I'd also like to see less e-waste due to software deprecation (looking at you, Pixel 3).
- spijdar 5y ago
  Does the analogy really work, though? Is RAM more akin to tires or some other component like the fuel tank? I'd argue existence of interchangeable commodity components in computing has been very abnormal and because of the direction the "computer market" is going, I'm not sure how much longer it'll persist. For now, it's still most profitable for the manufacturers and OEMs to source cheap interchangeable parts from many sources. If the industry consolidates even more, though, it may be more profitable to vertically integrate. That was the way before the PC clone market. Hopefully not, but we'll see.
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  As the comment above states, LPDRR RAM is apparently not sold in DIMM form.
- Google234 5y ago
  Tires are more like the plastic rubber things on the bottom of the laptop. What you want is to upgrade the engine.
the_biot 5y ago
What a bunch of nonsense. These are tiny laptops, and every bit of space inside is used. Soldering on RAM chips is an obvious optimization to make the laptop thinner. What were you expecting, a DIMM slot that's taller than the actual laptop body?
- plater 5y ago
  For the very thinnest of laptops it's probably difficult without soldering the chips on board, but many users would prefer a slightly thicker laptop where you can replace the RAM, SSD etc. I have never had a laptop where the thickness has been an issue and I have done a fair share of traveling while working in sales. It's like a thoughtless race to make the thinnest laptop as if that is something that is useful. I bit like the megapixel race a few years ago. "We do it because it's difficult, but we can" kind of thing. And then we have the aluminum body used on higher end laptops. Is that really better than high-end well designed plastic? When using my wife's Macbook Air M1 I suffer from the razor sharp edges while typing. (Maybe not related to it's thinness or aluminum body, but a big design issue). Has anyone noticed on the Macbook Air M1 the small vibrations it causes in the hands/palms when you slide them over the palmrest ever so slightly? Extremely annoying.
  - kaszanka 5y ago
    I bet these "small vibrations" are due to some kind of coupling between the mains and the case. Dunno, not an electrical engineer. See if it still happens on battery power.
    - plater 5y ago
      No, it's nothing electrical. It's all mechanical. It's the surface which is slightly striped or bubbly or whatever and when sliding the hand or finger lightly over it, it generates a vibrating feeling. It might be less now after some months of use. Maybe the small cracks are filled with finger fat or something :). The sharp edges are still there though.
      - 5y ago
tootie 5y ago
I bought a few Acer's for my kids and upgrades were still really easy. I actually bought extra RAM and an SSD and had my daughter install them and it wasn't difficult.

ribit 5y ago

> In what universe is that normal? In a universe where you want high-performance energy efficient RAM. Premium ultracompact laptops have long moved to LPDDR which is both faster and consumes significantly less energy than regular modular DDR. And LPDDR does not come in DIMMs. And then you have Apple who are using custom package technology with custom RAM chips to cut down RAM power consumption to under one watt active, delivering close to 20 hours battery. You simply can’t have this with socketed RAM. Modularity is not a free lunch, as much as some people like to pretend.

nspattak 5y ago
Can you please point us to some technical report or something where they document the energy saving of moving from dimm slots to soldered ram/ssd ?
- ribit 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I am not aware of any document like that. There are some papers comparing everything efficiency of different types of RAM, and there is of course indirect evidence of premium notebooks having significantly improved the battery life after moving to LPDDR.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    LPDDR does many, many things to reduce power consumption (the current version even does DVFS, which I think is a first for main memory; graphics cards have been doing interface DFS for a long time, but a high end graphics card will burn around 30-70 W in the memory chips, and uses extremely high speed PHYs running at around 20 GBit/s per pin in the current generation). The only thing that really changes between DIMM and soldered on is a somewhat increased trace length. That accounts only for a very small increase in power.
    - foldr 5y ago
      > That accounts only for a very small increase in power. What are you basing this statement on?

hughrr 5y ago

Realistically 99% of the corporate and consumer laptops I have been party to are built to order with the right amount of RAM in and never upgraded. Those of us who actually upgrade are an insignificant minority at this point or pulling them out of the ex corp recycling lifecycle. Another point is stuff that is soldered in is a lot more reliable as a whole. Amazing how many old machines can be resurrected by reseating the RAM. Really I'm on the fence. I'm sitting here on a 16Gb M1 MBA also. Now what I really want to see is replaceable USB-C ports. Those have a massive repair and replacement risk over the normal lifetime of a laptop. Lenovo / Dell etc solder them directly to the motherboard. One bad knock and the whole thing goes in the trash. At least Apple stick them on a daughterboard.

jarcane 5y ago
The Framework's ports are all on user-selectable, replaceable expansion modules. If one of the USB-C ports dies, you just unplug it and install a new one.
- ttraub 5y ago
  What happens if the expansion port itself becomes damaged? Would you need to change out the motherboard?
- james_pm 5y ago
  AKA square, flushmount dongles.
- wffurr 5y ago
  The expansion modules themselves are USB C dongles designed to fit flush in the case If the internal USB C ports get damaged, presumably the device can be opened and repaired.
  - jarcane 5y ago
    They mention that several other such ports like the audio and power are easily replaceable so that seems a fair assumption. The modules are also track-mounted and appear to lock into place somehow, so it seems unlikely that the internal connection will suffer the same kind of torture an external port would.

raffraffraff 5y ago

This reminds me of the day I dropped my new HTC One M8 into water. I grabbed it out within a second. The screen was still on and seemed functional, but rather quickly it started behaving erratically. The little motor that handles vibrate was constantly running. The device was getting hot. I couldn't power it off. The battery couldn't be removed. In fact, the entire case was sealed shut so I couldn't even expose the internals to dry them out more quickly. I basically had to sit and watch as it buzzed away and finally died. I swore I would never again buy a phone that couldn't be opened up. My next phone was the Fairphone 2. I replaced the battery a few times over it's lifetime and upgraded the camera. I bought the Fairphone 3 as soon as it came out (and I'm still using it happily). My wife switched to the FP3 shortly afterwards. We both bought the camera upgrade and spare battery.

Google234 5y ago
New phones are water proof now which is something that modularity generally doesn’t allow.
- neop1x 5y ago
  I never had a need for water-proof phone. I am not diving or bathing with the phone...
  - Idiot211 5y ago
    Sure, but the reason they're nice to have for that one time that an accident occurs, whether a drink is spilled or you drop it in the sink or whatever. It's a pleasant nice to have if it is waterproof.
    - input_sh 5y ago
      That's just splash damage, which doesn't really equal waterproofing. There are different IP ratings for the two. Splash damage resistance is significantly cheaper and you'll find plenty of models that don't claim to be waterproof, but are still splash resistant. In other words, IP52/IP53/IP54 instead of IP63/IP64: https://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/ https://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/

audunw 5y ago

You better get used to it. RAM is going to move closer and closer to the CPU for speed and power reduction. And every major laptop manufacturer will move that way to compete. Especially now that the M1 Mac has shown what’s possible when every part of the system is optimized for low power. What we can hope for is that SSD acts more like RAM. Maybe it could have a decent sized RAM chip that the OS can dedicate as cache for virtual memory. There’s a chance that at least some hardware manufacturers will continue to allow for replaceable SSDs.

emodendroket 5y ago
Yeah, I’m really curious where they go from here because it seems like the lesson is that modularity has a major performance penalty.
- ribit 5y ago
  Once you get to a certain stage, yes, modularity becomes very expensive. I do believe that things like SSDs or WiFi cards should be modular, because there is no reason for them not to, but RAM? We are moving towards high-bandwidth on-package RAM, why would I want to sacrifice 100Gbps of performance and 5+ hours of battery life — not to mention also paying more — just to have an option of upgrading the RAM some time down the line?
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Right, and then even if you can upgrade the RAM, the machine may not even be compatible with the best RAM down the line anyway. It's hard to imagine another drop-in upgrade that will be as big as putting SSDs in old machines was.

intricatedetail 5y ago

Soldering is not a problem. Your average tech should be able to rework most of the things, maybe except BGA stuff. Problem is no access to spare parts.

neop1x 5y ago
Almost everything is BGA now, including RAM and data flash chips. Just bios flash chips are still often (not always) SOIC. BGA soldering is possible with more expensive IR or convection-based stations and a bit of skill too. But yes, parts are often not available at all or from unreliable sources with dubious quality.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  Plenty of QFN chips that die often e.g. charging chips. They are extremely easy to replace.

sydd 5y ago

Its great, but I really don't understand why they cannot ship outside like 2 countries (?). Its always such a let down to see a company in 2021 that doesn't offer worldwide shipping, and sells its products just in the usual 2-3 countries (USA, Canada, maybe UK). At least give some FAQ with reasons or ETA when you will be shipping outside the US

Karsteski 5y ago
They are working on EU right now. I imagine it's quite difficult for a startup to get licensing and shipping logistics done for multiple countries, and since NA is their biggest and easiest to target market, that's usually where they start. I understand your frustration. I'm from the Caribbean, we get nothing, ever :`)
heywherelogingo 5y ago
Have to manufacture different keyboard layouts for one. That layout in the pics looks unpleasant to my UK eyes.
- nrp 5y ago
  We have an ISO layout for UK English and other languages tooled and in testing. There are an enormous number of hurdles to shipping in each new country, across currency, language, customs, fulfillment, support, certifications, compliance, taxes, duties, business registrations, and more. We're working through them as we go, but as a startup we had to focus and pick a couple of countries to launch in first (the US and Canada).
- javier2 5y ago
  Don't have to, I'm from EU and want the US keyboard layout.
javier2 5y ago
Yes, I was sad when they wouldn't take orders to my country :( I thought shipping was mostly handled by postal companies anyway?

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago

I’m not advocating for any particular build paradigm but there are shops, at least in New York and here in Baltimore that will repair/replace soldered-on parts for you.

zzzeek 5y ago

XPS13 here also, I love everything about it except my fingers have totally chewed through the keyboard and the keys are all popping off all the time now. you can't get replacement keys, I've tried ordering from those scammy places and what they send you is not exactly the right fit. broken keyboards / trackpads is why i keep having to throw out laptops and get new ones. so I am very interested in this laptop if they are actually going to make working keyboards / keys / trackpad replacements available.

nrp 5y ago
Yes! We've designed the keyboard, the touchpad, and the full input cover to be replaceable modules. We've published guides for these: https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop We'll be making the replacement modules themselves available later this summer.

thaeli 5y ago

How long do you plan to keep your laptop? For my "carry with me" laptop, I just plan to replace it every four years and buy four years of accidental damage coverage. I break the ports or the screen, Dell comes out the next day and replaces it. For the machine I use to do my job, that's a great thing to have. I can see the advantage of fully serviceable if you're on more of a 7-to-10 year cycle, but then you have parts availability. I trust that Dell will still have service parts four years from now. I don't really have any reason to trust that this company will still exist four years from now, let alone still make a full line of upgrades. (Ironically, I've found that an old, out-of-warranty Dell is actually affordable to do major component repair on - because there are cheap screens, keyboards, even motherboards readily available. That sweet spot where a bunch of business machines are coming off-lease is when you can get a new screen for $35.)

Naracion 5y ago

I am also very excited about this, but the Verge review says the build quality isn't great. We'll see I guess. I just hope that they release the next gen motherboard when it launches. Intel 12th gen, DDR5 RAM. I'm waiting for that big generational jump before making a purchase, and I really hope I can get a Framework.

riedel 5y ago

Give me a keyboard with a trackpoint and I will give up thinkpads for the exact same reason.

wnolens 5y ago
Not integrated into laptop, but since 99% of my laptop time is spent docked, i'm using https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/