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That's a false dichotomy. User replaceable batteries don't come at the cost of thin and sturdy phones. Laptop manufacturers have been saying that for years, an

That's a false dichotomy. User replaceable batteries don't come at the cost of thin and sturdy phones. Laptop manufacturers have been saying that for years, and look at the Framework.

noirbot 5y ago
As someone who bought a Framework to try to support a better model, my #1 complaint about it by far is that the battery is essentially worthless. It maybe gets 3 hours of use on a full charge, and 9 hours while closed and hibernated. I returned a M1 Macbook Air to get the Framework instead, so essentially, I've now paid 50% more to get a laptop with almost infinitely worse battery life when idle and 3-4x worse battery life in use. It's also slower, heavier, thicker, and has a screen resolution that a lot of apps don't know how to use well. At this rate, I better be able to replace the battery because I'm having to do a full charge/discharge cycle multiple times a day if I'm not just constantly leaving it plugged in. I love the idea of it in theory, but it's essentially a worse laptop than even the decade-old Apple laptops that did have replaceable batteries.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  You seem to think that Framework can fix their battery by gluing it in and welding the case shut?
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I don't know, but whatever they did has made for a decidedly worse laptop, and I assume they didn't set out to make a laptop that had an essentially unusable battery. I'm assuming good intent on their part that this is the best laptop they could make with the parts/design constraints. I'll be happy if the v2 of it is better though.
    - stolsvik 5y ago
      Is it the battery, or the power usage of the laptop? The battery is a pretty physical thing, storing that many Watt-hours. If you have a 100 Wh battery, Apple uses 10 W and Framework 50 W, then you’ll get a 5x difference on the same battery.
      - noirbot 5y ago
        Does it matter? It's not as if I designed this laptop myself. I had 2 options. If you can only put a battery in your laptop that holds X W/hrs of power and you sell it with a CPU and other components that demand enough power to drain it in 3 hours, then that's a design flaw. At least unless you put a big glaring "This laptop has 3 hours battery life" on the purchase page. Instead, they just repeatedly say how many Watts the battery holds and leaves you to assume that it's such a big number that it'll have great battery life.
- gcthomas 5y ago
  > It's also slower, heavier, thicker, The Framework and M1 Macbook Air weight the same at 1.3 kg, and are both 16 mm thick, according to the specs that I can find. Did it really _seem_ thicker and heavier to you?
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I'm a little surprised, but the weight being roughly the same makes sense. The thickness is a little deceptive. I think they're both measured from their thickest point, but the Framework is essentially a solid brick with only a slight taper on the front and back edge, while the Air tapers to nearly a point on a number of sides. For reference, Apple lists the Air at: Height: 0.16–0.63 inch (0.41–1.61 cm) So they're the same thickness at their thickest point, but I'd guess that the Air has much less of the laptop at that thickness. I'd be curious about a volumetric comparison.
- Dunedan 5y ago
  It's not the battery size which is the issue here, but how much power the hardware uses. The capacity of the battery of the Framework is 55W, while the capacity of the battery of the M1 MacBook Air is 49,9Wh. So apparently Framework managed to fit a larger battery in a equally large case, without the need to glue it in.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    To my point above, I'm pretty sure the Framework case is quite a bit larger in volume than the MBA case, so it's not really apples to apples there. Perhaps it's just that the Intel processor in the Framework is a massive energy hog (likely), but even my old Intel Macbook had easily 2x the battery life. In the end, I wasn't even trying to say that the battery size mattered. If anything, the fact that it's a bigger battery almost makes it worse. They crammed more battery in and it's still a drastically worse user experience when it comes to everything about the battery. Some of this is definitely because they're having to buy worse parts to try to make sure they're replaceable, and maybe that would improve if more places made parts for it. Maybe I could upgrade to a more efficient CPU/Mobo in the future, or a better battery, but then what do I do with the old one? I'm still contributing to e-waste.
    - tjoff 5y ago
      Well, you'd have almost twice the battery-life, if you used Windows. And you can get comparable results in Linux, but you need to tweak it yourself at the moment.
      - noirbot 5y ago
        I'm using Linux and Windows. I regret to inform you that neither helps all that much. I've even spent a decent amount of time shoving values into config files to try to improve things on Linux.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      The comparison begins and ends with M1 vs Intel chip. Linux is the second factor unfortunately.

That's a false dichotomy. User replaceable batteries don't come at the cost of thin and sturdy phones. Laptop manufacturers have been saying that for years, and look at the Framework.

noirbot 5y ago

As someone who bought a Framework to try to support a better model, my #1 complaint about it by far is that the battery is essentially worthless. It maybe gets 3 hours of use on a full charge, and 9 hours while closed and hibernated. I returned a M1 Macbook Air to get the Framework instead, so essentially, I've now paid 50% more to get a laptop with almost infinitely worse battery life when idle and 3-4x worse battery life in use. It's also slower, heavier, thicker, and has a screen resolution that a lot of apps don't know how to use well. At this rate, I better be able to replace the battery because I'm having to do a full charge/discharge cycle multiple times a day if I'm not just constantly leaving it plugged in. I love the idea of it in theory, but it's essentially a worse laptop than even the decade-old Apple laptops that did have replaceable batteries.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
You seem to think that Framework can fix their battery by gluing it in and welding the case shut?
- noirbot 5y ago
  I don't know, but whatever they did has made for a decidedly worse laptop, and I assume they didn't set out to make a laptop that had an essentially unusable battery. I'm assuming good intent on their part that this is the best laptop they could make with the parts/design constraints. I'll be happy if the v2 of it is better though.
  - stolsvik 5y ago
    Is it the battery, or the power usage of the laptop? The battery is a pretty physical thing, storing that many Watt-hours. If you have a 100 Wh battery, Apple uses 10 W and Framework 50 W, then you’ll get a 5x difference on the same battery.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      Does it matter? It's not as if I designed this laptop myself. I had 2 options. If you can only put a battery in your laptop that holds X W/hrs of power and you sell it with a CPU and other components that demand enough power to drain it in 3 hours, then that's a design flaw. At least unless you put a big glaring "This laptop has 3 hours battery life" on the purchase page. Instead, they just repeatedly say how many Watts the battery holds and leaves you to assume that it's such a big number that it'll have great battery life.
gcthomas 5y ago
> It's also slower, heavier, thicker, The Framework and M1 Macbook Air weight the same at 1.3 kg, and are both 16 mm thick, according to the specs that I can find. Did it really _seem_ thicker and heavier to you?
- noirbot 5y ago
  I'm a little surprised, but the weight being roughly the same makes sense. The thickness is a little deceptive. I think they're both measured from their thickest point, but the Framework is essentially a solid brick with only a slight taper on the front and back edge, while the Air tapers to nearly a point on a number of sides. For reference, Apple lists the Air at: Height: 0.16–0.63 inch (0.41–1.61 cm) So they're the same thickness at their thickest point, but I'd guess that the Air has much less of the laptop at that thickness. I'd be curious about a volumetric comparison.
Dunedan 5y ago
It's not the battery size which is the issue here, but how much power the hardware uses. The capacity of the battery of the Framework is 55W, while the capacity of the battery of the M1 MacBook Air is 49,9Wh. So apparently Framework managed to fit a larger battery in a equally large case, without the need to glue it in.
- noirbot 5y ago
  To my point above, I'm pretty sure the Framework case is quite a bit larger in volume than the MBA case, so it's not really apples to apples there. Perhaps it's just that the Intel processor in the Framework is a massive energy hog (likely), but even my old Intel Macbook had easily 2x the battery life. In the end, I wasn't even trying to say that the battery size mattered. If anything, the fact that it's a bigger battery almost makes it worse. They crammed more battery in and it's still a drastically worse user experience when it comes to everything about the battery. Some of this is definitely because they're having to buy worse parts to try to make sure they're replaceable, and maybe that would improve if more places made parts for it. Maybe I could upgrade to a more efficient CPU/Mobo in the future, or a better battery, but then what do I do with the old one? I'm still contributing to e-waste.
  - tjoff 5y ago
    Well, you'd have almost twice the battery-life, if you used Windows. And you can get comparable results in Linux, but you need to tweak it yourself at the moment.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      I'm using Linux and Windows. I regret to inform you that neither helps all that much. I've even spent a decent amount of time shoving values into config files to try to improve things on Linux.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    The comparison begins and ends with M1 vs Intel chip. Linux is the second factor unfortunately.