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Me and many of my friends all have zombie Frankenstein desktops that perfectly illustrate why the Framework laptop both does and doesn't make sense. I can unde

by acyou 3y ago

Me and many of my friends all have zombie Frankenstein desktops that perfectly illustrate why the Framework laptop both does and doesn't make sense. I can understand why people with money to burn might not understand the limitations of trying to make a modular architecture work over the long term. Back in the day, dropping in an SSD represented a massive, relatively inexpensive upgrade. But, a desktop has cross-compatibility and flexibility primarily afforded by its massive size and weight. I'm not convinced these sorts of cross compatible upgrades will continue to surface into the future. And especially not on a laptop/mobile form factor. Now, my desktop's IO ports are 2/3 fried. Its memory, motherboard, CPU, GPU, OS and hard drive are hopelessly outdated. It will never make sense to meaningfully upgrade it, upgrade would mean wholesale replacement of everything. I could keep the case and the CPU cooler, big whoop.

bane 3y ago
I remember the days of incremental PC upgrades being quite commonplace (the 286/386/486/Pentium era). It was sort of a golden time where a relatively poor kid (me) could save his pennies up to buy a small upgrade and keep a system going through various "Ship of Theseus" efforts. I think I managed such an upgrade cycle through 4 generations of CPU while keeping various peripherals in various states staggered across all of that. It also meant that if you had the right supplier you could cobble together barely working computers just able to boot the latest all floppy release of SUSE or something. Today it seems that a decent computer (~$1000k) will simply just run most things perfectly fine for around 5-7 years, after which all the main bus and peripheral tech will have moved on. It's easier to junk that system and buy another one almost from scratch. The main benefit I can think of for still buying your own parts and putting it together (or having somebody put it together) is price/performance /customizability still leads. I was able to retire (give to my wife) an 8 year old desktop which is still perfectly fine for her needs, and buy an all new system, but thread what I wanted through a budget by ultra-specifying specific parts. I couldn't find a pre-built that was close, even after I just paid Microcenter to put it all together for me. This also turned out to be a good idea as they were able to on-the-spot substitute a few pieces based on compatibility and inventory.
eightysixfour 3y ago
Counterpoint - socket AM4 motherboards had an extremely long, upgradable life. Mine has 5 years on it and the 5800x3d I recently swapped in is still one of the fastest gaming CPUs there is. From a gaming standpoint it can handle any top of the line GPU. And it is in a 7.5l SFF case.
nightski 3y ago
For a second there I thought I was reading boomer news instead of hacker news. I kid, but honestly there are plenty of us that still upgrade our systems piecemeal. I'm always buying new parts. Partly because I like having the latest stuff, but also because I love handing down parts to my family members which end up being huge upgrades for them.
- acyou 3y ago
  My desktop is 11 years old this year. I added a network card when the port on the motherboard broke and switched OS when the OS became no longer supportable. Audio output is no longer possible without also adding a sound card, given the audio ports are all fried. Memory and CPU aren't meaningfully upgradable without wholesale motherboard replacement. That's not happening piecemeal. If you have experienced these sorts of issues, you'll understand the challenges with using and maintaining hardware over the longer term. Piecemeal upgrade ceases to be a meaningful option on that time scale. It's not cost effective, and at some point you just need a new machine. Does that make sense? If anything, I would think using something for as long as possible instead of buying and generating large amounts of e-waste puts me more in the Greatest Generation category. Otherwise, I'm sure I would love to have the latest and greatest all the time too, but on a stats basis, also not being able to afford it puts me less in the boomer category, and more in the younger generation category, no?
whazor 3y ago
Laptops are more vulnerable. They are more likely to need replacement fans, new display, new keyboard. For a mainboard upgrade, it might make sense if two generations ahead is seriously better. For example, 13th gen i5 is outperforming the 12th gen i7. The i5 mainboard costs 450$ and the i7 1000$, so if you can wait for two new generations it would be worth it.
chrismartin 3y ago
> I'm not convinced these sorts of cross compatible upgrades will continue to surface into the future They've already outdone every other laptop manufacturer: you can swap a new 13th gen system board into an original 11th gen Framework. My friend's wife has a Framework, and she suffered a liquid spill which reached the system board. He ordered parts, did the swap, and she's back in action for less than half the cost of a new laptop. If it were Dell or Lenovo, you'd be trying your luck with used eBay parts. The housing would have ~20 tiny plastic clips that you break one or two of every time you open it up. (Or adhesive, ugh.) It's just a sketchier proposition.
Semaphor 3y ago
I disagree, I still upgrade my desktop like the Ship of Theseus, there are even over 10 yo hard disks in there. My last upgrade was RAM to 64GB, before that the GPU (RX 470 to RX 6600), before that, the mainboard and CPU from some ancient Intel i3 to Ryzen 5 3600. And between all those upgrades, more and more SSDs were added.

by acyou 3y ago

bane 3y ago

I remember the days of incremental PC upgrades being quite commonplace (the 286/386/486/Pentium era). It was sort of a golden time where a relatively poor kid (me) could save his pennies up to buy a small upgrade and keep a system going through various "Ship of Theseus" efforts. I think I managed such an upgrade cycle through 4 generations of CPU while keeping various peripherals in various states staggered across all of that. It also meant that if you had the right supplier you could cobble together barely working computers just able to boot the latest all floppy release of SUSE or something. Today it seems that a decent computer (~$1000k) will simply just run most things perfectly fine for around 5-7 years, after which all the main bus and peripheral tech will have moved on. It's easier to junk that system and buy another one almost from scratch. The main benefit I can think of for still buying your own parts and putting it together (or having somebody put it together) is price/performance /customizability still leads. I was able to retire (give to my wife) an 8 year old desktop which is still perfectly fine for her needs, and buy an all new system, but thread what I wanted through a budget by ultra-specifying specific parts. I couldn't find a pre-built that was close, even after I just paid Microcenter to put it all together for me. This also turned out to be a good idea as they were able to on-the-spot substitute a few pieces based on compatibility and inventory.

eightysixfour 3y ago

Counterpoint - socket AM4 motherboards had an extremely long, upgradable life. Mine has 5 years on it and the 5800x3d I recently swapped in is still one of the fastest gaming CPUs there is. From a gaming standpoint it can handle any top of the line GPU. And it is in a 7.5l SFF case.

nightski 3y ago

For a second there I thought I was reading boomer news instead of hacker news. I kid, but honestly there are plenty of us that still upgrade our systems piecemeal. I'm always buying new parts. Partly because I like having the latest stuff, but also because I love handing down parts to my family members which end up being huge upgrades for them.

acyou 3y ago
My desktop is 11 years old this year. I added a network card when the port on the motherboard broke and switched OS when the OS became no longer supportable. Audio output is no longer possible without also adding a sound card, given the audio ports are all fried. Memory and CPU aren't meaningfully upgradable without wholesale motherboard replacement. That's not happening piecemeal. If you have experienced these sorts of issues, you'll understand the challenges with using and maintaining hardware over the longer term. Piecemeal upgrade ceases to be a meaningful option on that time scale. It's not cost effective, and at some point you just need a new machine. Does that make sense? If anything, I would think using something for as long as possible instead of buying and generating large amounts of e-waste puts me more in the Greatest Generation category. Otherwise, I'm sure I would love to have the latest and greatest all the time too, but on a stats basis, also not being able to afford it puts me less in the boomer category, and more in the younger generation category, no?

whazor 3y ago

Laptops are more vulnerable. They are more likely to need replacement fans, new display, new keyboard. For a mainboard upgrade, it might make sense if two generations ahead is seriously better. For example, 13th gen i5 is outperforming the 12th gen i7. The i5 mainboard costs 450$ and the i7 1000$, so if you can wait for two new generations it would be worth it.

chrismartin 3y ago

> I'm not convinced these sorts of cross compatible upgrades will continue to surface into the future They've already outdone every other laptop manufacturer: you can swap a new 13th gen system board into an original 11th gen Framework. My friend's wife has a Framework, and she suffered a liquid spill which reached the system board. He ordered parts, did the swap, and she's back in action for less than half the cost of a new laptop. If it were Dell or Lenovo, you'd be trying your luck with used eBay parts. The housing would have ~20 tiny plastic clips that you break one or two of every time you open it up. (Or adhesive, ugh.) It's just a sketchier proposition.

Semaphor 3y ago

I disagree, I still upgrade my desktop like the Ship of Theseus, there are even over 10 yo hard disks in there. My last upgrade was RAM to 64GB, before that the GPU (RX 470 to RX 6600), before that, the mainboard and CPU from some ancient Intel i3 to Ryzen 5 3600. And between all those upgrades, more and more SSDs were added.