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I want to love Framework badly but I'm not sure if the additional thickness and worse battery life is really worth it compared to a Macbook or linux-compatible

I want to love Framework badly but I'm not sure if the additional thickness and worse battery life is really worth it compared to a Macbook or linux-compatible high quality laptops like the Malibal Aon S1. The latter also lets you upgrade the storage. I own a Thinkpad X1 Carbon from 2018 and to be honest I've never had to upgrade it so maybe modularity and upgradeability isn't as important to me personally...

brucethemoose2 3y ago
And also worse thermals. If you look inside a gaming laptop like a Asus G series, the entire back of the laptop is heatpipe and heatsink, shared between cpu/gpu and stretching side to side. The modularity sacrifices this by necessity.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I think capable cooling should be possible on a modular laptop, especially for models without a dGPU, but it’d require a thicker chassis than most people find acceptable on laptops these days.
guideamigo_com 3y ago
That's the hard truth, espcially with M1 chips, it is hard to beat Mac book Air 15" or Mac book Pro 16".
jwells89 3y ago
While my main machine is an MBP, I have uses for a small x86 laptop with great battery life and the number of options in that realm is depressingly tiny. The closest to what I want that I've been able to find so far are the HP Dragonfly G3/G4 which apparently can be cajoled into ~14h real world usage with some tuning. Nearly all x86 laptops with battery life that good or better are large.
- porphyra 3y ago
  Try the Malibal Aon S1
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Intriguing specs, but I've not seen anything about the company before. Found a Reddit post that suggests their ODM is Tongfang, but I don't have a way to confirm that. Barrel jack charger is disappointing and I hope the giant 3D logo on the lid can be removed easily.
lucb1e 3y ago
For me it could be twice as thick and the battery twice as bad and I'd probably still buy it, except... I don't understand how you're supposed to use it. All but one of the six "expansion slots" are used to have a normal laptop: charging port, card reader, headphone jack, HDMI, ethernet, and finally you get to choose between having 1 USB A port for your mouse or 1 USB C slot for charging your phone. Connecting a keyboard just is not possible without disconnecting your mouse. Yay? Dongles at excessive price points (45 euros for a network jack that comes standard on any old laptop?!) is something I associate with (web comics about) Apple people. For years I was so hoping Framework would launch a ~15" version at a reasonable price by the time I needed a new laptop, and now it has (well, still a ~9-month wait if you order today(!)) but then it was actually announced and, while geeking out on pre-release footage, I noticed it's not actually a usable laptop without a bunch of dongles :'(
- duped 3y ago
  It comes with a headphone jack, you don't need a card for that. The bonus is that you get to pick your i/o. I have a display port adaptor because I definitely do not want HDMI and I don't know of many laptops that come with that at all. I do think they could find a way to cram two USB C ports into a single card or come out with a 1.5x sized card that could fit two USB type A. I understand why this is difficult, but there is plenty of space in the chassis for it. The cards themselves are not space efficient (but the size they are does give designers a bit of flexibility, so it's a game of trade offs).
  - neogodless 3y ago
    > HDMI and I don't know of many laptops that come with that at all. Hmm probably my taste in laptops but every laptop that's come into my household over the past decade (about 8?) have had HDMI ports. Unless you mean ones that don't come with DisplayPort? Then yeah, I only seem to see USB-C ports that you have to use a dongle for outputting to DP.
    - duped 3y ago
      I'm talking displayport, I don't really care about HDMI connectivity since I drive a 4k display and I have never gotten decent frame rates with HDMI.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

And also worse thermals. If you look inside a gaming laptop like a Asus G series, the entire back of the laptop is heatpipe and heatsink, shared between cpu/gpu and stretching side to side. The modularity sacrifices this by necessity.

jwells89 3y ago
I think capable cooling should be possible on a modular laptop, especially for models without a dGPU, but it’d require a thicker chassis than most people find acceptable on laptops these days.

guideamigo_com 3y ago

That's the hard truth, espcially with M1 chips, it is hard to beat Mac book Air 15" or Mac book Pro 16".

jwells89 3y ago

While my main machine is an MBP, I have uses for a small x86 laptop with great battery life and the number of options in that realm is depressingly tiny. The closest to what I want that I've been able to find so far are the HP Dragonfly G3/G4 which apparently can be cajoled into ~14h real world usage with some tuning. Nearly all x86 laptops with battery life that good or better are large.

porphyra 3y ago
Try the Malibal Aon S1
- jwells89 3y ago
  Intriguing specs, but I've not seen anything about the company before. Found a Reddit post that suggests their ODM is Tongfang, but I don't have a way to confirm that. Barrel jack charger is disappointing and I hope the giant 3D logo on the lid can be removed easily.

lucb1e 3y ago

For me it could be twice as thick and the battery twice as bad and I'd probably still buy it, except... I don't understand how you're supposed to use it. All but one of the six "expansion slots" are used to have a normal laptop: charging port, card reader, headphone jack, HDMI, ethernet, and finally you get to choose between having 1 USB A port for your mouse or 1 USB C slot for charging your phone. Connecting a keyboard just is not possible without disconnecting your mouse. Yay? Dongles at excessive price points (45 euros for a network jack that comes standard on any old laptop?!) is something I associate with (web comics about) Apple people. For years I was so hoping Framework would launch a ~15" version at a reasonable price by the time I needed a new laptop, and now it has (well, still a ~9-month wait if you order today(!)) but then it was actually announced and, while geeking out on pre-release footage, I noticed it's not actually a usable laptop without a bunch of dongles :'(

duped 3y ago
It comes with a headphone jack, you don't need a card for that. The bonus is that you get to pick your i/o. I have a display port adaptor because I definitely do not want HDMI and I don't know of many laptops that come with that at all. I do think they could find a way to cram two USB C ports into a single card or come out with a 1.5x sized card that could fit two USB type A. I understand why this is difficult, but there is plenty of space in the chassis for it. The cards themselves are not space efficient (but the size they are does give designers a bit of flexibility, so it's a game of trade offs).
- neogodless 3y ago
  > HDMI and I don't know of many laptops that come with that at all. Hmm probably my taste in laptops but every laptop that's come into my household over the past decade (about 8?) have had HDMI ports. Unless you mean ones that don't come with DisplayPort? Then yeah, I only seem to see USB-C ports that you have to use a dongle for outputting to DP.
  - duped 3y ago
    I'm talking displayport, I don't really care about HDMI connectivity since I drive a 4k display and I have never gotten decent frame rates with HDMI.