Please watch the followup to this video. Framework 110% decided to stand behind the concept of Right to Repair. Awesome company. th-cam.com/video/G2YjKYG8P58/w-d-xo.html
I was just coming to this video to leave a comment asking what you think of them now that you can see the actual product they are delivering. I personally think it looks great XD but I will go watch the new video. Also I do want to say its great you came back here and made a post directing people to the latest video on the topic! very viewer friendly
Thanks for digging into our product! We'll be releasing more detail as we head towards pre-orders this spring and shipping this summer. Some quick responses: 1) We want it to always be the obvious choice to upgrade or repair the product rather than needing to buy a new one, and we'll be using that philosophy for our pricing. 2) The screen is attached with four fasteners rather than adhesive, and we made the bezel magnet attach in part to make it easier to replace the panel. (the picture at 10:16 is a black bezel) 3) We'll be selling the panel+eDP cable as a replacement item rather than requiring a full lid assembly replacement. 4) We'll be releasing documentation around interfaces to make it easier to debug the product. We'll be restricted from sharing full source around most boards, but we will do what we can to make board-level repair possible for repair shops. 5) The silicon we're using is all off the shelf, but availability at single chip level is up to the chip vendors. Individual chip sale is unfortunately not something we're likely going to be able to offer any time soon. 6) The keyboard is indeed held in with fasteners rather than being heat staked or riveted into place. We have two options here. The first is replacing the keyboard module by itself, which takes a little longer since there are about 50 small fasteners to handle. This is the cheaper and less wasteful path. The second is replacing the full input cover, which is just 5 fasteners, but includes the cost of the cover, touchpad, and fingerprint reader. The choice is yours!
On your website, you mention that some expansion modules that you are working on will have Arduino-compatible microcontrollers inside them. What controllers will there be and what will you be able to do with them? Will the GPIOs be exposed somehow? Also, System76 offers an easy way to modify and reflash the firmware of their laptops to e.g. change how the keyboard behaves on a firmware level. Will your laptops offer something similar?
@@vulnerablerummy We'll be announcing pricing before we open up pre-orders. We aren't going to ask folks to pay a premium for longevity. We're shipping in the US and Canada this summer and expanding to additional countries later in the year.
I’d really like to thank you for taking the time to respond. Thanks for the push in creating a product like this. I’ll be the first to pre order when they launch. We desperately need more companies to emerge and create products with the same principle in mind.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. On paper, it makes a lot of sense for them to try to carve out this niche and building good faith and a fan base through right to repair, and if they deliver on that in practical reality as well as marketing, I would absolutely consider buying from them. They've earned my attention, now it's up to them to deliver a good product and they can absolutely earn my money.
In my opinion designing for repairablity really isn't hard especially with smart designers. The real challenge is the business model. Motorola took a shot at this and failed. If this turns into a marketing pitch its going to fail. Customers need to see the benefits of repair not simply be told how great it is.
Just checked their website and it is full of embedded videos that you somehow didn't show/see... and the display screws are CLEARLY visible in those ! ^^
Yeah and not just the right to repair , yes its a big deal sadly now days , but also the sustainability , all these nutjobs screaming about global this and carbon that while they buy their apples and samsungs etc ... make products that last longer / kill planned obsolescence / , make then heavily modular so parts that god bad can be swapped without the whole or large parts , and make them easily recyclable . I think if this is not just marketing and they catch both the right to repair crowd and the want to be greener crowd we may have a tiny spark at the end of a very-very long and dark tunnel ...
In deed, is a god idea. A web page whit categories on right to repair. Aproved, So so... and... Apple hard persecution and kill if you even try to repair this s@!7
The first video of the girl assembling the laptop has her remove the bezel exposing the screws, or what looks like screws. It’s after she installs the ram and before she shows the keyboard.
I don't either but if the main board is fairly cheap it could be worth buying that alone to use it an SBC for a NAS type project or something like that, plus the expansion cards would let you add in anything else you need, so if they deliver on their promise "We’re also opening the spec and sharing reference designs to enable partners and the community to participate in the Expansion Card ecosystem." Then yeah we could probably see some sata ports or NIC cards for these things, making them a DIY/hackers dream PC.
@@vgamesx1 What would be cool is some sort of clustering card - turn it into a cluster or similar, if the modules get essentially plugged into the PCI-E bus.
One huge green light that I see here is that the "repairability" isn't washed up in some marketing non-sense like Google's "upgradable" phones. Never heard of that? Good, Google didn't want you to know anyway. I see parts that look like they are both manufacturable and user assemblable.
The Fairphone of laptops. Modular construction is the way to go. These company's representatives are who should appear at those "Right to Repair" hearings.
@@Vinni-2K "fair" is subjective to the point of being meaningless. As a consumer what is the most fair to you is the best possible device for the lowest possible price. This is not necessarily fair from the pov of the political dissident in China making the thing at gunpoint.
I'm in the same boat too. I want to support the company and spread the word, but am still a bit worried about their financial future. Although, Linus investing in the company does make me a bit hopeful ❤️
A lot of the non-repairability comes from the cost reduction of removing connectors. Connectors (for M2 SSD, RAM, etc) are some of the most expensive things in a product and a lot of money can be saved by say soldering HDD flash right to a MB.
Is THAT WTF is wrong with manufacturers these days? I have a 2007 Dell Inspiron 9400 and a 2014 "Dell" Alienware R1 (R5), and the thing I love about both of those computers is that you can disassemble them down to their component boards by removing phillips screws. The only original part on the inspiron laptop is the bottom panel of the chassis case, and I've replaced the GPU on the Alienware laptop twice, already.
Yeah, but the problem with soldering connections is that it makes it very difficult to replace a part. I had a laptop whose GPU could not be replaced without heavy expense because it was soldered on and the soldering had failed, causing the gpu to fail. But part replacement is a valuable feature that consumers should pursue and encourage manufacturers to pursue.
@@iuciubbb Exactly. But you'd better believe it if the production cost goes back up again, the end-user cost goes up as well. Shareholder shares are like a ratchet on the price.
@@iuciubbb For some companies, usually those publicly traded. But the vast majority of businesses will either turn profit into future production and pay employees more, or lower costs by clearing debt. Capitalism is a tool and is neither moral nor immoral.
Throwaway electronics need to become a thing of the past. However, until the market shows more demand for repairable, serviceable products, it won’t become standard.
I keep waiting for mors law (process node shrinkages) to finally die, once that happens people will start experimenting more with other aspects of computing, and people will care more about longevity when there device wont be obsolete in four years.
Oh, absolutely. I’d even consider buying the Intel version, because the 11th-gen mobile parts aren’t half bad. If the price is right, this is my next laptop.
Would love a ryzen+dgpu version with something half capable of running at nice framerates but this laptop seems to be targetting a different group of users
I just got a new job that requires me to start taking a laptop with me at pretty much all times. I got a basic dell work laptop for this. Seeing this is making me want to keep an eye on that company and maybe switch to it if they end up being good.
@@shroomer3867 yes, this laptop exactly fits the linux system. Would be cool if the company let the customers choose to install linux instead of windows. That'd be awesome.
The absolute best thing Framework could do, for themselves and everyone else, is give Louis Rossmann one of their laptops and let him do a review. *Edit:* and release the schematics.
@@Waffles1313 They are probably too far in the development to perform any major changes if that thing launches in summer. But a Rossman seal of approval is certainly going to boost sales. I'll likely buy one when they become available in my country.
That would be, suicide, I think, first sales is important, and first mass product prone to have a lot of issues, and if it discovered early, nobody would buy it, and they will have no money to fix said issues, and then the company will die.
19:00 they have taken repair to a new level from what i saw, color matched screws, QR codes for manuals on all the things you can replace / repair, Batteries that have written on this "you can replace this yourself" etc. it seems this is a very REPAIR FIRST company.
Hopefully they update the store and have all the parts listed. I need a new laptop and I wouldn't mind supporting a company that truly wants repairability as a key feature instead of an afterthought.
I know you don't consider yourself to be the greatest tech reviewer but I would genuinely love to see you get one of these and review and take them apart once it comes out. I'm considering getting one if it isn't significantly more expensive than similarly equipped alternatives (laptops equipped with an i5 1135G7 range from 500-700£ in uk for refference) and if it turns out to be decent.
this laptop coming out is like just barely getting out of a shitty situation, and then a super positive one conveniently pops up. We all instantly think "this is too good to be just that". Gonna have to be very cautious about this laptop
@A Google User here's to hope the eu legislation will soon be applied to electronics. if we can have spare parts, manuals etc... for 10 years, they won't be able to pull that off
Another good sign for this company is they layout an actual business model not a feel good piece. I also enjoyed reading it since it was one of my business ideas when I was 19. (oh well) Throwaway consumption benefits large integrated firms as they profit at all steps of the manufacturing process. However a firm designing a final product thats a repairable platform mostly benefits from branding. Their product will very quickly get away from them just like Arduino. But this is great if they are true to their word and consumers really care about repairaiblity since documentation and schematics is not something copycats benefit in providing. I think from a business perspective their best bet is probably going to be a combination of good marketing and outperforming ease of distribution. But long term they're going to want support contracts. There's a lot of firms and agencies that'd want machines speced to last to save money and would be perfectly willing to pay a premium.
Louis, there is AI that reads lips and synthesizes audio from your voice recordings. Webcams, if they were any good quality, would make it possible to derive audio from video. There is a video on this from Two Minute Papers on TH-cam.
Another step in the right direction, but I think if other laptop manufacturers were able to fit in desktop cpu sockets, then if we can do it here too, that would cut down costs by a lot, not to mention how perfect it would be with a swapable gpu, since there have been laptops able to do that too.
Just want to point out that this is a non trivial task for a startup. While I would like to see it, I'm sure it won't come for a while, and I think Ryzen would be a better platform for such a system considering their awesome backward compatibility.
@@_FaUlti_ From lotta years there are laptops with desktop cpu sockets but mostly they are just like top tier stuff , f.e. Clevo which means ya would rather need to be richer to get this. Years ago normal cpus in laptops were on PGA sockets but they got swapped to BGA because well , it's actually cheaper to solder than make pga/lga socket that can be used for few cpus. Also with swapable gpus , mxm slot is something great but problem like bios whitelist and stuff appears where certain upgrades aren't certainly allowed. Other than that MXM is like PCI-E of Laptops in case of GPUs.
This reminds me a bit about problems with fee-for-service in some licensed occupations. When I was a real estate agent in New Mexico, I wanted to offer piecemeal services, because some customers didn't need the full range of services and would have been better served by offering specific services for a set fee. You had to be a member of the local Realtor organization (remember folks, Realtors are members of a club. "Realtor" is NOT a license category. You cannot be licensed as a Realtor, you get licensed as a real estate agent or appraiser and then optionally join a Realtor organization. Being a Realtor is being a member of a professional club, one that specializes in real estate. You don't need to be a Realtor in order to sell real estate, but you do need a state real estate license.) in order to get access to the multiple listing service (MLS), and without that it was very difficult for a real estate agent to learn about properties for sale because this was before Zillow and other online services. As a Realtor, I was only allowed to sign contracts offering full services and charging a full commission, no matter what the customer wanted. The local Realtor organization actually reduced the amount of information available to the public MLS to force the public to contact a Realtor, the exact opposite of what I thought should be done. I wanted to earn my pay because I provided a necessary service, not because I was a priest with access to secret information. My pushing for more public access and fee-for-service rapidly led me to be persona-non-grata at the local clubhouse and to leave the Realtors after that. Indeed, I was repeatedly told I was not a member whenever I wanted access to a benefit I paid for, and literally with a receipt in hand showing I had paid for my membership renewal minutes before I was told I was not a member when it came time to voting for officers. Right-to-repair and fee-for-service have similar fights.
I agree audio is more important for privacy than video. However, don't forget speakers can be used as microphone too - and especially tiny laptop speakers could be probably very effective in this role...
This has me genuinely interested in a laptop for the first time in a while. My main concern is the replaceable IO modules, and how well they'll be seated. I wouldn't want one coming out with a flash drive that i'm ejecting. Also given that I could possibly get a fairly cheap laptop with a lower end CPU and just upgrade down the line is pretty awesome sounding.
I'm actually impressed with the slimness of this I hope it does well and there make a surface pro style device. I would of got one of these but I have already preordered a steam deck
Just put in my preorder for a Steamdeck too, and my current laptop isn't that old, yet this thing makes a pretty good case for itself especially with Linux support. Depending on how it turns out and the cost, I may actually pick up one of the kit versions, I had a lot of fun building out my desktop and at least as far as I see it so long as I take my time and follow the guides there's nothing really stopping me from being able to say I built my own Linux Laptop, likely with Manjaro linux or whatever distro I settle on to flush Windows out of my Desktop rig
From a corporate perspective I really love the idea, we use to have thinkpads that were extremly easy to fix back in the days, so we could have laptops that would be usefull for 3-5 years no problems. Now thinkpads, dells and hp corporate laptops are pretty much the same as apple laptops, everything solderon or you can't really replace parts easily. I can see us using these kind of laptops and having a stock pile of parts. So when a user comes we can say oh your battery is bad, lets replace it or you throwed water in the keyboard? we can replace the keyboard easily, you need more power? sure, we can replace the motherboard with one with better specs for you. I'm kind of a power user and I'm still using a yoga book with an i7 of 5th generation and 8gb of RAM and that is enough for me. I really don't see the need of companies to replace laptops every two years (at least here that is how it is) and since those laptops can't be sold nor donated they end up destroyed creating more e-waste.
same reason i don't have one; they don't ship the phone or parts to USA, nor do they even have an option for NA modems. they've been talking about expanding to NA market for years, but it's been all talk. resellers don't always have one they're willing to give up, and the chain of trust going through someone willing to buy and ship it on your behalf is shaky at best.
Also at least for me, the hardware is just not good. It does not have a flagship SoC (which is crucial for long software support, and at least for careful people most likely the main lifespan factor), it has too large bezels for an 18:9 screen. 18:9 by it self is something I hate, 18:9+bezels is just horrible. For example my LG G2 lasted 7 years. LGs software was horrible. The screen died after a few years (ghost touching), but replacement parts were cheap and LineageOS great. The phone only lasted me 7 years because a) the SoC was the fastest b) the battery was big, even after 5 years it still lasted over a day. The reason I finally moved on was the 2013 SoC, not bad repairability. Don't get me wrong, repairabiility is very important, but a fast CPU is more crucial for a phone.
From their website as of today, theres a large embeded video that shows a lady working on one. There IS a black bezel on the screen, showing her remove it and revealing the screen frame screws. :)
i have a gigabyte i really love, it has 2 m.2 slots, 2 ram slots, replacable wifi card, and loads of ports. the only downside is the screen (fantastic from day 1) is not replaceable, my guess is its glued together like you said
Ok looks interesting, having watched one of their videos loop a few times to see if there was any hints on the points you made the display looks to be screwed behind the bezel I believe the image you saw was with a black bezel in place. The separate keyboard membrane in the top most image leads me to think the key caps will be easily swappable from the inside of the lower chassis although with the same aluminium between keys means it is likely a single aluminium piece and the assembly would need replacing if a keycap swap is not enough E.g: major layout changes. All together an interesting laptop that I will watch progress on and may consider as a replacement for my portable machine. P.S. thanks for the great videos, I have never needed component level repair but it is great to have a basic knowledge of the area. P.P.S. I didn't see the official reply from the designer, being a dummy. Its great to have both areas that are easiest to break accessible for repair (keyboard and screen)
21 minutes of Louis giving great analysis, while a cat in his lap stares at him, wondering why the human needs to move around so much if he isn't petting a cat.
The fact that Framework actually watched this and answered back makes the product even more enticing. I love a product that allows for diversity. Allows me to build it like I want it. Thanks for the video and informing us about this exciting product.
01:32 "It's sad that something like this makes me happy" I'm fucken speechless. Such profound words coming from a macbook repair technician. That right there is quite a remarkable piece of wizdom.
Already looking forward to other tech "reviewers" getting their hands on it and saying they cant recommend it bc its not as fast, pretty, doesnt have as big a battery, doesnt feel as "premium", not as cheap, not as quiet, not as cool, etc. etc. as conventional laptops out there, completely missing the entire point. Same happened with the Fair Phone, same will probably happen with this. I really hope thats not going to stop them tho, really hope this will be a success, so I can eventually get my hands on one as someone living outside of the US and Canada.
Big battery and reasonable thermals & noise leves are quite essential for laptops and - frankly speaking - Framework has taken it into acount in fan design
Lets see if the live up to their promise. This reminds me of the the dutch company ,fairphone‘. They promised the same for a smartphone. By the time mine got broken the ran out of spare parts.
I like seeing that someone is trying to develop such a product. I hate proprietary. I hope the project goes well. It's too small for me. I'm building a laptop using a desktop motherboard. It will be big and bulky, but it will still fit on my lap.
One thing that I think Framework could do that would really set them apart is to make it so that the onboard audio is usable. Apple does a pretty good job of this. The noise floor could be a bit lower, but it's otherwise unobtrusive. The same cannot be said for most PC laptops. It wouldn't need to compete with the best of the best- just make the line output, line input and headphone amp "respectable".
This is my first time commin' to watch Louis Rossmann vid. After watching *Right to Repair from Marques* where Louis kinda made a cameo and hey thanks man for letting us know the imp. Stuff / takeaway from that vid. Shout out to this guy! I really like his boldness & courage to ask questions and explains what is wrong and also it's negative effects on consumers like us.
I think it'd be hard to market this as repairable since as you said most people don't think or care about that until it breaks. The big sell imo is modular/upgradeable similar to a desktop PC. If you really can have an attractive laptop that you can keep up to date for a reasonable price that will get a lot of enthusiasts on board.
@Ross to answer your questions real quick : it's not a real product. It doesn't exist. It's just a landing page to gauge how many people would want such a product.
I got a Fairphone 3 as I wanted a repairable phone, but the said fact is the "ethical" and consumer friendly devices don't seem to have decent specs. Disappointed to see them use Intel, hardly the most ethical company around.
They are probably using thunderbolt for the port module thingies. Thunderbolt is still pretty much an Intel thing and I hard guess they kinda ran out of board space for any type of Thunderbolt module. Even if they could fit a thunderbolt chip somewhere, they need green light from Intel for that. They just choose the logical solution reather than hacking something together and getting shut down.
"don't seem to have decent specs" - depends on what you need... my girlfriends has a Fairphone 2: it's totally okay for most people, I'd say. Such small companies like Fairphone will not produce real flagships, because it is too risky and they don't sell enough devices. And they don't have that much money in the bank to finance expensive stuff, because there are often no external investors.
@@gayming4197 Well, it's a price thing. A Fairphone to match the specs of a top tier Android phone at $1000+ just doesn't make sense. I imagine they don't want to make an ethical phone also a luxury item only available to the rich.
Hey Luis. I'm wondering if you could do interviews with some manufacturing experts to go over some of the challenges companies would face trying to bring a product like this to the market, especially as devices and components get smaller and more tightly integrated? With right to repair, in as much as I believe it's the right thing to do for all products, my question has been how easy is it to make some components user repairable and what are some of the trade-offs a manufacturer would have to make to achieve that? For example, is there any real reason (besides marketing nonsense and just not wanting to) to rivet a keyboard into a laptop frame instead of using screws? Or with smartphones, are there ways to make sure the water resistance can be reliably replaced after the repair? I'd love to hear right to repair from the point of view of someone making these devices so we can see just how easy or hard it is for them to do it. My guess is that there are also some best practices that they could speak on with regards to the layout of these devices so consumers can also know what to look out for/expect from user repairable devices. I believe this because devices used to be repairable so it's a problem that has been solved before. However, as technology has moved forward and robotic manufacturing has taken over, I've wondered if we've gone past the point where these practices may not be possible any more. And if that's the case, then how would manufacturing have to change to make sure that we don't go past this point? or at least make sure the parts that are most likely to fail are still repairable within a reasonable level of difficulty? How do manufacturers even figure out what is and isn't likely to fail? I'm ask this because a common argument that seems to be made against making devices repairable is that these type of devices will either be larger to accommodate the "extra layer of repairability" or that the consumer will have to deal with a less optimised experience. Now for larger devices like desktop computers and cars, this is less of a concern. But my guess is that there are still some real challenges/trade-offs to achieving this with smaller devices, like say the camera module of a mobile phone. It probably wouldn't make much sense to make the lenses user replaceable. In such a case, it's much easier to replace the whole component rather than fixing it, and so a component like that is made so that it's highly unlikely to fail in that way in the first place. The issue is that companies seem to want us to believe that that limit for this is at the device level and not the component level, even though they don't engineer the devices to be basically indestructible to begin with. so I'd like to understand how a manufacturer with right to repair in mind would define this limit and how easy or hard it would be to just build devices/components like these that won't fail and need fixing in the first place. At the end of the day, right to repair is an engineering issue. So I feel like hearing about it from the point of view of engineers working on these type of devices directly will help solidify in people's minds that it's not unreasonable to ask that our devices be repairable.
Here's something to be cynical about: Their rhetoric is great, and their photos are definitely neat, however, look at their staff. They've got a bunch of marketing types and design types, yet they have only two people with "Engineer" in their job title. Neither one electrical. I kinda feel like an electrical engineer might be important to make all of this modular hardware work together, but what do I know?
It's plausible to consider they hired out some of the Electrical engineering work to a separate company until they have their own team, hopefully the quality of the work is good enough not to bite them
Looking at the pictures on their website - my guess is that the the screws for the screen are under the inner bezel (the bezel that holds the magnets for the removable coloured bezel). It would be nice if the inner bezel is attached by magnets too.
I never thought much about the screen proportions until I visited the local property assessor's office several years ago. His computer had a 42" wide screen for mapping and a 20" CRT for everything else. The day I visited the screens were duplicated. He had Outlook open, and there was more information on the smaller screen than the larger one due to the change in proportion. So depending on use, particularly where text is involved, a more square screen can provide more information.
You can actually build a car from a bunch parts. The main obstacle would be passing automotive safety regulations from your country. If you can’t legally register a car for use in public roads. Then that car is a basically a toy.
Soon I expect. With EVs the components can definitely be modularized. Once the battery is smaller and lighter. Then they could build a common platform and have options. You can do this now but it requires custom work because a lot isn't modular.
@@domg7359 theyre modular for production purposes, the problem is parts arent accessible. though ive seen that GM is selling their electric drive train as a crate engine, which means normal people can buy it and put it in a vehicle of their choice
@@domg7359 the new skateboards might lead to more small-scale manufacturers, but the roll cage is the biggest issue to me. That and the seatbelts/airbags have to be tested by a govt or similar org for me to trust it.
This looks like another *modular* *Google* *Project* *Ara* concept. Unless they already offer all spare parts for that laptop in a resemble price on Amazon / Aliexpress this will simply not work.
Now it's released, can you give an update, especially if you think their business model will allow them to keep supporting the product for years to come? Also who is behind it? Sent from my thinkpad lol. Spquare screen is square
This is an EXCELLENT development for right-to-repair and certainly one the industry has desperately needed since its inception. One glaring issue that has always existed with laptops is a lacking of standardization, and what I am talking about here is mainboard form factors. Since the original PC and PC-XT, motherboards for desktop machines have all been built in one or more standard sizes and shapes, like AT, Baby AT, ATX, ITX, Mini ITX, Micro ATX and Mobile ITX. For the most part, all of these have been broadly interchangeable across generations of hardware. But this is not so for laptop PCs. With laptops (and most other mobile computers), each model or model series uses its own unique shape and layout for its motherboard. It is physically impossible to swap boards from different machines between each other, even when they are from the same manufacturer. If the board in one laptop dies for any reason, you cannot take the one from another unless it is the EXACT SAME model as the one that failed. My hope is that Framework will build some sort of standardization into the motherboard and expansion modules' shapes and sizes so that no matter how large or small their laptops are in footprint, they will all use the same size and shape motherboard and that board type can be adopted as an industry standard that other companies can follow for truly user repairable and upgradeable laptop PCs, just as standards like ATX and ITX have done for desktop PCs. THAT, I would like to see happen. A great start nonetheless for Framework. :-)
If I can repair it myself without issue, that is awesome. If it is a little difficult and thus I might prefer taking it to an independent repair shop, then okay. The big thing is that I shouldn't be punished for wanting to repair my device... or even upgrade a little bit inside it. And if I take it to a repair shop, they shouldn't be worried that what they need to do to repair it is a high risk to causing more damage. Imagine if replacing the oil in a vehicle required a cutting torch to open it up and a welding torch to seal it again. That is Apple devices right now.
Like J A has stated - cautious optimism. Louis, since you know from experience how difficult it is to not be abused by fools that use the CC companies to cover their own screw-ups, it doesn't bode well for that aspect of the business I do wish them well too. It's a near impossible task to design something like this to suit everyone's concept of how it 'should' be. Thanks once again for another informative video.
Their website looks like a quick promo without any technical information. As a DIY "power user" I want to see technical manuals and specs in numbers and price €€€. Until then, it is great idea, but it is just an idea. But I am clinging all my thumbs they succeed in delivering what they promise.
I'm a customer IF they follow through. And the same for smartphones. I'd rather have a bulky laptop or phone if that means I can get a cheaper upgrade, replacement or diferent module on the spot. THIS should be the future.
1:50 thank you! I hate all these 16:9 displays. It makes sense on a gaming laptop, but why do all laptops even entry level ones or ones geared toward productivity have to have such a short display? Its really annoying to use when most of what you do is browse around google, answer emails and maybe some slight gaming on the side.
I thank you for trying to put out a product which is repairable. I despise people who, whenever someone tries to change or do something different from the rest, get dragged through the coals because their design isn't 100% PERFECT (not aimed at you, Louis- you do have legit questions, but in general this happens). You know what, Framework? I am here to say I am HAPPY to PAY MORE for a product that is better/repairable. I don't think I'm alone in this. I don't expect perfection, but I do appreciate a constant attempt at improvement as things, hopefully, move forward.
A great first step by Framework, provided this comes to market and lives up to it's promises. What it amounts to is that the laptop market has been deliberately hobbled for decades. There is absolutely no reason we shouldn't already have standardized, modular laptops. It all comes back to 70s and 80's business practices, get the monopoly at any cost. The target? Corporate markets. I remember working on a Compaq laptop back in the day (Pentium II) that literally had 3 little latches to remove the keyboard, pull the bottom 2 down and the bottom of the keyboard popped up then the third latch would leaver against the area around the connector and pop it free. It was solid, easy to replace and under it, with no need to undo a single screw, was your RAM, wifi and drive expansions. Obviously, this thing was a brick but the design language was there. CPUs can be modular, even SoCs, a simple module with a compact edge connector is far from difficult to design and implement GPUs, same story, its been done already, for decades. RAM, there is absolutely no excuse for RAM to not be upgradable, the standards for laptop RAM already exist Drives, with the existence of M.2, a non-upgradable machine is a joke Keyboard, as I mentioned above, they can be made serviceable and easy to replace. They also make for a fantastic access panel, removing the need for the user to open the entire machine to access more commonly upgraded parts. Display, It always baffled me why they don't just use a hard edge connector at the bottom of the display. Just pop it out, put in a new one. That way the ribbons need only extend from the base unit into the display casing. Ports, I love the implementation on the website for this thing, modules with varied ports is brilliant. Their implementation looks a little costly, it could be done with bare PCBs using the same connectors and save on materials and cost. The only place I can see a fully non modular setup being of any use is in ultra slim portables, when saving on weight and bulk, soldered components are a huge help. Even here tho, they should be SoC designs on a single board that can be upgraded by replacing it. RAM and Storage should NOT be soldered to the mainboard, with the footprint of an SoC mainboard there is plenty of room in even the thinnest 10" ultra portable for an M.2 and RAM slots, mount them on the edge of the board so they don't add much, if any height. Standardized RAM, CPU, GPU and storage designs will lead to wider spread third party options. The monopoly era is dead, it needs to be buried.
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but while it all sounds good but even if they deliver on these claims, the chances are high that this company won't exist 3 years from now and all of the stockpile of those swappable modules and components will be sitting in a landfill.
Hopefully, with the current government and media focus on 'right to repair', these guys will get the exposure to gain enough market share, or at the very least the incorporation of some of these design concepts into mainstream laptop company designs - I think the design aspects here are brilliant and deserve to be recognised and/or learned from.
In 2003 I built a custom laptop that used a standard atx motherboard had PC parts, and was tig welded aluminum sheets. It survived being run over by a Bobcat 763. Had a handle like an attache case but was heavy.
Looks like basically 95% of Windows laptops. Also the part they say "make adapters thing of the past" and literally show bunch of adapters that just plug into the body of the laptop...
Think those go into expansion slots in the case. Not hanging off the body. Like old laptops and game consoles. Points still valid, but do you want them to send boards in static bags so idiots break it.
Do you think the actual "real" ports on your laptop just magically grow there? They are still little daughterboards plugging into the PCIe bus or a USB Controller. They (framework) just propose you choose your ports yourself. And making them standardized adapters to plug in to plug into some sort of bus without them "dongeling" around is the smartest way to do that.
The bezel is removable! :) I just went onto their site, and a few scrolls below there's a video with a person disassembling the laptop, including popping off the bezel and revealing some screws. I'm in Europe, the website might be different for some people elsewhere.
Please watch the followup to this video. Framework 110% decided to stand behind the concept of Right to Repair. Awesome company. th-cam.com/video/G2YjKYG8P58/w-d-xo.html
I was just coming to this video to leave a comment asking what you think of them now that you can see the actual product they are delivering. I personally think it looks great XD but I will go watch the new video. Also I do want to say its great you came back here and made a post directing people to the latest video on the topic! very viewer friendly
Hopefully they ask you for an influencer sponsorship so your audience can put their money where their mouth is
Any update on the repairability of the screen?
Just watched Linus buy one during his hands on review. That says something.
they did give linus one of there kits and everything really does look easily replaceable still not sure about the screen though
Thanks for digging into our product! We'll be releasing more detail as we head towards pre-orders this spring and shipping this summer.
Some quick responses:
1) We want it to always be the obvious choice to upgrade or repair the product rather than needing to buy a new one, and we'll be using that philosophy for our pricing.
2) The screen is attached with four fasteners rather than adhesive, and we made the bezel magnet attach in part to make it easier to replace the panel. (the picture at 10:16 is a black bezel)
3) We'll be selling the panel+eDP cable as a replacement item rather than requiring a full lid assembly replacement.
4) We'll be releasing documentation around interfaces to make it easier to debug the product. We'll be restricted from sharing full source around most boards, but we will do what we can to make board-level repair possible for repair shops.
5) The silicon we're using is all off the shelf, but availability at single chip level is up to the chip vendors. Individual chip sale is unfortunately not something we're likely going to be able to offer any time soon.
6) The keyboard is indeed held in with fasteners rather than being heat staked or riveted into place. We have two options here. The first is replacing the keyboard module by itself, which takes a little longer since there are about 50 small fasteners to handle. This is the cheaper and less wasteful path. The second is replacing the full input cover, which is just 5 fasteners, but includes the cost of the cover, touchpad, and fingerprint reader. The choice is yours!
sorry if it's already mentioned, but what are your price range? will purchase be available globally or is it specific to usa?
Seems fairly reasonable and rational. WHATS THE CATCH?!?
On your website, you mention that some expansion modules that you are working on will have Arduino-compatible microcontrollers inside them. What controllers will there be and what will you be able to do with them? Will the GPIOs be exposed somehow?
Also, System76 offers an easy way to modify and reflash the firmware of their laptops to e.g. change how the keyboard behaves on a firmware level. Will your laptops offer something similar?
@@vulnerablerummy We'll be announcing pricing before we open up pre-orders. We aren't going to ask folks to pay a premium for longevity.
We're shipping in the US and Canada this summer and expanding to additional countries later in the year.
I’d really like to thank you for taking the time to respond. Thanks for the push in creating a product like this. I’ll be the first to pre order when they launch. We desperately need more companies to emerge and create products with the same principle in mind.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. On paper, it makes a lot of sense for them to try to carve out this niche and building good faith and a fan base through right to repair, and if they deliver on that in practical reality as well as marketing, I would absolutely consider buying from them. They've earned my attention, now it's up to them to deliver a good product and they can absolutely earn my money.
these devices will be super expensive... built in California?!
@@peppybocan Then again It might actually be worth paying the "American tax" as you actually get to repair the device instead of buying another laptop
In my opinion designing for repairablity really isn't hard especially with smart designers. The real challenge is the business model. Motorola took a shot at this and failed. If this turns into a marketing pitch its going to fail. Customers need to see the benefits of repair not simply be told how great it is.
Just checked their website and it is full of embedded videos that you somehow didn't show/see... and the display screws are CLEARLY visible in those ! ^^
Yeah and not just the right to repair , yes its a big deal sadly now days , but also the sustainability , all these nutjobs screaming about global this and carbon that while they buy their apples and samsungs etc ... make products that last longer / kill planned obsolescence / , make then heavily modular so parts that god bad can be swapped without the whole or large parts , and make them easily recyclable . I think if this is not just marketing and they catch both the right to repair crowd and the want to be greener crowd we may have a tiny spark at the end of a very-very long and dark tunnel ...
Imagine Louis working with them and giving the product a "Easy to Repair Certified by Louis Rossman" label.
Rossmann group does not repair PCs, would require the user add a bodge to forfeit its status as such and be considered as an Apple product.
That sounds great!
In deed, is a god idea. A web page whit categories on right to repair. Aproved, So so... and... Apple hard persecution and kill if you even try to repair this s@!7
@@nonatobk dude one more time, but use your hands to type not your buttcheeks..
@@HighestRank with enough user, or enough price, rossmann group will support them. they do data recovery and stuff too
Can anyone spot the kitty?
On your lap
The first video of the girl assembling the laptop has her remove the bezel exposing the screws, or what looks like screws. It’s after she installs the ram and before she shows the keyboard.
Also I saw the cat lol
I thought I saw a rotating triangle for a second, then I realized the cat was turning its head.
noggin go wobble bobble
While I currently don’t have any interest in buying a laptop, I hope that this company succeeds.
I don't either but if the main board is fairly cheap it could be worth buying that alone to use it an SBC for a NAS type project or something like that, plus the expansion cards would let you add in anything else you need, so if they deliver on their promise "We’re also opening the spec and sharing reference designs to enable partners and the community to participate in the Expansion Card ecosystem." Then yeah we could probably see some sata ports or NIC cards for these things, making them a DIY/hackers dream PC.
@@vgamesx1 What would be cool is some sort of clustering card - turn it into a cluster or similar, if the modules get essentially plugged into the PCI-E bus.
it may be a year or so before I need a new one but I will definitely be recommanding this
same.
Just watched their video of disassembly and its a display held in by 4 screws.
That just doesn't inspire confidence for me. I'd hope its a minimum of 6 screws atleast.
@@clou09 remember, screw in with confidence
The lack of visible screws was from a magnetically secured bexel that is made to be easily removed and/or swapped.
@@clou09 what that dude said ^^
@@clou09 Even 2 screws could hold it, 4 is definitely a good amount.
Fantastic, this needs to be successful and standardized.
@@BigMassiveWeiner how will you lobby against this?
@@BigMassiveWeiner Are you lobbying against this?
Pizza.
@@DarthVader1977 With pineapple?
They used to be more like that. Access hatches for RAM, disks etc.. It's ever since Apple got popular that they stopped adding upgradeability.
One huge green light that I see here is that the "repairability" isn't washed up in some marketing non-sense like Google's "upgradable" phones. Never heard of that? Good, Google didn't want you to know anyway. I see parts that look like they are both manufacturable and user assemblable.
Too bad Fairphone is only available in Europe...
@@lerx5799 Assemblable? My guess anyhow.
Almost forgot Gogle did have a Project called Project Ara its what this Framework Laptop does but on a smaller phone footprint
The Fairphone of laptops. Modular construction is the way to go. These company's representatives are who should appear at those "Right to Repair" hearings.
Except fairphone sucks. They don't offer parts on the original anymore and the specs were never good anyway.
@@Merahki3863 yes fairphones werent really that great, they where just fair to the workers and consumers
@@Vinni-2K "fair" is subjective to the point of being meaningless. As a consumer what is the most fair to you is the best possible device for the lowest possible price. This is not necessarily fair from the pov of the political dissident in China making the thing at gunpoint.
@@M167A1 i know i actually didn't like Fairphone either
There is no such thing as fair
@@Vinni-2K I'm not defending the product I don't know much about it
My point is that what is fair to you may not seem fair to me.
Framework, watching this video: Write that down! Write that down!
Fully agree.
They have to if they do what he's sayin it's a gg for them
Framework commented in the video. They are literally writing that stuff down.
They actually do and they commented here already
They answered / commented.
So perhaps they did.
Pessimistic me:
I bet this is just another google ara project.
Optimistic me:
Don't delay, Buy tomorrow.
The rule of "don't pre-order" or "early adoption" still apply. I just hope it goes well and will also change other companies though.
Realistic me: by the time I'll have the money to get a new laptop, this company will have proven itself for what it is either way.
God I was so hopeful for ara.
I'm in the same boat too. I want to support the company and spread the word, but am still a bit worried about their financial future. Although, Linus investing in the company does make me a bit hopeful ❤️
Updated: I did buy the Framework laptop. Mine is arriving tomorrow (was in batch 4) 😬👍
A lot of the non-repairability comes from the cost reduction of removing connectors. Connectors (for M2 SSD, RAM, etc) are some of the most expensive things in a product and a lot of money can be saved by say soldering HDD flash right to a MB.
Is THAT WTF is wrong with manufacturers these days? I have a 2007 Dell Inspiron 9400 and a 2014 "Dell" Alienware R1 (R5), and the thing I love about both of those computers is that you can disassemble them down to their component boards by removing phillips screws. The only original part on the inspiron laptop is the bottom panel of the chassis case, and I've replaced the GPU on the Alienware laptop twice, already.
Yeah, but the problem with soldering connections is that it makes it very difficult to replace a part. I had a laptop whose GPU could not be replaced without heavy expense because it was soldered on and the soldering had failed, causing the gpu to fail. But part replacement is a valuable feature that consumers should pursue and encourage manufacturers to pursue.
Lower production cost rarely turns into lower price for consumer, it mostly flows into managers' and great shareholders' bank accounts.
@@iuciubbb Exactly. But you'd better believe it if the production cost goes back up again, the end-user cost goes up as well. Shareholder shares are like a ratchet on the price.
@@iuciubbb For some companies, usually those publicly traded. But the vast majority of businesses will either turn profit into future production and pay employees more, or lower costs by clearing debt. Capitalism is a tool and is neither moral nor immoral.
Throwaway electronics need to become a thing of the past. However, until the market shows more demand for repairable, serviceable products, it won’t become standard.
I keep waiting for mors law (process node shrinkages) to finally die, once that happens people will start experimenting more with other aspects of computing, and people will care more about longevity when there device wont be obsolete in four years.
It should have never become a thing
Lmao, there are at least 8 minutes of Louis having PTSD of that screen repair
If they make a Ryzen one i'll buy the fuck out of this.
Oh, absolutely. I’d even consider buying the Intel version, because the 11th-gen mobile parts aren’t half bad.
If the price is right, this is my next laptop.
I’ll wait for Ryzen version.
Would love a ryzen+dgpu version with something half capable of running at nice framerates but this laptop seems to be targetting a different group of users
Yeah.
This Laptop is not meant for powerusers or gamers. But still mobile Ryzen is fire.
@@jadoei13 gaming laptops are already quite upgradable though.
If i had social media or friends i would have recommended this to everyone
I wish Google+ still existed. I'm friends with Tom on myspace still though.
I just got a new job that requires me to start taking a laptop with me at pretty much all times. I got a basic dell work laptop for this. Seeing this is making me want to keep an eye on that company and maybe switch to it if they end up being good.
There's a video on their website that shows the black screen bezel off and indeed reveals screws of the screen assembly.
You will own nothing but this repairable laptop and be happy.
And have Linux on it because Windows 10 is an additional 10+ GB of useless stuff, including the OS itself.
@@AcidiFy574 I use Manjaro since I'm too lazy to install Arch.
@@shroomer3867 yes, this laptop exactly fits the linux system. Would be cool if the company let the customers choose to install linux instead of windows. That'd be awesome.
@@setter_soul_waifu0930 you can. when choosing parts for the diy edition on their website just select bring your own OS
@@shroomer3867 I'm using pop os because I'm a lazy boi and cant be bothered with arch shenanigans lmao
Even though louis doesnt do product reviews, I would love to see him do this from a repairibility standpoint.
The absolute best thing Framework could do, for themselves and everyone else, is give Louis Rossmann one of their laptops and let him do a review.
*Edit:* and release the schematics.
Even better would be to send him an early prototype and have him critique it so they have time to fix any criticisms pre-release.
@@Waffles1313 They are probably too far in the development to perform any major changes if that thing launches in summer.
But a Rossman seal of approval is certainly going to boost sales.
I'll likely buy one when they become available in my country.
@@KallePihlajasaari that would be the greatest advertising for both of them.
That would be, suicide, I think, first sales is important, and first mass product prone to have a lot of issues, and if it discovered early, nobody would buy it, and they will have no money to fix said issues, and then the company will die.
(edited post here)
All they have to do is market this to the working class and boom, 70+million market that is fed up without having the tools they need
Nope.
I'm going to Uni soon and I've been looking for a laptop. Depending on their addressing of these issues this will be the laptop I get.
1:05 "certain other company" - directly refers to A1286 2011 lol
19:00 they have taken repair to a new level from what i saw, color matched screws, QR codes for manuals on all the things you can replace / repair, Batteries that have written on this "you can replace this yourself" etc. it seems this is a very REPAIR FIRST company.
Hopefully they update the store and have all the parts listed. I need a new laptop and I wouldn't mind supporting a company that truly wants repairability as a key feature instead of an afterthought.
I know you don't consider yourself to be the greatest tech reviewer but I would genuinely love to see you get one of these and review and take them apart once it comes out. I'm considering getting one if it isn't significantly more expensive than similarly equipped alternatives (laptops equipped with an i5 1135G7 range from 500-700£ in uk for refference) and if it turns out to be decent.
this laptop coming out is like just barely getting out of a shitty situation, and then a super positive one conveniently pops up. We all instantly think "this is too good to be just that".
Gonna have to be very cautious about this laptop
@A Google User here's to hope the eu legislation will soon be applied to electronics. if we can have spare parts, manuals etc... for 10 years, they won't be able to pull that off
Another good sign for this company is they layout an actual business model not a feel good piece. I also enjoyed reading it since it was one of my business ideas when I was 19. (oh well) Throwaway consumption benefits large integrated firms as they profit at all steps of the manufacturing process. However a firm designing a final product thats a repairable platform mostly benefits from branding. Their product will very quickly get away from them just like Arduino. But this is great if they are true to their word and consumers really care about repairaiblity since documentation and schematics is not something copycats benefit in providing. I think from a business perspective their best bet is probably going to be a combination of good marketing and outperforming ease of distribution. But long term they're going to want support contracts. There's a lot of firms and agencies that'd want machines speced to last to save money and would be perfectly willing to pay a premium.
Please see the video on the site, the woman takes the frame off the screen, you can see the screws, not glued.
Louis seal of approval is definitely a major point for my next laptop/tablet purchase. I'm sick of this non repairable garbage
Louis, there is AI that reads lips and synthesizes audio from your voice recordings. Webcams, if they were any good quality, would make it possible to derive audio from video. There is a video on this from Two Minute Papers on TH-cam.
you got my vote for when one of these comes out, you break one down as far as you can go for a video. put em to the test!
Another step in the right direction, but I think if other laptop manufacturers were able to fit in desktop cpu sockets, then if we can do it here too, that would cut down costs by a lot, not to mention how perfect it would be with a swapable gpu, since there have been laptops able to do that too.
Just want to point out that this is a non trivial task for a startup.
While I would like to see it, I'm sure it won't come for a while, and I think Ryzen would be a better platform for such a system considering their awesome backward compatibility.
@@DingleFlop Yes, I completely agree with you. Lets atleast hope we will be able to witness it happen sooner, rather then later.
@@_FaUlti_ From lotta years there are laptops with desktop cpu sockets but mostly they are just like top tier stuff , f.e. Clevo which means ya would rather need to be richer to get this.
Years ago normal cpus in laptops were on PGA sockets but they got swapped to BGA because well , it's actually cheaper to solder than make pga/lga socket that can be used for few cpus.
Also with swapable gpus , mxm slot is something great but problem like bios whitelist and stuff appears where certain upgrades aren't certainly allowed.
Other than that MXM is like PCI-E of Laptops in case of GPUs.
This reminds me a bit about problems with fee-for-service in some licensed occupations. When I was a real estate agent in New Mexico, I wanted to offer piecemeal services, because some customers didn't need the full range of services and would have been better served by offering specific services for a set fee. You had to be a member of the local Realtor organization (remember folks, Realtors are members of a club. "Realtor" is NOT a license category. You cannot be licensed as a Realtor, you get licensed as a real estate agent or appraiser and then optionally join a Realtor organization. Being a Realtor is being a member of a professional club, one that specializes in real estate. You don't need to be a Realtor in order to sell real estate, but you do need a state real estate license.) in order to get access to the multiple listing service (MLS), and without that it was very difficult for a real estate agent to learn about properties for sale because this was before Zillow and other online services. As a Realtor, I was only allowed to sign contracts offering full services and charging a full commission, no matter what the customer wanted. The local Realtor organization actually reduced the amount of information available to the public MLS to force the public to contact a Realtor, the exact opposite of what I thought should be done. I wanted to earn my pay because I provided a necessary service, not because I was a priest with access to secret information. My pushing for more public access and fee-for-service rapidly led me to be persona-non-grata at the local clubhouse and to leave the Realtors after that. Indeed, I was repeatedly told I was not a member whenever I wanted access to a benefit I paid for, and literally with a receipt in hand showing I had paid for my membership renewal minutes before I was told I was not a member when it came time to voting for officers. Right-to-repair and fee-for-service have similar fights.
Damn, if i need a laptop again i hope to remember to check framework first. This is awesome. I hope they stick around for years!
I agree audio is more important for privacy than video. However, don't forget speakers can be used as microphone too - and especially tiny laptop speakers could be probably very effective in this role...
The one dislike must have come from Tim Cook.
Applefanboiiis
There's 20 of them now. Probably by people who love the "latest trendy" laptop design of being ultra mega thin and non-user serviceable.
'' Tim Crook''
This has me genuinely interested in a laptop for the first time in a while. My main concern is the replaceable IO modules, and how well they'll be seated. I wouldn't want one coming out with a flash drive that i'm ejecting. Also given that I could possibly get a fairly cheap laptop with a lower end CPU and just upgrade down the line is pretty awesome sounding.
Linus got an early unit and had a difficult time getting them out
I'm actually impressed with the slimness of this I hope it does well and there make a surface pro style device. I would of got one of these but I have already preordered a steam deck
Just put in my preorder for a Steamdeck too, and my current laptop isn't that old, yet this thing makes a pretty good case for itself especially with Linux support.
Depending on how it turns out and the cost, I may actually pick up one of the kit versions, I had a lot of fun building out my desktop and at least as far as I see it so long as I take my time and follow the guides there's nothing really stopping me from being able to say I built my own Linux Laptop, likely with Manjaro linux or whatever distro I settle on to flush Windows out of my Desktop rig
From a corporate perspective I really love the idea, we use to have thinkpads that were extremly easy to fix back in the days, so we could have laptops that would be usefull for 3-5 years no problems. Now thinkpads, dells and hp corporate laptops are pretty much the same as apple laptops, everything solderon or you can't really replace parts easily.
I can see us using these kind of laptops and having a stock pile of parts. So when a user comes we can say oh your battery is bad, lets replace it or you throwed water in the keyboard? we can replace the keyboard easily, you need more power? sure, we can replace the motherboard with one with better specs for you.
I'm kind of a power user and I'm still using a yoga book with an i7 of 5th generation and 8gb of RAM and that is enough for me. I really don't see the need of companies to replace laptops every two years (at least here that is how it is) and since those laptops can't be sold nor donated they end up destroyed creating more e-waste.
I wounder why Louis's daily driver isn't a Fairphone already...
same reason i don't have one; they don't ship the phone or parts to USA, nor do they even have an option for NA modems. they've been talking about expanding to NA market for years, but it's been all talk. resellers don't always have one they're willing to give up, and the chain of trust going through someone willing to buy and ship it on your behalf is shaky at best.
Last time I checked it was only available in Europe.
@@mnemonic5819
Aw man, that unfortunate.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Are they a thing in the US nowadays?
Also at least for me, the hardware is just not good. It does not have a flagship SoC (which is crucial for long software support, and at least for careful people most likely the main lifespan factor), it has too large bezels for an 18:9 screen. 18:9 by it self is something I hate, 18:9+bezels is just horrible.
For example my LG G2 lasted 7 years. LGs software was horrible. The screen died after a few years (ghost touching), but replacement parts were cheap and LineageOS great.
The phone only lasted me 7 years because
a) the SoC was the fastest
b) the battery was big, even after 5 years it still lasted over a day.
The reason I finally moved on was the 2013 SoC, not bad repairability.
Don't get me wrong, repairabiility is very important, but a fast CPU is more crucial for a phone.
From their website as of today, theres a large embeded video that shows a lady working on one. There IS a black bezel on the screen, showing her remove it and revealing the screen frame screws. :)
If I'm still alive when this product is released I may buy it
i have a gigabyte i really love, it has 2 m.2 slots, 2 ram slots, replacable wifi card, and loads of ports. the only downside is the screen (fantastic from day 1) is not replaceable, my guess is its glued together like you said
if it delivers on its promises it will definitely be the way to go for me.
Ok looks interesting, having watched one of their videos loop a few times to see if there was any hints on the points you made the display looks to be screwed behind the bezel I believe the image you saw was with a black bezel in place.
The separate keyboard membrane in the top most image leads me to think the key caps will be easily swappable from the inside of the lower chassis although with the same aluminium between keys means it is likely a single aluminium piece and the assembly would need replacing if a keycap swap is not enough E.g: major layout changes.
All together an interesting laptop that I will watch progress on and may consider as a replacement for my portable machine.
P.S. thanks for the great videos, I have never needed component level repair but it is great to have a basic knowledge of the area.
P.P.S. I didn't see the official reply from the designer, being a dummy. Its great to have both areas that are easiest to break accessible for repair (keyboard and screen)
21 minutes of Louis giving great analysis, while a cat in his lap stares at him, wondering why the human needs to move around so much if he isn't petting a cat.
The fact that Framework actually watched this and answered back makes the product even more enticing. I love a product that allows for diversity. Allows me to build it like I want it. Thanks for the video and informing us about this exciting product.
01:32
"It's sad that something like this makes me happy"
I'm fucken speechless. Such profound words coming from a macbook repair technician. That right there is quite a remarkable piece of wizdom.
Definitely caught my attention. Just subscribed to their notifications. Eager to see pricing and availability. Will prefer building it myself!
I am in the market for a laptop I will definitely be checking that out
Already looking forward to other tech "reviewers" getting their hands on it and saying they cant recommend it bc its not as fast, pretty, doesnt have as big a battery, doesnt feel as "premium", not as cheap, not as quiet, not as cool, etc. etc. as conventional laptops out there, completely missing the entire point. Same happened with the Fair Phone, same will probably happen with this. I really hope thats not going to stop them tho, really hope this will be a success, so I can eventually get my hands on one as someone living outside of the US and Canada.
Big battery and reasonable thermals & noise leves are quite essential for laptops and - frankly speaking - Framework has taken it into acount in fan design
Lets see if the live up to their promise. This reminds me of the the dutch company ,fairphone‘. They promised the same for a smartphone. By the time mine got broken the ran out of spare parts.
I like seeing that someone is trying to develop such a product. I hate proprietary. I hope the project goes well. It's too small for me. I'm building a laptop using a desktop motherboard. It will be big and bulky, but it will still fit on my lap.
I like how cheating on his wife was the worst thing he could think about ♥
LOL, if "cheating on your wife" is the worst thing regarding your privacy, you deserve to get exposed
I love this kind of spirit as a hardware manufacturer, hoping it will succeed !
Didn’t even see Blackberry until you were “cheating on your wife”
2:12 i prefer 16:9 cus videos fit on that aspect ratio perfectly. It just looks so nice. Zero empty spots on screen. All video.
15:24 Oreo looked concerned when you said "I'm cheating on my wife" 🤣
Cannot wait for Framework to be available in the UK. Absolutely love the company's ethos with reparability and upgrade paths. :)
I have a feeling that they browsed all your videos and said "If it was a problem for him then don't put it into our design"
One thing that I think Framework could do that would really set them apart is to make it so that the onboard audio is usable. Apple does a pretty good job of this. The noise floor could be a bit lower, but it's otherwise unobtrusive. The same cannot be said for most PC laptops. It wouldn't need to compete with the best of the best- just make the line output, line input and headphone amp "respectable".
Hello, Whoever reading this, Have a wonderful day ahead. ❤️
^_^ you too
This is my first time commin' to watch Louis Rossmann vid. After watching *Right to Repair from Marques* where Louis kinda made a cameo and hey thanks man for letting us know the imp. Stuff / takeaway from that vid.
Shout out to this guy! I really like his boldness & courage to ask questions and explains what is wrong and also it's negative effects on consumers like us.
I'm about to buy a new laptop and this one looks very interesting, finger crossed :D
I think it'd be hard to market this as repairable since as you said most people don't think or care about that until it breaks.
The big sell imo is modular/upgradeable similar to a desktop PC. If you really can have an attractive laptop that you can keep up to date for a reasonable price that will get a lot of enthusiasts on board.
@Ross to answer your questions real quick : it's not a real product. It doesn't exist. It's just a landing page to gauge how many people would want such a product.
In other news, the sky is blue. You answered a question no one was asking.
8:35 I just checked and they are selling the keyboard for 39$ currently. 😀 You were right on spot with the number!
I got a Fairphone 3 as I wanted a repairable phone, but the said fact is the "ethical" and consumer friendly devices don't seem to have decent specs. Disappointed to see them use Intel, hardly the most ethical company around.
They are probably using thunderbolt for the port module thingies. Thunderbolt is still pretty much an Intel thing and I hard guess they kinda ran out of board space for any type of Thunderbolt module.
Even if they could fit a thunderbolt chip somewhere, they need green light from Intel for that. They just choose the logical solution reather than hacking something together and getting shut down.
Hope they go Ryzen.
"don't seem to have decent specs" - depends on what you need... my girlfriends has a Fairphone 2: it's totally okay for most people, I'd say. Such small companies like Fairphone will not produce real flagships, because it is too risky and they don't sell enough devices. And they don't have that much money in the bank to finance expensive stuff, because there are often no external investors.
@@gayming4197 Well, it's a price thing. A Fairphone to match the specs of a top tier Android phone at $1000+ just doesn't make sense. I imagine they don't want to make an ethical phone also a luxury item only available to the rich.
@@terravida333 Thunderbolt makes sense for egpu and other purposes. Personally just give me a load of USB3.x ports.
Hey Luis. I'm wondering if you could do interviews with some manufacturing experts to go over some of the challenges companies would face trying to bring a product like this to the market, especially as devices and components get smaller and more tightly integrated?
With right to repair, in as much as I believe it's the right thing to do for all products, my question has been how easy is it to make some components user repairable and what are some of the trade-offs a manufacturer would have to make to achieve that? For example, is there any real reason (besides marketing nonsense and just not wanting to) to rivet a keyboard into a laptop frame instead of using screws? Or with smartphones, are there ways to make sure the water resistance can be reliably replaced after the repair?
I'd love to hear right to repair from the point of view of someone making these devices so we can see just how easy or hard it is for them to do it. My guess is that there are also some best practices that they could speak on with regards to the layout of these devices so consumers can also know what to look out for/expect from user repairable devices.
I believe this because devices used to be repairable so it's a problem that has been solved before. However, as technology has moved forward and robotic manufacturing has taken over, I've wondered if we've gone past the point where these practices may not be possible any more. And if that's the case, then how would manufacturing have to change to make sure that we don't go past this point? or at least make sure the parts that are most likely to fail are still repairable within a reasonable level of difficulty? How do manufacturers even figure out what is and isn't likely to fail?
I'm ask this because a common argument that seems to be made against making devices repairable is that these type of devices will either be larger to accommodate the "extra layer of repairability" or that the consumer will have to deal with a less optimised experience. Now for larger devices like desktop computers and cars, this is less of a concern. But my guess is that there are still some real challenges/trade-offs to achieving this with smaller devices, like say the camera module of a mobile phone. It probably wouldn't make much sense to make the lenses user replaceable. In such a case, it's much easier to replace the whole component rather than fixing it, and so a component like that is made so that it's highly unlikely to fail in that way in the first place.
The issue is that companies seem to want us to believe that that limit for this is at the device level and not the component level, even though they don't engineer the devices to be basically indestructible to begin with. so I'd like to understand how a manufacturer with right to repair in mind would define this limit and how easy or hard it would be to just build devices/components like these that won't fail and need fixing in the first place.
At the end of the day, right to repair is an engineering issue. So I feel like hearing about it from the point of view of engineers working on these type of devices directly will help solidify in people's minds that it's not unreasonable to ask that our devices be repairable.
Here's something to be cynical about: Their rhetoric is great, and their photos are definitely neat, however, look at their staff. They've got a bunch of marketing types and design types, yet they have only two people with "Engineer" in their job title. Neither one electrical. I kinda feel like an electrical engineer might be important to make all of this modular hardware work together, but what do I know?
They are hiring electrical engineers if you look at their job openings. 2 electrical and one mechanical engineer at the moment.
It's plausible to consider they hired out some of the Electrical engineering work to a separate company until they have their own team, hopefully the quality of the work is good enough not to bite them
Looking at the pictures on their website - my guess is that the the screws for the screen are under the inner bezel (the bezel that holds the magnets for the removable coloured bezel). It would be nice if the inner bezel is attached by magnets too.
Let me know when there's a AMD version
I never thought much about the screen proportions until I visited the local property assessor's office several years ago. His computer had a 42" wide screen for mapping and a 20" CRT for everything else. The day I visited the screens were duplicated. He had Outlook open, and there was more information on the smaller screen than the larger one due to the change in proportion. So depending on use, particularly where text is involved, a more square screen can provide more information.
looks nice, can we do cars next?
You can actually build a car from a bunch parts. The main obstacle would be passing automotive safety regulations from your country. If you can’t legally register a car for use in public roads. Then that car is a basically a toy.
Soon I expect. With EVs the components can definitely be modularized. Once the battery is smaller and lighter. Then they could build a common platform and have options. You can do this now but it requires custom work because a lot isn't modular.
@@domg7359 theyre modular for production purposes, the problem is parts arent accessible. though ive seen that GM is selling their electric drive train as a crate engine, which means normal people can buy it and put it in a vehicle of their choice
@@domg7359 the new skateboards might lead to more small-scale manufacturers, but the roll cage is the biggest issue to me. That and the seatbelts/airbags have to be tested by a govt or similar org for me to trust it.
Done for a very long time. Search for "kit car" or "car kit"
Love to see an updated look from Louis now that physical machines are starting to make their way out
This looks like another *modular* *Google* *Project* *Ara* concept. Unless they already offer all spare parts for that laptop in a resemble price on Amazon / Aliexpress this will simply not work.
There's an idea: blatantly publish the specs and invite global companies to undercut you on spare parts
Project Ara was just a hedge against Motorolas modular phones. I don't think Google ever believed in repair.
The modules have usbc on the other end, and the casing is designed to be 3d-printable.
So it's meant to be relatively easy to make your own.
You're way too dependent.
All a company has to do is make a standard form factor and never change it. Always iterating, like the desktop arena. Hope this works out.
Now it's released, can you give an update, especially if you think their business model will allow them to keep supporting the product for years to come? Also who is behind it?
Sent from my thinkpad lol. Spquare screen is square
This is an EXCELLENT development for right-to-repair and certainly one the industry has desperately needed since its inception. One glaring issue that has always existed with laptops is a lacking of standardization, and what I am talking about here is mainboard form factors. Since the original PC and PC-XT, motherboards for desktop machines have all been built in one or more standard sizes and shapes, like AT, Baby AT, ATX, ITX, Mini ITX, Micro ATX and Mobile ITX. For the most part, all of these have been broadly interchangeable across generations of hardware. But this is not so for laptop PCs.
With laptops (and most other mobile computers), each model or model series uses its own unique shape and layout for its motherboard. It is physically impossible to swap boards from different machines between each other, even when they are from the same manufacturer. If the board in one laptop dies for any reason, you cannot take the one from another unless it is the EXACT SAME model as the one that failed.
My hope is that Framework will build some sort of standardization into the motherboard and expansion modules' shapes and sizes so that no matter how large or small their laptops are in footprint, they will all use the same size and shape motherboard and that board type can be adopted as an industry standard that other companies can follow for truly user repairable and upgradeable laptop PCs, just as standards like ATX and ITX have done for desktop PCs. THAT, I would like to see happen. A great start nonetheless for Framework. :-)
Ethernet port please
If I can repair it myself without issue, that is awesome. If it is a little difficult and thus I might prefer taking it to an independent repair shop, then okay. The big thing is that I shouldn't be punished for wanting to repair my device... or even upgrade a little bit inside it. And if I take it to a repair shop, they shouldn't be worried that what they need to do to repair it is a high risk to causing more damage. Imagine if replacing the oil in a vehicle required a cutting torch to open it up and a welding torch to seal it again. That is Apple devices right now.
This sounds like it would be a really cool Hackintosh
With different distros of Linux, that tries to mimic the look of a mac os, you would be far better off.
Until they drop Intel.
Or just trow a macOS look alike Linux Distro on there.
Like J A has stated - cautious optimism. Louis, since you know from experience how difficult it is to not be abused by fools that use the CC companies to cover their own screw-ups, it doesn't bode well for that aspect of the business I do wish them well too. It's a near impossible task to design something like this to suit everyone's concept of how it 'should' be. Thanks once again for another informative video.
remember Phoneblocks?
RLM has broken me. Now every question begining with "Remember" sounds like Mike Stoklasa in my head
Their website looks like a quick promo without any technical information. As a DIY "power user" I want to see technical manuals and specs in numbers and price €€€. Until then, it is great idea, but it is just an idea.
But I am clinging all my thumbs they succeed in delivering what they promise.
I think the video of somebody cheating on their wife is a little more damning than the audio admitting it.
I'm a customer IF they follow through. And the same for smartphones. I'd rather have a bulky laptop or phone if that means I can get a cheaper upgrade, replacement or diferent module on the spot. THIS should be the future.
Thumbs downs probably from Tim Cook (Apple CEO)!
Gates entered the chat 😅😀
Tim "Dipshit" Crook
1:50 thank you! I hate all these 16:9 displays. It makes sense on a gaming laptop, but why do all laptops even entry level ones or ones geared toward productivity have to have such a short display? Its really annoying to use when most of what you do is browse around google, answer emails and maybe some slight gaming on the side.
30 seconds from upload, 14 likes
I thank you for trying to put out a product which is repairable. I despise people who, whenever someone tries to change or do something different from the rest, get dragged through the coals because their design isn't 100% PERFECT (not aimed at you, Louis- you do have legit questions, but in general this happens). You know what, Framework? I am here to say I am HAPPY to PAY MORE for a product that is better/repairable. I don't think I'm alone in this. I don't expect perfection, but I do appreciate a constant attempt at improvement as things, hopefully, move forward.
Would love to see this using AMD
A great first step by Framework, provided this comes to market and lives up to it's promises.
What it amounts to is that the laptop market has been deliberately hobbled for decades. There is absolutely no reason we shouldn't already have standardized, modular laptops. It all comes back to 70s and 80's business practices, get the monopoly at any cost. The target? Corporate markets. I remember working on a Compaq laptop back in the day (Pentium II) that literally had 3 little latches to remove the keyboard, pull the bottom 2 down and the bottom of the keyboard popped up then the third latch would leaver against the area around the connector and pop it free. It was solid, easy to replace and under it, with no need to undo a single screw, was your RAM, wifi and drive expansions. Obviously, this thing was a brick but the design language was there.
CPUs can be modular, even SoCs, a simple module with a compact edge connector is far from difficult to design and implement
GPUs, same story, its been done already, for decades.
RAM, there is absolutely no excuse for RAM to not be upgradable, the standards for laptop RAM already exist
Drives, with the existence of M.2, a non-upgradable machine is a joke
Keyboard, as I mentioned above, they can be made serviceable and easy to replace. They also make for a fantastic access panel, removing the need for the user to open the entire machine to access more commonly upgraded parts.
Display, It always baffled me why they don't just use a hard edge connector at the bottom of the display. Just pop it out, put in a new one. That way the ribbons need only extend from the base unit into the display casing.
Ports, I love the implementation on the website for this thing, modules with varied ports is brilliant. Their implementation looks a little costly, it could be done with bare PCBs using the same connectors and save on materials and cost.
The only place I can see a fully non modular setup being of any use is in ultra slim portables, when saving on weight and bulk, soldered components are a huge help. Even here tho, they should be SoC designs on a single board that can be upgraded by replacing it. RAM and Storage should NOT be soldered to the mainboard, with the footprint of an SoC mainboard there is plenty of room in even the thinnest 10" ultra portable for an M.2 and RAM slots, mount them on the edge of the board so they don't add much, if any height.
Standardized RAM, CPU, GPU and storage designs will lead to wider spread third party options. The monopoly era is dead, it needs to be buried.
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but while it all sounds good but even if they deliver on these claims, the chances are high that this company won't exist 3 years from now and all of the stockpile of those swappable modules and components will be sitting in a landfill.
Hopefully, with the current government and media focus on 'right to repair', these guys will get the exposure to gain enough market share, or at the very least the incorporation of some of these design concepts into mainstream laptop company designs - I think the design aspects here are brilliant and deserve to be recognised and/or learned from.
In 2003 I built a custom laptop that used a standard atx motherboard had PC parts, and was tig welded aluminum sheets. It survived being run over by a Bobcat 763. Had a handle like an attache case but was heavy.
Looks like basically 95% of Windows laptops. Also the part they say "make adapters thing of the past" and literally show bunch of adapters that just plug into the body of the laptop...
Its a good strategy to start with nothing fancy.
Think those go into expansion slots in the case. Not hanging off the body. Like old laptops and game consoles.
Points still valid, but do you want them to send boards in static bags so idiots break it.
Do you think the actual "real" ports on your laptop just magically grow there? They are still little daughterboards plugging into the PCIe bus or a USB Controller. They (framework) just propose you choose your ports yourself. And making them standardized adapters to plug in to plug into some sort of bus without them "dongeling" around is the smartest way to do that.
The bezel is removable! :)
I just went onto their site, and a few scrolls below there's a video with a person disassembling the laptop, including popping off the bezel and revealing some screws. I'm in Europe, the website might be different for some people elsewhere.