Literally every company is using the same AI-generated marketing words about being environmentally friendly, that doesn't move the needle anymore. A circuit card is a circuit card is a circuit card. It's like I said, it's marketing BS. They aren't special.
Nothing to substantiate these claims. Making completely modular and self-repairable laptops is unique, Framework is special in that every single part of the laptop is replaceable
If you buy 2 laptops worth of parts over piece-by-piece over 2 years vs buying a laptop, and then buying another laptop 2 years later? What is the net difference, other than the piecemeal version means a lot more shipping trucks driving to your address?
There is no way, without negligence, that you would go through 2 laptops worth of parts in two years. Using the same logic, suppose we are talking about a car. Instead of just giving it new tires when needed and a full synthetic oil change once every 9 months, we just buy a new car. The reason this is not viable is because its cheaper and consequently less harsh on the environment to go through multiple new products in such a short span. Manufacturing new whole products versus specific parts is a lot more detrimental to the environment than an extra order or two over the years to replace a part.
The reason most people (even computer nerds) don't upgrade the CPU in laptops isn't because you *can't*, It's because it's not worth it.
The reason most people, even 'computer nerds' do not upgrade CPUs in laptops is because its either; made purposefully more expensive than their other products to increase their revenue by incentivizing the purchase of new products over repair, made purposefully difficult to do so by means of proprietary screw heads, riveted parts, permanently glued parts, or it will void your warranty, or it is outright impossible to do so, and many others I am probably forgetting.
A CPU upgrade for a mainstream laptop requires a mainboard replacement, which is proprietary and expensive. When you want to upgrade a Framework laptop, you need to buy a mainboard replacement... which is proprietary and expensive. This 7840U upgrade costs $700 (RAM, wifi, and GPU not included).
None of Frameworks designs are proprietary as you can get all the diagrams you want from them for everything, and whether or not their products are expensive is a matter of opinion. If you are buying a 7840U mainboard you most likely already have a Framework Laptop with RAM, and a Wi-Fi card. The problem is you are trying to put an AMD mainboard in what is an Intel compatible Framework laptop. If you are going to switch from Intel to AMD there is going to be incompatibilities sometimes. Of course you could just buy the AMD framework laptop in the first place if such a thing is not what you want.
This 7840U upgrade costs $700 (RAM, wifi, and GPU not included). You can walk down to bestbuy today and get a more powerful Ryzen 7 7840HS gaming laptop with an RTX4050 (and also the rest of the laptop) for $750.
What am I missing here?
If we are going to compare products, please link me what you are referring to. Just because a laptop has, at least on paper, more powerful components does not mean that they are more performant then another laptop with less powerful components. Laptops have extremely differentiated power limits even within the same exact SKU of parts. We would also need to talk about each laptops ability to get heat away from those parts so they can perform as the SKU of CPU and GPU would suggest. You have to ask so many questions when comparing laptops because a laptop is essentially 4-7 different products in one device. A laptop is a PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, and microphone/s as a single product. You are comparing only a couple different aspects Framework's laptop with the same couple aspects of another laptop. We would also have to compare several other aspects of the laptops such has battery life, charging brick size and length of its cord, and many other laptop specific issues and how they deal with them.
As to your question, you seem to be missing the point of a Framework laptop to begin with.
This company lost me with the full frontal homepage co-marketing with LTT and David2D. But, they lost me for real when I realized they are banking on reviews judging their product on "base" prices for partial-products that are not usable laptops.
It is completely irrelevant to the product and what its worth is as to who or what endorses a product or brand. They never claim to sell you an entire laptop and its constituting parts for the 'base price.'
Framework is working really hard to sell the idea their product will "save you money", and that just isn't true.
So you are saying that buying a new laptop every two years for 750 dollars is cheaper than buying one laptop and a couple parts over 4+ years is cheaper? I call BS on that one. The idea behind Framework laptops is that if anything small breaks, the laptop is still serviceable or repairable. On a conventional laptop if, say the charging port breaks, you are either buying a new laptop, getting it repaired by a professional, RMAing it for warranty, or attempting to fix it yourself. All of these options are more expensive than buying a 20 dollar UBB-C module from Framework. If the screen cracks, its a very similar situation except you can use a cracked screen sometimes, or you can get a replacement from Framework for less than the cost of all your options with a conventional laptop. There are so many examples that it
will save you money, that I am not going to list them all.
When you buy a "DIY Edition" framework laptop, literally everything is an upcharge. Power supply, windows, SSD, RAM, even basic USB and audio jacks. But Reviewers continue to think the DIY edition is a full laptop. The prebuilt base model, is actually $63 cheaper than the identical minimum-viable configuration of the DIY edition.
They upcharge you because they are a business and they need to sell you things at a profit. They also give you the option of not choosing any of their components so you can buy them cheaper and, I don't know, Do It Yourself (DIY), maybe. The ports on the Framework laptops are unique in that they are modular and can be hot-swapped with each other. They are also very cheap so I do not believe they are that much of an 'upcharge' considering they are 9 or 19 dollars each. The reason why the DIY version with the identical parts as the minimum-viable configuration is more expensive is most likely because all of the parts from the DIY are individually packaged rather than assembled. If I had to speculate, this is likely more work because there are significantly more recourses put into prebuilts and their assemblies to keep them as cheap as possible compared to there are DIY packages. The DIY edition exists so people can save money and use cheaper parts sourced outside Framework, or parts that you already have to prevent e-waste of perfectly good parts you already have.
For example PC Mag embarrassed itself in it's Framework Laptop 13 review by saying a negative of Framework is "Pre-built system comes at a premium" - but the prebuilt includes all the pieces you 100% have to buy to get a working computer. But PC mag didn't know that the pre-built are sold at a discount over the DIY version. Because Framework didn't tell them upfront, nor correct them after publishing.
Why is it Framework's fault or even relevant that some random publication did not understand their simple business strategies? I would have to question their review if they read enough of Framework's website to understand what they were writing a review about but still failed to understand their business model.
Framework seems to want people to be on their site and halfway through configuring their laptop before letting them know that the $850 base price only gets you a half-built barebones PC that requires another $200+ to get running. The $850 version apparently can't even be charged until you add on at least 1x $9 USB-C expansion card.
Framework explicitly warns you with their prebuilt laptops that at lease one USB-C module is required to charge the laptop, I do not get your disdain in having to spend 9 dollars on a port that is required. Framework also auto-selects and includes 4 USB charging modules in their base model prebuilt laptops. They do not know if you are an individual first time Framework buyer or an IT department at a business with 500 spare USB-C modules on hand. They let you choose with the DIY version how many and of what type modules, but assume you need them with the prebuilt versions and add them automatically.
You can get into the nitty gritty of configurations, but the tldr is that a framework laptop with 1 additional mainboard upgrade is working out to be about the same price as buying 2 regular brand-new laptops.
This is disingenuous because if you are upgrading an
Intel Framework laptop with an
AMD mainboard you need compatible RAM and Wi-Fi card. If you were upgrading mainboards from their 11th gen Intel mainboard to their new 13th gen mainboard, a mainboard is all you would need. This is because their Intel mainboards are only compatible with DDR4 memory and AMD's is only compatible with DDR5 memory. I am not entirely sure why the Wi-Fi cards are incompatible, but it may be because the Wi-Fi card for the Intel mainboard is made by intel and not compatible by default.
So you can have a laptop with a new processor paired with an aging screen/battery/keyboard and an old mainboard sitting in a plastic bag, or you can have a fully new laptop with a still very-usable second laptop. You could use that Framework mainboard to start to building out a second PC, or you could just already have 2 working PCs.
If there is nothing wrong with the screen, battery, and keyboard why am I supposed to care about them 'aging'? The old mainboard can be put to use many ways, like getting a 40 dollar case for it and making it another PC, or selling it to someone else who will do so or use it for parts. In your scenario you have two laptops with one that is 'aging' just like the supposedly 'aging' first Framework laptop with a new board and a second laptop with the same issues as the first. These issues include lack of reparability without breaking warranty, or exuberant cost to do so professionally, or risk of destroying the device with no recourse by yourself.
You could even save the environment by giving that useful second laptop to somebody who otherwise needed to have killed the planet by buying a new laptop, right?
If you can save the environment by giving the second laptop to someone who needs it, you could do the same with the second mainboard from a Framework laptop except its even better for the environment because none of the other parts besides the mainboard needed to be manufactured in the first place.
Or even better yet, you can just be normal and use that keep using that old laptop until the screen/battery/keyboard make you sad.
Or you can have a Framework Laptop and keep it conceivably forever replacing the parts that make you sad when they break.
When you're buying a laptop, you're really buying a monitor/keyboard with some computer attached and a warranty. You're buying the complete package. Save specs and raw power for the desktop, where you don't have to worry about a compromise with weight and battery life.
Agreed.
So maybe Framework can get back to me when they are offering a bunch of different monitor and keyboard options with a regular cadence of upgrades, because replacing the mainboard is never going to be worth the cost, regardless of how easy they make it.
Those are things that they have talked about adding to their ecosystem. I personally believe they have great laptops at a bit of a premium, but at least cheaper than Apple computers. The premium you pay, in my opinion, is for a quality product with a lot of power handed you for reparability, personalization, and modification. Cheers.
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