I recently bought a framework laptop for a daily driver when I'm not on my desktop. For context I was running NixOS on an old 2014 macbook air, and I work on the glasgow haskell compiler in my day job so I do a lot of CPU heavy tasks.
I've got to say, as long as these things are being produced I'll never go back. They are just too good and I cannot recommend them highly enough. One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on. That may not seem like much but it was a revelation the first time I sat on the couch and thought "huh I really wish this was over on that side....wait a minute!".
I've also had absolutely no problems with NixOS on my machine, even my apple earbuds easily connect via bluetooth, something that I never quite got working on my macbook.
10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.
Widescreen laptops were a phase, but they're rapidly falling out of fashion.
Being able to see more text (webpages, news articles), and longer lists (email inbox, code) is more important to more people than having a laptop that can watch movies. Split-screening on a laptop is rough no matter the dimensions. In the best case scenario you have a wide laptop and you see two panes, but a miniscule amount of rows on each pane.
Squarish laptops have been a breath of fresh air for me.
Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason, I've just never seen anyone publicly admit to being the cause. Would you also like to take the blame for glossy screens, chicklet keyboards, and non-replaceable batteries?
> Obviously manufacturers haven't been eradicating useful screen ratios for no reason
For me 16:9/10 is way more "useful" than 3:2/4:3 ever was (had that for ages, wouldn't go back). I love being able to have two different things side-by-side, e.g. an editor and a terminal, on a 13" screen, at a font size I can still read well. I definitely wouldn't buy a square-ish laptop screen.
And I'll take anything that's more square than 16:9 personally.
16:9 is great if I wanna watch movies all day, unfortunately for the apparently unaware laptop industry, I need to also work a little bit sometimes.
Thankfully Apple never jumped on the stupid 16:9 bandwagon with their laptops. Now if only some monitor manufacturer would wake up and start making 27"+, 16:10, 4K+ monitors with 120hz+ refresh rate then I'll literally instantly buy 5.
A poor cope for being forced to use a media consumption format. In order to make full use of the ratio ill-suited to productive work, you are compelled to adopt a specific workflow involving two windows being open at all times. Great, that stackoverflow search page can stay open. Do yourself a favor: pivot one of your cursed resolution monitors and open a source file on it in full screen. That is how many text rows you lost in the war on general purpose computing.
> 10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.
Agreed, with the seemingly-trivial but actually real elaboration: I’m excited because there’s a new version on the way and _I can decide, piece by piece, which parts of the upgrade I want._.
Having the upgrade be a literal circuit board I can swap out is 100% the value prop for Framework and I am likewise a very happy customer to see it, even if I’m happy with the current performance of my laptop and don’t need to upgrade.
Agreed! Got one from work, and it's a beast on Fedora 36 with the 11th gen. Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast. So cool that we'll actually be able to update the innards in a few years as necessary to keep it feeling fresh.
Edit: A small but nice design feature is the light that comes on to imply whether the usb-c port is charging properly. Coming from a mac that removed this feature when usb-c charging was introduced, this is a huge luxury.
I just played through Mass Effect 2 & 3 on mine (Intel i5) with no problems, using Wine. When I do upgrade my main board, I may get the i7 for better graphics performance.
Another huge + is setting battery charge limit with a console command (1). When I’m connected to power at home, I run `ectool fwchargelimit 60` to keep the battery at 60%. If I’m going out, I set it to 100% in the morning and let it charge.
On my thinkpad, I've found it most useful to additionally set a start charge threshold much lower than the charge limit. My use case only sees a handful of minutes without charger per day. With charging starting at 40% and ending at 80%, the battery gets charged sometimes as seldom as once per week.
The other way to look at it with regards to the framework is to just not worry about it. Replacing the battery is trivial and only $60 https://frame.work/products/battery
Once the ecosystem picks up speed and there are multiple vendors, perhaps the price or even capacity will improve. Although this may be possible with the thinkpad as well.
This doesn't seem useful based on what I know about LiIon batteries: they don't benefit from partial charges, since their capacity loss comes from discharge behaviour.
Exposing the battery to high temperature and dwelling in a full state-of-charge for an extended time can be more stressful than cycling.
Most Li-ions charge to 4.20V/cell, and every reduction in peak charge voltage of 0.10V/cell is said to double the cycle life. For example, a lithium-ion cell charged to 4.20V/cell typically delivers 300–500 cycles. If charged to only 4.10V/cell, the life can be prolonged to 600–1,000 cycles; 4.0V/cell should deliver 1,200–2,000 and 3.90V/cell should provide 2,400–4,000 cycles.
On the negative side, a lower peak charge voltage reduces the capacity the battery stores. As a simple guideline, every 70mV reduction in charge voltage lowers the overall capacity by 10 percent. Applying the peak charge voltage on a subsequent charge will restore the full capacity.
>Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast. So cool that we'll actually be able to update the innards in a few years as necessary to keep it feeling fresh.
Isn't Intel graphics always been the best bet for Linux due to their excellent driver support? I'm excited for their discrete GPUs just for the sake of proper Linux support.
I have an 15W haswell machine in the corner decoding & encoding multiple HD camera feeds from motion on integrated GPU using intel_vaapi while the CPU is free for postgres, redis and a qemu VM - 24*7.
Intel GPUs have been the best bet for Linux laptops for a long time (over 10 years), but for the last two or three, AMD has been just as good. Just avoid dual GPU laptops ("Optimus" or whatever), it's very problematic on Linux and somewhat problematic even on Windows.
I do have a laptop with one of those early intel/AMD 6000 series dual GPU laptops, I remember setting up GPU drivers for it (AMD GPU) used to be troublesome but nowadays even Ubuntu sets it up by default and the devices could be switched with just DRI_PRIME.
But of course the performance is awful and intel GPU is better for most tasks; Newer AMD GPU and open-source drivers are likely much better as you say.
> Even the discrete-ish Iris Xe graphics are surprisingly fast
Anyone have any idea how well this stacks up against RDNA2? I'd love it to be close enough to not have to worry much about, but from what I hear AMD have it significantly better
This is interesting: over the last several months, a friend has been running NixOS on a Framework and has been told by Framework employees that they can’t help him with Linux kernel issues because he’s using an unsupported OS and he’s also had lots of complaints about battery life and power management.
I love the idea of the Framework, but it seems to suffer from all the issues that made me switch to MacBooks in the first place.
We would love to be able to provide more personalized service for different Linux distros, but we unfortunately just don't have the necessary expertise to be able to do that well.
For Linux-related service requests, we first ask that folks try an Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora 36 Live USB (the distros we have done the most internal testing with and created setup guides for) to be able to determine whether there could be a hardware issue. Once we have verified there isn't a hardware issue, we ask that folks post in the community thread for their distro for help: https://community.frame.work/c/framework-laptop/linux/91
In practice, this works well because we have an extremely helpful and engaged community (including in many cases maintainers for that distro). Additionally, because that debugging happens in the open, any answers from it are publicly visible for future users to see.
All of that said, we'd love to find better ways to provide deeper support ourselves and are open to input. A more official path would likely still start with the most popular distros.
You know, not to promote NixOS too much but the reproducibility of it makes this specific OS especially easy to support. There's already a community driven hardware support module to use [1]. If you look at it it doesn't hold a lot of things though, since NixOS is quite bleeding edge (Wi-Fi already supported) and you Framework is otherwise quite Linux friendly (Please make a 1080p-ish display tho, until Wayland is 4 real).
LPT: NixOS installs by themselves aren't good for much, use NixOS-hardware and look into power configurations if you have specific requirements.
Yea and the best part was that installing NixOS was dead easy. I followed Graham Christensen's instructions[1] and had nix create a personalized image with the latest linux kernel and some other stuff. Then I just flashed and booted from that image after partitioning. Honestly it was dead simple and its so hard to go back to the ad-hoc system config style a la Arch linux and other distros.
I'm probably a lost cause now because I think I'm going to convert my entire raspberry pi cluster to NixOS from ubuntu.
I'm daily driving NixOS both at home and work, but to be honest I don't really use the Nix features all that much, I just have a system that's predictable.
Every now and then I spin up an OS container w/ Ubuntu or the likes, forward X if I'm doing something that isn't supported in NixOS yet.
This is why most people just buy a MacBook: it should not be necessary for the user to read, do, or configure _anything_ to make suspend mode work properly and not drain 30% of your battery overnight.
I've set aside this afternoon to update my macbook because it refused to do the 12.4 update by itself. Then it refused when I asked it to restart manually. Then it looked like it worked and was restarting but actually it just kernel panicked or something I'm not sure. Then it wouldn't acknowledge an update existed. Then it wouldn't check for an update.
So now, I'm watching it download and prepare an update in real time in safe mode, while doing absolutely nothing else, because apparently a light breeze will knock this update process over. Preparing the update has so far taken 30 minutes. No doubt installation will take another 30 mins to an hour.
Sucks that you had this issue, but the 12.4 update went smoothly for me (unattended) on both an Intel MBP and an M1 Mac Studio. I’ve never experienced an update issue on the Mac (Windows is an entirely different story).
I understand the sentiment, and for users who don’t want to do
any configuration, we do have systems preloaded with Windows 11 that work out of the box with everything you’d expect a laptop to do. WSL has even gotten good enough to be a reasonable substitute for many people. For folks who do want Linux, in practice we have not seen following the steps in the setup guides be a constraint for usability.
This is because the people who want a Unix-like operating system that doesn't require manual following of guides after purchase to get basic features working all self-select out of your user pool and go buy a MacBook.
My MacBook hasn't been suspending itself properly for ages. Love it when my bluetooth headset decides to connect to my MacBook that's been closed and unplugged for 3 hours.
Fucking "connected standby" is the worst thing to happen to ACPI since ACPI. In every OS it's a battery draining backpack heater that provides features nobody wants. In every OS you'd better hope the firmware still supports hybrid suspend or suspend-to-hibernate.
To be fair, do macbooks and frameworks really share a target market? Apple defines itself by "do it the Apple way and everything just works." Framework is all about "customize it your way and it works." The Venn diagram in my head doesn't have a lot of overlap.
If you want the Mac experience on a Linux device, perhaps you'd be happier with an ubuntu preinstalled Dell or Thinkpad. If you do things the ubuntu way, I'd say the Apple "just works" guarantee applies.
Yeah, honestly when folks roll over to Nix, it's just not a walled garden anymore and there are too many deviations for a support team, it really needs community/forums where people talk to you in a way that teaches as you go.
MS and OSX are locked down enough that you need to be fairly clever to begin with just to get off the beaten path.
I think community is always the way to go when heading down the Nix road, you all are doing an incredible job with it!
doyougnu was previously running NixOS on a Macbook so their bar for "working" is probably much lower than a normal person's.
I'm on Windows, but if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat. I don't know what it would take to have sensible power management on Linux without major issues.
I get six to eight hours on my Thinkpad, running Arch Linux.
This did not happen out of the box. I think I got like two hours of battery life before I began tuning parameters. As usual, the Arch wiki is an excellent resource even if you're running a different distro: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
That's impressive. I've done the equivalent of tuning everything and still wound up with battery lifetime half of what it should be on Windows.
There's also specific programs that are really bad. Edge used to add 2-4 hours extra battery life when using my Surface to read PDFs. If I used Firefox, it was shorter by a very noticeable amount.
$ sudo powertop --auto-tune
modprobe cpufreq_stats failedCannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_results.powertop
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d
Devfreq not enabled
glob returned GLOB_ABORTED
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only
Leaving PowerTOP
powertop --auto-tune is kind of annoying to use, it usually winds up tuning something that shouldn't be and there's no convenient way to filter what it does, and then suddenly your mouse stops being responsive if you leave it alone for more than 2 seconds.
Also on a laptop you might have stuff being plugged and unplugged all the time. Tbh it's kind of surprising systemd hasn't grown a "powertop that remembers things" arm.
Experience differs depending on hardware. My Dell XPS 13 got 7hrs out of the box on Manjaro, which I tweaked to get to 8.5-9. On ubuntu I didn't have to bother with the tweaks. That's comparable to Windows on this device...
"Good battery life" is not my measure of good power management. I can leave my windows laptop sitting out, it will sensibly turn off the screen and eventually hibernate, I don't need to worry about it. A Linux laptop will need babying when it's not plugged in.
Gnome has power management features like that, didn't even enable them. It's the most installed DE I think, so your characterization of Linux is pretty off.
I like Gnome and its newest incarnation Gnome 40, but at least on Nixos it has some issues so I often rebuild to an i3-based environment instead.
Of course, depends highly on the value of "they".
Because the "you may have heard..." pattern is worse than useless, here's actual info to compare and decide whether either of these may work for you:
Sadly, protectionism is a thing. Launching in new countries is hard and expensive. Perhaps there's a company in country that would do it better than some giant international megacorp.
Framework does not ship internationally yet. System 76 does.
But if I’m buying a laptop for work why would I get a laptop from a manufacturer that has no presence in my country? What am I going to do when things go wrong? Unfortunately, it may be better to take a punt on a manufacturer with global presence.
battery life with that laptop was always better on the mac, but I regularly got 4-6 hours on that machine for years, first with Arch linux, and then with NixOS.
We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that
Fedora 36 works fantastically well out of the box, with full hardware
functionality including WiFi and fingerprint reader support. Ubuntu 22.04
also works great after applying a couple of workarounds, and we’re working
to eliminate that need. We also studied and carefully optimized the standby
power draw of the system in Linux. You can check compatibility with popular
distros as we continue to test on our Linux page 322 or in the Framework
Community 39. [0], [1]
There's semi-official Linux support it sounds like!
because this hardware is uniquely repairable and upgradable and it has better linux support than most of the industry. Unless you just want another rebranded clevo laptop this is very good.
First, "no linux support" is disingenuous. Second, with a Framework you can replace a USB-c port with a 1TB expansion card, or with an Ethernet port, or whatever is in stock. Those who bought the first model can now upgrade to a next-gen processor and/or reinforced lid, without throwing the whole laptop away. While System76 has surprisingly lower prices than I expected, it does not appear to have similar features--you still have to replace the entire system whenever your Pangolin becomes obsolete in 3 years. Framework was always more about sustainability. They didn't anticipate the demand for Linux/FOSS stuff, but they're adjusting for that. Hopefully some future motherboard will have Coreboot, and I can buy that motherboard and pop it in my laptop.
Nope. If I can't file a ticket or call and get an issue fixed, that's not support.
> with a Framework you can replace a USB-c port with a 1TB expansion card, or with an Ethernet port, or whatever is in stock. Those who bought the first model can now upgrade to a next-gen processor and/or reinforced lid, without throwing the whole laptop away.
I still haven't been able to get suspend to work on my high-spec last-gen Framework, despite following all the troubleshooting and disjointed recommendations in the forum because the company won't just publish fixes for common problems directly.
Suspend will sap 30% of my energy by morning, even in "deep" sleep, and the computer won't wake properly. The trackpad will work intermittently or really fast after sleeping.
I have to turn the thing all the way off every time I use it. Which, alright, forced asceticism. Maybe a growth opportunity.
It's just frustrating and disappointing to find out so much work has gone into making a new one instead of fixing the pile of garbage I ended up with supporting them with the first version.
> Suspend will sap 30% of my energy by morning, even in "deep" sleep, and the computer won't wake properly
That's just unacceptable: without wake timers (so outside "connected standby"), S0ix on a Intel 11th or 12th gen should use at most 0.7% of the battery per hour, so 7% over 10h (assuming you like long nights!). A well configured system should aim for about half as much, so between 3 and 4% over 10h.
You are getting about 5x worse power consumption during sleep than a normal modern system, and 10x worse than a well configured system.
Digging into the community forum should only be needed if you are using a different distro or if you want to micro-optimize beyond what is in the guides.
I still am unable to get resume from deep sleep to be less than 12-15 seconds. I dug the forums, contacted support, did all the things, but nothing works. If I go to s2idle it is instant, but that takes way too much battery.
Even with deep sleep the battery life feels very short. I haven't done formal tests, but I also have a macbook for work, and the difference is quite noticeable. I very often come to open the framework after a few hours of sleep and it just ran itself out of battery. This never happens with the macbook.
Don't get me wrong, I love the framework, and I love that it's "open", and fixable - so I'm willing to live with that. But just comparing it to another laptop, I'm not sure I'd give it 10 out of 10.
Suspend hasn't failed me yet but I run suspend+hibernate.
Trackpad seems good to me but my setup is not trackpad heavy. In fact I have a hotkey binding in xmonad that disables the track pad because everything I do is keyboard based including my browser. So I find I rarely need to use the mouse and it just gets in my way.
Battery depends on usage, with nothing (nothing is emacs daemon, wifi on, bluetooth on, xmonad and syncthing running, I don't use a desktop environment) running my battery reports a discharge rate of 5-6W, with normal usage (firefox and chrome open, slack and spotify open) the battery discharge is ~9-10W which is easily 6 hours, of course when I'm compiling GHC with all cores firing away this shoots up to ~30W and battery tanks to 1-2 hours but I can't really blame the machine for that :)
If it helps with the decision at all, certain 12th gen Intel mobile chips are competitive with the M1 in terms of performance. They do use more power to achieve that though if I remember correctly, but it's not an order of magnitude difference.
I'm stoked that mobile chips are getting as powerful as they are, even though I'm very much an Apple user. Higher perf low wattage parts are good for everyone, and competition will keep Apple moving forward which is good for me!
Yeah it's hard to beat just running linux in a VM on a Mac, especially with Mac's new hardware. Framework's modularity is probably the most compelling alternate value proposition, though.
You can basically do this with macs if you still use the usb-c charger. Even with the new ones they still charge through those ports on either side.
But yeah, being able to swap those ports is great. I'm feeling the pain of having only 1 hdmi out on my laptop and the ability to just add one on sounds amazing.
Do Macs still favor charging via the USB-C ports on the right side? IIRC charging on the left caused overheating/throttling. I'd be interested to know if the Framework also favors a specific port for charging.
Same. Only things I wish were slightly better build quality and also I've had issues with Wi-Fi disappearing of late [0], fast battery drain during suspend, as well as battery refusing to charge from zero but there's a workaround involving a dumb USB charger. Kind of hoping these are just early adopter issues and that they'll be dealt with over time.
I really hope some community hardware experts can design more modules for this thing. I want an IMU+GPS+Barometer module among other things, but I'm a software person and don't know how to design PCBs.
I couldn't get Wifi working reliably when trying to use my Framework on Linux, even trying multiple distros, it would just disappear and not come back. Eventually I gave up and switched to Windows which has worked perfectly.
My main complaint are that the built in speakers are not good, they just simply cannot get loud enough. I'm also a little annoyed that I bought mine and a month and a half later the 12th gen version comes out. I would have happily waited for it.
Its a shame they don't have the option of AMD processors, the rdna2 igpu's included in the new ones would be more than sufficient for me, whereas my understanding is that the intel igpu's leave a lot to be desired.
As game dev is one of the main things I do with a personal PC, sadly this means Im somewhat tied down to having a decent gpu. RDNA2 would be perfect for me, powerful enough to dev on and weak enough to test on (so I dont need a seperate low-spec machine for testing low-end performance).
It's really a deal breaker for me if they do not Start Offering Ryzen options for the Mainboard Module as Intel's Integrated graphics is currently lacking compared to AMD's Ryzen 6000 series Mobile APUs with RDNA2 Graphics(680M).
But I want Linux and the Blender 3.2 version released and all that ROCm/HIP support shipping with the Linux Distro/Kernel so I can Have Cycles-X GPU accelerated rendering for Ray Tracing/Rendering as Eevee lacks Ray Tracing currently.
It's just too bad the Intel and AMD have gone with some non standard GPU compute APIs instead of supporting Vulkan Compute. Intel's got its OneAPI while AMD's gotten its ROCm/HIP for GPU Compute API support as the Blender Foundation's no longer supporting OpenCL there for Blender 3.0/later editions.
AMD's Ryzen 6000 series APUs with RDNA2 integrated graphics are just great there for rendering capabilities but it's strange the laptops that ship with the Integrated 680M Graphics are mostly only available on laptops that also Include Discrete Mobile GPUs, as if the OEMs are force up-selling Ryzen 6000 based laptops that come with discrete mobile GPUs only, even if one can get buy with the Integrated 680M graphics alone.
But ETA Prime's YouTube channel has already Reviewed an Unnamed Mini Desktop PC Unit that sporting a Ryzen 6000HX series APU and that 680M integrated graphics but that product is not scheduled for release just yet. There is also a just released Minisfourm Ryzen 5000 series Mobile APU based Mini PC that's still Vega Integrated Graphics but that Mini PC also has a Radeon 6660M discrete Mobile GPU.
Apologies, I am new to HN, could you please share a write-up of your experience and process in case you haven't already? I'm moving from an MacBook Pro to a Framework and before the MBP, I used Slackware as my daily driver. Would appreciate any tips on using NixOS as a daily driver.
> One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on.
I'm not really sold on the integrated dongle design of the framework. Doesn't this argument speak more to the design of USB-C than it does to the integrated dongles?
No, some laptops with type-C inputs on both sides only support charging on one side (typically marked with a power icon), because they don't want to route power input to both sides of the laptop. It adds a bit of cost and complexity.
Higher-end laptops either support it on all ports, or just put ports on one side of the laptop.
To be fair when MacBook move to typec one can charge on both sides for many years, and I kind of look forward to a future when all port use typec
But when it comes to inside Mac by no mean compares to framework
Except the M1 Air and 13 inch M1 Pro reverted to left side only (the new models with M1 Pro/Max chips have an extra USB-C on the opposite side). It's my only real gripe with the M1 laptops compared to older Intel Macs.
Of course, the Framework is the polar opposite of the M1 Macs' locked down "appliance" feel. I'm enjoying the progress being made with OpenBSD and Asahi Linux on the M1 platform, but the hardware itself remains impossible to upgrade or repair for mere mortals. The Framework is the pinnacle of truly owning your laptop while not sacrificing speed and a crowd pleasing design.
The Airs with usb-c always only had them on one side, didn't they? So did the low-end (two port) 13" MBPs; I have a 2016 Intel one with the same issue.
I recently received my first framework laptop after being a loyal Thinkpad user for years. I am loving it so far. I run Ubuntu 22.04 daily and have not had any issues with battery life or the lid (but I do typically leave it plugged in during lunch and overnight). The expansion cards are brilliant and the keyboard is comparable to my old t-series. The aspect ratio is great for coding and I'm happy to see upgradeability is being taken seriously as promised. If I can get 5-10 years out of it like my old ThinkPads (all while upgrading piecewise along the way) I will be a fan for life.
I recently received my first framework laptop after being a loyal Thinkpad user for years.
I get excited about different laptops occasionally...and then I remember that I won't have a trackpoint if I switch to a different brand, and I get disappointed. Literally happens every few months.
Same. Everytime I get excited about Framework, Syste7m6, etc... and then get sad.
I fully understand I'm a vanishing minority, But trackpoint is such a productivity booster for me, and makes such amazing use of space in a laptop format, that it's a must-have (and again, I fully understand that those who don't use Trackpoint will have no comprehension of what am I going on about; I'm a grouchy quirky old man :).
Then there's other little things that may or may not be trackpad related - small function keys, lack of standard home/end/insert/del/pgup/pgdown cluster, and the collapsed arrows which I don't even understand - you have the room, it's right there, nothing is using it... why is everybody making up and down arrows functionally unusable (I want to blame Apple, but as Obi Wan said - who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool that follows :)
I taught myself just last year to use the trackpoint because I was curious. I turned it off at the BIOS, etc. just to make me use it exclusively. Once I got over the hump, I was surprised. I don't want keyboards anymore without it. I developed a strong muscle memory for it over the year. I'm a grouchy quirky old man, but when it comes to trackpoints, I am new to this quirk :D
Having had a trackpoint laptop since the 90's, the only thing that I found I could switch to when moving to a job that gave all engineers Mac's was the MBP track pad - the gestures and precision/feel just about made up for the loss of not having to move hands from the home row.
But yeah, sad that more laptops don't have trackpoints.
Wow I just realized I had been using trackpoints completely wrong - as in using it like I would use a trackpad, by taking my hand off of the home row. Very neat!
Similar story here. All the laptops I used had the trackpoint and I didn't want to give it up until I tried an MBP in 2012. The trackpad was miles better than any other trackpad I'd used. Other machines have gotten better trackpads now, though I still haven't tried one that is as good as the current MacBook trackpads. But at least I don't hate every moment of using non-Mac trackpads anymore.
When I was using Macbooks (the last time was around 2016-2017), I never deliberately used all the features of it, so I really don't know what is the fuss about it. I think they introduced things like 2-finger scrolling, which is really nice and ended up elsewhere. It makes using casual use a little easier, which causes me to still use it sometimes. (but I am getting used to using the TrackPoint for casual things too because the amount of control you have over things like scroll speed). My wife has a 2015 Macbook and the "click" sensor seems to have a problem. She got used to it though. But "clicking" is an option that can be turned off. However, when I use it, it is such a complete nuisance to use.
Is this on a thinkpad? My HP EliteBook has a track point and I haven't found any config that makes it usable. The tracking is either way too quick or way too slow. And the acceleration curve is either very steep or non-existent.
I've tried it on both Windows and Linux. I realize I'm not used to it, in the beginning I used to have a hard time with mice, too, so maybe it's just a question of habit.
For the moment, the only thing it does is leave a round trace on my screen whenever I close it...
I only used them on Thinkpads ... I can't imagine how they would work on HPs or Dells. And specifically, on older ThinkPads. I am typing on a T430s, but also have a x220 and a T470p. The latter feels a bit different, but I had to initially get used to it. For thinkpads at least, I definitely not have had a problem finding a proper acceleration curve.
Totally understandable. I'm a trackpoint junkie, but I also could not get to using it on an HP laptop from work. It felt completely gimped (and yes, having just 2 buttons was probably a part of it).
I would die a little inside (ok, maybe that's dramatic :D ) if I was presented a trackpoint-like device but didn't work properly. I had that once - an X1 Carbon 5th gen actually I was using temporarily, struggling to make that useful, because it was too tight (I feel like post-*30 models, you need to break them in, a lesson that I eventually learned) and it would float a lot.
One nice thing about many used ThinkPads at least: trackpoints are usually the one component that are brand new on the device :D
> the collapsed arrows which I don't even understand - you have the room, it's right there, nothing is using it... why is everybody making up and down arrows functionally unusable (I want to blame Apple, but as Obi Wan said - who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool that follows :)
This so much!!
I miss PageUp and PageDown there so much I refuse to buy anything but thinkpads right now.
The last alternative brand was Dell, which adopted the stupidly huge Left and Right arrows, and that's even seen on customer line Lenovos now :(
HPs still have dedicated pgup / home /etc in a column, to the right of backspace / enter / etc. But they've also adopted the stupid arrow cluster you describe.
It's not the same, but the Logitech MX Master is basically the current version of this.
It has two scrollwheels, one for vertical and one for horizontal. They have some interesting tech in them. When moved slowly they click with detents, like normal scrollwheels. But when you move the wheels more quickly they "unlock" to spin freely, you can scroll at a pretty high speed and with good accuracy.
here [0] is a teardown of the current generation compared to the previous, to show how much design and attention to detail goes in to them.
I was an MX Master 2 user for years, and bought a 3, along with an MX Keys [1] at the beginning of covid WFH. still going strong 2 years later, and I would buy both again in a heartbeat.
Yes. I have the previous gen Master MX. The scroll wheel is a solid metal flywheel. It has serious heft and continues spinning maybe 5-10 seconds after a good flick.
On mine, the horizontal wheel does not have this feature. Maybe the newer model does.
And like another poster mentioned, it has a detent when scrolling slowly like a traditional scrollwheel, that then mechanically disengages when flicked fast enough. You can configure this sensitivity in software, and even map one of the mouse buttons to disengage the detent, if you dont like the smart scroll feature.
Its seriously the best designed mouse I've ever used. It's clear logitech spent a lot of effort thinking about what makes a good mouse really good, and they implemented that in this mouse. Truly a flagship device, without cruft or unnecessary crap.
Battery life after about 4 years is so-so, so I keep a usb cable on my desk to plug it in when it runs low. I get about 2 weeks out of it?
Materials are also degrading a bit, it's surface is becoming sticky like many "velvet" finish plastics do, but its not at a point where it's gross to hold.
Its held up very very well after roughly 1000 work days of use. It's cost per day of use is basically 0.
> On mine, the horizontal wheel does not have this feature. Maybe the newer model does.
I have both the current model and the older one. the horizontal wheel has been improved a bit - it's larger, and they moved the side buttons so that it's harder to hit them accidentally when scrolling horizontally (see this [0] comparison pic from a teardown [1] that I also linked elsewhere in this thread)
but the "shifting" feature is still only for the main scrollwheel, not the horizontal one. in practice I've never found myself using horizontal scroll often enough to wish it had the same "flick" capability.
Yep, the scrollwheels are metal so they have some heft and they do keep spinning.
I haven't used the MX Master, only very briefly tested a display unit at a store, but I do believe that it spun for a while. So I'd check a video review first if you're thinking of buying one.
I personally use their G(aming) series mice with their older manual, mechanical mechanism instead of the new electromagnetic one in the MX Master. The G mice spin for a while... 15 seconds after a solid flick.
I just took a stopwatch to mine and it spun for 10 seconds. In real life you would give it another whirl after a couple of seconds because it starts to slow down, but the short answer is clearly yes.
Back in the late '90s, I worked for an inventor dealing with analog dome switches. We took a mouse that had a rocker for scrolling instead of a wheel and I reprogrammed it to "fake" scroll clicks faster or slower depending on how hard you pressed. You could scroll slow enough to read, or zoom to the end of a doc with really good control. Man I miss that mouse.
Trackpoint really is damn nice. I also find it hilarious when I disable the trackpad in the bios to avoid any accidental brushes and then someone else tries to use my laptop - its like watching a deer try to walk for the first time!
Yes. Who ever thought making up and down arrow keys so small was a good idea? They are high usage keys, and every time I'm on a laptop keyboard like that, I cringe whenever I use the arrow keys.
In fact, the keyboard is the first thing I look at when I'm in the market for a laptop. Small arrow keys = pass, I won't even look at the specs or price.
I used to love my trackpoint, and swore by it, but I was unable to get my mouse to go fast enough on my latest X1 carbon, so I've sadly stopped using it..
Yep, same here. And with increasing urgency as Thinkpad quality control seems to have fallen off a cliff. Framework seems uniquely positioned to fix this though. Someone just needs to do a compatible top cover that takes Thinkpad keyboards. I'd take a stupid one without touchpad at all as I just disable it anyway. That shouldn't be too hard, it's mostly getting the plastic right and adapting the connector to the motherboard.
> Yep, same here. And with increasing urgency as Thinkpad quality control seems to have fallen off a cliff.
Not really, they are among the rare laptops to still offer S3 for Linux.
And the X1 Fold is a technical marvel (working on Linux support right now, if I'm successful it may become my next toy device to try to use Linux on as a daily driver)
> Framework seems uniquely positioned to fix this though. Someone just needs to do a compatible top cover that takes Thinkpad keyboards.
This. I will buy one as soon as they make a thinkpad like keyboard [+] or the possibly to disassemble and mount a genuine Thinkpad keyboard.
+ : A keyboard qualifies as a "thinkpad keyboard" if has all of the following:
- PageUp above Left, PageDown above Right: to me, that's the most important thing ever!
- PrintScreen between right Alt and right Ctrl: very important too
- Delete above Backspace
- A trackpoint between the {G,H,B} keys with 3 buttons below the Spacebar: I'm not a trackpoint fanatic but I appreciate the precision it offers when I need it, and badly felt its absence when I tried a macbook (no, can't do!)
That's what available now: except on the T25, the old layout is no longer found on modern Thinkpads.
This modern layout has advantages: for example, the space between the keys makes it more comfortable to use with nails, so I no longer have to keep them short.
> This modern layout has advantages: for example, the space between the keys makes it more comfortable to use with nails, so I no longer have to keep them short.
Layout and the shape of keys are orthogonal concepts.
But yeah, you're right that there aren't many options these days, and the T25 is getting old. :-(
Personally, I like it as it is, but I can understand someone preferring the control key in the bottom left (though I would suggest using Caps as Control, in which case having Fn on the easier to reach spot and therefore first would still make more sense)
> PrintScreen between right Alt and right Ctrl: very important too
Please don't. Unless you want users of language layouts that make use AltGr to suffer.
Imagine typing away a message, accidentally slipping your finger from AltGr onto the PrintScr (actually SysRq), and triggering a sysrq reboot in linux. Regularly.
It's a choice between triggering crashes _all the time_, or disabling sysrq and never being able to debug the legit ones.
Because even with the most generous interpretation of your issue, it seems fully self-inflicted, by a lack of typing skills compounded by refusing to configure the keymap or the sysreq bitmask, and asking instead for that to become everyone problem by having the key moved!
> accidentally slipping your finger from AltGr onto the PrintScr
What about learning to touchtype? And until them, typing in a well lit room?
> It's a choice between triggering crashes _all the time_, or disabling sysrq and never being able to debug the legit ones.
That's a false dichotomy. You are not triggering crashes, you are instructing your computer to reboot (sysreq B) which it does.
It should not be blamed on the computer, but on your lack of attention, and the lack of adaptation, so I'd even call that a self inflicted problem.
If you can take the time to configure your laptop to use a non standard layout, you can certainly take the extra time to learn proper typing instead of bothering the vast majority of those who are happy with this layout.
If you can't take that time, you can certainly apply one of the many possible counter measures, like moving sysreq to another key (cf dumpkeys and loadkeys), or just disabling the sysreq reboot function (0 disables sysreq, 1 enables it, but you can have a finer control if you read the documentation, ex: 128 is the bitmask for the reboot/poweroff) which would let you debug the "legit ones" - though if your linux has legit crashes, you may have bigger problems!
> fully self-inflicted, by a lack of typing skills compounded by refusing to configure the keymap or the sysreq bitmask
So, git gud? Sorry, I'm not buying it. People have different motor skills, you know. You can't always make your body physically perfect.
Changing the mapping might work (although I doubt it, it's a deep kernel mechanism that probably avoids such complexity), but requires having the knowledge that it's even possible and how to do it. Sadly, laptops don't come with the instructions. And why should they? Machines should be made well in the first place.
Oh, and setting a mask doesn't help because b, c, e, i, k, o, r, u, all have nasty consequences.
If if's bothering you as much as you said, YES, stop complaining, and start acting on your complaints!
I've already given you all the pointers.
Now I'll help you more if you need.
> Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Neither am I. I get the feeling you want to complain more than you want to actually solve your problem. But as this is HN, I'm giving your comment the most positive interpretation possible.
> People have different motor skills, you know. You can't always make your body physically perfect.
So you don't want to try or, due to physical limitations, can't train better fine motor skills to be on par with about 90% of the regular population? Not very plausible, but why not!
Still, this leaves remapping Sysrq or configuring the bitmask, so I'll guide you though the keymap fixing if you need (even if I hope I won't have to, and that you'll be able to learn by yourself with the right pointers)
> Changing the mapping might work (although I doubt it, it's a deep kernel mechanism that probably avoids such complexity),
With computers, there is no place for philosophical doubts: you try it, and note the results of the experiment: either it does work, or it doesn't work. And if it doesn't, you can make it do so by reading the code, understanding then changing it.
So first, did you try it? If not, why? If you did, what did you observe?
BTW if you didn't, let me remove some of your doubts: dumpkeys and loadkeys are all that you need to change the sysreq mapping: the "deep kernel mechanism" links an action with a key through a table, defined in software.
This is just like how the same key can trigger a Y or a Z (US vs German keyboards) - and yes, you can change that too if you don't like it.
To have a look at this tablet, outside X or Wayland (ex: chvt 1), do:
dumpkeys > current.map
Edit it with your favorite editor to move Sysrq to where you want ex (ex: Insert key?).
You can also add any other changes you want (like, keep both your alt as regular alt, and instead make something else the 3rd level key - say the right ctrl key?)
> requires having the knowledge that it's even possible and how to do it.
Yes, this is called having agency. But here, I gave you the knowledge! Do you have another complain/excuse? Or are you willing to try to fix the problem now?
BTW regarding "agency", I don't use Linux as a daily driver- I prefer Windows, not just because it's less elitist, but due to the better terminal options and the greater hackability of its GUI. You don't have to use Linux if you don't like it! There are many things I dislike in Linux myself.
> Sadly, laptops don't come with the instructions.
You'll find most of the instructions you want (and more!) on the Arch wiki.
But if it doesn't exist or if it's not accessible enough, what about writing some?
Personally, I'm preparing a tutorial to help people with a specific tablet (great hardware, but bad software and configuration OOB, so most people hated it, which I find sad)
Maybe you could do the same, as other people may be inconvenienced by the same problem you are having, and would benefit from your solution?
> And why should they
Because you or someone else (say me!) cares enough to want to hack they hardware to do their bidding? Because it fun?
> Machines should be made well in the first place.
Different people want different things.
Some tastes can't be reconciled.
> Oh, and setting a mask doesn't help because b, c, e, i, k, o, r, u, all have nasty consequences.
Do you really want/need me to also write your bitmask for you? Select the ones you won't want, and mask them out
But again, you should take the easy way out: just remap Sysrq to another key that's away from your fingers, and call it a day! You could have done this remapping in less than half the time it took you to write this complain!
I just did: I raised an objection to a bad idea for anyone who might be misled by it. Also I won't buy a computer with this flaw.
> So first, did you try it? If not, why?
I did not, because I did not know how. I also don't want to know how to alter my computer to achieve a basic minimum of functionality, because a minimum is what is assumed. Either the OS or the hardware should have sane defaults.
> Different people want different things.
I suggest you remap your keys (when you use Linux) to fit your special need then ;)
There's typically the "emulate a right click" button or a Windows button in between AltGr and Ctrl. Those don't have the faults of a SysRq, so they seem like good candidates for a new hypothetical keyboard.
> Not really, they are among the rare laptops to still offer S3 for Linux.
The features are great but my complaint was about quality control. My T460s has had every single part but the chassis replaced, some multiple times, and still failed. A new T14s had to have the keyboard replaced because it randomly missed keystrokes. It then started having the screen randomly start flickering after resume. A new X1, top of the line 4K spec, has the internal screen randomly lose sync. The days of Thinkpads as dependable machines seem gone.
> A new X1, top of the line 4K spec, has the internal screen randomly lose sync. The days of Thinkpads as dependable machines seem gone.
I believe it's all due to the large hardware and firmware changes.
Take for example USB-C: we don't know yet how to make study ports. My X1 had its motherboard replaced due to a dead port.
Or look at ACPI S0ix: it's only since last year that it's become comparable to S3 in power consumption (and S3 is no longer officially supported since Intel 11th gen)
The keyboard too changed: the layout is the same as the xx30 series, but there's less travel.
Likewise, the screens are now 2k or 4k with thinner bezels, and intel HUD ("Xe graphic") is quite different from the previous generations: even if it's handled by the same i915 driver on Linux, GUC/HUC are more important, and disabling PSR no longer makes sense.
Change is constant, but I believe pre pandemic and post pandemic Thinkpads are very different beasts.
I have had similar experiences with the X1 Extreme. The biggest issue I have had is that the repair process almost always breaks something new. The first one spent so much time getting repaired that I actually bought a second one so that I could at least have one functional laptop. The second one is a newer generation, but the quality issues are similar.
All of your attributes of a "thinkpad keyboard" are downsides that would make me less likely to buy it. Keyboards should be as close to 104-key ANSI as possible.
That's why I have high hopes for (something like) the Frame.work; it should be possible to just get another keyboard 'part' which actually does have a trackpoint (and even no trackpad but other stuff theoretically). Someone, either Frame.work themselves or someone else needs to make it, but at least it's possible.
Edit: I would pay for such a keyboard for the Frame.work; it would actually very much stimulate me to buy one! I really hope to see crowdfunding from people who just make a Frame.work part.
Seriously - or at least a mod kit to get it working with the existing keyboard. Hell there could even maybe be a universal mod kit to add to any laptop keyboard that is removeable and has the space!
The Trackpoint seems redundant to me because I can manipulate the trackpad with my thumb without leaving the home row, and for me it's faster and more comfortable than a Trackpoint.
Using your thumb to control the trackpad works better on Mac laptops because the Force Touch trackpad allows you to press anywhere to click. Most PC laptops have a "diving board" click mechanism which means it gets progressively harder to click the further you are from the bottom, and clicking near the top is impossible. Also, Mac laptops position the top of the trackpad closer to the keyboard than other laptops I've seen.
You can use tap-to-click as a work-around for being unable to click the top of the trackpad, but I find tap-to-click less usable for other reasons.
Is there a way to middle click with this method? I use that often for new tabs and ThinkPads have the physical button at the top and tap to click is just three fingers.
Yep, the trackpoint (and buttons on top of the touchpad) are huge. I am a heavy vim user so those were extremely convenient but I have been trying to get comfortable with tap to click because that seems to be the way laptop manufacturers have headed (and I don't want my efficiency to suddenly collapse when I am put behind any other brand of computer). I am also still holding out some small hope that someone will come up with a way to swap it in to a framework laptop but I'm not holding my breath.
I am posting the same thing every time framework pops up on HN. I hope the nudging will do it's work eventually.
Meanwhile I am wondering why there aren't many third party mods for the framework around. Would it be feasible to design a trackpoint keyboard (if you figure out how to put it in the profile) ? Does it connect via USB or alike internally?
Just got a new one from work. It's literally in front of me right now.
Granted the laptop's build quality is questionable (the right hinge's case bulges higher than the left) and the trackpoint has a tendency to get stuck to one direction.
Oh man, I have an 845 g8 (840 with amd). I hate this laptop with a passion. It could've been such a great tool, but it's a steaming PoS because HP wanted to make a quick buck.
I don't have your hinge issue. But, as you open the display, the hinge gets below the laptop's feet. So now it slides around on the table. Which is so stupid, because this laptop doesn't have 4 feet, but 2 large ones, than run the width of the laptop. Which is fantastic if you want to use it on the corner of a table since it won't wobble!
Then there's the screen. I swear someone at HP wanted to see how shitty a screen they could get away with in a 2000 euro laptop (which is just a middle of the road config, mind you). On basic models, you have a 6 bit screen. On higher-end ones, they have this security screen thingy that massacres the viewing angles even when it's off. If you move your head around the tiniest bit (say while listening to music) the colors will perceptibly change. The colors are atrocious. And they don't even hide it! The specs say 72% NTSC (not sRGB, which is much wider).
Then you have your usual suspects with cheap laptops: the cooler is an absolute joke, the fan developed a horrible noise in a few months. There's coil whine that drives you up a wall when connecting a USB-C monitor + power.
On the plus side, the analog headphone out is surprisingly good. I don't hear any background noise, there's no whine when moving the mouse, and the sound is similar to my Retina MBP on relatively high-end headphones.
It also works very well on Linux, I'd say it's even better than Windows: I've installed a fresh copy of Windows 11 and I can't get the camera to work. It works perfectly on Linux.
Had a similar one and the trackpoint was a pain for 2 reasons. The shape was inverted, so you always touched a raised edge rather than surface. And the cap started coming off after a few months of use. Not a fan of HP's solution.
Rumor is, some IBM sales rep somewhere at some point in history managed to put pointing stick into a procurement requirement for professional laptops, so to make only ThinkPads to be qualified. Many agencies are not capable of drafting good requirements on their own and such skewed requirements written by the winning contractor to exclude competitors are sadly common.
There is always a model or two in every laptop manufacturer's mobile workstation lineups with a pointing stick, for that reason. Not often is in consumer or non-workstation business laptops, and I was never impressed with one, but there always is one.
Same! And the first thing I did was check the Framework marketplace for a keyboard replacement with a touchstick/trackpoint. I am hoping we can just pop a ThinkPad keyboard in it with a mod.
I loved the TrackPoint and still miss it occasionally, had one on my T41p from IBM, however, I've been really happy with my Macbook (2011 Air and 2020 M1 Pro) trackpad, its lightyears ahead of any other ones I used on PC laptops and just works seamlessly. My Dell laptop from work the trackpad is garbage.
Won't fix one child-comment on quality, but is there a TP keyboard that would physically fit the hole in the framework. A physical shim would be easy easier; I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that they connect via an internal USB connection?
Short aside: any tips for becoming a trackpoint user?
I find it much more comfortable than the trackpad, but my curosr always seems so slow when it's not going way too fast. Is there special software tweaking I need?
On my X1 Carbon 6th, this helped but not much. I put up with a stiff trackpoint for couple years (that's how I depend on one :)), until it hit me! Sticking a folded piece of paper (or similar) into the base of the eraser lifts it up and makes it feel smooth as butter! Problem solved! I would give myself a Nobel prize for discovering this if I could!
I've tried them, but they felt so clumsy to me that I don't see how I could ever be a convert. Trackpads, at least on Macs, feel precise and intuitive; I even use one on the desktop (unless I'm gaming).
I suppose a trackpoint might be useful if you really want your hands never to leave your keyboard, but generally I'm either editing text with emacs keybindings (where I don't have to use the mouse), or else I'm in a mode where having one hand off the keyboard doesn't feel at all hindering.
Maybe I could be convinced, but since they're hard to find these days and getting harder there wouldn't be much point (except to frustrate myself on the off chance I ended up loving them).
>>they felt so clumsy to me that I don't see how I could ever be a convert.
They do have a learning curve; but FWIW, I feel exact the opposite - I can achieve both lightning fast movement, AND pixel-perfect precision with the trackpoint (the latter I have never managed to consistently achieve on a trackpad).
(Note, for me, it's never a "Trackpoint vs Mouse". I'll use mouse 100% of the time when at my desk. When not at the desk though, it's "Trackpoint vs Trackpad", and for the amount of space it takes, the compromises it instills in keyboard layout and ergonomics, Trackpad never quite worked for me. On aside, I miss the potential of netbooks because a 10" screen with Trackpoint would be a formidable hyper-portable machine with today's ARM processors - but not if you need to reserve 5 inches for a trackpad :| )
Ever tried playing something like (multiplayer) Quake with an Apple trackpad? I used to win online matches with the trackpoint. Once you get use to it, the difference in speed and precision is quite significant.
What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse?
I think they were competitive with old touchpads (and probably the ones you still get on cheap laptops) but I expect all the people above praising them have just never used a modern Apple touchpad. Far superior. It's not even close.
>>There's a good reason nobody makes them anymore.
But they do. Last I checked HP, Dell and Lenovo all had options for power users (not in their consumer / mid-range laptops though). Or at the very least, my last several and current clients have all sent me laptops with a Trackpoint from those three brands (and not to my asking; it's just fairly standard for mobile employees or enterprise customers to have Trackpoint included)
>>What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse?
well, no - to me, that's an inherent contradiction: Mouse and trackpad are both positional (as largely is trackball). Joystick, trackpoint are directional. They are fundamentally different paradigms.
In terms of learning curve, I do believe Trackpoint is less intuitive for most users, as it does have that different paradigm. I think it takes a bit of time to get really good at it - most people who use it for a few minutes feel it's inferior and clumsy. But I've had "races" with my colleagues with Macbooks, and spoiler - I'll agree it's not even close, but not necessarily in the direction you might expect 0:-)
(on aside, I do have a Macbook, it's about 4 years old. How new does a modern it need to be to fit your definition of a modern Apple Trackpad?
> What learning curve? Isn't it just a joystick mouse?
They don't have a learning curve in the sense that it's difficult to make one functional, but when I did try a trackpoint I felt it terribly awkward and imprecise. I'm not at all surprised that there would be a transition period after which trackpoints at least felt better to use.
If I ever need to buy a laptop this would be a huge feature for me, I would love if they still made 4:3 displays for desktops, it's so much better for the triple-wide setup I prefer, especially on the sides.
Yes, I owned a t430 (and also a yoga 14) so the keys on the framework are a little wider. I can still feel the keypresses and they are a little "softer" and quieter. I use vim frequently so I do still miss the trackpoint and buttons at the top of the touchpad but it hasn't been as big of a problem as I anticipated. I am also still adjusting to the cntrl/fn placement but I think a lot of people swapped that in the bios anyways so it might be normal for others.
Looks like it can be charged from any USB-C port you install in it.
Much better than my work-assigned ThinkPad, which only allows charging through one specific port. As if everyone on the planet has their wall plug in the same location.
> and the keyboard is comparable to my old t-series.
Really happy to hear this bit since it's my main concern when buying a new laptop. My 2 other questions - how long does the battery last, and how is overall build quality?
I am happy with the build quality so far. It feels sturdy and lightweight. The laptop is noticeably lighter and thinner than my old ThinkPad. With the lid open it is about the same height as my 14 inch but there is more vertical screen real estate because there is less black around the display area. I have read about issues with the hinges but I think this has been fixed now. I have not had hinge issues. I opened up the laptop to take a look inside when I first got it and everything came apart and went back together nicely (my only surprise was one screw does not come out all the way by design which I had to Google about). The expansion slots are maybe a little too sturdy and require a good amount of force to remove.
For battery life I think an average user can expect 5 to 6 hours. I use mine for about 5 hours with Firefox (around 10-20 tabs) and a few terminal processes and will still have about 20% remaining.
Oh, good point. Yes, my resolution is 2256x1504 and found the 1x too small so I have to scale it up. I haven't had any issues but I also typically do lower level and back end type work (occasional front end when needed). I also haven't done any gaming with the laptop (except some minor experimentation with Godot). If you are a designer or serious artist I recommend at least trying out your os with fractional scaling first.
I run at 2x scaling and then set the text scaling factor to .85, so the effective text scaling becomes 1.7, and I avoid the issues with non-integer scaling in Wayland.
Yes, using the tweak tool. I believe there were also a few apps I had to tweak separately, like setting the default zoom level in Firefox. As for external displays, I don't generally connect my laptop to one, since my displays are connected to the desktop PC that I also own (which I run at 150% scaling in X11 mode so that fractional scaling actually looks good).
I've got to say, as long as these things are being produced I'll never go back. They are just too good and I cannot recommend them highly enough. One of the things that didn't occur to me before I bought it was that _because_ of the modular design I can switch the side the power port is on. That may not seem like much but it was a revelation the first time I sat on the couch and thought "huh I really wish this was over on that side....wait a minute!".
I've also had absolutely no problems with NixOS on my machine, even my apple earbuds easily connect via bluetooth, something that I never quite got working on my macbook.
10/10 This is damn close to my dream laptop and I'm excited a new version is on the way.