Finally, someone offering a proper Danish keyboard. Denmark, Sweden and Norway have long been stymied with the low-effort that is the Nordic keyboard layout. The problem is if you are not familiar with keyboards, then the labels are supposed to help you, but they don't on the Nordic layouts, because it just show three different keymap's labels on some keys, but you don't know which belong to which.
I know Apple also offers a proper Danish keyboard, and I've seen some modern Thinkpads with proper Danish keyboards.
I normally use a US Intl keyboard, but whenever I see a Danish keyboard, I struggle to find the | key.
Nordic keyboards were a mistake. Should be redone. They are bad for both writing and coding. Changed to US International years ago too, and will never go back.
Coding in Swedish keyboard mode in a Mac with (){}[] all on the same two keys with various vulcan neck pinching modifiers is definitely not one of my favourite things!
I've sticked to US Intl + AltGr as modifier key to access åäö in the usual location for ~a decade now. Managed to get the same config working on both Linux and macOS.
Not much better on standard Norwegian(non-apple) keyboards. ()[] are on the same two number keys and {} are on the keys surrounding those keys. []{} require alt gr while () require shift. Also $ is alt gr+5 which is revolting. Combined with / being at shift+7, typing in the shell is a terrible experience.
I think those are all the same on Swedish PC keyboards too, except $ -- yup, that was AltGr-4, not 5. And yeah, not lovely... Why have I put up with this for over 30 years?!?
Yeah, I have a Swedish layout Dell as well and it's better but not much. I'm confused now, though, as I took the parent as telling me that non-Swedish Macs also have the horrible symbol placement for the various braces. (rsynnott above clarifies that it's indeed Swedish-specific so it's just the Macs are a bit worse than the PCs).
I'm fairly adept at switching between British PC keyboard, Swedish PC keyboard, and Swedish Mac keyboard nowadays, but the latter's significantly the worst (and don't get me started on how default IntelliJ key combos work with that)
I don't care much about keyboard layouts anymore. I use a mix of FI/UK/US normal/Mac layouts almost daily, and it rarely matters much. Maybe the layout used to be a bigger deal before smartphones, but touchscreen interfaces have taught me to expect that the layout changes randomly all the time.
You definitely haven't use any of the nordic or the common nordic keyboards then. Its not the changing around that is the issue, its the absolute backwards positioning of key (heh) keys that is the problem.
I used the Finnish layout almost exclusively for 20+ years, and I didn't find it particularly inconvenient. I needed äö at least as often as ()[]{}/|\$@, and no alternate layout was clearly better than the default.
If there was a dedicated Finnish layout (instead of a shared Finnish/Swedish one), it could be a bit better by using the å key for something more common. But apart from that, I haven't seen any suggestions that would make the layout better.
I find that some keyboard shortcuts, in programs that use "weird" keys like, say, Alt-semicolon or Ctrl-backslash, don't work with a Nordic keyboard. I've hypothesised it's because we need to use modifiers to get to those characters in the first place; maybe the programs read keyboard scan codes directly in stead of OS-mediated character codes (or vice versa), Idunno... You never run into that?
Yea, there are some programs that expect me to be able to press Ctrl-/ or something - but / is shift-7 so i'd actually have to press ctrl-shift-7, which in 99.9% of cases never works.
It's easier to just remap the shitty hotkeys to something better.
You try it once, and you see which colour applies to your language. It's not really a big deal. (And even that's only required to disambiguate between danish and norwegian.)
As someone who grew up having to write both on a regular basis, it was neat having both on the same layout. Now that I use Linux it doesn't matter as much since altgr lets me type æø instead of äö, but back on Windows you'd have to switch layout for that.
It's too bad they didn't at least ship nordic as a separate option.
You don't need to differentiate between Swedish and Finnish, since the layouts are identical, but between Danish and Norwegian, because Ø and Æ swap places between those two. (So, blue for Norwegian?)
Even worse for Icelandic ones. Keychron used to show the Icelandic flag on their Nordic keyboard page, despite that layout not including Icelandic-specific characters (Ð / Þ missing, Ö in the wrong place). I asked them to start including those characters, but now they just removed the flag.
While we're talking about keyboards, why won't they put dedicated page up/down keys ? There are 2 empty spots right above the left/right keys that would be ideal for this and are basically just wasted, being left empty, as one can see on the photos. It's one of the reasons that makes me cling on my old Thinkpad for so long, I use them all the time.
> There are 2 empty spots right above the left/right keys that would be ideal for this and are basically just wasted, being left empty, as one can see on the photos.
In my opinion and experience it’s utter shite: the precision of fingers on half keys is not great, so it’s way too easy to hit the page keys when just trying to move two characters sideways, and now you need a few seconds to realise what the fuck just happened.
It’s exactly what my current work laptop has, and if I had to use its internal keyboard for any length of time the laptop would long have gone out the window.
If I’m paging, it’s easy enough and a lot more intentional to press the FN up/down key. I could see the argument for TKL laptops but this is garbage and I hate it.
My T420's keyboard has some next/previous page keys there. I have zero idea what to use those for. The previous page key makes a nice additional modifier key though (e.g. for Compose) as it's next to the Ctrl key.
From reading comments around, is this "Nordic" layout just those four different languages overtyped on top of each others for users to ignore irrelevant parts? That sounds insane.
It shouldn't really be all that bad; it's just two letters that differ -- both in actual font design and keyboard placement. Swedish and Finnish write the letters Ö and Ä; in Danish and Norwegian they're Æ and Ø. The really weird thing is that the latter swap places between the languages; in Danish the keys are Æ to the left, Ø to the right; in Norwegian it's the other way around. So we have these two keys to the right of L that are marked, respectively, ØÖÆ and ÆÄØ.
Fortunately, the Å key seems to be the same for all four languages, and stay put in the row above the aforementioned ones, to the right of P.
Can someone explain to my why some keyboard layouts hide some of the most important terminal punctuation in everyday use? For example, on an Apple Swedish keyboard you're not allowed to natively access your home directory ~, nor pipe anything |.
What idiot came up with that, or is there legitimate reason?
They're recycling typewriter layouts that optimized for what was at the time more important to the average user, making common non-latin characters more accessible.
And arguably, for the average user, it's still the right choice. It's only IT nerds who really need all those weird extra characters that aren't even real punctuation, and they can just switch over to the US layout.
That's true, but also not really an explanation. There is a Polish keyboard layout that's derived from a typewriter, but got abandoned very early on in PCs, even though Polish has 9 additional characters.
Every single keyboard layout has its own story. Let me tell you the one about the keyboard layout I use: CAN/CSA Z243.200-92.
When writing French on typewriters, people in Québec and the rest of Canada used a slightly modified US-keyboard layout that assigned the necessary accents and moved the symbols those keys used elsewhere. You could even use this layout with the US 104-keys keyboards on computers without losing much. Aside from having glyphs on your keys that didn't connect to what you were typing but people lived with it.
But when we moved to computers there came an opportunity to improve the keyboard. We could now assign keys to common letters with their accents together without losing anything, since we didn't need to focus on the additive nature of accents. You know, moving from a mechanical system to pure software.
So who jumped on the opportunity? The government of Québec led the charge in the early 90s for this new keyboard layout to replace the old French (Canada) layout. Feeling at some point that there was a risk of furthering divide in Canada, the federal government asked for some slight changes to the Québec proposal, in exchange for the promise of adopting it as the standard Canada-wide. Québec agreed, but Canada never did anything of value to help with adoption. So we're stuck with two standards, basically on the line of your OS: if you're on Windows, you're probably using the old French (Canada), and Mac users switched over to the new standard.
Every. single. keyboard layout. has a story surrounding its creation and its usage.
Not sure I buy that explanation -- an image search suggests that a lot of US-made typewriters didn't have curly, square, or angle braces, and yet we have them on the standard US keyboard layout.
Apple specifically don't label these special characters on their keyboards for some reason, but they aren't inaccessible, you just need to press option/alt. If you use the keyboard layout viewer built-in to macOS, you'll discover there's actually extra letters and symbols on every key!
Because the designers of Unix used whatever keys happened to be available on the teletype keyboards that they had in their lab, and didn’t give a second thought to international keyboard layouts.
Programming languages used to be more cognizant of this. For example Pascal used mostly keywords rather than ASCII symbols, and this was entirely intentional to enable programmers in all countries to easily work in the language.
Of course C inherited Unix’s approach, killed Pascal, and nobody cares anymore. Except all those millions of non-English users trying to learn programming, but nobody in Silicon Valley thinks about them.
Learning to touch type is one of the best investments I made early in my career. It's never too late. The fact that you will no longer need to care about whatever is printed on your keyboard is only a minor bonus.
It took until reading this comment that I understood why everyone's going on about the keyboard layout when it's always only ansi or iso anyway. I care that the left shift is long because then my hands can reach things like shift+4 comfortably (this php coder needs that $ a lot, my hand at an internship actually hurt from trying to use the bad layout), but beyond the physical keys, it wouldn't even occur to me that anyone who's into Framework hacker laptops cares about the print on them! Thanks for that hint
It's not just what's printed on them, really. I touch type, but a US keyboard have different shapes. For instance a longer left shift, and then go straight to Z, while we have an extra button inbetween. After jkl we have three buttons and then a thin and tall enter, but you have two and a short enter.
Yeah I've had laptops with various hardware layouts and don't really care, other than I prefer a Nordic layout on Macs where the Enter key is tall rather than wide. But it's a trivial adjustment.
A Swedish keyboard layout works for Norwegian, as long as the Ö maps to Ø and Ä maps to Æ. Or the Danish as well, except there for some reason Æ must map to Ø and Ø must map to Æ, otherwise they're identical. So most keyboards sold in Scandinavia just has one button with ØÖÆ on it and another with ÆÄØ on it, and then based on OS keyboard setting you get the correct one.
Point is, I'm curious why they also just don't release in Norway when they have made the layout? But I guess it's because we're not in the EU that makes it harder?
Personally I just use a US layout with alt gr for æøå. The Norwegian layout is very awkward for C style languages(and the unix shell), I find. The US one feels more natural, which makes sense considering the modern US layout is very similar to the layout of the teletypes used at bell labs in the 70s.
Took a while to get used to it, but only a month or so to be just as fast as I was previously on the Norwegian one.
My reason for learning the US layout back in the days was because of Counter Strike. For some reason it didn't adhere to your OS keyboard settings when chatting, so trying to write ø always became ; etc, so we kinda after a while just learned how it worked (didn't even know it was a US layout thing to look up, just bruteforced and memorized).
The danish layout is brain damaged indeed. My greatest daily annoyance is shift+7 to get "/", when navigating around folders in the terminal, but on the other hand I have ~30 years of built up muscle memory at this point.
Agreed, takes honestly a very short time to get used to it but the benefits are large, as a programmer at least. I don't think I would ever go back to the other layout again.
Yeah. Norwegian living in the UK, and I use a US layout as well. I do have a keybinding to swap to Norwegian keymap that I use occasionally, but it doesn't see much use.
Lack of keyboard as my reason for not buying a Framework laptop when upgrading last year. I wouldn't mind them releasing a Nordic keyboard, which isn't ideal but better than nothing (as a migrant I'm never quite sure what character I'll get when I hit those keys!).
It seems Norway is often left out as being outside the EU and having it's own tax, customs and consumer rights requirements puts a large burden on companies to officially support a market here, especially when it's a relatively small market.
I always wondered why the special non-language characters are in different places in various language specific keyboards.
Do Danish people not pipe their standard output as much? Do Swiss people not write emails as much? Are Europeans bad at finding the return key, thus requiring a larger one than Americans? These are all things I've actually come across.
Why are the special characters in all sorts of weird places? One of the great mysteries of life.
On other side I always found weird that ANSI layout has this weird monster key for | \ like are those so often used it needs bigger key? Why not just used standard sized key for normal thing...
Also why miss such useful symbols as ¤ ½ § from layout?
I think most layout differences come from back then typewriters and word processors were the most that was available, and nothing got changed due to inertia.
Going back and forth between " and @ being capital-2 daily is probably the one that's caused me the most frustration.
Oh… My framework laptop is two years old now and it starts showing. Had to replace the fan already (twice in fact) and now some random stuff with keyboard started to happen.
10 year old thinkpad in comparison can still be used both as a daily driver, a hammer and to barricade oneself during the zombie apocalypse
That's more or less the reliability of modern laptops for you.
I had to replace the fans in my ASUS after less than two years, but the official manufacturer's parts store was out of stock so I had to rely on Ali Express. After that I had to go through the process of replacing them, which was anything but simple.
You can't buy quality any more, but at least you can have repairability.
Yeah, I'm Danish but grew up in Norway, it's almost interchangeable. A few harder sounds in Norwegian, so change a few g's to k's etc. And Danish for some reason just litters commas randomly in a sentence, so just remove half of them randomly. And then remember the different meaning of "må" (NO=must, DK=may) when writing your manual, and you're good to go!
In Norwegian, “kan” may mean either “can” or “may” depending on context. That’s a source of confusion sometimes. Not sure about Danish, but I don’t think it can mean “must”.
How good are these? They are pretty highly priced (1600-2000 USD), comparable to a mac laptop. I would expect the quality to be on mac level if i would pay this price for a laptop.
You will not get mac level finish or integration, nor battery life.
But you will get a lot of ram and disk for this price, a robust and fast laptop.
And something you can repair.
If you are a mac person, there is no substitute for the mac, by definition.
If you don't care about mac, then the framework is a good machine.
I rocked dell for a long time, I switched to framework, and so far, it's been great. The keyboard is comfy, the touchpad is good (for a non mac), the mate screen is productive and I enjoy its format.
The specs have not let me down perf wise, the extension system is fantastic, and the value proposition of being able to be repaired is unmatched. I assembled it, and you can see they care a lot.
Dual boot windows + linux on it is quick and easy. Support is perfect, including sleep, wifi, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc. The mechanical off switch for the mic and cam is a plus.
The battery life sucks, and I can hear the fans more than I want. It's not as stylish as other notebooks.
That's it.
Mostly, I forgot about the machine in a week and it's transparent to me: it's plugged on a USB dongle that powers it, hook me to ethernet and extends the screen. I used it on the go twice, nothing special to report.
I'll co-sign everything you said, other than to say that if you care about the webcam or the sound, this isn't the laptop for you. I'd still recommend it highly despite those failings, though, as the configuration and the longevity is more than worth it.
Plus, who knows, they might come out with a webcam or sound upgrade kit one day.
True, I forgot to mention it because I almost never use them. Laptop cams and mics are never up to my standard, even on mac, and since I remote work 90% of the time, I always travel with a full mic stand and external cam.
This is too important for good communication for me.
But indeed, it's not on the higher end for sound and image quality.
I think I saw a video from their CEO showcasing some of the things in their pipeline, they are upgrading the webcams significantly. Best thing about a framework is you can just get the webcam and upgrade it.
Might upgrade in a year or two if I feel I need more brightness.
The fact you can change it slowly, piece by piece, is fantastic. It spreads the cost of upgrading the machines over the years instead of having to pull the entire cash at once. No need to reinstall everything every time.
You can upgrade the battery when you need to. Then maybe the RAM 3 years later once electron app with embedded AI model takes over the world and a hello world eats 4go.
> I would expect the quality to be on mac level if i would pay this price for a laptop
I'm not sure if the quality is "on the mac level" (I've heard conflicting things, like I have for Macs), but the repairability and upgradeability are a million times better. That means that you can buy the 8GB RAM version, and upgrade later if needed; you don't have to shell out 500euros more just to not have a useless device in a year or two.
I heard that upgrading the framework laptop would end up costing about the same as just buying a new regular midrange laptop entirely, at which point I'm not really sure if I'd care about the upgradeability.
Update: updating the main board (e.g CPU) would cost anywhere from 500 to 1000 EUR (https://frame.work/marketplace/mainboards). I'd much rather stay with a desktop PC where all the parts are also upgradeable, but much, much cheaper to the point that it actually makes sense.
There is also the thing about you know... things not ending up in landfill. Price/performance/quality wise nothing beats cheapest Macbook Air. But that machine is designed in a way that its 100% that in few years it will die and it cannot be repaired. By soldering SSD and RAM you are on ticking clock. Especially the 8gig ram version will swap depleting your SSD cycles.
I own cheapest macbook air M1 - i think it's the peak laptop "THE STANDARD", its great. But all the ways it's designed to be unrepairable. It's so clear case of planned obsolescence... it should be criminalized.
Apple seems to have a robust and well-defined recycling program that I haven't seen with any other manufacturer. It would be interesting if somebody made a study comparing their environmental efficiency vs repairable hardware.
One nice thing about upgrading the framework is your old main board isn’t useless once removed. You can get an external case for it and use it separately as a mini PC (replacing a media PC, raspberry pi or NAS)
I bought mine as part of one of the first two batches. When the 12th gen Intel came out I upgraded for about 40% of the price I'd pay for a similarly specced laptop in my country.
The last Intel CPU micro-architecture to be offered with sockets for laptops was Haswell, where CPUs were offered in the Socket G3[1] package. I had one of these, Intel i7-4710MQ.
Since then, every laptop Intel (and AMD, for that matter) CPU package has been BGA, and therefore soldered to motherboards.
If you want to upgrade your CPU on a notebook, you must change your motherboard; no choice in the matter.
Pretty much yeah -- all laptop CPUs since Haswell have been non-socketable/BGA. I still have a rather decent laptop with such a CPU - acer aspire v3-771g.
It's still in daily use, after 8y back I had to replace a faulty mlcc (short to ground) that took a mosfet along with it.
The cpu, the heatsink and the mainboard are one part, that is correct. If you want to replace the cpu you have to place the other parts as well. Even though that is trivial.
As for the costs: Yes the mainboards on frameworks website currently cost about 500-1000€, new laptops using those cpu's are tend to be a bit more expensive than just those parts, so you are saving a bit of money there.
But in my opinion that is not the main selling point. The fact that you get a high quality, long lasting, well supported laptop from a company that respects it's customers and their problems coupled with the fact that it is just environmentally better is the main selling point.
Yes currently you pay extra for those benefits. You have to choose if those things are worth more money than the next 3-year throwaway laptop.
Btw: I am a very happy user of a Framework 16 as my gaming machine. So my opinion may be biased ;)
Yeah but you update the mainboard once every 10 years.
Usually what you upgrade are: ram, disk and cpu.
Comparing a tower with a laptop makes little sense. They don't have the same use cases and compromises at all.
It's like saying "I much rather stay on a framework, because all the part are upgradable, but I exchange the bigger price for portability and not having to by a battery to protect against power down".
It has little to do with the framework proposition, which is to be a laptop that happens to be easier and cheaper to repair than the competition.
I tried to repair my previous laptop. I killed it because the parts are so hard to manipulate.
> you don't have to shell out 500euros more just to not have a useless device in a year or two.
I have a 12yo iPad, a 8yo Macbook Air, and they're still going strong. I think after around 10 years you may not be able to update the OS anymore?? But tbh after 10 years I really want to change laptops, it's about time :)
And hopefully one can install Linux on the Mac and keep using it for other things, I think... the hardware is just very good.
Because you paid enough in advance to get enough RAM and storage to last you years. If you get a modern low end 8GB / 256GB SSD MacBook, it will last you a long time if you only have a very limited use (basically light browsing).
> If you get a modern low end 8GB / 256GB SSD MacBook
That's the one I currently use when not working. It's still very fine for browsing the web, watching videos and even coding as long as you don't mind some delays.
With "good" light software (e.g. emacs, anything on the terminal), it's still very snappy and totally fine.
I bought the new framework 13 with a ryzen config (forgot which chip it was, i think i went for the 6 core one) with 16gb ram @5600Mtransfers/sec and 1tb wd black ssd with the cache thing, no OS. I also got 2 usb a, 2 usb c, and 1 hdmi ext. card.
paid around 1300eur netto, and i found the build quality to be on par with my old macbook 13. Matte display is also nice, though the brightness settings are not as 'wide' as the macbook's. The fan rarely ever ramps up, the keyboard is very comfortable compared to a 1st gen butterfy keyboard, and you can set the battery charge limit in the bios settings (e.g. limit charging to 60 %)
Fully charging the battery can cause it to age more quickly and lose capacity. Limiting charge level helps to protect it, especially when it's always connected to a power supply and don't need the battery that much.
if the li-ion is kept < 4.25v that should be no issue. I don't know why overcharging is even considered a thing (100% should be 4.22v or so for a standard li-ion cells). You can keep all tool batteries at around 4.2v (fully charged), and nothing happens - they don't degrade.
What actually kill batteries is overcharging (which has to be done on purpose in the electronics) and heat, having internals over 60C is where the real issue is.
I think phones are the 1st ones that started overcharging just to ensure lower life expectancy of the device... and of course much better autonomy during the 1st impressions.
I was in the market for a decent Linux laptop, but after having seen one in person, I'm less convinced. Note: I'm talking about the 13" one.
The battery life using Linux isn't good, the screen is isn't that good, the touch pad is okay, but not great, the layout of the arrow keys is ridiculous. I don't get how something can market itself as an enthusiast laptop and come with arrow keys like these. And I agree that for this price, you should expect best-in-class components.
But the killer for me was seeing the modular port concept in action. It's the kind of thing that sounds great on paper, but in practice doesn't really work. It just wastes space that could be used for a larger battery, while limiting the number of ports that the laptop can fit at any one time. It's not a Linux laptop, but just for comparison, a Macbook Pro has way more ports, and all of them are usable at once.
I'm sure things will improve, but basically my impression is that the Framework concept doesn't seem that well thought out yet. And the upgradability guarantee might lock them into their unfinished ideas for a lot longer than other manufacturers would be. I really hope they can solve these issues, because what they're trying to do is fantastic, but it’s not for me just yet.
To quote myself in the post you responded to "It just wastes space that could be used for a larger battery, while limiting the number of ports that the laptop can fit at any one time."
The ports I personally need are HDMI, lots of USB-C ports, sometimes USB-A (but less and less), and sometimes an SD card. I know everybody has different requirements, but I'm also sure that's at least somewhat typical. And given that, I can't be the only one who thinks it's silly to reserve space for several 4x3x1 cm large USB-C-to-USB-C converters in a space-constrained device.
The replaceable ports are not interfering with the battery. The battery is under the touchpad, not up near the hinge like the ports. [1]
I love my Framework 13. The battery life on it is fine, I'd estimate probably 6-8 hours and charges quickly. The touchpad is quite large which I really enjoy, I believe that's thanks to the 3:2 aspect ratio? It took a second to adjust back from a haptic touchpad to a physical one, but doesn't bother me at all anymore. The arrow keys are a none issue, the half sized up/down arrow is standard on most 13" (and even some 16") laptops I've seen.
As far as I know, those aren't wasting the space for a battery. Framework opted for their current battery sizes. Larger capacities are available for the same size of battery they do have.
For example, my other favorite laptop, the Redmi Pro Books basically have the same physical size batteries but at 80wh/99wh ratings.
I just think Framework can't find a contract manufacturer for higher density batteries at their volume.
> As far as I know, those aren't wasting the space for a battery. Framework opted for their current battery sizes.
I don’t get that logic. There’s extra space; more battery could fit in there. The fact that higher density batteries exist in no way invalidates that.
(You might perhaps have a point if battery life was already excellent and the more important goal might be to save weight, but that’s not the case at all.)
In any laptop, if you have IO on both sides of the laptop, then the motherboard is at least going to extend to both sides. There is no room for batteries. Especially with high speed data links such as USB3 and USB4 these days, you need a nice impedance controlled PCB to the edge or some expensive cabling or in the case of framework, IO modules that are pcbs with a connector bridging the distance further.
The opportunity is then taken to stuff the speakers in the framework in that same space.
It's literally no different than a MacBook Pro or other mfgs.
The only thing I could see is they need to figure out how to miniaturize their speakers to expand the battery size a bit. Or move the speakers to the main board and project out the top. Their speakers are currently larger than the competition and not really any better while stealing battery space.
I would love to see them offer a larger battery with the trade-off of the user removing the modular speakers. Because personally I think using sound devices in public is just fucking rude and I'll use better quality earbuds/headphones both in public and privately anyway.
Eliminate or shrink the speakers and you can redistribute that space.
IO? There is no space redistribution possible if you want the IO on the left and right like every other laptop in the world. The alternative would be to put the IO on the top edge of the laptop, in which case you can reclaim space. The downside is you limit the display opening angle (it can't go flat), but that's a weird obsession in laptop design that came from Apple and thinbooks. (There used to be IO on the top edge in older laptops). Unfortunately being the ulgy duckingly would be bad for Frame.works business most likely as I guarantee every reviewer would whine about it
In particular Framework uses a 4 series cell battery pack configuration. Not unusual and they went for 4 equal sized cells put in series in a rectangular frame. Trying to fill awkward remaining space such as a "U" or "L" shape cavity requires a far more custom solution and Framework most likely does not have the volume to commission such an order from a custom battery pack manufacturer.
Yeah, I have a HP laptop for work, with the same cursor setup - it is terrible. Thinkpad FTW! The only thing that saves it for HP is that you get an extra column of Delete/Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys on the side.
ps. Tuxedo has the same problem. No Linux-native laptop suits me :( Thinkpads it is.
You're saying you're in the market for a Linux laptop and compare it to a macbook. I don't see the fair comparison to be honest. Sure there is Ashai and you could install Linux on an Intel MacBook, but for those setups you don't have company that has explicitly support for Linux.
As for your other points, those are fair even though subjective.
I really do like the modular ports, especially because they expose the possibility to build your own modules (or buy community made modules) for the laptop because everything is open source.
I don't see why I shouldn't compare them. Besides economies of scale, there's no inherent reason why a company couldn't build a Macbook-quality laptop that runs Linux.
As someone who went through two of the touchbar macbook pros up until recently getting a M2, "on a mac level" is a pretty tricky metric these days. Apple were charging crazy prices for garbage quality machines for years.
A friend has a frame.work & I've trialed it a fair bit - combining his review with my hands on experiences I'd say it's not quite as nice as the new Ms nor up to the level of the old pre-2018 macbooks but it is very close, & certainly far better build quality than what Apple were churning out in those intervening years.
The last few generations of intel macs weren't great indeed. The 2018 model I had had the flaky keyboard that ultimately destroyed the laptop when a loose key inserted itself in between the screen and the keyboard. Still angry about that.
But I must say the M1 mac book pro (14", 16GB) is one of the nicest laptops I've ever had. The second best would be a 2011 era mac book pr 15" that I used for several years (pre-retina).
I'd be interested in a decent linux laptop but so far everything I look at has compromises on quality, screen/resolution, trackpads, etc. These framework laptop come close. Especially now that they finally have decent screens that aren't the industry standard 1080p garbage. Not quite upto Apple's standards (colors, contrast, dynamic range, etc.). But it's nice enough. It does seems a bit bulky for my taste. But I could probably live with it. I'd use it for gaming and Steam mainly. I have a shitty old laptop I use for that currently but I hate the screen, keyboard, trackpad, and the anemic performance.
I own a MBP M1 13' and a Framework 16 with GPU.
Build quality, battery life, sound and display are better on the macbook.
But! The Framework has a very good build quality compared to every other laptop maker. All other aspects are good to decent. I'd say thats about 80% of the price. The other 20% are for:
- Not having a solid piece of metal and plastic that only a specialist can repair.
- A company that values you as a customer and seriously wants to help you with your problems.
- Investment in a future where there are real alternatives to all the other non-repairable crap thats out there.
The moment you want to upgrade it, or have a broken part out of warranty it's infinitely better. You can not only get actual parts for it there are repair guides endorsed by the manufacturer.
"Mac level" quality isn't all it's cracked up to be, to be fair. They're great for "premium feel" and all. But in terms of durabilty and repairability they leave a lot to be desired.
I'm curious why you say they leave a lot to be desired in terms of repairability. I don't have one, but my understanding is that you can get a replacement for pretty much any part directly from the manufacturer along with a guide to do the repair yourself. I don't know of any other brand on the market that does that.
Doesn’t even come close. Especially the trackpad, the built in speakers, and the fans. Mind you M* Macbook Airs doesn’t even have fans and Framework will start spinning the fans sooner or later.
They are nice laptops but not in the category of a Macbook or a Thinkpad X1 Carbon
I bought a framework laptop (13in, intel, 13th gen) at the end of 2023 and have had nothing but problems with it. Mostly stability issues. It freezes entirely without warning after about 3-5min of use, regardless of whether I'm booting into a linux kernel or windows machine, from the ssd or the usb. very unhappy that I spent money on it. support has been unhelpful.
the idea of a DIY laptop that I could upgrade, et cetera, was something I could really get behind. but in practice it just feels like a waste of time and money. The machine does have to actually work.
So run Memtest86+ If it fails, replace one DIMM at a time and retest until it passes; as soon as it passes, the DIMM you just replaced was bad. If it passes, replace the motherboard, ideally under warranty.
Perhaps, but when the asking price is on the same levels as a mac book pro, i think its fair to compare it against one. Personally i have been using macs since 2012 (windows and ubuntu before that), and can not go back to anything else yet because of the insane quality of the mac hardware. My favourite ones are the 2012 MBP, and then later (what im still using) is the M1 from 2021.
I honestly don't understand why did you feel the need to write this advertisement post for your Mac. I like mine, but I still don't get where some of you get this deep wish to write ad copies.
No, it's not "fair" to come here and bloviate about your Mac in a topic about Framework laptops built for a different crowd. We get enough ads all across the web, keep them off HN at least.
I don't see how it's a problem to stock all keyboard types, such as for the Nordics. It's the same layout, just with different letters. They could just have blank keyboards with the most commonly used layouts and put them in a laser etch jig for custom orders. Similar what they are doing now for screen protectors where they cut them in-store
Yeah, there are mostly only ANSI, ISO, and JIS physical layout in this world, stamped differently to suit needs. JIS is only ever used in Japanese so just blank ANSI and ISO should cover everything(emphasis on should; corrections are welcome).
They were already available since they started selling to the first EU country. As an EU citizen, you have the right[1] to purchase a product from any EU country. Geo-blocking is often prohibited. They now only ship to those countries as well, so you don't have to pick it up from another EU country.
By that logic, they were available even before, because you could fly to US and buy it there. Being able to buy a laptop in finland is pretty much the same hassle for me as if i bought it in US... less custom fees, more shady remailers and a language I don't understand.
Half of amazon.de won't deliver to my (not germany) EU country, half of amazon.it won't either, and sometimes there' stuff that one of them will send but not the other (stuff sold by amazon, not third party sellers), and some things are impossible to get (lipo batteries) while other companies somehow manage to ship them.
EU is far from a "unified market" (in a way where buying stuff from other EU countries would be the same experience as buying stuff from your own). Even large retailers like amazon don't even care about the difference, since they have your shipping address, notify you that your shipping address is set to <address> with a popup, let you search for an item, show you an item in the search results, and only when you click on the item, they tell you that they can't ship it to your address.
The bigger thing is having Nordic keyboard layout available. Also we use ISO layout with more keys and shapes/sizes.
> With this launch, we’re adding Danish and Swedish/Finnish keyboards that you can order now with a Framework Laptop 13 or as a standalone Keyboard or Input Cover Kit.
For me the biggest issue is the different shape enter key causing me to miss click it all the time when using standard (ANSI?) qwerty keyboard.
I've tried that before, and I've not been able to find stickers that will last long (trust me, you'll have sweaty fingers from time to time). A better solution is to use a white permanent marker on the keys instead. It doesn't last, obviously, but it doesn't make it awkward to type, and you can just re-apply it as the keys lose their labels.
It still won't be permanent, but water-slide decals will probably work better than stickers, and about as well as the marker while being more legible. It might also be possible to put a clear coat paint on it that'll help them last longer.
The big advantage over stickers is that they aren't held on by glue, but instead by the plastic that they're made out of conforms to the surface and grips it instead. That said I'm not sure how to make white text for a black keyboard.
On my keyboard (not a Frame.work), the only letters that are still readable are Q, Y, U, J, Z anyway. The rest are worn down, some with nail striations in the plastic... I'm not sure how cool it looks, but clearly I manage without the labels.
Can't seem to find the finnish keyboard option for the 13, and it seems to be immediately out-of-stock for the 16.
It's great, though. The keyboard layout was the main thing restricting me from getting a framework. I was just looking at slimbooks yesterday, in fact, since they offer more keyboard layouts.
They will probably never make a LoRa module, but making a LoRa expansion card would be a pretty interesting project.
You can get more info about the expansion cards on the dedicated github repo: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards
You know, there's 3d models for the expansion cards, so you can always just design your own LoRa expansion cards, probably (or get someone else to do it)
As the current situation is I dont see why we shouldnt join the EU. We are better at adopting EU directives than most EU members. And we still end up having to adopt the horrible ones anyway, so might as well at least have an influence on the decisions that are made.
Does that actually help? I've been waiting for Czechia availability for years now. The best they can do is to tell me I should order to a supported country and handle shipping from there myself.
I know Apple also offers a proper Danish keyboard, and I've seen some modern Thinkpads with proper Danish keyboards.
I normally use a US Intl keyboard, but whenever I see a Danish keyboard, I struggle to find the | key.