Quick summary for those couldn't watch the livestream/load the website.
- New Framework laptops are available using Intel 13th Gen and AMD 7040 series.
- New 61Wh battery, new matte display option & a Cooler Master mainboard case for $39.
- New 16 inch Framework laptop. Allows you to have a number pad or not, up to you and customizable. If I understood the livestream correctly, there are upgradable dedicated GPUs that connect to the 16 inch laptop.
The customization goes further than just yes/no to the number pad. Looks like a whole "Input Module system" that could open up opportunities for different keyboard designs (DVORAK, various locales, maybe different switches?). I love this idea, excited to see what folks do with it. Makes me think of Apple's Touchbar nonsense -- why force a number pad, or a second touchscreen on folks who don't want one? Such a good iteration on the Framework idea.
They're using QMK on their prototype keyboard and numpad input modules (which are RP2040-based internally).
The interface for input modules to the rest of the computer is "just" USB 2.0, so you could put just about anything there that'll fit in one of the input module form factors. Although high resolution, high frame rate touchscreens are probably out because of bandwidth constraints (since it is only USB 2.0).
It's plausible to use something like a DisplayLink controller, or for lower resolution even a microcontroller with flexible high speed peripherals like an RP2040 with the PIO interface.
Split ortholinear keyboard with a clit mouse. If someone makes this to where I can just plug and play and program the keyboard firmware directly I'm switching at the next opportune moment(I'm not a hardware guy, I stop at the lowest levels of programming and leave the soldering to steadier hands...)
Though my Thinkpad can still handle another 5 years of wanton abuse I'm sure, so I have all the time in the world.
Man my next laptop is gonna be awesome. Literally everything I want in a laptop, which has never existed until now(well, soon).
There is a huge untapped market segment here. It's only a matter of time before someone makes it happen.
Honestly, I see the biggest problem that people have entering the ortholinear/ergonomic keyboard market is cost: the obvious choice is to target mechanical keyswitches, but you quickly realize your consumer base would rather pay more (in parts cost and construction effort) to get exactlty what they want.
But what if you went as cheap as possible instead? What if you made flat rubber dome boards that cost next to nothing to manufacture; and sold them for $40 a pop? You would probably broaden your target audience by a factor of 100, and have huge profit margins.
Doing that for an integrated laptop keyboard would be even easier to sell. I would gladly use shitty rubber dome switches if it meant having a split ortho layout that I didn't have to lug around separately from my laptop. I would buy that yesterday.
I'd love someone to do a split ortholinear keyboard on a laptop. That'd probably push it to instant buy for me almost regardless of the rest of the specs etc.
Split ortholinear is possible. We didn't show this, but it is technically possible to build an Input Module for the Framework Laptop 16 that is full width, giving a lot of horizontal real estate for a split layout.
Please do an ortho or split ortho layout. I get that it'd be low volume but I'd be willing to pay a premium if it meant being able to keep my Helidox Corne at home while I travel or go into the office, without sacrificing ergonomics.
Looking forward to purchasing the 16 regardless though. Keep up the amazing work / mission with Framework. Fantastic work to the team.
As a dev with hands that won't let me use a standard laptop keyboard for more than a few minutes without being in pain, this is so needed. It would be so good to be mobile again.
Have you had much experience with mechanical keyboards? I do much better with just unicomp m-style buckling spring or cherry mx brown (real cherry, not the fake that some use).
Given that there's just more room in the 16", I wonder how hard it would be to just build an adapter board (and some 3d printed scaffolding) to just mount an actual lenovo thinkpad replacement part...
When it comes to the keyboard, the room that matters is the height, and both the FW 13 or 16 have a maximum height of 3.8mm
Unless one can come up with a way to produce a custom keyboard with the same height restriction, using something like a Thinkpad keyboard which is considerably taller would essentially require a custom taller chassis.
Framework should beg Sensel for a blank touch surface...which you could press a couple of macro keys to entirely transform the surface with.
users print out a custom layout to guide their fingers.../dream
Agreed, I'd kill for a modern version of the TouchStream LP. Comfiest and quietest keyboard I've ever used, with no elbow strain from reaching for a mouse/trackpad. They even had a product that could replace a MacBook keyboard. [1]
That being said, the company was acquired by Apple and turned into the iPhone and iPod Touch. The keyboards were effectively museum pieces at that point. I wonder if the patent situation would allow for third parties to revisit the design. It'd be interesting to see what could be done with by borrowing ideas from the programmable keyboard community and mobile touch hardware.
It would be nice if we could get non-multiplexed edit keys in the unused space. That is the biggest failing of modern laptops. Massive horizontal real estate and they're packing keys in like it's 1995.
Also height of keys. I don't understand the rush towards thinner and thinner that killed the more reasonably higher-keys keyboards.I don't need a 1mm laptop, I need a laptop I can comfortably type in.
Previous framework was 3:2, not 16:9 so there isn't a ridiculous amount of width. But yes, a vertical column of dedicated keys is a decent compromise that doesn't shift the keyboard over much. I had that on an older luggable.
You don't have to shift the keyboard over at all. That can stay centered and there's room for a 2x3 block of edit keys plus an inverted-T with full height up and down arrows. All it takes is willingness to be a leader instead of a follower copying one company's misguided minimalism-at-all-costs.
Because of the screen ratio, there's simply no space to do that on a Framework 13, without reducing key spacing: there is almost exactly 1 cm of space between the last keys and the actual edge of the frame.
On the Framework 16, I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes that: it looks like the design would accommodate a left/right-hand side narrow input module with the keyboard still centred.
I'd prefer inverted-T with half height keys and use fn as a modifier for pgup/pgdn/home/end. Don't really need insert or delete though, but there's already a key for that.
Maybe you mean an 85-key "75% keyboard". It's a popular request on the frame.work community discussion of "The keyboard".
On keyboard layouts like Framework's, I still have trouble trying to touch-type the right control key with my ring finger-nail. I prefer a "75% keyboard" with an navigation/editing column which provides room for the right ctrl key further right. (And full size arrow keys. And makes shift-End easy for selecting rest of line.)
Maybe we can hope a Kickstarter keyboard maker will make a Framework version in a few years. Main limitation is the thinness, only 3.7mm.
If they're using qmkesque firmware you could start programming some interesting new layers to give you functionality like this. I used to require a full sized keyboard so I'd have all this functionality like home and end keys and stuff, and then I started using keyboards with qmk and similar, and now I have all sorts of layers and macros and etc and I seriously can never go back.
I tend to favor left control, and right shift myself... discovered this using a KB where the up arrow was at the edge of the right shift, most annoying keyboard to type on ever... all of the sudden my typing is in the middle of already typed text. If typing while looking at something else, I'd see a garbled mess too often.
Do you have very large hands or a narrow keyboard? On a normal 85-key "75% keyboard", I cannot reach the up-arrow key with my pinky while the rest of my fingers are on the home keys.
I've had similar cursor problems with those keyboards that have page-up and page-dn next to the up-arrow key. Just a little finger displacement when trying to left-arrow and the cursor is suddenly inserting my subsequent typed text far from the intended location.
The big question is whether the cooling system in the 13" would be able to handle the HS. Is there any data on Zen 4 laptop chips that has tested the efficiency vs performance considerations on the U vs the HS series?
On previous generations: the 4000 series starts to hit a relative performance wall at around 35W. The 5000 series clocked higher and hence gained more moving from 15 to 35 and 35 to 45.
Another point: you can throttle the 35W HS series to 15W, and get the laptop to run fanless or almost fanless since it is designed to cool a higher TDP.
Matte display yay! I missed that a lot on the MBP. Seems like they still want to bundle a windows license, I never understand this, do MS pay OEMs to do this?
If you pick the DIY option, you can omit the Windows license. You'll have to install Linux yourself, but that doesn't seem like a terribly difficult task for someone already going with the DIY option.
I'm guessing they don't want to officially support any specific distro, and offering support for multiple distros is probably a bit outside their wheelhouse at the moment. [e: this is perhaps not the case]
Yes, several distros are supported now. Even NixOS, though not yet officially. As someone who purchased multiple DIY editions running linux, avoiding shipping any framework with a preinstalled linux distro has some real benefits:
Not shipping with Linux installed gets Framework out of the business of managing distros and images themselves. They also dodge a neverending barrage of "But what about my favorite distro X?" that would surely come for them as soon as they picked some fixed set of distros.
If you are uncomfortable assembling computer components and installing an OS yourself then linux is probably not for you. This acts as a filter for people who are serious.
It's a lot easier to support newbie computer users on windows, and they are a lot more likely to get support from friends and family.
They would be shipping a DIY edition anyways, this vastly simplifies their inventory.
These may offend your Linux-maximalist sensibilities, c'est la vie.
Some of us are perfectly comfortable with the software side, but no longer have the hand eye coordination or dexterity to handle those tiny little ribbon adapters in modern computers.
Personally, I kind of wish System76 would sell framework laptops with a generalized configuration and PopOS pre-insalled.
We continue to focus on solid Linux support, and we’re happy to share that Fedora 38 and Ubuntu 22.04 will work fantastically out of the box for both the 13th Gen Intel® Core™ and AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series models. We have thorough setup and troubleshooting guides and will continue to provide official support for these two distributions. Manjaro XFCE 22.0 and Linux Mint 21.1 are also working great, and we’re detailing the documentation for those as well. You can check compatibility with popular distros as we continue to test them on our Linux page or in the Framework Community.
For what it's worth, Linux works great on the current generation. Even sleep works, although it wakes up so quickly that I'm not sure it's actually gone to sleep. I should try pinging it to see.
With the S0 suspend, it can actually go either way on if its' actually sleeping or low power mode... Not speaking to framework or any linux variant specifically, just know it's often an issue.
Sorry, I missed where it was specifically about the AMD model. The 13th-gen Intel got added to the list between me posting and you posting, so who knows.
So how about 'No OS preinstalled' option? and allow customers to chose if they want to pay the MS tax or not. Maybe they are not allowed to offer this option?
Including any linux distro would be better, because it would show a growing linux desktop market share.
More likely, the answer is that a lot of Windows users want a hassle-free experience. DIY edition of this would have no Windows tax, if you are a linux user.
Depends how your Windows was licensed; if you had OEM license with license key that you had to type in (this is usually when Windows license is an option), or if the key was embedded in BIOS (when Windows license is provided and it is not an option).
Not OP, but in my case, I'd love an HS part without a dGPU. I'm typing this on a 5650U and its integrated GPU is overkill for what I do. Hell, until a year ago, I used to daily drive an i5-6500 with an HD530 with a 4k display and I never felt limited by the GPU.
But I do use the CPU from time to time, so a beefier part would be useful. I would rather not pay for a dGPU which I'd use maybe 1% of the time, and which would cost more and weigh more and possibly be a PITA to manage under Linux.
i don't play videogames and i don't do ai/ml, video editing or whatever.
i spend most of my time in firefox and in terminals. i do use virtual machines quite a lot to test stuff around, so high cores count and high memory would be a plus for me.
but an nvidia gpu is a deal breaker for me. I just don't want it. I don't need it, i don't use it, it just makes the whole thing less usable. and it draws a lot power that i'd prefer using otherwise.
the intel integrated gpu is not only sufficient for me, i actually WANT it. it just works under gnu/linux and i don't have to mess with drivers.
I cannot stress enough how much i hate having to deal with proprietary drivers.
and last time i played a videogame, it was openarena, and it ran beautifully on the intel hd 600 my work laptop had (dell latitude 7390, great little machine).
edit: regarding amd gpus... i'm not sure. i've been told they work with open source drivers, but still it's a power usage i would happily avoid.
I mean, in a laptop, you dont use the dGPU on battery unless its for compute, period. It should just be sitting there turned off (which indeed means you dont want it). But if its sucking any power, thats a bug.
That being said, Firefox and Chromium use the integrated GPU more than you think, and they feel faster with a stronger IGP. Just try disabling some of the gpu acceleration and see how it feels.
On my nvidia thinkpad I have had to completely disable the integrated GPU in bios and use discrete only due to constant bugs with hybrid graphics on Linux. This means my battery life is less than two hours.
I haven't noticed any difference between an i5-8500 with its integrated GPU and my gaming PC with an RX5000 something. Both running latest windows and edge.
They actually feel similar to Firefox running on Linux on an i5-6500's IGP.
It probably depends on the websites you visit. The only thing better on the newer ones is video decoding for YouTube or the like. I usually actively avoid websites with animations and other similar stuff as I find them very unpleasant to use. But I've noticed those typically tend to use the CPU, even on a Zen3 or Intel 11th gen IGP, even on Windows + Edge.
That is not how GPU multiplexing works on Laptops. My dGPU most certainly works on battery, though I can directly disable it if I like (or use a power saving power plan).
For example, I could disable the nvidia card on my ThinkPad W530, but then i'd lose the use of the external video output (because it was wired to the nvidia card).
and yes i know it depends on whether the laptop has a mux or not... it's not always easy to determine, not all reviews go explicitly over this detail...
I just don't want a discrete graphics card. Not an nVidia one for sure.
It works, but it sucks power like no tomorrow if it actually stays on. Its basically unusable if you want more than hour or two of battery life (or you use it in short bursts for compute).
> That being said, Firefox and Chromium use the integrated GPU more than you think, and they feel faster with a stronger IGP. Just try disabling some of the gpu acceleration and see how it feels.
i have strongs doubts the doxygen webpages i spend time on will get any faster with an nvidia 3090.
You can usually disable it completely in the BIOS, and it won't be drawing power if it isn't doing anything. I can get wanting to not pay extra, but realistically supporting an extra custom hardware configuration probably costs more than they would save on the part.
> The issue is that on some machines, the video-out ports go through the dGPU. Does that still work if the card is disabled in the BIOS?
Traditionally yes; the machine is designed to only run the dGPU under heavy load, not all the time, the BIOS setting just disables doing the thing that you did in the "heavy load" condition. I guess there might be machines it wouldn't work on but I've never known any.
I dunno, as time goes on I am wanting to do more and more on the GPU. Last gen it was media processing and upscaling, now its running Stable Diffusion and other Generative AI.
But what it sounds like you want is an E-core mad part from Intel. I always thought they should sell a 20-30 core laptop part with only one or two big cores as a compilation monster.
> But what it sounds like you want is an E-core mad part from Intel. I always thought they should sell a 20-30 core laptop part with only one or two big cores as a compilation monster.
Indeed. I've been looking at the 12th gen laptops we're getting at work, but those were underwhelming. I don't remember which model CPU it was, but it only had 2 P cores (those are basically for "office work", so no one cares about performance). For compilation (Rust) it was in the same ballpark as my 11th gen i7 (so 4 "regular" cores + HT). For basic day-to-day work, they both felt the same.
As you say, I'd expect a part with more P cores to be interesting for my use case, which is exactly the same as your sibling's [0]
The Radeon 680M/780M compete pretty well with base M1/M2 GPUs. And there are going to be some 7040 series chips with them like the 7940HS. No, it's not a 16 core monster but I imagine Aya Neo will shove it in a handheld in like 5 months.
LG Gram is a multipurpose laptop. You can use it's screen also as a mirror and keyboard has so interesting design you can play twister game with your fingers whether you like it or not.
A standardised laptop GPU connector could be a game changer and would be a killer feature. There have been a few false starts in that space with MXM, but they never really took off.
It’s often the first thing people upgrade on a desktop (it’s much more impactful than a RAM and CPU upgrade over the same timeframe), but is rarely an option for laptop users.
I'm currently in Tokyo on holidays. Everywhere I've visited (Hakone, Nikko, Kamakura, Fujiyoshida), everyone is wearing masks both inside and outside. The only times I take my mask off are when I'm eating, drinking or in my hotel room.
The only people I have seen that aren't wearing masks outside are foreigners. This is only a subset of people visiting. Most tourists also wear masks outside.
Wasn't aware of this, but cool move on ARM side! Thanks for the tip!
Looking at the code [1], some of files are indeed copyrighted to ARM. So they are actually providing some data. Also, the linked story mentions that qcom is also providing some support to thee opensource driver. Pardon my ignorance here.
While this is true now, Collabora devs did a lot of reverse engineering with little documentation to get a functional driver, then ARM started to pay attention. For a long time, ARM neglected efforts to develop open source drivers.
SSL/TLS encrypts your traffic between you and a server but by itself doesn't prevent your ISP from snooping some information about your encrypted connection. If you aren't using Secure DNS & DNSSEC, they may be able to see and intercept your DNS queries. If you don't use TLS 1.3, they can see the SSL certificate of the website you are connecting to. If you don't encrypt your Server Name Indication (SNI), they can see the hostname of the server you are connecting to.
This all allows your ISP to figure out which websites you are connecting to and this can be used to prevent you from accessing certain websites, sell your browsing history to an advertising agency, etc.
- New Framework laptops are available using Intel 13th Gen and AMD 7040 series.
- New 61Wh battery, new matte display option & a Cooler Master mainboard case for $39.
- New 16 inch Framework laptop. Allows you to have a number pad or not, up to you and customizable. If I understood the livestream correctly, there are upgradable dedicated GPUs that connect to the 16 inch laptop.