[HN Gopher] The Framework Laptop Could Revolutionize Repairabili...
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The Framework Laptop Could Revolutionize Repairability. We Hope It
Does
Author : mikhael
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-10-14 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| dfdz wrote:
| I really like the idea of the Framework laptop, but at the same
| time it is hard to imagine the time scales involved
|
| My personal experience is that a thinkpad laptop lasts 6 years if
| you replace the keyboard and battery. I am sure that the same is
| true for other brands.
|
| After 6 years, my old laptop starting having other issues with
| the screen, and ssd. Everything about the laptop was out of date,
| low resolution screen, comparatively slow processor, bad webcam,
| not a lot of memory, keyboard started having issues. So it make
| sense to buy a new laptop.
|
| I am having trouble imaging how things would be different with a
| Framework laptop. What is the imagined life span of this laptop?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I don't think repairability is the big deal here. It's the
| customizable ports.
|
| Pretty much everyone's laptop has at least one port they
| literally never use, and is missing a port they wished it had.
| E.g. I'll literally never use the SD card slot, nor the 1/8"
| audio jack, but right now I really wish it had one oldschool USB
| port. In a year or two, it might be nice to swap that out for an
| extra usb-C.
|
| This laptop design is a dongle-eliminator.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| It's a dongle-eliminator, but it also affords a form of
| traditional dongle fetishism in that nothing stops fetishists
| from carrying around the excess port-blocks they so desire, and
| swapping in the field when needed.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Does anyone else miss PCMCIA? I do!
|
| Some Dell laptops used to have these plastic cages around their
| hard drives, so you could take out a single screw and cold-swap
| drives in 10 seconds, no need to open the case. Same to pop in
| a sound card, ethernet card, USB card, SD card reader, etc.
| Still my favorite "hacker laptop". Lost it somewhere in Vegas
| during a bender at DEFCON. Thank goodness for hard drive
| encryption.
| NathanielK wrote:
| If you're clever, you can usually hotswap that drive too,
| since it's just a dumb SATA port. More convenient to do with
| the CD-bay 2.5" drive caddies.
| Infernal wrote:
| Agreed, my laptop now has 2 USB-C, 1 USB-A, a microSD, and a
| headphone jack. I would absolutely swap the second USB-C for a
| USB-A, and the microSD for an SD. Or some days an ethernet
| jack.
| nottaylorswift wrote:
| People supporting this are missing the point. When you look at
| the demographic responsible for purchasing the majority of these
| types of product, they have enough expendable income to buy a
| replacement every 5 years at least. The minority intent on making
| their product last forever through disassembly and endless
| repair, don't have enough purchasing leverage to change policy.
| Further after 5 years most people prefer to upgrade and those who
| don't simply need a new battery in >80% of the cases. I can see
| demand for the return of a replaceable battery in phones and
| laptops, but the rest is futile resistance against a natural
| progression. Repair simply isn't worth it.
| adriancr wrote:
| You are missing:
|
| - the customization. I for one would like to be able to change
| laptop at will. (try out oled, quantum dot, change color, put
| in weird components when available)
|
| - Other purposes for components - I could take the
| motherboard+cpu+ram, put it in another enclosure and make a
| router out of it, or robots or other hobbies. Take one or more
| displays, put it behind windows and have smart windows, etc...
|
| Only thing for me is size, too small display, but I'll likely
| compromise and get it for christmas.
| technofiend wrote:
| I disagree that the only two buckets of consumers are people
| who can afford a new laptop anyway and those who want their
| laptops to live forever. There's a broad spectrum of people who
| simply want options. IMHO they want the option to repair,
| replace, upgrade or some combination of the three and they want
| it on their terms, not the manufacturers'.
|
| Warranties and extended purchase plans are profit centers. So
| as one example you can either pay $199+ on a warranty, gambling
| that the issuer agrees to honor it in case of failure, or
| instead pocket the money and use it on a repair or upgrade when
| the laptop fails. I know which I prefer and it's not tacking on
| $200 to the cost of a laptop for a Microcenter warranty or
| Applecare.
| nottaylorswift wrote:
| Most electronics fail from manufacturing defects within 6
| months of use. After that, it will probably last as long as
| you want to use it, or until you pour coffee on it. Excluding
| the battery. Just because something might fail doesn't mean
| it's going to. Much of the equipment you use will function
| longer than you will.
|
| And there's another side to this right to repair movement.
| There's now less incentive to make the individual components
| reliable. Since the penalty is no longer a full logic board
| replacement, the components can have a lower MTBF - that
| lowers cost and promotes the product at the same time by
| convincing the customer of the need for repairability.
|
| Many of the customers are really just laymen hobbyists
| looking for a project that seems technical. Kind of like the
| gamers who wire up a series of unnecessary fans and RGB LEDs
| and pretend they invented the microprocessor. They have no
| buying leverage.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I know you're not Taylor Swift, but are you Tim Cook? My
| goodness, I've never seen a regular person so against
| allowing people to repair/upgrade stuff they own.
| nottaylorswift wrote:
| If I gave the impression I'm against it, I'm not. It's
| nice to have repairability, a bonus feature, but not a
| competitive or innovative incentive to purchase over the,
| and at this point everyone has to admit, very well
| designed Apple line of product. I do believe we are well
| into the era of disposable electronics, and both
| assembly, disassembly, recycling and repair will be fully
| automated in the near future. Because, in order to make
| products more compact and continuing the SoC trend moving
| components to silicon, there's no longer a place for the
| human technician.
| technofiend wrote:
| Well I suppose that depends on what you consider well
| designed. Designed to maximize Apple's profit and prevent
| consumer choice or upgrades? Undeniably true. Woe to the
| buyer who decides a year later he needs double the RAM or
| storage. At the very least he or she must resell their
| device and buy new again. So to that buyer I dare say
| frame.work is both competitive, innovative and a better
| choice than a glued shut hunk of electronics with
| everything soldered on. System on a chip is not relevant
| here as both storage and memory are outboard, as is a GPU
| once one needs better graphics performance than an
| integrated GPU/CPU can provide.
| felistoria wrote:
| Framework can't compete with the M1 chip unfortunately. I
| love what Framework is doing though.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think you under-estimate how many people want to reduce their
| contribution to landfill with old products and ecological
| demolition with new products.
| nottaylorswift wrote:
| I think you overestimate - wildly - how much people care
| about the environment. Further the idea that recycling as
| policy offsets pollution is a delusion. That issue needs to
| be solved by materials science before even the design phase,
| not after the fact do good mitigation. It's a type of
| indoctrination; that's the purpose of recycling laws. If you
| follow them you're affirming voluntary compliance with
| government policy and that precedent makes you more agreeable
| to their continuing agenda. Doesn't make a bit of difference
| to the environment. It's a mind game. I've seen cargo ships
| pour metric tons of waste into the ocean as routine waste
| from industrial zones. The sheer size of the waste is almost
| unbelievable. Don't worry about the aluminum in your laptop
| and soda cans.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| This isn't about recycling, but REUSE, and extending the
| life of a computer instead of pulling another one out of
| the supply chain and all of the consequences which follow.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Sorry to jump in wildly here - but this reminds me of a
| similar attack on the idea where we shouldn't use "air
| cleaners" to reduce carbon emission already in our
| atmosphere.
|
| I get it, it's not a the only solution to a problem, but
| again - why not use this technology if the job it is
| designed to do helps, even enough to mitigate some other
| issues. Just because a solution does not address all 10
| parts of a problem, doesn't mean that you can't use that
| solution for 1/10 of the problem.
| paxys wrote:
| According to this logic the entire desktop computing segment
| shouldn't exist, yet it is a thriving ecosystem made up of
| thousands of vendors, millions of buyers and components at
| every possible price point. Meanwhile no one is buying a Mac
| Pro tower. Turns out people like choice and customizability. If
| I have the disposable income I'd rather replace my CPU/GPU
| every year and RAM every other year rather than the entire
| laptop every 5 years.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Desktop PC sales are in freefall and were stagnant years
| before that.
|
| Laptops nowadays are about ~2 years behind mainstream desktop
| platforms and are now capable of serving the needs of most
| gamers, video editors, and programmers. Consumers, prosumers,
| and businesses are increasingly are asking themselves why
| they should give up the flexibility of a laptop and dedicate
| valuable space to a traditional desktop setup. From the
| business perspective, laptops are also logistically easier to
| deploy.
|
| The biggest ways I've seen upgradability used is to deal with
| HDD failures, which are several times less likely than they
| were ten years prior. To deal with running oom, which is far
| less of an issue because swapping to SSD isn't as profound of
| a performance hit. To deal with running out of disk, which
| you can compensate for with cloud storage. To deal with
| running out of compute, which can be dealt with using cloud
| compute. It should also be said that an alternative to
| upgrading a component is to just sell the entire machine and
| get a new one, even if this might be less efficient, it's
| still an option.
|
| One might say "but aha - doesn't an upgradable laptop give
| you the best of both worlds?" but being honest a framework is
| not a better value or better performer for most users than a
| 8gb MBA even if you can slap in 32gb of memory and a 1tb
| drive into a framework for cheap. The integration of the MBA
| offers unique benefits when it comes to battery life and
| performance, and just the fact that TSMC n5 is only available
| on an integrated laptop is really a huge if artificial
| competitive edge for integrated laptops.
|
| I don't really see repairability coming back if I'm going to
| be honest, I see the laptop of the future being harder to
| repair not easier.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| On the other hand, every college student ever needs a computer
| in order to do their school work. College students and new
| grads with a ton of student debt are not exactly demographics
| that can afford to drop several thousands of dollars on new
| laptops each time they break or become too slow.
| zepto wrote:
| I'm using a 7 year old Mac for software development and it's
| not 'too slow'. Cheap computers are readily available on the
| used market.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Software development, in general, doesn't require much
| resources. You're just editing text most of the time. Most
| of my development is done remotely via a Raspberry Pi.
|
| But that also depends on the development you're doing.
| There's a night and day difference between compiling Rust
| projects on my 2015 MBP versus the Ryzen desktop I just
| built. Same thing goes for development that requires VMs or
| modern IDEs. Sure, I can run a single VM on an old MBP, but
| I can't run much else. I can run a modern IDE, but it will
| be slow and I won't be able to open more than one browser
| tab at the same time.
|
| Students in certain fields also rely on heavy applications
| to do CAD, special effects, 3D modeling/rendering, graphic
| design, video and photo editing, etc. It would be a shame
| for them to have to buy additional machines because the
| ones they already own have 4/8GB of soldered memory and
| they need 2 to 4 times that, or because their processors
| are too slow or don't have enough cores. The Framework
| laptop would allow them to upgrade their memory and CPU
| without having to buy a whole other machine.
| felistoria wrote:
| Yeah, I daily drive a 6 year old Macbook Pro and it feels
| just as fast as when I first got it. I'm sure you can pick
| one up on eBay for a few hundred bucks.
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