Tech enthusiasts don’t understand what budget hardware means.
Touchscreen, budget? I suspect we have different ideas of what a budget machine is. Doubt I will be buying but best of luck to them anyway.
Several manufacturers make budget laptops with touchscreens. For what reason? People are fucking dumb. My gf sadly has one of those. A shitty intel i3 laptop with a touchscreen. Completely hardware malnourished but hey you got a touchscreen.
What is wrong with an i3? As long as you are paying i3 prices there is nothing wrong with that.
Nothing really. It’s just that you could probably get an i5 withput touchscreen for the same price.
Well it depends on the price of the laptop. My partner has ryzen 3 and touchscreen although she didn’t care for it having touchscreen. Mostly because it was reduced by a huge amount though, its regular price would not have been worth it.
I don’t think she got it discounted. I just dislike touchscreens on lower spec machines exactly because they reduce the actual value of the device as it tends tp then have worse internals to accomodate the touchscreen and thus is less likely to last longer.
It was discounted, it had been much more expensive in the past and they were selling off the last of them. It was out of stock shortly after.
I would love to have a color epaper display option on a machine like this.
Epaper refresh rates are utter shit, it’s a cool idea but not practical except for in bespoke devices like the remarkable
It would be very useful to people who don’t consume multimedia, especially writers and certain types of hobbyists and office workers.
Having such niche features available as modules is a big part of the value proposition Framework provides.
If they can make a decent 2-in-1 in the $500 range, it would be massive. It doesn’t really need great specs, the major issue with these laptops are build quality and battery life.
I really doubt they will.
The thing to note about Framework laptops is the “starting price” is literally just the system board, the screen, standard American keyboard, and the laptop body. You have to add your own RAM, SSD, all the expansion cards, a charger, and a Windows license (if you don’t use Linux). There’s a reason why the starting cost for a Ryzen 13 is $750 and a “pre-configured” system is $1100.
Sure they’ll save some money from using a plastic body instead of an aluminum one, but that’s not the bulk of the cost, assuming they’re still committed to using the same system board form factor as the 13 & 16. I’d consider it a win if they get a fully configured 12 for sub-$800.
Also Trump’s tariffs have to be factored in for US buyers.
If it costs under $700 I would consider it :3
I have been waiting for something like this from framework for ages now, super pumped to order one.
Specs are a bit disappointing, so here’s hoping it gets a bit beefier cpu option in the future
the model clearly was designed around to cut coat corners and imo, meant to partially replace their chromebook line. using the older 13th gen cpu, ontop of having features like a kensington lock makes it sound like its the cheap option for school leasing.
I dont need much in a laptop, it would be replacing my Lenovo x220t thats really starting to show its age now. So even a 13th gen is a vast improvement, I was just hoping for a more efficient chip for battery life, or a higher performing one so it’ll last as long as possible, since I try to keep hardware for as long as possible
I’m using an asus e200ha, which is basically a Chromebook from 2016 but without chromeos, or whatever it’s called. It barely works, has 32 gb of emmc storage (that’s right, as much storage as mid-tier computers have RAM). I’ve been ready for an upgrade for years.
What’s wild, is it’s actually been getting steadily faster and more useful as it gets older, because all the issues it had in it’s younger years are all getting fixed in the Linux kernel.
Please just give us physical mouse buttons as an option.
And a TrackPoint.
I had a touchscreen laptop for years and only used the screen if the touchpad was broken for some reason. a touchscreen is just not ergonomic in laptop form. the yoga-style screen should make it much more useful.
my use case would be for occasionally reading music on a music stand, and to run an audio mixer with a tablet style interface.
I dunno how people can knock the option. I can’t stand using a laptop without a touchscreen.
Quick interaction with small elements at distances across the screen? Absolutely I’m preferring poking the screen over the touchpad.
I would never drop the touchpad in favour of a touchscreen, but I feel it when the touchscreen is missing.
I think most people’s alternative to a touchsceen is a mouse, not the touchpad.
Sure, but what about when you use a laptop on your… Lap?
On a couch, bed, bus, plane, train, waiting room chair, etc.
I’m in the same boat, but it is worth mentioning that the screen folds back on itself. It can be used as a tablet and has stylus support.
That’s what they meant by “yoga-style screen”.
Their website has over an hour wait time. If the price is good this laptop could be big. I hope it keeps the good Linux compatibility their other ones have.
All of the models ship with various options for OS:
- None
- Fedora, Mint, or a couple other Linux distros
- W11
So given they all list a few different distros as an official option, and each product page has a Linux tab, I think it’s a safe bet
Thats actually solid, id have bought this over my current tablet if its around 500$ No good convertible touch screen options below 1k. You can maybe put linux on a tablet with a keyboard case but thats pretty jank compared to this.
Nits could be higher, prob fine for indoor use tho, any lower than 400 max is rough in bright environments.
Bought a second hand surface pro 8 and put fedore on it. It is very good.
I do like 2-in-1 laptops, but I’ve had a pretty rough experience using them with Linux. Automatic screen rotation, deactivating the physical keyboard in tablet mode, summoning/dismissing the on-screen keyboard have all been pretty challenging in various distros I’ve tried. Looking forward to reviews of this – I’m hopeful these sorts of things won’t be a problem with non-proprietary hardware!
Framework laptops are built with the intention of Linux being a first-class citizen. They work directly with distro maintainers to ensure compatibility. There’s even a Framework-specific image for Bazzite.
That’s great but can you ship to some more countries or stop actively blocking freight forwarding 😑
Honestly, I hate touchscreen laptops and two-in-one devices. I wonder if I can just turn off the touch capability of this display.
I like the fact that you can use it as a drawing tablet. But I’ve never understood why anyone would want to touch screen laptop. Microsoft has already proven people don’t want that, get companies still make them.
It’s more convenient than dragging a cursor across the screen. Works especially great with a 360° hinge.
Framework isn’t sharing any idea of pricing today, beyond that it will be “lower cost” compared to the Framework Laptop 13, which typically starts at around $750 for a DIY model with previous-gen chips or $1,100 for a prebuilt with the latest ones.
I really hope they can get the price low. I briefly looked at Framework in the fall, but I couldn’t justify the price.
You can only justify over the long run. If you use it as intended, to easily repair and upgrade, it should end up cheaper in the end.
