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The new and upgraded Framework Laptop

(community.frame.work)
1680 points etbusch | 7 comments | 19 May 22 12:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.604s | source | bottom
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doyougnu ◴[19 May 22 17:07 UTC] No.31437263[source]▶
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.

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nikodunk ◴[19 May 22 17:39 UTC] No.31437716[source]▶
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.

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1. 0x38B ◴[20 May 22 03:22 UTC] No.31443002[source]▶
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.

1: https://community.frame.work/t/exploring-the-embedded-contro...

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2. XorNot ◴[20 May 22 07:26 UTC] No.31444350[source]▶
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.
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3. bipson ◴[20 May 22 07:51 UTC] No.31444522[source]▶
LiIon batteries apparently benefit a lot from not never being at 100% and 0%.

I think there is a reason why car manufacturers over-provision (i.e. the better designed electric vehicles never charge to real 100 %)

4. tashbarg ◴[20 May 22 11:58 UTC] No.31446137[source]▶
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.
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5. tashbarg ◴[20 May 22 12:05 UTC] No.31446193[source]▶
Source: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...

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.

6. pradn ◴[20 May 22 13:09 UTC] No.31446897[source]▶
I’m curious: why do you set the max battery percentage?
7. moondev ◴[20 May 22 15:10 UTC] No.31448532[source]▶
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.