[Leimi]

This is starting to be a really interesting choice compared to sticking to thinkpads.

The dream would be to have 6 expansion cards in the laptop 13. 4 really is a bummer for a work laptop, it's definitely not enough for me… And while you can easily carry other expansion cards and switch at will, it's kinda like carrying adapters, you easily forget them.

[bleep_bloop]

Are there any 13" laptops on the market with more than 4 ports? None that come to my mind. My macbook air has only 2 x USB C and I've never come across a situation where I needed more. For a 13" 4 ports is more than most people require and it wouldn't make sense for a small start up to only target extremely niche use cases.

[causi]

My ten inch Win Max 2 has 2x USB-C, 3x USB-A, HDMI, headphone jack, a full size SD card slot and a microSD slot, a 2280 m.2 slot and a 2230 m.2 slot.

Demand better of your manufacturers.

[ris58h]

Why should I demand if I don't use them?

[causi]

If you don't, you shouldn't. But then why want a Framework?

[JoshTriplett]

The X1 Carbon has two USB-C, two USB-A, a full-sized HDMI, and a headphone jack.

I don't personally feel like the framework 13 needs more than 4 expansion bays, but I'd love to see expansion cards that use Thunderbolt to offer (for instance) two USB-C ports, or a USB-C and a USB-A. (There are some experimental unofficial ones attempting this.)

If those were available, my four expansion bays would be one Ethernet, one HDMI, and two 2-USB port cards.

[kmeisthax]

There's been discussion of multi-port cards for a while. The main problem is how many different things you can shove on top of USB-C:

- USB 2/3

- Power delivery

- DisplayPort[0]

- PCI Express

- Analog audio

- USB4

You need some kind of chip that can negotiate two ports' worth of that nonsense and appropriately multiplex them into the correct set of altmodes on the interior port. Some of them have readily available and widely implemented hub silicon. Some of them require cursed nonsense like DisplayPort MST[1]. Some of them don't even have a hub mechanism - what do you do if someone plugs in two analog audio dongles? Mix the signals together?

Furthermore, as far as I'm aware such a "miracle dongle" chip does not exist. If it did, it very much would not fit inside the tiny footprint that a Framework expansion card does. One key thing to note is that because USB-C is reversible, all the high-speed data modes need a mux chip per port. So even a simple USB3 hub card with no power delivery or altmode support is going to need either several support chips or hideously expensive-to-design Framework silicon.

As it currently stands the state of multi-port USB-C dongles is absolutely terrible. Just... go to your local Best Buy, and look at the terrible compatibility of the multi-port dongles in the Apple section.

[0] There used to be an HDMI altmode, nobody uses it. All HDMI-to-USB-C dongles on the market are actually HDMI-to-DisplayPort-to-USB-C dongles.

I'm not mentioning the really cursed altmodes like MyDP (Nintendo Switch dock) or VirtualLink (VR headsets). That last one violates spec by reusing the USB 2 pins, necessitating the existence of bespoke 2-to-3 silicon that only people who hate USB 2 audio noise bother with.

[1] I didn't understand why Apple banned MST until I had to use it:

I have a triple monitor setup that needs to go over two optical cables to my computer in another room. The first MST hub I tried would hang Windows for so long I triggered some kind of display detection failsafe that bluescreens the kernel. The second one (an older standard) worked decently, except it wouldn't pass through EDID for one of my monitors. I worked around that with custom resolutions, which stopped working last September in a really weird way. If I connect all three monitors through the MST hub, the GPU cursor overlay refuses to move onto any monitor behind the hub. And that's only with the combination of MST + custom resolutions: if I only have one monitor on it's fine, if I give the other monitor a third cable it's fine.

[nrp]

Thanks for this super detailed and correct response! We are holding our hope that the miracle chip will appear some day to make it possible.

In the meantime, we have seen a community member start developing a Dual USB-C Expansion Card that offers only USB 3.2 functionality without USB-PD. That’s not a card we will build at Framework, so it is awesome to see it coming from the community.

[JoshTriplett]

A USB-C plus USB-A expansion card would only need to support any of those on USB-C. That'd be substantially simpler.

[kmeisthax]

So, there isn't enough internal volume to fit an A and C port in the same slot. Ports require more volume than they appear. But I'll interpret this to mean: "why can't we have one USB-C port with all the altmodes and another with just USB 2 or 3, no altmodes, no power/data role swaps, etc".

USB 2 is possible, for some really dumb reasons. USB-IF actually prohibits repurposing the USB 2 pins for other purposes in USB 3.x capable connectors; effectively making it a separate bus from everything else. So you can route the USB2 pins on both C connectors to a hub chip and route everything else from the "privileged" port to the inner port. You will still need some kind of power mux so that the USB 2 port still gets power regardless of what port holds the power role.

This technically breaks the USB-IF rules[1] because you aren't supposed to disassociate the USB2 and 3.x pins like that. In practice as long as every device sees either just 2.0 or both 2.0 and 3.x pins, it's fine.

USB 3 onwards is a problem because of altmodes. The 3.x pins are officially referred to as "high-speed lanes" in the USB-C spec, because there's two of them and they don't have to carry USB 3.x. Every altmode[0] exclusively repurposes the high-speed lanes for some other kind of traffic. So USB 3 is effectively an altmode in and of itself. If you put a USB3 hub on those pins, then you lose altmodes, unless you have that magic hub silicon that doesn't exist that I mentioned in the parent comment.

[0] The USB2 lanes are forbidden to be reused by altmodes. Which is why VirtualLink is incredibly cursed.

[1] Yes I actually have mentioned this sort of thing in the Framework forums, no they won't actually sell a card like that. Consider it an EE exercise for curious Framework users.

[JoshTriplett]

Thank you for the detailed comment!

You'd definitely need a smart hub chip, yeah. But I don't think you need all the altmodes. No analog audio, for instance. Primarily Thunderbolt, and power.

I'm interested in the volume question; what makes USB-A and USB-C unable to both physically fit in the space no matter how creative you get?

[codedokode]

The manufacturers do everything wrong. Why not add 10 ports to every laptop? Are USB-A sockets so expensive?

It surprises me especially that MacBooks seem to be targeted at professionals, like creators and creators always have lot of stuff with USB plugs - like MIDI keyboards, MIDI controllers, external audio interfaces, mouse, drawing tablet, external hard drives - but MacBook only has like 3 sockets, despite being super expensive.

[horsawlarway]

> Are USB-A sockets so expensive?

I mean... objectively speaking here: yes.

They eat up a ridiculously large amount of physical space. Ports are cheap when space is cheap. Space is at a very high premium for laptops.

The port doesn't just magically disappear into the machine, it eats up that entire chunk of the laptop. Space which could be going to mainboard / speakers / hid / battery.

So modern laptops give you a very high bandwidth and low physical size bus (thunderbolt/usb-c) and a duplicate so you can charge at the same time and that's really all you need. Now I get the best laptop for the space the case takes up and the option to plug all that other stuff in is still there. The bus is plenty fast, you just need an adapter or dock.

I have a 4 usb-c port machine. I've never had all 4 ports in use at the same time. I have (just counting plugs on my hub) 9 usb devices and 2 4k monitors plugged into my machine. Switching them over from work to personal laptop is as simple as unplugging and replugging a usb-c cable. Feels fine to me.

[bityard]

That's how you sell $300 thunderbolt docks!

[Leimi]

thinkpad x13, hp 835 g9, dell latitude… and if you go for a 14" laptop, connectivity is even better while still having a small device.

I'm not sure more than 4 ports is _extremely_ niche use case especially for a work device, but yeah I get that most people would be okay with it and I understand Framework's choice.

[planede]

I have an Acer travelmate spin b3, which is a 11" convertible laptop.

Left side: * barrel jack charging port * HDMI * microSD slot * USB-C (also usable for charging) * Gigabit ethernet

Right side: * USB-A * 3.5mm jack

Even discounting the microSD slot and the barrel jack, this is 5 ports. On a 11" laptop.

Granted, it's not exactly thin, but I really don't care.

[Uvix]

And the 13” Framework has a 3.5mm jack in addition to the four expansion cards, meaning the two are neck-and-neck.

Maybe the Framework could have squeezed in some more ports if they weren’t customizable, but I prefer the flexibility.

[henearkr]

On the Framework laptop 13, the 3.5mm jack is built-in (not an expansion card).

[goosedragons]

4 ports total or 4 USB C ports? A ThinkPad X13 has two USB C, two USB A and an HDMI port. Not that hard to use all of them without a hub. One USB C for power, USB A for keyboard/mouse, HDMI for monitor and the other USB C for external SSD.

[cduzz]

In the distant past I was of the "need more ports" camp, but with the advent of USB C hubs that have power pass through. One thing to plug into the computer. They're cheap enough that I've got one at my "normal" workstation area (with an external keyboard, printer, external monitor, printer, power supply, and wired ethernet) and another in my laptop bag that's got basically the same.

I've had lots of experiences of a laptop festooned with nubs getting caught / smashed in such a way (from normal in/out of the bag or being put down hard on an end) that the plastic shells or cables get destroyed and I have to fish bits of usb jack out of the laptop.

After a decade (it feels like, anyhow) the USB-C promise seems real.

(edited to add power supply to list of things on the "home" usb hub)

[jamespo]

Wired mouse & keyboard? No thanks, or if you do much nicer to have them plugged into a usb c screen.

[kuschku]

My T470 has on the left side:

1x charging port, 1x Thunderbolt/USB-C, 1x USB-A

And on the right side:

2x USB-A, SD-Card reader HDMI, headphone/microphone jack.

On a 14" laptop.

[t344344]

It is not a laptop, but Asus PN53 has 1kg with 7 USB port, 2x2.5 Gb ethernet, 4x4k@60Hz displays, 64GB RAM and 3xSSD. I use it as a docking station while traveling.

[asymmetric]

For me the main difference (and comparative advantage of ThinkPads) is the extended, on-site warranty options.

For a work laptop, I can't wait for a replacement part to arrive from who knows where, I need a technician next day at my place.

[tbrock]

I want framework to succeed and they are targeting folks who want sleek and customizable computers (which they’ve nailed) but compared to a thinkpad the build quality isn’t great.

[imiric]

To be fair, ThinkPad quality from Lenovo doesn't come close to what it was when IBM was making them. I've had everything from screen backlight bleed, to coil whine, to recently, key caps popping off and switches breaking. This is on top-of-the-line models. At the end of the day, it's just plastic. Nice plastic, but plastic, nonetheless.

After decades of sticking exclusively to ThinkPads, these new Frameworks look very appealing. I'm not expecting Apple-like build quality, but the customization and repairability is unparalleled in the market. I'm willing to give up the TrackPoint and nice keyboard for that (pretty much the only reasons I stuck with ThinkPads for so long), and I'm almost certain there will be a TrackPoint module somewhere down the line.

[ChuckNorris89]

>doesn't come close to what it was when IBM was making them

Sure, but laptops back then were also massively thicker and heavier so engineers had more freedom and less restrictions from the design/marketing team.

Nobody would buy a laptop with that bulk and heft today unless we're talking about these mobile workstation laptops with Xeon CPUs and Quadro GPUs.

[rjh29]

Same here, both X1 Carbon and T14s have had keyboard problems after 3 years or so, yet they keep making them thinner and worse to use. Lenovo seem determined to destroy the ThinkPad's best feature.

[buildfocus]

Disagree. I switched to Framework from a Thinkpad X1, I've actually been very impressed by the quality - feels super sturdy, keyboard is a significant improvement, it's great.

[mhb]

Thinkpad X1 == low bar for keyboard and trackpoint

[rvense]

I wish there was a single module with two USB-A ports, but I don't think they're wide enough.

[bleep_bloop]

That would be an extremely niche use case. Can't imagine any scenario needing more than 2-3 x USB A ports outdoors. In any case it would make much more sense to use a dock.

[speed_spread]

Niche? One for the keyboard, one for the mouse. That's a normal computer, if you believe wires are better than Bluetooth.

[justeleblanc]

We're talking about a laptop. What's the point of a laptop if you're just going to make it into an underpowered desktop?

And it's not like mouses and keyboards need a 4Gbps connection to the host. Plug them into a tiny hub. You're already lugging a keyboard and mouse around, why not a hub too?

[rvense]

I don't lug a keyboard and mouse around, but I'm very happy happy to have three ports on my Thinkpad. There are lots of other things to plug in - MIDI controllers, audio interfaces, macropads, microcontroller dev boards and debuggers, cameras and other capture devices. It depends on what you do with your computer.

[vidarh]

My laptop is "an underpowered desktop" 90% of the time, but it saves me from having a second machine the remaining part of the time.

But I agree regarding ports - at home my mouse and keyboard are plugged into a cheap KVM switch, so I still need only one USB port on the laptop; If I needed to lug them with me I'd certainly just bring a hub too.