[levitate]

Framework's modular design has been advertised as a solution to upgradability, which is huge, but I see the real strength in being able to have a GPU plugged in when I'm using my laptop at home, and swapping it out for an extra battery when I'm using my laptop away from an outlet.

Being able to transform the capabilities of the laptop based on your situation is a huge game changer.

[sschueller]

I find that hilarious because we did that back in the day on laptops that let you put batteries in instead of a cd or floppy drive.

Then Apple happened and ever laptop maker only saw the cash, abondend what users needed and wanted to copy what Apple was peddling including making parts on replacable.

Now after waisting all these resources on form over function even Apple has started to go back to function (at least a tiny bit).

[ChuckNorris89]

>Then Apple happened

As much as I dislike Apple's anti-repair and anti-upgrade practices, they're hardly to blame for this. They only gave consumers what they wanted, and consumer collectively voted for their wallets for sexyer, slimmer and lighter notebooks at the expense of repairability and upgradability, regardless of who made them, Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Asus etc.

Consumers are a lot more likely to prioritize "hey look, my laptop fits inside a Manila Envelope" rather than "hey look, I can unscrew and replace/repair all these components in my laptop if something breaks".

Now the entire consumer electronics industry has conditioned consumers that whenever their laptop breaks they just take it to a "genius" bar where some dude who doesn't have any electronics repair knowledge (because that would be too expensive), takes a look at your laptop and says "sorry mate, looks like it's fucked and you're gonna need a new motherboard replacement for 800$", when in fact it can be fixed for 50$ in a 10 minute soldering job by a technician who actually knows electronics but is either retired or out of work because his job was offshored to China and we don't repair things anymore we just throw them in the landfill "because we're that wealthy and stuff made in China is that cheap".

Hopefully right to repair laws, stricter environmental rules and trade tariffs, will put an end to this consumerist throwaway madness that just jack up corporate profits at the expense of everything else, even if that means that MacBook Airs will have to be 1.5mm thinker.

[LightHugger]

"They only gave consumers what they wanted"

This is a complete myth and not how consumer economics works.

[throw9away6]

Sub 4lb laptops were a game changer. It was worth paying the premium for them and many consumers did

[ChuckNorris89]

Then please enlighten us how it works.

[sneak]

> Then Apple happened and ever laptop maker only saw the cash, abondend what users needed

99% of users don't need a powerful discrete GPU or an extended battery, as evidenced by the Macbook Air (the base, sub-$1k model) being Apple's bestselling computer by far.

[nordsieck]

> 99% of users don't need a powerful discrete GPU or an extended battery, as evidenced by the Macbook Air (the base, sub-$1k model) being Apple's bestselling computer by far.

To be fair to Apple, the m1 air has an absurdly good battery life.

[sneak]

The intel Macbook Air was Apple's best selling computer even before their switch to ARM.

[dabluecaboose]

In fairness as well, Apple's laptop battery life is top notch. So paradoxically it could be said that proves people do need more battery

[joe5150]

If we're really being fair, the vast majority of people buy cheap laptops with poor battery life and even poorer everything else.

[kaliqt]

Let's be honest... That's a new thing. Laptops have sucked for a long time prior.

[etse]

PowerBook G3 had expansion ports, too. Maybe it was the 1-inch thick titanium powerbook g4 that changed the game.

[brookst]

This is a really strange take on how product development works.

If Apple came out with something that users did not want, and other manufacturers were still shipping what users wanted, why would anyone have ever bought Apple products?

And even in the Windows PC market, if users really want modular batteries, wouldn't you have been the last manufacturer to move away from them? If you're Acer, and Dell / HP / Lenovo are shipping products users don't want, wouldn't you clean up by continuing to ship what users want?

I think you should be more upset that users want the wrong thing (from your perspective). Product design, especially in competitive markets, is all about differentiating by better meeting user needs. This tinfoil idea that users are sheep who are tricked into buying what they don't want is not realistic.

[nine_k]

There is no single user with a single taste. While some users sincerely like the razor-thin, flat-keyed macbook airs with their mirror-finish retina screens. Some others, like me, strongly prefer the bulky, perfectly user-serviceable Thinkpad T series laptops, with their superior keyboards and matte screens. Some other users love their tiny 12" mini-laptops. There are customers who consciously choose Alienware gaming laptops, or Thoughbooks.

What Apple make is always partly a fashion accessory though. Many wanted macbooks for the reason that they look cool, even though the hard edges are manifestly uncomfortable while typing. Some laptop producers made devices with similar aesthetics, again because it was a fashion statement, not because cardboard-thin laptops are more comfortable to carry around, or are functionally superior.

[brookst]

I think you may be misunderstanding the motivations of people who have different priorities than you.

[nine_k]

I mostly am trying to say that there are different priorities. Looking cool is a valid priority for some, and I'm not going to devalue it. Compactness and light weight is also very important for a lot of people. This is on top of some very impressive engineering that Apple put into their machines.

[AceJohnny2]

My first "real" laptop was a beast of a Dell workstation-class laptop in 2005. One of its key features for me was being able to swap out the CD drive for an extra battery.

Of course, by modern standards the thing weighed a ton. These days, my 15" MBP feels like a brick in my bike bag, and it's likely 30-50% lighter!

(Oh and fun fact: recently I wanted to test out Moore's Law, and see how the RasPi 4 compared to that Core Duo laptop (that I still have!) Well, the 18y-old laptop still handily beat out the RasPi4 in single-CPU performance! Moore's law can't quite make up for opposite market segments)

[majormajor]

Yeah, this used to be pretty common.

Through the 90s laptops came with expansion cards and often swappable bays. Even late-90s Mac laptops had two bays that you could swap batteries, DVD/CD/floppy drives into and out of, plus a PC Card slot that could take things like TV video capture cards or Wifi adapters.

I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to make external video cards practical (plus... it would require a separate monitor, I guess), though.

They all went away in the quest for lightweight size and capacity... especially as more things got built in.

[znpy]

> I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to make external video cards practical (plus... it would require a separate monitor, I guess), though.

PCMCIA surely not, but express card most likely.

I remember some mods installing an external GPU onto the mythical ThinkPad X220 by means of a bridge card that would fit in the express card slot and would allow a full pci-express to be connected. See: https://artemis.sh/2021/08/04/eGPU-on-thinkpad-x220.html

[toast0]

> I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to make external video cards practical (plus... it would require a separate monitor, I guess), though.

Original PCMCIA was 16-bit ISA (not sure the speed), CardBus was 32-bit, 33Mhz PCI with DMA and whatnot. Certainly there were many video cards on 16-bit ISA, but I wouldn't think you'd want to stuff one into a PCMCIA slot, maybe a hercules card so you could do monochrome/color multi-monitor; but multimonitor didn't really come into popularity until windows 98 and 2000 on the NT side; advanced graphics card back then were AGP, but some were released as 32-bit PCI as well; they almost certainly wouldn't have been able to be compacted to fit in the slot, but you could probably have a cardbus -> pci slot adapter and some ugly thing. A quick search doesn't find any, but I'd expect something to exist as a development tool.

[acomjean]

PCMCIA

I remember those slightly larger than a credit card (and thicker).

I had 2, and IBM one which had a eithernet and modem on it (and a really fun sparkly label). and a scsi one for a zip drive (they had parallel port zip drives... but)

[dabluecaboose]

I had one I got at the Spy Museum in DC that was a little compartment! In high school I used to keep a $20 bill in there in case I wanted to do something with my friends that cost money

[kitsunesoba]

I have a 2008 Dell workstation laptop (M4400) that had the swappable bays feature that I bought used around 2012 and used as my primary machine for several years (which as an aside, worked so, so much better than buying a brand new machine for the same price would've).

In my case I swapped the optical bay for a SATA bay which enabled quick swapping of SATA drives. For my usage at that point in time that ability was very handy… perfectly possible with an external USB gadget of course, but it was nice to have that without the cables and gadget. Most of the time that bay held a large HDD for "cold" storage, allowing the primary SATA slot to be filled with a fast 256GB SSD.

[thx-2718]

"(Oh and fun fact: recently I wanted to test out Moore's Law, and see how the RasPi 4 compared to that Core Duo laptop (that I still have!) Well, the 18y-old laptop still handily beat out the RasPi4 in single-CPU performance! Moore's law can't quite make up for opposite market segments)"

shouldn't power consumption also be a factor in comparing performance?

I would think an ARM would use less wattage than a Core 2 Duo.

[AceJohnny2]

Certainly, in a MIPS/W or MIPS/$, the RasPi beats the pants off the old laptop (Edit: which I now remember was a Dell Precision M65, which specs say weighed 2.81kg (6.2lb) (likely without extra battery), whereas my current MBP M1 Pro is 1.6 kg (3.5 lbs) so more than half as heavy!)

But I had the mistaken assumption that 15+ years of Moore's Law would certainly leave the old laptop in the dust, in the same way that "modern smartphone more powerful than an old supercomputer". It was interesting to be corrected!

[danShumway]

How hard is that to do? I know Frameworks are repairable, but you can really do a swap like that completely on the fly?

Honestly, this comment is a somewhat decent sales hook for me; I've been thinking about getting a Framework for my next laptop whenever the current one I use really starts to fail (depending on how their AMD stuff works out), and this comment makes me more curious to look into them.

[nrp]

Swapping an Expansion Bay Module like an discrete GPU will take ~2-3 minutes:

1. Shut down

2. Slide out the input modules covering the Expansion Bay connector, and open the cover door.

3. Unscrew three or four captive fasteners to remove the Fan Cable or GPU Cable.

4. Unscrew two captive fasteners to release the Expansion Bay Module.

5. Slide out the Expansion Bay Module.

6. Reverse the steps with the new module.

It's not something we specifically designed to happen on the fly like swapping Expansion Cards or Input Modules, but it is quick enough that you don't have to plan ahead for it.

[danShumway]

Thanks for the reply/clarification.

This kind of direct response from an owner is also somewhat of a selling point that makes me more interested Framework laptops. :)

> on the fly like swapping Expansion Cards or Input Modules

I knew that Framework was doing input modules, but I didn't realize that stuff like input modules would be hot-swappable. That's pretty cool to see in action.

I'm sure it's not something that there are any current plans to do, and I'm sure it's not possible to talk about even if there were plans, but just as a side-note: seeing the keyboard on the fly get replaced like that -- if there was a way to get a digitizer/screen with good stylus support to be thin enough be used as a keyboard replacement, I could easily see that module turning the 16 inch Framework into not just a laptop but also a replacement for my travel drawing tablet (especially knowing that I can stick a GPU on the back).

[stavros]

I don't know about the GPU, but in general, you unscrew five screws, lift up the magnetic lid/keyboard, and you have access to all the internals. I imagine that swapping the GPU is as easy as undoing one more screw.

Removing the battery is a cable and a few screws, for example. Everything is very accessible.

[alpaca128]

From what I've seen the GPU add-on is not an internal component (within the laptop's case) but similar to swappable batteries on oldschool laptops, slotted into a port on the back. It makes the laptop larger just like extra large batteries on Thinkpads.

[stronglikedan]

Hopefully they use some crazy hard screws so the heads don't strip with repeated use. (I don't know much about Framework... yet)

[stavros]

No, they're built to unscrew easily, and they're captive, so you can't even lose them.

[pimterry]

I don't think anybody outside Framework knows for sure yet (maybe not even internally) but my impression from what they've shared so far is that the expansion bays are intended to be very easily swappable (external, a click & push like the expansion slots) but almost certainly not hot-swappable while the machine is powered on.

They do have some initial specs at https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay that somebody more knowledgeable than me might be able to glean some practical info from.

[danShumway]

Hot swapping would be amazing, but I wasn't really expecting that to be supported.

The images/videos I'm seeing linked in your reply and sibling replies are basically about as good as I would hope for, that it would be the equivalent of swapping out a battery, that it wouldn't require a screwdriver, and that the components wouldn't be so fragile that I couldn't carry them in a backpack or computer case. Definitely something I'll be paying more attention to.

If somehow it is hot-swappable then even better of course, but I'm assuming that wouldn't be the case.

[mfenniak]

It looks really easy in their product preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km3MVZ8HZeY

[pitaj]

I think we'll have to wait and see whether these are hot-pluggable.

[varispeed]

Interesting that nobody came with a concept of a desktop PC, but as a laptop (commercially) before.

Most like due to perceived niche, no standard format of laptop motherboards, not easy to buy laptop motherboard off the shelf.

Then also the technology was evolving, so manufacturers maybe didn't want to restrict themselves to the certain layout and way how components can be laid out and connected.

[ivan_gammel]

I would love to see an external monitor with embedded GPU/extra CPU etc that would serve as an extension to a laptop, tablet, phone or stick. If such devices were popular enough in remote-first offices, coworkings and hotels, it would be a game changer making computing more inclusive. Imagine having a $100 laptop with easily replaceable components that is transformed into $1500 workstation on demand.

[vel0city]

External Thunderbolt GPU enclosures exist and can behave as a dock. A friend has one at his place, I can just plop my own cheap laptop in and it gets a massively upgraded GPU, access to a few monitors, USB PD, a USB hub with all the peripherals plugged in, and wired networking.

Its not all built into the monitor, but IMO having the several hundred dollar GPU outside of the monitor gives really good flexibility. The dock isn't much larger than the GPU and a few hundred watt power supply which you'd need anyways.

The only thing really missing from that equation is the extra CPU power and it being integrated into the monitor. But having a powerful CPU that scales down to be power friendly when on the go seems easier than finding a powerful GPU that doesn't suck the battery dry just rendering a desktop and a browser window.

[acomjean]

Isn't that what "Display Link" usb monitors kinda are (without the powerful gpu and large screen real estate)

I've used a usb-> monitor adapter from time to time (with my own screen). The performance wasn't great, but its not bad and been more than usable for work and such.

with usb3 it should be better than the one I used.

https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/disp...

[ivan_gammel]

Well, the connector does not really matter, the key is the hardware at the extension. CPU+GPU+screen+network+camera+HDD with some software that you need only in workstation mode etc. The software could be sandboxed by the OS on your device, security of extra CPU and GPU is interesting, but probably solvable problem.

[zozbot234]

That's pretty much an all-in-one PC. E.g. an iMac, or a Surface Studio.

[ivan_gammel]

yes, if all components are present, it looks like an all-in-one PC. But again, I’m talking about an extension, where OS and your data belong to your portable device and run in trusted environment using extension resources when necessary.

[dijit]

I had the same idea before, its basically possible now if you pass through the SSD to a host computer.

I even thought about maybe having an external SSD module which you could swap out the SSD to a beast machine when you need it.

[ivan_gammel]

This solution will work even with good old HDD, but you need a whole host computer and you swap, not extend your hardware.

[usrusr]

Standing on the shoulders of giants is a pointless endeavor if the giants simply aren't there or if their abilities are too narrowly focused on the very hard problems.

Very fast (on a contemporary scale) mobile extension interfaces have come and gone before, but only PCIe in its USB-C and m.2 incarnations not only excels at high performance but also scales down nicely to things as pedestrian as plugging in a mouse or a non-exotic storage extension. PCMCIA for example was dead weight unless you happened to be one of the very few who had one of those super exotic cards. An unused lightning 4 slot? There can never be enough of those, the more the merrier. You might find yourself using it for things as simple as topping up your bike light battery when it's not running an external GPU.

[usrusr]

(eh, sorry for typing lightning when I meant thunderbolt)

[sh34r]

I strongly believe the tech just wasn’t there 10 years ago. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did to make a modular laptop, but making some ten billion smartphones (and the constant drive to make them ever thinner and smaller) made it so we can pack far more power into a smaller space.

Modularity and repairability is always going to lead to less space efficient designs. I will gladly concur that Apple and others have taken severe advantage of this in an excuse to push planned obsolescence, long after anyone cared about shaving another millimeter from a device. But there was absolutely a time where it just wasn’t feasible to make a laptop do what people wanted, at the desired price point, and also make it modular. Computer architecture’s all about tradeoffs and there just wasn’t a viable product on that part of the “efficient frontier.” Similar argument explains why gaming laptops were also a massive disappointment for so many years. There are conflicting requirements.

People also didn’t really care as much about right to repair, when hardware improvements made you want to upgrade every few years anyway, and we didn’t have such rapacious anti-consumer monopolies.

[jjice]

There was a short period where external GPUs that could connect to your laptop were kind of big a few years back. The never really took off though, and that was the only big component I saw that with.

[theWreckluse]

Any idea why they didn't take off?

[Jochim]

They often just don't justify the cost. The enclosures themselves are expensive, and there's a really rough performance hit, less than half the framerate of the same card connected via PCIe in some cases[0]. A decent gaming laptop probably costs about the same while having better performance[1].

They're not particularly portable either, so you'd be better off getting the gaming laptop, or building a desktop with a cheaper GPU for roughly the same price.

The size/power delivery of the enclosure can be a limiting factor as well, new GPUs have tended to be bigger and more power hungry, resulting in many enclosures just not being compatible with newer cards.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlYHPj-0DTE

[1] https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-thunderbo...`

[mschild]

Guess on my part, but likely cost.

The cheapest egpu case I could find is 300 Euros and that's just the case with an internal PSU. You still need to buy an incredibly expensive GPU to put into it.

So now you're spending probably 1k just for the laptop, plus 300 for the case and an additional, let say, 350-400 on the GPU. For that amount of money, most would probably look for good laptops that have an integrated one, buy a handheld, a console, or just don't want to spend that amount of money on it.

[jerf]

"Interesting that nobody came with a concept of a desktop PC, but as a laptop (commercially) before."

Oh, they did, it was just a niche market you needed to go looking for, because they were and still generally are expensive. I remember my father once brought home a laptop from work to evaluate whether or not they wanted to use it to do data collection in car certification tests. It was a hardened laptop, so the entire thing was made out of sheet metal. I think you could literally run it over with a car and it would be fine. The most noticeable feature was that it featured 4 ISA expansion ports and the volume necessary to contain the cards. I think it was a 486/100 or so. They called these "luggables", but, yes, technically it fit on my lap. I wouldn't guarantee it would fit on everyone's lap, though; I'm quite tall. It was ~$8,000 in ~1995 dollars, and I'm pretty sure I had a Pentium 233MHz by then, and I was never cutting edge on that stuff, was always scrounging around. So, very expensive.

This sort of thing has been available for a while, you just had to go looking for them. A lot of advancements combine to make something like Framework possible, such as the fact that any such testing platform today would have all of its data gathering gear as a combination of USB at worst, bluetooth or wifi quite possible, and software driving the rest, leaving nowadays a GPU as just about the only thing you might want to wire to a laptop at such speeds, so the market has toned down.

A couple of years ago it lived on in the gamer laptop space where, at the very top end, the laptops are basically just desktops jammed into a luggable laptop shell with desktop GPUs in them. You paid through the nose for these things, though you did recover a bit of the price on the grounds that you were using off-the-shelf desktop parts and not paying the mobile premium. I'm qualifying that with "a couple of years ago" because I haven't looked since then, and the external GPU enclosures are getting steadily more practical and well-supported and I expect that will probably eat that market. Hauling around two bits of kit is nominally worse than one, but an external GPU enclosure can have such massively better cooling than trying to jam it in a case with everything else that it will probably be able to perform even better and at this level performance is everything.