[reissbaker]

Personally I've been a huge fan of my Framework 13, and am planning at some point to swap out the mainboard with the new one they released — it's pretty nice that you can do that (and they sell a desktop case to put the old mainboard in, so you end up with a faster laptop and a spare desktop afterwards!).

Battery life is the main downside, although it doesn't bother me too much — running manufacturer-supported Linux is very nice and worth having to charge more frequently. It uses USB-C anyway, so it's just one cable for all my devices — doesn't feel like that big of a deal.

[filmgirlcw]

Yeah, I love Framework (disclosure, I invested in their community funding round) and I pre-ordered the desktop and have strongly considered upgrading my Intel laptop of theirs to an AMD mainboard (or just getting a whole new unit since I'll have to get new RAM and would like the higher DPI screen) and compared to other Windows or Linux options right now, I think they are pretty strong for thin and light HOWEVER I would be a liar if I said I think it can compare to a MacBook Air right now.

Which to be honest, is fine -- plenty of people want something different from a MacBook Air, whether it is the ability to run Windows or Linux without compromises (tho VMs on Apple silicon are pretty good, it's not going to be ideal for everyone), the ability to upgrade storage, or just wanting repairability.

But the battery life on a MBA is not something Framework or any of the Windows laptops can compete with right now. I thought we might get there with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips last year -- and maybe the next iteration will (and ARM64 chips have their own trade-offs for Windows and Linux (whereas if you're committed to Mac, those trade-offs don't exist anymore)) -- but right now, unfortunately, Mac is where it is at for the true all-day performance and battery place.

Even there, however, I would specify that it is the MacBook Airs that have the best battery life. My 16" M4 Pro with 48GB of RAM has great battery too -- don't get me wrong. But my original 14" M1 Max and the 14" M3 Max I replaced it with both have exceptional battery life for what they can do, but I can definitely drain that battery in under 5 hours if I'm working on it hard enough. Whereas the Air just lasts and lasts and lasts.

[reissbaker]

I would love better battery life, but personally, running manufacturer-supported Linux is worth the tradeoff: every Linux tool I'd run in production works for every program on my laptop (no need to set up VMs, and even then, the Linux tools can't work with or inspect what's running on the macOS host...); containers run at full, native performance; games on Steam work much better than macOS (it's literally just a bigger, better Steam Deck!); plus the niceties of upgradeability.

If I usually worked from cafes, or spent many hours a day working on planes or trains, all-day battery life would be at the top of my list. But I usually work in workspaces that have power, so... It would definitely be nice to have better battery life, but other features are higher priority for me.

[_factor]

I would love it if they made it easy to split 16x PCI-e 5 16x/8x/4x slots into gen3 or gen4 breakouts.

The chips may not have the lanes, but they have the bandwidth if only 10GbE / 4xm.2 / storage controllers could plug in. I wonder if power is an issue.