The Framework Expansion card essentially is an USB-C adapter but with the form factor of a framework extension card.
I personally don't find the card very appealing. I thought Ethernet ports in thin laptops are a solved problem.
I personally don't find the card very appealing. I thought Ethernet ports in thin laptops are a solved problem.
In that case, an expansion slot sounds nice.
I'd much rather have more battery volume inside the computer with all the USB-C ports directly exposed and then have the option to carry around a USB-C dongle with the extra ports I might need.
Hiding a USB-C hub inside a laptop and calling it "modularity" seems pretty silly.
Maybe if that hub connected to some kind of riser card PCI-E interface and was replaceable I'd take this modularity claim more seriously. At least then I'd be able to replace the whole contraption with NVMe slots, a GPU, 10GigE, etc.
Well congrats, it is connected to PCIe because it's thunderbolt, and there's no hub to need to replace because it has a direct line to the CPU (you can replace the main board if you want).
https://d3t0tbmlie281e.cloudfront.net/igi/framework/t5KLkw4x...
I'd rather either have a bank of ports that can be removed as one module and replaced with a single large component or just drop the concept and put more battery in there. These tiny individual modules waste space and don't accomplish much.
That's still missing the point. There isn't a thing to remove. You just want bigger slots.
There is no specific thing that could be removed to satisfy your desire. The difference between removing something and the type of redesign they would have to do isn't pedantry trolling.
On the one hand, they're too small for some very obvious standard ports you might want on a laptop, like for example an RJ45 port. Or multiple/vertical USB-A ports. And they're too small by a relatively small amount, so if the laptop had aimed more at Thinkpad T size thickness (still not terribly thick) rather than Macbook Air thickness, the modules would have been much more flexible (and maybe we could have had even better keyboard options).
A really significantly sized bay would have been quite interesting too - old T-series used to allow you to add a second battery, a big bay could have allowed breakouts for sensors, fpga add ons, etc. Perhaps allowing a double-wide might have been a good way of addressing both.
On the other hand, the modules are still pretty chunky. You don't want to be using one out of its slot, I don't know what sacrifices were made in terms of space in order to have what in many peoples laptops are going to be pass throughs, but the Framework has a relatively disappointing battery, so perhaps that's an effect of the reserved space.