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Comment by Throw73747 | Hacker News Reader

My main problems compared to old school enterprise modular Lenovo (IBM) and HP laptops:

- The only module option is a graphic card. There is no option for extra battery, extra CD-ROM, no module with 4x NVME SSD... I could put three batteries into my old lenovo

- it is build like a cheap plastic toy. It would not survive fall from table etc...

- No hot swap, you have to shutdown the system, fiddle with screws for 20 minutes and reboot. My regular laptop with removable lid has similar level of modularity.

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We’ve demoed a dual NVMe module already and have open sourced the design for third parties and the community to create their own modules. We’ve seen an Oculink module and an FPGA module in development (and this is before the first laptop shipped).

The system is made of thixomolded magnesium and CNC aluminum and is tested to the same drop survival standards as most other high end 15-16” notebooks.

The Verge timed their Graphics Module swap and did it in <3 minutes.

> tested to the same drop survival standards as most other high end 15-16” notebooks.

My impression from my (very breef) test is that replaceable display frame is compromising display integrity. I also do not like how motherboard is accessed from top lid, rather then bottom lid. In many laptops (Sky Lake Dell XPS 13) keyboard is screwed together with motherboard, and is protecting motherboard a bit. Removable bottom lid provides crash zone, and bends independently from motherboard, on Framework it sends every stress directly into motherboard.

Form factor of an "ultrabook" has been around for more than decade (Mac, XPS 13, Zenbooks..). People know tradeoffs and what to expect.

This is a new form factor. If its rudged, perhaps provide some videos with crash tests.

You have one and tested it? How did you accomplish that? Can you tell me about your test? How did you determine it's the replaceable lid is compromising integrity?

No, I spend like 20 minutes on friends unit, deciding wherever to buy it as well. Now I am telling company founder my impressions.

I did not determined anything with bottom lid. Perhaps they can answer motherboard is free floated, or crash zone is from sides, since it is in center.

There is potential for a extra battery module. It doesn't exist yet, but the connector supports power going from the expansion bay to the laptop[0], so someone could build a battery module or potentially even a hot-swappable adapter to use a removable battery made for a more common laptop.

[0] See pins 41-51,63-64 on https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay/tree/main/...

No CD-ROM? Whatever shall we do.

Lmao that's what I was thinking when I saw that

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