Framework seems pretty popular here in general, but nobody really seems to talk about how repairable enterprise laptops are. Some laptops have clips around the edge of the bottom panel to hold it in place, which frequently break. On my brother's T480s, those clips were made out of metal and held in with screws, meaning they were themselves replaceable. More recently I worked on a Dell Precision 7550 laptop, and if you crack it open everything is labeled just like a Framework. Also, before selling it I ran the onboard diagnostic. I was surprised when it told me to check the touchpad cable, because the touchpad was working fine. Took it apart again and yep, the touchpad cable was loose.
Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades. In addition, they're a much more mature product -- been selling laptops for much longer at much higher volumes. Thinkpads are the prototypical example but I actually like Dells better. Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well.
> Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades.
Yeah, but does Dell allow you to change your laptop's mainboard for another mainboard with time? That is such a quantum leap. You do not have to adjust your self to a new keyboard just because you wanted a new processor.
A chassis is 10% of the cost of the laptop. Reusable chassis just to put new hardware in isn’t something the average consumer is interested in.
Also, buying a new mainboard every few years and putting the old mainboard on a shelf is a lot less sustainable than buying a complete new laptop and selling your old laptop to someone.
It's not just the chassis, it's also the screen, storage, RAM, ports, speakers, battery, and so on. And there is lots of demand for old mainboards, they sell pretty quick on Ebay. More sustainable to only buy and sell the part you need than the entire laptop, especially factoring in shipping costs. Plus the mainboards can be used like a mini PC.
Yeah, I started with their first laptop (11th gen Intel DDR4 ram) and upgraded to the 7040 AMD board with DDR5 ram. Now there's even newer boards available with desirable features like LPCAMM. Framework has absolutely delivered on the "upgradable mainboard" promise.
There's also 3rd party ARM and RISC-V mainboards, but I'd recommend the average user sticks to the x86_64 boards.
> but does Dell allow you to change your laptop's mainboard for another mainboard with time
Business laptops are swapped out every few years.
Reusable chassis? Literally no one asked for this, it makes no sense outside of a very, very small community of enthusiasts who think it's cool. Restricting yourself to no mechanical changes/improvements in perpetuity is not the flex you think it is.
Keyboards wear out, the chassis gets dented/scratched. Thermal requirements change.
You make a good point. And they do have the industrial knowledge / experience to create higher quality parts than Framework. But note that the value difference between Framework's offering and the others you cited is that repairability is today a lower priority for them (due to prioritising planned obsolescence), where as it is the core value around which the Framework business is built. Why aren't we seeing more modular laptops and smartphones? Sure, people cite technological advances and how electronics are manufactured today. But a major reason, in my opinion, is that it isn't seen as profitable as designing and selling devices that are not easy to repair or upgrade.
Each new Fairphone has pushed the boundaries of what a modular and repairable phone can be, but people must accept that it comes with a very significantly higher price (although in their case that's not only because it's modular, but also fairer wages, more ethical metals, etc). The average person is not willing to pay twice as much for a repairable phone.
Arent the USB ports on the framework also soldered on? I’m looking at a picture of the motherboard right now. Unlike my MacBook it doesn’t use a daughter board for the ports. It’s straight on the main board. Seems less repairable than my MacBook.
The ports on the motherboard are soldered, but you don't use them directly. You attach "expansion cards" which slide into a slot on the laptop case which locks them in place. So those ports seldom see any forces applied to them. All your day-to-day wear (plugging/unplugging, twisting, yanking) is going to be on the port on the expansion card which you can replace for $10. It's basically like a daughter board that is trivially user-replaceable rather than a daughter board that you have to open up your laptop to replace.
> If you are inserting/removing cables like a gorilla
You've never moved your laptop without realizing it is still plugged in? I've done that a couple of times. My framework gives me peace of mind because I know the only port that will be damaged from that is the one on the $10 card because the card is firmly attached to the laptop body. Your suggestion of a 3" dongle doesn't have that benefit so yanking a plugged-in laptop could still cause a loose or broken port on your motherboard.
I've been repairing my laptops for a long time. I loved my dell laptops for field work. Swappable batteries especially! Framework, for me, was just the natural extension of that, geared towards multi-use that included reconfigurability, which dell never had, and more compact overall.
On balance, I think the framework has been a cool talking point, but yes, a 2015 dell would have supported all the improvements I made over time to my framework, provided it had all the ports I needed originally. It'd have definitely been bulkier though!
You are right... I personally own a T480s and it is a remarkable device, which can be repaired just like the framework (although most parts are no longer available new). I added a glass trackpad (which is way better than the original) and ordered a WQHD Display + Cable to upgrade from FullHD to WQHD (2560x1440?). Batteries can be replaced, RAM can be upgraded (in a way, part of it is soldered) and everything has a unique part number that can be easily researched.
However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability.
Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again.
I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.
BTW: Dell has great repairable business notebooks (I recently switched to a cheap Latitude 5420 - the T480s was getting to slow for some tasks), but there are caveats I immediately noticed and most people don't think of:
- Keyboard Backlight is way too bright in the lowest setting
- Keyboard layout is a bit off
- It cannot be opened with one hand
- Display Brightness steps are to low (using the ALT key could increase / decrease the step size, like in MacBooks)
- Display Brightness cannot be set to "off" / black screen (this only works on macbooks)
- The Dell 5520 Trackpad is horrible
- Nobody except Apple supports AudioJack-Headphones remotes for controlling audio playback and volume (with USB-C to audiojack Adapters this works out of the box on Linux)
> I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.
Original author here. I like your optimism, but I've linked multiple threads on their forums with people doing the same problem going back over a year. I also pieced together most of the stuff from people doing external flashing on the forums. Still, no official guides, no changes as far as I can tell. This post is the most detail repair guide available right now.
If something happens after this, it would be because this post got to the top of HN and they have to respond to save face.
My last two ThinkPads (a P40 Yoga and a T14 Gen 2) were absolute shit.
The P40 spent more time in the repair depot than in use before I replaced it with something that didn't ship with a fucked M.2 slot, a touchscreen that failed out of the box and then a month after replacement, and a battery that pillowed within a month after that.
The T14 Gen 2 bricked on a BIOS update. The pinhole reset didn't work, so it went to the repair depot, came back two weeks later with the BIOS updated. Next BIOS update bricked it again.
The recent thinkpads are shit. They market high tech materials in the T14s machines but the bottom for a huge amount of the line is aluminium with plastic mounts glued to it. Those are fragile and break off. So really the whole magnesium alloy thing is performative.
I preferred the older plastic coated Mg chassis ones. At least they were honest about the materials.
Personally I avoid laptops now since the T430 line. Desktops are faster, cheaper, more reliable, easier to repair and replace bits and most of the time I don't need to carry a computer around.
It's a complete overstatement. The USB-C ports are still soldered onto the motherboard and their parts supply chain is shit.
I don't trust iFixit's quite frank "press handjob" because they're giving higher repairability rankings for that junk compared to Apple who have replaceable ports and a good supply chain available to the end user. Also they were all over selling battery kits for Pixel phones which are a complete pain to replace the batteries in compared to an iPhone.
Not that Apple are the bastion of repairability, just their claims are less insane than both Lenovo's and iFixit's.
Most people I know don't own enterprise computers. They are pretty pricy and visually tame - not really made for consumers. To me, buying a framework is more about ideology than them being the best at everything. You can't expect them to be the best when starting out either. I am buying a future.
I don't think any framework owner seriously thinks they are buying the most repairable laptop in the world or the most cost effective laptop in the world.
> nobody really seems to talk about how repairable enterprise laptops are
Thinkpads have been a meme since the early 2010s.
It's funny to bring up the T480/s as positive example because I remember people complaining about anything past ~xx20 series.
> caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle
Framework is a reaction to the cult following a lot of the business laptops had. When people are spending $$ to retrofit modern mainboards to vintage Thinkpad chassis you know there's enthusiast money to be made there.
There's repairable and there's repairable and it's not quite as obvious as it seems.
The big issue we see on our Dell and Lenovo units is broken USB-C ports and the only repair method possible there is replace the motherboard. No ports on daughterboards like the MacBooks. And you can't just buy the parts from most vendors. Dell is utterly impossible and with Lenovo half the time they don't actually have any of the parts available or somehow manage to fuck up their shipping so they never turn up. Had to charge back Lenovo/Digital River twice. Zero support at all and impossible to contact anyone. And the whole PART NOT USER SERVICEABLE in the HMMs.
If you want Dell/Lenovo repairs just buy two of whatever.
At the same time iFixit are gushing all over Lenovo who are hell and pissing on Apple. The Apple who don't have this problem and I seem to have no problem getting parts for from their official parts store, the parts actually turn up and work.
I’m assuming many people also haven’t experienced their warranties and service networks. I remember decades ago when I was a teenager and anytime my Dell XPS stopped working (or I dropped it…) a tech would come in a van within two days and repair the laptop on my kitchen table while I watched and peppered him with questions.
I love my framework because it’s the only laptop where I can design a custom plugin module to talk to my hardware and EE testbench, but DIY repairability pales in comparison to a service network where the tech arrives with a library of spare parts faster than you can get a replacement from Amazon.
In today's blog post, we are all studying the enshittification of the BIOS.
In general, I agree with you that the bigger laptop makers can repair laptops and do an amazing job.
What we're all here for though is 2026. No big company is coming to fix your machines, even big companies are waiting 30+ days for parts availability from the big company bros they bought from. If you're a consumer, forget about it.
"Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well." I'm calling BS here. Dell and HP hide their limited, paltry Linux offerings in the back of their website. Define your use of "many."
Now we're down to the BIOS. Today's blog post encountered a failed BIOS update, and takes Framework to task for it. Some of the support team at Framework are really cool and would probably have detected this customer is https://xkcd.com/806/
This time he got the strict script follower for customer support. I hope it blows up on Framework.
A bit off-topic, but kind of relevant. I firmly believe that if installing custom firmware voids the warranty of a device, installing official updates should extend the warranty.
I'm tired of sloppy updates or change of behavior that mess with how I use MY device.
At this point, I'm convinced Google is doing this on purpose. My Google TV has become slow since the Gemini update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted it. My pixel battery life gets worse with every update, etc.
I lost my google mesh network to a firmware update, ofc I didn't even ask for it to be updated, they just shipped an update that bricked the devices. Just got an "out of warranty" response after they gave me the normal suggestions of trying to reboot, etc.
Google bricked all of the old fitbit scales with a firmware that glitches out and drains the battery. There were tons of reports at the time, but the devices were out of warranty so they didn’t fix it.
I had the same thing happen to me with my Thinkpad Nano, and researching how to fix this made me realize pc manufacturer really don't care.
PC bricked from BIOS update are still ultra common.
I uploaded a dump of the flash [1] in the bad state and they somehow analyzed it and made a fix.
Great for others I guess, but I'm still mindblown that the regular path would have been that this perfectly working laptop to this day become ewaste.
Being an embedded dev, I don't understand why there isn't a special USB-C protocol to recover bios over SDU/CC pins. Or some DFU mode you can boot into.
> I don't understand why there isn't a special USB-C protocol to recover bios over SDU/CC pins
Not enough of these cases happen under warranty for them to bother (and out of warranty cases are either neutral, or even beneficial to them if they drive sales of new hardware).
I think cases like this should be brought before a small claims court. It seems unfair. The company (Framework Computer) provided the software, but the software is faulty and broke ("bricked") the laptop. Can you imagine if a GPU driver caused the card to get bricked? Even if out of warranty, surely the manuf would be legally liable in many jurisdictions for this faulty driver.
The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells me that this person lives/works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While the issue is already fixed, for others affected with the same issue, I would suggest the small claims route. Make sure to talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps to gather and prepare evidence for your claim. If you are lucky enough to win, then you should "go nuclear" on social media (and their own forums) to share the win and the exact details about how you did it. Framework Computer will surely (1) cave and provide replacements or (2) be flooded with small claims about this issue.
I somewhat regret buying my framework laptop at this stage, because the answer to every fault is "buy a new component, from framework".
I'm not sure I blame them for this really, but there is no competitive market of parts (or really any market at all), which means that the reality is that you're just locking your money to them. They also often have stock issues, so woe betide you if your component fails at the wrong time.
It's very hard to predict costs here, but framework laptops do seem to fail more than other brands, and their laptops do tend to be more expensive. In comparison to MacBooks I've used over the years, which other than screen delaminating, have been faultless, at least.
having 2 fw 13s this is my experience as well (and also friends who bought into FW); i was willing to give the 13 pro a try until they downgraded my order. I inevitably cancelled and went with a dell xps14 and its a fantastic laptop. I am unsure bout any future fw purchases. also my m1 macbook pro is made so well I've abused this to the cows come home and i feel like it still has another 3+ years to it..
everytime someone brings up the e-waste aspects of fw, i don't know if its that simple...because i've definitely already generated much more e-waste with my frameworks than any other laptop i've bought in the last decade
that being said, i do like the fw vision, but they might be trying to do TOO much that their quality is suffering for it
My conspiracy theory is that selling parts is pretty much their main business case.
A modular gpu using a new standard that is form-factor specific for only a specific model?
Matte panel released a few months after the first 13.5 model was released with glossy panel as only option?
It sounds a bit fishy to me. But maybe I'm just a bit too cynical .
> My conspiracy theory is that selling parts is pretty much their main business case.
I think this is absolutely what you sell to investors. For it to be attractive to consumers though (and thus attractive to investors, since people actually need to buy the thing), there has to be a balance. They haven't even managed to conjure up a market for third party expansion cards, which feels like the lowest of hanging fruit.
At the moment they are living on borrowed time and good will from the tech / hippie community who want to be more sustainable and customizable. I think they have likely lost me at this point. I don't know how close they are to losing everybody else.
I see your point, but what i'm talking about is the company generating a strong incentive to people to buy upgrades or replacements.
This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one.
Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't have a bias against it. But those suspicious "features" pulled me away from the 16" model for example.
I really don't understand how in 2025 a competent company can't implement a trival A/B flash update. Do they depend on some obscure contractor for the firmware and have no power here?
As with many things, "It's complicated" but effectively, yes
Such system firmware is generally provided by AMI / Insyde / Phoenix and similar.
There are a few vendors who decide to go their own way (notably google using a fork of Coreboot for their chromebooks), but it's generally list of vendors that you can count on a single hand.
If it means anything I'm pretty sure AMI provides A/B updates on most products i've used with their stuff.
But that's always been the case. Phoenix and AMI have been the dominant BIOS providers for over 30 years. Both have always provided modular tookits for OEMs to customize their own ROM images, write their own ACPI tables, etc. UEFI gives even more control to the OEMs. If Framework isn't doing that properly, that's on them.
It appears that Framework contracted out the development of their (Insyde-based) firmware to somebody who, to put it mildly, does not treat them as a priority. Either way, Framework’s firmware is really bad, and that’s entirely on Framework; you can look around on the forums for the horror stories in the (open) EC code around power delivery for instance.
As another example of a vendor low-key screwing Framework in a way that I think it’s entirely appropriate to blame Framework themselves for, the first couple 13-inch models could charge off 5V chargers. The newer ones still have the necessary hardware, but whoever they get their power circuitry from cut that bit from the firmware on a newer chip version, and Framework obediently went “welp, guess we don’t have that feature anymore”.
I heard a lot of talk about porting to coreboot (they even sent some motherboard to some coreboot developers I think).
Not sure what is stalling there, but sounds like a priority.
For the EC, I feel like a team of a single developer could arrange something there?
I know some higher end gaming motherboards that were targeted towards the overclocking community had two bios chips for exactly this purpose and switching between them was trivial from what I remember. If you overclocked too far, you wouldn't brick your system. It seemed like overkill to me. I'm guessing this is less common than it's worth to fix in software, but then at least continue to give support for the issue.
Original author here, and I agree. When overclocking, the most important feature is probably resetting the CMOS with one easy to reach button.
I was testing ECC previously in https://qt.ax/ecc and was trying to overclock the RAM to induce faults to confirm ECC was fixing them. Since I was using a cheaper board, I had to use keys to short the CLR_CMOS header and that got old really quick... I didn't ultimately succeed in creating a barely stable overclock that generated a ton of ECC errors, but that was a very awful experience.
Having some sort of BIOS recovery is definitely the baseline I'd expect these days, and having two BIOS chips so you can just keep using the device as if nothing had happened is the best solution.
It's not a gimmick when the serious overclocking people do custom VBIOSes. Similarly for miners. That's when you need the recovery switch if things go wrong.
Good story, and surprising that there was so little assistance from the OEM. As an aside, I got to test out Asus crash free BIOS a couple of weeks ago. A strong thunderstorm hit and before I could get to my office a rapid series of deep voltage drops occurred. I shut down my systems and waited out the storm. When I powered my Asus tower back on it failed to POST, automatically restarted, recovered the BIOS (CMOS settings I assume), restarted again and booted Windows. Pretty slick, and instantly removed that cold lump of lead that had formed in my gut.
I recommend people who have a soldering iron to start experimenting with enameled wire. It's easily sourced from any random coil/inductor/switching transformer/broken speaker even. Dip the tip of the wire in some flux and keep it on the tip of the iron for a bit so enamel clears away and tins the wire.
This way you can solder the thin wires in crammed places, don't have to stress about them shorting out anything they touch, easily routable and they don't put stress on the solder joint, like a regular thicker wire would.
Working with this type of wire made things easier for me in these sorts of situations. And it's perfectly adequate for signal (withing reason, if not very high speed), and even some power, few mA needed for these kinds of chips is no issue.
The entire USB-C situation with the Frameworks (I have both the original gen 11 and the AMD 7040) is a massive train wreck. They have clearly given up on fixing it. Only some of my ports work, and not reliably. Th EC controller is a bug fest. If you don't believe me, check their forums. I wish I could get back all the hours I spent debugging this, to no avail.
I'm lucky that I had no USBC issues with mine I guess. Unlike my ryzen desktop that hard locks when resuming from suspend sometimes when it goes to enumerate the USB devices. If I time a key press right I can get it to continue some times, but if I miss the window it just shuts down entirely.
AMD has had several USB based issues on their 500 series chipsets, x570 etc. so part of me wonders how much of these problems are on the vendor vs the integrator.
If you're on Linux you might be able to use a combination of modprobe + udev + systemd unit files to hardcode a solution.
Either you hardcode your keyboard and mouse absolutely into kernel parameters, or you make two systemd unit files: one that runs with before suspend and one that runs 'before' resume.
You make the before suspend unit file manually temporarily disable USB enumeration. And the before resume unit file enables it again.
This trick at least works with Gigabyte Aorus 5XX motherboards that have an infamous suspend bug, where any used PCIe SSD slot would prevent the system from properly suspending and you have to disable the slot temporarily.
Also, always check the NixOS repo for stuff like this. In some ways it has started to rival or even surpass the Arch wiki for finding workarounds for hardware quirks.
I had a very different experience with the Framework team. The battery died (within the warranty period), I reached out to them, they asked some questions, then sent me a brand new one.
Very satisfied with my Framework laptop and the customer support. I can't imagine buying another laptop.
Replacing a battery that failed under warranty should be a baseline expectation.
Not "terrible" obviously, but a slight negative that the battery failed under warranty and a slight positive that they honored their published warranty.
I had good experience within warranty period, but there was still some funky-ness with a non-posting board... I do sometimes wonder if it was a bios corruption - It died after running the battery 100% to zero...
That being said, I think the particular bios-chip is a design flaw that they should communicate about and fix for future boards... Probably a teething issue thing, but they should fix it. Either a usable replaceable chip so they can just send out a fix, or the fallback bios chip....
This reply seems like a non-sequitor and does not respond to GPs concern. How would you feel if a BIOS update outside of warranty bricked your motherboard? I am sure you would not say the same.
I like my framework, but I do wonder if the repairability angle is overstated if you're already used to fixing normal laptops. Yes, Framework's parts are easier to find, and the laptops are easier to open, but it's not like doing any of the typical repairs - keyboard, screen, touchpad, battery - are impossibly difficult on those other guys.
Used thinkpads and the glut of EBay parts for them reach about 85% of what Framework does for me, and at half the price. But it's a different experience.
Framework does seem like better build quality than most laptops I've had, but I'm used to cheap crappy ones.
On the other hand, you do seem to find more cases of multiple people doing things like the linked bios update procedure on framework.
My support experience has been quite similar. Lots of required evidence, slow responses, and then just links to buy replacement parts in the store.
The kicker is that the things they were telling me to buy didn't even fix the problem. My fingerprint reader was very flakey, and after replacing it and all cabling connected to it, it still didn't work.
They then told me to buy a whole new input cover which was the wrong solution again. The issue was the touchpad, which routes the signal for the fingerprint sensor through its circuit board.
They also encouraged me heavily to update the BIOS and firmware of everything aggressively before really digging into any of the kernel messages I was seeing.
All that said, it's really hard to complain that for $50 and some waiting I was easily able to fix the problem.
Compared to replacing the battery on a MacBook pro which took me 5hrs and required complete disassembly of the chassis sans fans it was a dream.
Here's to hoping that framework does better, they do seem to take well to community feedback.
While it's nice to know that I can buy a $100 replacement keyboard (I'm about 6 months out of warranty) it's also frustrating that Framework wouldn't own up to what is obviously a manufacturing failure.
My framework was sitting in a drawer for two years and now will not turn on no matter how long I charge it. I assume there’s a dead coin cell in there somewhere or something that needs changed but it’s pretty disappointing.
IIRC the only Frameworks that have a coin cell in them are the 13-inch 11th-gen Intel ones (i.e. the OG model), and it should be right there staring you in the face as you lift the keyboard. There’s indeed a known design flaw[1] around that cell in that it the laptop isn’t wired to drain its own actual battery instead; an email to support or a look on the forums should allow you to sort things out.
I looked at the shared link. The laptop manuf is recommending that people solder a wire between two points to eliminate a coin battery from the motherboard. Wild.
Yup, I had to do that to get mine to work. It is a good thing that I am more experienced then the average bear when it comes to soldering. When it was **ed, I could still get it to boot with an AC adapter plugged in, so you can try that.
I know that firmware (and software in general) has bugs. But I wonder why modern firmware for UEFI has to be so complex, that it needs updates on a regular basis. It would be nice to have a dead-simple hardware-initialisation system that doesn't need regular updates and that only has very limited attack surface.
That is the dream isn't it? But there's no such thing since even a simple one that requires no updates would have some sort of vulnerability that needs an update, and the cycle continues.
I agree. But we could still try to have a smaller hardware initialisation system. And if there is the occasional need to patch a security vulnerability, then that patch is probably a lot more straightforward.
> For three years, the laptop has served me well, until Framework suggested via newsletter to install the latest BIOS update, version 3.20, with a bunch of security fixes. Unfortunately, the system hung and displayed a corrupt image on the screen, signifying a failed BIOS flash.
> Naturally, I reached out to Framework support, who told me to unplug the laptop, let the battery drain, and power it back on again afterwards, hoping the laptop would recover by itself. Unfortunately, it never did, and after giving Framework a bunch of information, they informed me that since my 1-year warranty has expired, I have no option but to purchase a new Framework motherboard, which will cost at least CA$500.
This is very disappointing.
1) Framework failed in not implementing a bootloader which takes a BIOS file on a USB-Stick and flashes it w/o requiring a working BIOS/Firmware or even a CPU/RAM. Every $70 Desktop-Mainboard worth its salt has this feature.
2) Considering 1) and that it was an official BIOS that caused the issue, Framework should repair (replacing/re-flashing the BIOS chip) for shipping fees max.
I am furious. We have recovery-bootloaders in devices with $10 bill of materials. Its not rocket science!
> bootloader which takes a BIOS file on a USB-Stick and flashes it w/o requiring a working BIOS/Firmware or even a CPU/RAM
For those unaware, this is sometimes called "BIOS recovery" or "crashfree BIOS". In short, if a BIOS update fails and bricks your motherboard, you can load the image of a known-working BIOS update onto a USB memory stick. Normally, a single USB slot on the motherboard has a special marking to indicate that it can be used to "unbrick" the motherboard. Insert the USB memory stick, start the PC, and the BIOS recovery should be automatic. I agree with the parent post: This would be an excellent feature for Framework Computer to add. From a simple Google search, it appears that their desktop computer already has this feature.
I sympathise with both parties. As customers, things like these really do test our patience. I wanted to support Jolla / Sailfish and purchased their phone but dealing with the bugs in the OS, for years, even as I was using it as my main phone, was sometimes exasperating, if not down right frustrating. At the same time, it was also disheartening to see Jolla make wrong business decisions, and struggle to stay alive as a business. Sad to see Framework struggling with their products too. It is difficult to not be angry at a company you want to support but are also pissed at because you are not getting your money's worth.
This systemic lack of support for the product for two problems of their own making, both the original design flaw of inadequate recovery from a broken BIOS and producing a bad BIOS for some models and actually encouraging its installation, is more than alarming.
My primary concern about Framework was if they would survive so they were capable of following up on their goal of modular upgrades. That was a risk that I was willing to take.
However, that a company that targets a market segment of fairly sophisticated technologists would fail this badly on _both_ engineering and customer support is a deal killer.
Framework is not even on the shopping radar now for me.
I bought a Framework 13 in 2021. I was so stoked. I used it for 5 years, and of those 5 years only 1 was heavy use. I had to replace the battery and the input cover. I never had to do that before. I never had a laptop I wasn't able to use for 5 years so the repairability was actually not that much better for me. I gave up on Framework because after 5 years they still didn't give a crap about terrible battery performance on Linux distros.
I was using a Macbook Pro before. Went back to a Macbook Pro again. I don't want a Mac. I just can't find anything else remotely worth my money.
From reading online, linux battery seems to be a-lot better on the new intel board, and also if you configure linux with sleep to hibernate, you get really good behavioral performance. My experience is that the sleep states really drain the battery since the low power mode is not _that_ low power, at least with the ram I have.
For context I have a 13th gen intel with the old battery and only get ~4hrs of battery life, but generally go a week or 2 between full shutdowns, since I hibernate all the time. I can close the lid, throw it in my backpack, not use it for the weekend, and when I open it it is ready to go, not having lost charge.
I generally have a better experience than when I was on windows.
After months of waiting on preorder (in which time I could've cancelled it), my Framework 16 finally arrived just yesterday, so this is a very unfortunately timed article for me.
Mine is using the AI 300 chip and is presumably on the latest bios so this specifically wouldn't be a problem for me, but it doesn't fill me with future confidence either, though I suppose if you look hard enough you can find similar stories about any manufacturer
Honestly, this is why I like Dutch consumer law. Dutch law states that the guarantee duration is dependent on the expected lifespan of a product. Continued official BIOS support is evidence that the device remains within its supported lifetime and also dutch law treats defective or incomplete updates as non-conformity. Therefore, in this situation it would be framework fault and the device would also be within warranty.
The Australia consumer laws are also famously strong. One question: That Dutch law is not zero-cost. Does Framework Laptop charger higher prices compared to the US due to this consumer protection laws? My point: We can presume that Dutch buyers will make more (valid/accepted) warranty claims than those in the United States (with comparatively much weaker consumer laws).
> Still, I was very disappointed that Framework chose to entrust sensitive information to a third-party who obviously couldn’t keep the data safe.
Then you're going to be very disappointed a lot. When HIBP first came out, I worried over each incident. These days, breaches of non-payment data are so common that I don't even bother to sign up for notifications.
When it comes to PII, we live in a de facto panopticon.
This was the only point I disagreed with the author on. They used metabase, a tool for their internal employees to manage the business and review their data. It's not some crazy 3rd party marketing tool or something, it's an internal BI tool that had a zero day. More zero days are coming.
I have a framework 13 for. Actually the same model as OP (AMD 7040 series). I have never been as conflicted on a laptop as this one.
I do love many things about it : The whole expansion card system is awesome. It does feel a bit redundant with a simple usb-c hub that do the usual network, hdmi, usb-a, but being able to set it on the side that fit my current setup is much appreciated. I love the form factor and the screen ratio also.
The linux support have been very good for me. And being able to open it up with just one tool and have detailed repair manual is amazing.
But on that last point, it's also the first laptop in a while that I had to get into to fix something. The webcam never worked. That's not a linux issue, it's just that my fw13 is a hand me down from a previous colleague who I believe borked the webcam installation. But I don't use the webcam, so I never cared. On the other hand, when I first got it, the cpu fan was emitting a constant high pitch whine. After some research I wasn't the only one affected, and the support had me do a lot of steps before sending a replacement part (which was very easy to install, but the problem should not have been there in the first place). I also had some random crashes that I was never able to debug. The mic is very meh also. I never use it in anycase with my setup but still.
But at the same time, I don't see myself switching to another laptop. Despite all, this is still the laptop that felt the most "right" to me. I do believe that Framework has to seriously step up their support and QA game. But it does feel like it's a company that is "suffering from success". They got big investment, lots of publicities in some circle and so I feel like they have to produce and sell way more computer than the rest of the business can reasonably handle. I hope it's a “necessary evil” for them to get enough customers and revenue to start being able to attract more investment and being able to invest more in the “quality” side of the biz.
EDIT: I should say, being in the E.U make it so that I have an automatic 2 year guarantee, so I didn't have to experience the whole "just buy new parts lmao"
Don't bother with the motherboard, the new BIOS is worse. I have two that just randomly shut off whenever they feel like it. I just bought a thinkpad instead, shrug.
Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades. In addition, they're a much more mature product -- been selling laptops for much longer at much higher volumes. Thinkpads are the prototypical example but I actually like Dells better. Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well.
Yeah, but does Dell allow you to change your laptop's mainboard for another mainboard with time? That is such a quantum leap. You do not have to adjust your self to a new keyboard just because you wanted a new processor.
Also, buying a new mainboard every few years and putting the old mainboard on a shelf is a lot less sustainable than buying a complete new laptop and selling your old laptop to someone.
There's also 3rd party ARM and RISC-V mainboards, but I'd recommend the average user sticks to the x86_64 boards.
Business laptops are swapped out every few years.
Reusable chassis? Literally no one asked for this, it makes no sense outside of a very, very small community of enthusiasts who think it's cool. Restricting yourself to no mechanical changes/improvements in perpetuity is not the flex you think it is.
Keyboards wear out, the chassis gets dented/scratched. Thermal requirements change.
This feature is for no one.
usb-c port is now dead, it is soldered.
Not going to happen to my https://frame.work laptop, 10 eur part, no soldering, not even a screwdriver, and good as new
The actual USB-C port on a Framework is soldered to the motherboard. If you destroy the port electrically it is the same thing.
If you are inserting/removing cables like a gorilla, then buy a 3" dongle (aka magic Framework module) for your other laptop.
You've never moved your laptop without realizing it is still plugged in? I've done that a couple of times. My framework gives me peace of mind because I know the only port that will be damaged from that is the one on the $10 card because the card is firmly attached to the laptop body. Your suggestion of a 3" dongle doesn't have that benefit so yanking a plugged-in laptop could still cause a loose or broken port on your motherboard.
No.
This damage usually happens by tripping over the cord, which results in the laptop falling on the floor, so a USB-C port is the least of your worries.
There's a reason Apple went back to MagSafe.
On balance, I think the framework has been a cool talking point, but yes, a 2015 dell would have supported all the improvements I made over time to my framework, provided it had all the ports I needed originally. It'd have definitely been bulkier though!
However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability.
Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again.
I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.
BTW: Dell has great repairable business notebooks (I recently switched to a cheap Latitude 5420 - the T480s was getting to slow for some tasks), but there are caveats I immediately noticed and most people don't think of:
- Keyboard Backlight is way too bright in the lowest setting
- Keyboard layout is a bit off
- It cannot be opened with one hand
- Display Brightness steps are to low (using the ALT key could increase / decrease the step size, like in MacBooks)
- Display Brightness cannot be set to "off" / black screen (this only works on macbooks)
- The Dell 5520 Trackpad is horrible
- Nobody except Apple supports AudioJack-Headphones remotes for controlling audio playback and volume (with USB-C to audiojack Adapters this works out of the box on Linux)
Original author here. I like your optimism, but I've linked multiple threads on their forums with people doing the same problem going back over a year. I also pieced together most of the stuff from people doing external flashing on the forums. Still, no official guides, no changes as far as I can tell. This post is the most detail repair guide available right now.
If something happens after this, it would be because this post got to the top of HN and they have to respond to save face.
My headcannon is that the only reason the T14G7 is as repairable as it is, is due to the whole right to repair movement, including framework.
The P40 spent more time in the repair depot than in use before I replaced it with something that didn't ship with a fucked M.2 slot, a touchscreen that failed out of the box and then a month after replacement, and a battery that pillowed within a month after that.
The T14 Gen 2 bricked on a BIOS update. The pinhole reset didn't work, so it went to the repair depot, came back two weeks later with the BIOS updated. Next BIOS update bricked it again.
I preferred the older plastic coated Mg chassis ones. At least they were honest about the materials.
Personally I avoid laptops now since the T430 line. Desktops are faster, cheaper, more reliable, easier to repair and replace bits and most of the time I don't need to carry a computer around.
I don't trust iFixit's quite frank "press handjob" because they're giving higher repairability rankings for that junk compared to Apple who have replaceable ports and a good supply chain available to the end user. Also they were all over selling battery kits for Pixel phones which are a complete pain to replace the batteries in compared to an iPhone.
Not that Apple are the bastion of repairability, just their claims are less insane than both Lenovo's and iFixit's.
I don't think any framework owner seriously thinks they are buying the most repairable laptop in the world or the most cost effective laptop in the world.
Thinkpads have been a meme since the early 2010s.
It's funny to bring up the T480/s as positive example because I remember people complaining about anything past ~xx20 series.
> caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle
Framework is a reaction to the cult following a lot of the business laptops had. When people are spending $$ to retrofit modern mainboards to vintage Thinkpad chassis you know there's enthusiast money to be made there.
The big issue we see on our Dell and Lenovo units is broken USB-C ports and the only repair method possible there is replace the motherboard. No ports on daughterboards like the MacBooks. And you can't just buy the parts from most vendors. Dell is utterly impossible and with Lenovo half the time they don't actually have any of the parts available or somehow manage to fuck up their shipping so they never turn up. Had to charge back Lenovo/Digital River twice. Zero support at all and impossible to contact anyone. And the whole PART NOT USER SERVICEABLE in the HMMs.
If you want Dell/Lenovo repairs just buy two of whatever.
At the same time iFixit are gushing all over Lenovo who are hell and pissing on Apple. The Apple who don't have this problem and I seem to have no problem getting parts for from their official parts store, the parts actually turn up and work.
I love my framework because it’s the only laptop where I can design a custom plugin module to talk to my hardware and EE testbench, but DIY repairability pales in comparison to a service network where the tech arrives with a library of spare parts faster than you can get a replacement from Amazon.
In general, I agree with you that the bigger laptop makers can repair laptops and do an amazing job.
What we're all here for though is 2026. No big company is coming to fix your machines, even big companies are waiting 30+ days for parts availability from the big company bros they bought from. If you're a consumer, forget about it.
"Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well." I'm calling BS here. Dell and HP hide their limited, paltry Linux offerings in the back of their website. Define your use of "many."
Now we're down to the BIOS. Today's blog post encountered a failed BIOS update, and takes Framework to task for it. Some of the support team at Framework are really cool and would probably have detected this customer is https://xkcd.com/806/
This time he got the strict script follower for customer support. I hope it blows up on Framework.
I'm tired of sloppy updates or change of behavior that mess with how I use MY device.
At this point, I'm convinced Google is doing this on purpose. My Google TV has become slow since the Gemini update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted it. My pixel battery life gets worse with every update, etc.
At this point I’m comfortable saying that on device “Smart TV” software is a crime against humanity, full stop.
I uploaded a dump of the flash [1] in the bad state and they somehow analyzed it and made a fix. Great for others I guess, but I'm still mindblown that the regular path would have been that this perfectly working laptop to this day become ewaste.
Being an embedded dev, I don't understand why there isn't a special USB-C protocol to recover bios over SDU/CC pins. Or some DFU mode you can boot into.
[1] https://github.com/fwupd/firmware-lenovo/issues/484
Not enough of these cases happen under warranty for them to bother (and out of warranty cases are either neutral, or even beneficial to them if they drive sales of new hardware).
The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells me that this person lives/works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While the issue is already fixed, for others affected with the same issue, I would suggest the small claims route. Make sure to talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps to gather and prepare evidence for your claim. If you are lucky enough to win, then you should "go nuclear" on social media (and their own forums) to share the win and the exact details about how you did it. Framework Computer will surely (1) cave and provide replacements or (2) be flooded with small claims about this issue.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/guanzhong-chen/
I somewhat regret buying my framework laptop at this stage, because the answer to every fault is "buy a new component, from framework".
I'm not sure I blame them for this really, but there is no competitive market of parts (or really any market at all), which means that the reality is that you're just locking your money to them. They also often have stock issues, so woe betide you if your component fails at the wrong time.
It's very hard to predict costs here, but framework laptops do seem to fail more than other brands, and their laptops do tend to be more expensive. In comparison to MacBooks I've used over the years, which other than screen delaminating, have been faultless, at least.
everytime someone brings up the e-waste aspects of fw, i don't know if its that simple...because i've definitely already generated much more e-waste with my frameworks than any other laptop i've bought in the last decade
that being said, i do like the fw vision, but they might be trying to do TOO much that their quality is suffering for it
How so? Most FW parts seem quite resellable, did you just throw them away after upgrading or something?
A modular gpu using a new standard that is form-factor specific for only a specific model? Matte panel released a few months after the first 13.5 model was released with glossy panel as only option?
It sounds a bit fishy to me. But maybe I'm just a bit too cynical .
I think this is absolutely what you sell to investors. For it to be attractive to consumers though (and thus attractive to investors, since people actually need to buy the thing), there has to be a balance. They haven't even managed to conjure up a market for third party expansion cards, which feels like the lowest of hanging fruit.
At the moment they are living on borrowed time and good will from the tech / hippie community who want to be more sustainable and customizable. I think they have likely lost me at this point. I don't know how close they are to losing everybody else.
Manufacturer lets you replace each part separately: it's a conspiracy to make money
This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one.
Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't have a bias against it. But those suspicious "features" pulled me away from the 16" model for example.
Such system firmware is generally provided by AMI / Insyde / Phoenix and similar.
There are a few vendors who decide to go their own way (notably google using a fork of Coreboot for their chromebooks), but it's generally list of vendors that you can count on a single hand.
If it means anything I'm pretty sure AMI provides A/B updates on most products i've used with their stuff.
As another example of a vendor low-key screwing Framework in a way that I think it’s entirely appropriate to blame Framework themselves for, the first couple 13-inch models could charge off 5V chargers. The newer ones still have the necessary hardware, but whoever they get their power circuitry from cut that bit from the firmware on a newer chip version, and Framework obediently went “welp, guess we don’t have that feature anymore”.
For the EC, I feel like a team of a single developer could arrange something there?
Two BIOS chips was supposed to protect you from bad BIOS updates or a bad BIOS mod, just like the scenario from TFA.
I was testing ECC previously in https://qt.ax/ecc and was trying to overclock the RAM to induce faults to confirm ECC was fixing them. Since I was using a cheaper board, I had to use keys to short the CLR_CMOS header and that got old really quick... I didn't ultimately succeed in creating a barely stable overclock that generated a ton of ECC errors, but that was a very awful experience.
Having some sort of BIOS recovery is definitely the baseline I'd expect these days, and having two BIOS chips so you can just keep using the device as if nothing had happened is the best solution.
I was under the impression that GPU overclocking, overvoltage and fan curve settings were not persistent across reboots.
This way you can solder the thin wires in crammed places, don't have to stress about them shorting out anything they touch, easily routable and they don't put stress on the solder joint, like a regular thicker wire would.
Working with this type of wire made things easier for me in these sorts of situations. And it's perfectly adequate for signal (withing reason, if not very high speed), and even some power, few mA needed for these kinds of chips is no issue.
AMD has had several USB based issues on their 500 series chipsets, x570 etc. so part of me wonders how much of these problems are on the vendor vs the integrator.
Either you hardcode your keyboard and mouse absolutely into kernel parameters, or you make two systemd unit files: one that runs with before suspend and one that runs 'before' resume.
You make the before suspend unit file manually temporarily disable USB enumeration. And the before resume unit file enables it again.
This trick at least works with Gigabyte Aorus 5XX motherboards that have an infamous suspend bug, where any used PCIe SSD slot would prevent the system from properly suspending and you have to disable the slot temporarily.
Also, always check the NixOS repo for stuff like this. In some ways it has started to rival or even surpass the Arch wiki for finding workarounds for hardware quirks.
But now I'm reconsidering. Not standing behind their own BIOS update is pretty horrible.
Very satisfied with my Framework laptop and the customer support. I can't imagine buying another laptop.
Not "terrible" obviously, but a slight negative that the battery failed under warranty and a slight positive that they honored their published warranty.
That being said, I think the particular bios-chip is a design flaw that they should communicate about and fix for future boards... Probably a teething issue thing, but they should fix it. Either a usable replaceable chip so they can just send out a fix, or the fallback bios chip....
Used thinkpads and the glut of EBay parts for them reach about 85% of what Framework does for me, and at half the price. But it's a different experience.
Framework does seem like better build quality than most laptops I've had, but I'm used to cheap crappy ones.
On the other hand, you do seem to find more cases of multiple people doing things like the linked bios update procedure on framework.
The kicker is that the things they were telling me to buy didn't even fix the problem. My fingerprint reader was very flakey, and after replacing it and all cabling connected to it, it still didn't work.
They then told me to buy a whole new input cover which was the wrong solution again. The issue was the touchpad, which routes the signal for the fingerprint sensor through its circuit board.
They also encouraged me heavily to update the BIOS and firmware of everything aggressively before really digging into any of the kernel messages I was seeing.
All that said, it's really hard to complain that for $50 and some waiting I was easily able to fix the problem.
Compared to replacing the battery on a MacBook pro which took me 5hrs and required complete disassembly of the chassis sans fans it was a dream.
Here's to hoping that framework does better, they do seem to take well to community feedback.
While it's nice to know that I can buy a $100 replacement keyboard (I'm about 6 months out of warranty) it's also frustrating that Framework wouldn't own up to what is obviously a manufacturing failure.
[1] https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+...
> Naturally, I reached out to Framework support, who told me to unplug the laptop, let the battery drain, and power it back on again afterwards, hoping the laptop would recover by itself. Unfortunately, it never did, and after giving Framework a bunch of information, they informed me that since my 1-year warranty has expired, I have no option but to purchase a new Framework motherboard, which will cost at least CA$500.
This is very disappointing.
I am furious. We have recovery-bootloaders in devices with $10 bill of materials. Its not rocket science!This systemic lack of support for the product for two problems of their own making, both the original design flaw of inadequate recovery from a broken BIOS and producing a bad BIOS for some models and actually encouraging its installation, is more than alarming.
My primary concern about Framework was if they would survive so they were capable of following up on their goal of modular upgrades. That was a risk that I was willing to take.
However, that a company that targets a market segment of fairly sophisticated technologists would fail this badly on _both_ engineering and customer support is a deal killer.
Framework is not even on the shopping radar now for me.
I was using a Macbook Pro before. Went back to a Macbook Pro again. I don't want a Mac. I just can't find anything else remotely worth my money.
For context I have a 13th gen intel with the old battery and only get ~4hrs of battery life, but generally go a week or 2 between full shutdowns, since I hibernate all the time. I can close the lid, throw it in my backpack, not use it for the weekend, and when I open it it is ready to go, not having lost charge.
I generally have a better experience than when I was on windows.
Mine is using the AI 300 chip and is presumably on the latest bios so this specifically wouldn't be a problem for me, but it doesn't fill me with future confidence either, though I suppose if you look hard enough you can find similar stories about any manufacturer
Then you're going to be very disappointed a lot. When HIBP first came out, I worried over each incident. These days, breaches of non-payment data are so common that I don't even bother to sign up for notifications.
When it comes to PII, we live in a de facto panopticon.
But on that last point, it's also the first laptop in a while that I had to get into to fix something. The webcam never worked. That's not a linux issue, it's just that my fw13 is a hand me down from a previous colleague who I believe borked the webcam installation. But I don't use the webcam, so I never cared. On the other hand, when I first got it, the cpu fan was emitting a constant high pitch whine. After some research I wasn't the only one affected, and the support had me do a lot of steps before sending a replacement part (which was very easy to install, but the problem should not have been there in the first place). I also had some random crashes that I was never able to debug. The mic is very meh also. I never use it in anycase with my setup but still.
But at the same time, I don't see myself switching to another laptop. Despite all, this is still the laptop that felt the most "right" to me. I do believe that Framework has to seriously step up their support and QA game. But it does feel like it's a company that is "suffering from success". They got big investment, lots of publicities in some circle and so I feel like they have to produce and sell way more computer than the rest of the business can reasonably handle. I hope it's a “necessary evil” for them to get enough customers and revenue to start being able to attract more investment and being able to invest more in the “quality” side of the biz.
EDIT: I should say, being in the E.U make it so that I have an automatic 2 year guarantee, so I didn't have to experience the whole "just buy new parts lmao"
Is thinkpad really it? I wasn't wildly excited about that one either.