Hello fellows,
I’m currently looking in 13-14" laptops with no immediate needs for one but just because it’s exciting. I love my Dell XPS but I feel I should support companies with which I share more common views. I could make the effort to go a with a less attractive look (especially for bezels) but I don’t want to go wrong with hardware so what are your thoughts on Framework, Starlab, Purism, and System76? I’ll be running Arch and I tend to have a preference for Framework for now.
Do you have feedback (positive and negative) to share on any of these companies?
Thanks for the knowledge you’ll bring me. That’ll be extremely useful when time comes to go with a new machine.
Update 1: Still wonderful to be part of such a great community. Thanks for all the great feedback (looking for more :) ).
So far everyone is standing behind Framework. Anyone with a less positive experience or who would like to speak for the other companies?
Update 2: Thank you fellows for the time you’ve spent to share your honest feedback! I didn’t want to influence your inputs but you all confirmed the Framework picture I had in mind. It’s a piece of mind to read real world experience so thanks again. I was surprised to not see the system76 community speaks louder. Anyway, when time comes I will (virtually) push Framework shop’s door.
And the company has been ultra-transparent about any issues so far.
Also all the spare parts are available straight from Framework and especially the consumables are cheo.
So far this is really what makes me leaning toward Framework. But you know, when something seems too good to be true… If Framework is as perfect as it seems to be I can’t wait for the need of a new laptop :D
It’s terrible because it’s great and I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s an investor lurking somewhere, waiting for the right moment to jack up the profit margins, fucking up an extremely nice thing. If Framework ever goes public, that’ll probably be the beginning of it getting worse.
The only thing that I’ve seen is Framework’s customer service is unbelievably fantastic–until it’s not. They had some deceptive marketing on their SSD modules, which they marketed as being useful for booting an OS on, but then later said on their forums that they weren’t designed to be used that way.
The average customer won’t have any issues, but every once in a while a customer reports feeling burned because they had persistent issues that Framework was unable to solve. After RMAing a number of times their support tells you to pound sand.