I see a lot of anecdotal comments about users’ past or present Thinkpads on this sub so I’m curious how many FW13 buyers have come from a Thinkpad or have a Thinkpad as a second machine and how many have migrated from other brands.
I see the appeal of Framework for the old-school Thinkpad tinkerer. The FW13 will be the first non-Thinkpad I’ve owned since the old 570 back in the 1990s (although, granted, I’ve always been able to get EPP pricing on Thinkpads, which has influenced by purchases). My other laptop is a Gen4 Thinkpad P1, which is too big and power hungry to really be a good travel machine, but I will probably replace it with another powerful Thinkpad P-series laptop sometime in the next year for all the editing I do at home.
Right now I’m on T480 that I got because it was the last model they made with an external battery.
Same. Replaced everything for fun. Different keyboard, removed internal battery for a dummy one, dual cooler on my Intel only board.
Framework was the first laptop since then that hit my minimum threshold of maintenance.
It sits in a nice position of x20/30 series and x80 series with ease of maintenance.
It’s fantastic being able to swap a drive in my X220 in 2 minutes. At same time, I rarely need to do that…
Although I could always use the SSD adapter in Framework
Ah, reminds me of the Thinkpads of old – external batteries, ultrabay that could hold another battery or whatever else you need, swapping drives, wireless cards, etc. and finding that perfect keyboard from the best of the 2-3 manufacturers they used. I also remember hunting down the last T-series they made with a 4:3 screen (the T61)
Yeah, every generation got 1 thing better but 2 things worse.
X200 with T480 performance (or better) would be where I land Then turns out that’s basically a Framework :)
Framework is going to surpass them in hobbyist circles for sure. Being able to convert a laptop to a headless server once the battery is gone is too cool. Can’t wait to see what they or the community achieve.