I have a hard time believing a company as anti-consumer as Intel would want to do anything even remotely pro-consumer so now I’m left wondering what nefarious anti-consumer deeds they are doing in the background.
The modular desktop is largely from them.
From a business standpoint, if I were Intel, I imagine that I might be very interested in leveraging my ability to do modular x86 systems. There is incoming laptop competition from ARM SoC systems, which are particularly weak on modularity. There, it’s not even just the laptop vendor making calls as to what components go on the system, but Qualcomm or whoever the SoC vendor is, so the consumer is even further away from having ability to choose what they get.
You spelled framework wrong…
Framework is better than the norm for laptops, but a long way from where desktops are.
I too think we should interpret the title/advertisement literally!
If you’re happy with your Framework laptop as of 2025, great, but this is hardly the end of the road. I want more than what Framework offers in 2025. Almost none of the things I want modularized are made modular by Framework today.
I’m sure they halted r&d and their products have now crystalised ad eternum, we do really need intel to bring that boat to shore because framework stopped. In fact, everything intel touches turns to gold so this ad is more than just an ad, it’s a prophecy!
they are their major contributor, its just they’re currently being fucked by cheeto hitler and its party. and it’ll be a looong 4 years to make any development with framework tech…or idk, who knows?
Framework could move to Europe, we have some of the best engineers in the world and they are far cheaper (and easier to work with) than the California stock.
You can want all sorts of things. Wanting doesn’t change the world.
They produced what is today’s standardized, modular x86 desktop. I don’t doubt their technical or business ability to establish a standardized, modular form factor in something approaching a laptop form factor.
Of course, having replaceable CPUs on laptops would open up a huge market for people buying new CPUs to install.
My laptop I used through university just a few years ago, an HP Elitebook 840 G3 had a toolless bottom panel that popped off to allow access to the battery, wifi card, m.2, SATA drive, and RAM. I upped to to 16gb RAM and put a m.2 drive in both for cheap and it was a capable computer and still gets used today. Why can’t we still do that?
You can still do that, but you typically have to get a chunky “gaming laptop” with SO-DIMM memory.
That, but also, I think that ability to upgrade the GPU is likely more important than the CPU, these days. CPU performance and capabilities aren’t changing as quickly as those of the GPU, and there are more non-gaming parallel compute applications coming to the fore. If you want to extend an older computer’s longevity by putting a modern component in, I’d think that the GPU would be more critical.
I have an old alienware laptop where you could swap the CPU and GPU on it. It was still trash (the thing died after about 3yrs; idk why I still have it), but it was a cool hidden feature.
Edit: of course, a normal CPU or GPU wouldn’t work in it, you needed one that used a different socket than their desktop equivalents and were significantly more expensive. Still a neat feature though.
l’d like there to be a portable, modular PC, and I want one for myself. I’d like the ability to have a larger, replaceable battery (maybe with multiple batteries a la Toughbook that can collectively exceed 100Wh); a Synaptics-style trackpad with three physical buttons; more USB-C ports (at least Framework laptops can do this one); more memory; centered keyboard with Caps Lock and Left Control physically swapped; a desktop-style, physically-removable, larger, better-optics webcam that can be left in a small case and attached only when I want to use it; an HMD instead of standard display when we hit the point that they’re a viable display replacement; a case that doesn’t rely on a spudger to open; a case with space to put air vents somewhere other than the bottom so that using the device on a soft surface doesn’t obstruct them, and so forth.
However, I don’t think that it makes sense for all laptops to do that. Modularity does come with costs, and not everyone wants to pay them.
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Physically, more size and weight. Need more space to make all these individually-structurally-sound components. I don’t care about this, as I throw my laptop into a backpack, but some people will.
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More power usage to use more widely-separated chips. Phones can be light on power in part because they’re using an SoC, the opposite of modularity. I don’t care about this because I’m fine with just throwing bigger batteries at the thing, but some people will.
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Easier to test and validate that a fixed number of devices work together (not a big deal for me, as I’m fine with where desktops are today).
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Security issues. External bus devices have historically not been trusted, but internal bus devices have been. If I can get physical access to your laptop and I can easily replace an internal component, that might have security implications.
a Synaptics-style trackpad with three physical buttons
I don’t even know why doesn’t Framework have trackpoints. It’s such a missed yet not too expensive feature.
Yeah, it’s definitely not a complete list of wants above. I don’t personally use pointing sticks, but I totally get the lack of availability driving people who do want it bonkers.
My guess is lack of scale. I mean, the overwhelming bulk of laptops don’t have them either, and Framework is already working at limited scale.
I’m not saying “Framework is bad people” – they gotta work with what they have. But, like…for their current build, I remember reading a blog post about how they were using rounded-edge screens that they found a large batch of that someone else wanted for something else to try to compensate for their lack of scale and bring prices down. They already have to struggle with scale issues that large laptop manufacturers don’t.
Every individual option that they have to go engineer up is gonna add cost, and that has to be paid for by spreading the cost over a relatively-small number of laptops. That’s why you’d want something like Intel putting out a standardized laptop form factor, though – if all laptops support a standardized “laptop keyboard” form factor, then suddenly you have an enormous amount of scale available, anyone can just buy and snap into place a new laptop keyboard with a pointing stick, and suddenly, anyone making these things has a huge amount of scale, because they’re designing the thing for laptops from a wide range of vendors, instead of just for one small laptop vendor.
FYI, if you can tolerate hauling around an external keyboard — and unless your laptop is a hybrid tablet that lets you swivel the keyboard out of the way, getting its internal keyboard out of the way means having to put the laptop on a stand, haul around and use an external display instead of the built in one, or shove the built-in display back further than where you’d want it relative to your eyes — it’s possible to get an external keyboard with a pointing stick. I just had a comment the other day that listed several USB keyboards that provide this. It was, unfortunately, in someone’s troll post on !trackballs@discuss.tchncs.de and so the whole post got deleted, so I can’t link to it, but here’s a copy:
If you’re okay with an external keyboard:
Cherry MX keyswitches:
https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Keypadless-Capacitive-AS-KBQ89-LRGBWP/dp/B0972DC97Q
Scissor switch:
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Thinkpad-Trackpoint-Keyboard-4Y40x49493/dp/B08CS1FVF2/
Buckling spring:
https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=UB40PGA
Note that I own one of the last, a model from about ten years ago. The buckling spring keyswitches are indestructable, and the nipple itself is fine, but the mouse button switches were much less durable and wore out a long time back. I have no idea if they still use the same button switches.
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They kind of were, then they started soldering and glueing everything shut because it was cheaper
