For the first time in my life I’ve purchased a laptop that isn’t made by Apple. I used a Compaq laptop back in the mid-2000s, but that was our family computer, not specifically mine. I had a feeling it was going to happen sooner than later.
On Thursday night I placed an order for a Framework 13. It will replace the trusty 11-inch MacBook Air that I bought earlier this year as my primary personal machine.
I chose the Ryzen 7640U with the 2.8K display, a black bezel, and four USB-C expansion cards.
My understanding is that the AMD models are the one to get, primarily because of their superior battery life and performance compared to the Intel models. I tend to prefer AMD when given the option, so I don’t have much complaints there.
I thought about ordering one with the 7840U processor, but it would be difficult to justify the $280 price increase. I just can’t imagine really needing the increased performance, especially when it would cost an additional 25% over the 7640U.
As for the display, I opted for the 2.8K display because it’s better for resolution scaling — you can set it at 2x and your user interface will look crisp and be properly sized. The display option also comes with the larger battery and improved webcam module. I’m not thrilled about the rounded corners on the display, but I suspect I won’t even notice it after the first few minutes using the machine.
The expansion cards were something I spent quite a bit of time thinking about. It’s a unique experience to fully customize the port selection on your laptop and there’s just so many combinations that can be had.
Ultimately, I took battery life into consideration and went with all USB-C to start. The other expansion cards have an impact on power consumption. And although that isn’t the largest factor — especially compared to things like display brightness — but every little bit of battery life counts. Being a longtime Apple user, though , I’ve already transitioned most of my cables and accessories to USB-C.
I will probably end up purchasing some additional expansion cards down the line. A single USB-A card will come in handy more often than not. But I plan to live with all USB-C for a month or two to see what other expansion cards may be the most useful to me, depending on my real world use of the machine.
I chose to buy the system’s memory and SSD elsewhere. I ordered a kit of 32GB of RAM by Kingston and a 2TB Solidigm P44 Pro.
The Kingston memory is listed on Framework’s site and offered the timings I was looking for. The storage was a recommendation that I came across in a thread on Reddit. The Solidigm P44 Pro is lightning fast and is one of the better SSDs from a power usage standpoint.
I’ve already received my tracking number for the Framework, so I expect it to arrive sometime next week. At that point I’ll assemble the machine and install Ubuntu 24.04.
I may end up installing Windows as well — possibly on a storage expansion card. There are a small number of applications that aren’t available on Linux and I may want to run on this machine. We’ll see how essential they feel to me as I use it, though.
I expect I’ll be sharing my impressions of the Framework, both here and on Mastodon. If you have anything specific that you’d like to learn about the machine, feel free to let me know.
