12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
Is this a joke? Framework as a work laptop?
Then what’s it for? Looking pretty?
Business laptops (at least at the enterprise end - SMB is a crapshoot) are typically backed by better warranties, guaranteed parts availability for a period, trade a more robust build for worse looks, have management features like PXE boot, and (historically) ports for docks. They’re also more likely to have compliance-driven features like fingerprint scanners, and are frequently more repairable.
Source: In a past life, I managed the entire end-user compute portfolio of a major OEM.
I am aware. I just assumed that since there’s not an IT department offering/mandating any particular option then it’s more of a prosumer type of situation. Both of my recommendations are a good fit. They both have good parts availability, an array of ports for peripherals, and Lenovo will provide next day service at your home or office with their premium support plans.
Hobbists and home devs I think.
Edit if anyone can link an example of a real sized business going with framework I’ll eat a delicious lunch very quickly so I become slightly uncomfortable
Why would a business not like a laptop that they don’t have to replace?
Because most businesses don’t think like that at all. They don’t want employees taking things apart either.
ThinkPads and similar are far more popular because they can be bought in large contracts
Fair point.
I’m genuinely asking, bought prebuilt what would be the difference from a normal laptop?
Cause I could see lower longterm costs being a great benefit to a business, and if one part fails not losing 100% of your data, just let the IT guy replace that part
Long term costs aren’t an issue, framework costs 2x as much as a comparable enterprise laptop.
With a warranty parts are replaced if needed by the vendor, the IT guy doesn’t need to do anything. They even come to your home.
Drivers are regular updated tested, verified, packaged together and deployed through a repository and management apps.
since many companies have the ability to switch vendors, costing a company like dell or Lenovo $100k+ per year by doing so, the vendors pay attention to issues.
Yeah but it isn’t exactly ideal to have to fully stop operations when something goes down, especially given the opportunity to solve things within 10 min.
I suppose this would be even greater benefit to smaller town/out of city center businesses, but still framework is a company, so they do go through their own quality testing
You can buy a 2nd spare laptop for the price of a framework.
Lenovo posts their compatibility with each windows release. They also provide specific driver packages to use.
They also have tools to remotely test and troubleshoot hardware issues, online and offline.
I’d love to have a framework and I support the idea they have for multiple reasons, but it’s not a legitimate business device yet.
Shit I’d love to see where youre finding a laptop with comparable specs at $750, I’ll probably pick one up
I just spec’d a framework for $2000+ and a comparable Lenovo Thinkpad for $1000.
Another item important for work users availability. I wouldn’t the Lenovo in a few days. Not sure about the framework.
Sure if you buy top of the line it’ll be expensive, but what makes you only choose that option? 1.5 k is still more than reasonable for most jobs, and I can’t seem to find any lenovo without 720p displays at half that price
You’re getting downvoted, but the only way a business buys frameworks is if they’re running a pilot program. They are just not proven in that environment yet.
For a dev going to a coffee shop… sure. It’s your work laptop.