alt Hacker NewsFramework seems pretty popular here in general, but nobody really seems to talk about how repairable enterprise laptops are. Some laptops have clips around the edge of the bottom panel to hold it in place, which frequently break. On my brother's T480s, those clips were made out of metal and held in with screws, meaning they were themselves replaceable. More recently I worked on a Dell Precision 7550 laptop, and if you crack it open everything is labeled just like a Framework. Also, before selling it I ran the onboard diagnostic. I was surprised when it told me to check the touchpad cable, because the touchpad was working fine. Took it apart again and yep, the touchpad cable was loose.
Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades. In addition, they're a much more mature product -- been selling laptops for much longer at much higher volumes. Thinkpads are the prototypical example but I actually like Dells better. Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well.
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You make a good point. And they do have the industrial knowledge / experience to create higher quality parts than Framework. But note that the value difference between Framework's offering and the others you cited is that repairability is today a lower priority for them (due to prioritising planned obsolescence), where as it is the core value around which the Framework business is built. Why aren't we seeing more modular laptops and smartphones? Sure, people cite technological advances and how electronics are manufactured today. But a major reason, in my opinion, is that it isn't seen as profitable as designing and selling devices that are not easy to repair or upgrade.
You are right... I personally own a T480s and it is a remarkable device, which can be repaired just like the framework (although most parts are no longer available new). I added a glass trackpad (which is way better than the original) and ordered a WQHD Display + Cable to upgrade from FullHD to WQHD (2560x1440?). Batteries can be replaced, RAM can be upgraded (in a way, part of it is soldered) and everything has a unique part number that can be easily researched.
However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability.
Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again.
I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and they provide a repair guide or maybe a replaceable BIOS chip. Stories like this are somehow sad but at least they help to improve.
BTW: Dell has great repairable business notebooks (I recently switched to a cheap Latitude 5420 - the T480s was getting to slow for some tasks), but there are caveats I immediately noticed and most people don't think of:
- Keyboard Backlight is way too bright in the lowest setting
- Keyboard layout is a bit off
- It cannot be opened with one hand
- Display Brightness steps are to low (using the ALT key could increase / decrease the step size, like in MacBooks)
- Display Brightness cannot be set to "off" / black screen (this only works on macbooks)
- The Dell 5520 Trackpad is horrible
- Nobody except Apple supports AudioJack-Headphones remotes for controlling audio playback and volume (with USB-C to audiojack Adapters this works out of the box on Linux)
From my experience they have been getting less repairable. Look at recent thinkpads.
My headcannon is that the only reason the T14G7 is as repairable as it is, is due to the whole right to repair movement, including framework.
Dell latitude 7480.
usb-c port is now dead, it is soldered.
Not going to happen to my https://frame.work laptop, 10 eur part, no soldering, not even a screwdriver, and good as new
Most consumers are not an IT department, unfortunately.
I've been repairing my laptops for a long time. I loved my dell laptops for field work. Swappable batteries especially! Framework, for me, was just the natural extension of that, geared towards multi-use that included reconfigurability, which dell never had, and more compact overall.
On balance, I think the framework has been a cool talking point, but yes, a 2015 dell would have supported all the improvements I made over time to my framework, provided it had all the ports I needed originally. It'd have definitely been bulkier though!
Most people I know don't own enterprise computers. They are pretty pricy and visually tame - not really made for consumers. To me, buying a framework is more about ideology than them being the best at everything. You can't expect them to be the best when starting out either. I am buying a future.
I don't think any framework owner seriously thinks they are buying the most repairable laptop in the world or the most cost effective laptop in the world.
There's repairable and there's repairable and it's not quite as obvious as it seems.
The big issue we see on our Dell and Lenovo units is broken USB-C ports and the only repair method possible there is replace the motherboard. No ports on daughterboards like the MacBooks. And you can't just buy the parts from most vendors. Dell is utterly impossible and with Lenovo half the time they don't actually have any of the parts available or somehow manage to fuck up their shipping so they never turn up. Had to charge back Lenovo/Digital River twice. Zero support at all and impossible to contact anyone. And the whole PART NOT USER SERVICEABLE in the HMMs.
If you want Dell/Lenovo repairs just buy two of whatever.
At the same time iFixit are gushing all over Lenovo who are hell and pissing on Apple. The Apple who don't have this problem and I seem to have no problem getting parts for from their official parts store, the parts actually turn up and work.
I’m assuming many people also haven’t experienced their warranties and service networks. I remember decades ago when I was a teenager and anytime my Dell XPS stopped working (or I dropped it…) a tech would come in a van within two days and repair the laptop on my kitchen table while I watched and peppered him with questions.
I love my framework because it’s the only laptop where I can design a custom plugin module to talk to my hardware and EE testbench, but DIY repairability pales in comparison to a service network where the tech arrives with a library of spare parts faster than you can get a replacement from Amazon.
> nobody really seems to talk about how repairable enterprise laptops are
Thinkpads have been a meme since the early 2010s.
It's funny to bring up the T480/s as positive example because I remember people complaining about anything past ~xx20 series.
> caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle
Framework is a reaction to the cult following a lot of the business laptops had. When people are spending $$ to retrofit modern mainboards to vintage Thinkpad chassis you know there's enthusiast money to be made there.
I mean, I needed to replace my thinkpad x1 carbon gen 3 keyboard and I started looking at videos and... You can do it, but it's absolutely bonkers what you need to do.
I think the context into which Framework introduced repairable laptops is mainly the Mac dev crowd who've only ever experienced Apple's glued together brick with serial number locked parts that gets replaced whole or not at all.
In today's blog post, we are all studying the enshittification of the BIOS.
In general, I agree with you that the bigger laptop makers can repair laptops and do an amazing job.
What we're all here for though is 2026. No big company is coming to fix your machines, even big companies are waiting 30+ days for parts availability from the big company bros they bought from. If you're a consumer, forget about it.
"Many of them are Ubuntu-certified as well." I'm calling BS here. Dell and HP hide their limited, paltry Linux offerings in the back of their website. Define your use of "many."
Now we're down to the BIOS. Today's blog post encountered a failed BIOS update, and takes Framework to task for it. Some of the support team at Framework are really cool and would probably have detected this customer is https://xkcd.com/806/
This time he got the strict script follower for customer support. I hope it blows up on Framework.
> Framework really caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle, but Dell/Lenovo/HP have been selling repairable laptops to IT departments for decades.
Yeah, but does Dell allow you to change your laptop's mainboard for another mainboard with time? That is such a quantum leap. You do not have to adjust your self to a new keyboard just because you wanted a new processor.