Hey friends, I’d like to talk to you today about my experience with my Framework laptop. This won’t be a long post, but I’ve been using this thing since December 27th and I like it so much I gotta tell ya.\
My partner, Krista, purchased this laptop for me for Christmas, and it’s incredible. It was just over $1,600 USD, and it’s the 13″ AMD Ryzen 7040 series. This one has a clear keycaps on an ISO English keyboard, and it’s the 2.8k matte display. She got me the DIY edition, which is marvelous! Here it is as I’m assembling it!
This is the primary machine I’ve been using for prototyping and open source development since the 27th. I’m running KDE Neon on it, and it runs great. When I first got it I had to flash a BIOS update, but after that I was off to the races.
The instructions from Framework were great, so assembly was a breeze. It was a lot of fun, and it helped me get a lay of the land so that if I do need to fix something, I can. The only thing I don’t love is this keyboard. Don’t get me wrong, the keyboard feels great to type on, is responsive, and I haven’t experienced any technical problems with it whatsoever. The only problem with the keyboard is that I do not like ISO keyboard layouts. That vertical Enter key with the \ right next to it has me typoing a lot more than I would prefer.
Luckily, I can replace the keyboard! I’m waiting for the International English Linux keyboard to come back into stock, and then I’ll replace the keyboard. As a fan of neat keyboards, this will be the least expensive keyboard I’ve bought in more than 20 years, at $39 USD. Rumor has it that the install procedure for these keyboards is a bit involved, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s fun to tinker, so tinker I shall.
Anyway, that’s my post: I love this machine, and my partner is incredible.
PS: The power button is a finger print reader, and it works under Linux.