The Apple MacBook Air M3 is the best laptop for most people – Mac users, of course, but also the platform-agnostic or anyone who wants a no-fuss, straightforward machine that doesn’t bombard them with advertisements or bloatware. I’ve often run into problems with the two USB-C ports on my MacBook Air being too close to each other and with them both on the left side, I can’t opt to charge on the right side if I happen to be sitting with the wall outlet on that side of me. I had a lot of fun noodling around in games like Crusader Kings III and Othercide on the Framework, but don’t expect to run Cyberpunk 2077 on this thing. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death! I’ve experienced a few other issues with the laptop that seem related to the EC, such as keyboard input in the EFI bootloader dropping keys and being very sluggish (this happened only once), USB-C ports refusing to accept power for charging until the system is powered off and back on again (I’ve had this happen a number of times), and it not restarting when instructed to by the kernel/ACPI (a few times).

Despite its potentially off-putting power source, the battery has a wide variety of applications. I don’t usually publish battery life estimates for laptops because power usage on modern laptops can vary wildly with screen brightness and CPU load, whether it’s constantly Turbo boosting, etc. The Framework Laptop has a 55 Watt-hour battery and it idles around 9 Watts with the screen at 25% brightness and connected to WiFi. Not these days. In light workloads like watching video and web browsing, you can expect over 10 hours of battery life. 2021-08-04: Initial boot of OpenBSD-current showed a strange issue once inteldrm took over from efifb. Recompiling the kernel with DRMDEBUG enabled showed that it was having trouble training the eDP panel properly, although enabling debugging caused it to print messages to the console during the whole process, introducing enough delay that it could complete the training properly. Eventually I found that by switching between X and the console a few times, the screen would train and work properly, but after an xset dpms force off, or trying to resume from S3, this workaround does not usually work. It must have a clean, user-friendly UI that keeps your users engaged and doesn’t make them feel like switching to some other competitor just because of a not-so-good mobile app.

I have recently started switching my systems to NixOS, so I have a reproducible setup across multiple computers. Firefox, Element, VS Code, and Inkscape don’t seem to have any trouble. So far, I prefer to regularly ssh and view the files on the terminal, as I don’t have to download the files just to view them (and iOS doesn’t come with a basic text editor!). Dropbox and alternatives (that work with iOS) do not have E2E encryption, and they don’t guarantee that they will not tamper you files. I initially installed USB-C and USB-A expansion cards on the left side, and a USB-C and 1TB storage card on the right which will be used for backups. Each new ThinkPad I’ve used lately has become less and less repairable and upgradeable, with RAM and WiFi cards now being soldered to the motherboard. Since I purchased the DIY version, mine came with the 32GB of Crucial RAM that I ordered, along with an Intel AX210 WiFi card (which I swapped out for an AX201 due to OpenBSD compatibility) in separate packaging. According to Tablet Reviews, it comes embedded with an in-built 8GB internal space and can be extended up to 32GB via TF card.

Framework has an Expansion Card Developer Program to support 3rd party expansion cards and they’ve also made available the schematics and case designs for their existing cards. Framework is a new company offering a laptop that is designed to be repairable and upgradeable, both in terms of internal components like the screen and motherboard, and in pluggable expansion cards. Specialists with broad stretches of relationship with offering explicit associations. I use Terminus, which also allows me to also access files over SFTP. For a really long time, I wanted to access my files from anywhere, and unfortunately there are no applications to securely1 sync files between my phone and computer. I can access my laptop anywhere (as long as I keep the lid open, of course!). Centered on the back of the lid is the Framework logo in black, with “Framework” branding written on the front of the hinge in glossy black against the matte black plastic making it very discreet in most lighting.