The only reason to have a desktop PC these days IMO is if you need something very powerful (for gaming, video editing, CAD etc.), otherwise laptops today can generally have plenty of power for most people.
So, yes, I’d just buy a dock for your FW and use that. Also worth getting a laptop stand to improve airflow around the case just in case things get toasty.
As with any courier/delivery service it all depends where you live and how good or bad your local depot is. For some people FedEx will be the best of the lot, for others not so much. There’s no hard and fast rule. In my case FedEx generally outperforms UPS for deliveries. For others it might be the other way round.
For charging or charging and data? For charging I like the Anker braided ones. Just bought a 10ft, 100W cable but as with all charging cables the data rate is only 480Mbps.
If you value battery life over everything else then a Macbook is a no-brainer IMO. That said, you should be able to get a Ryzen or even an Intel 13th gen FW13 to last at least 8 hours without much difficulty.
yes, Thinkpads just seem so solid, even the more recent ones. The only thing I truly hate about them, build-wise, is that coating they use that’s a huge grease magnet. If the weather’s hot and/or you have sweaty hands a new Thinkpad will look like someone dumped a quart of motor oil over it within a few days! What’s more, the grease marks in well-handled areas can be impossible to fully get out eventually regardless of the cleaning products used. The older Thinkpads with the hard black plastic never suffered from this issue. I’m really looking forward to the bare aluminum of the FW13.
Any idea if you still have to go through this if you swap out the AMD wireless card for the Intel AX210 before installing Windows?
There was a good deal on 32GB of Crucial RAM ($65-$72 depending on store) but it was sold out everywhere by Sunday. The only other deals I’ve seen are at NewEgg, which has some discounts on the G-Skill 64GB kits (CL40 for $175 and CL46 for around $163). Otherwise all the decent RAM discounts have been for configurations other than DDR5 5600Mhz.
Ah, reminds me of the Thinkpads of old – external batteries, ultrabay that could hold another battery or whatever else you need, swapping drives, wireless cards, etc. and finding that perfect keyboard from the best of the 2-3 manufacturers they used. I also remember hunting down the last T-series they made with a 4:3 screen (the T61)
I can’t see how a charger can fail because of what it’s charging, especially if it has plenty of headroom (a Framework 13 is designed for a 65W charger). More likely to fail because it’s either a lemon or the electrical outlet is bad in some way, so I call bad luck on the Anker and perhaps predictable luck on the rando brand.
It’s Gen3 and also a DRAM-less drive so will choke a bit with sustained writes. The 4TB Teamgroup MP34 is the same price and is IMO a better SSD.
The bigger problem is that I never seem to be able to get superglue to actually stick things together. Literally everything I’ve used it on has come unstuck. Skin seems to be the only thing I can reliably stick with superglue. When it comes to gluing plastic or metal I always use an epoxy, which can get messy.
Does RAM quantity really impact power consumption in any meaningful way? I’m curious because that crossed my mind after I missed the crucial 32GB deal and opted instead for 64GB from GSkill. My SSD will be a Hynix P31 so I’ll save some battery life there at least
Such a popular price that the 32GB kit is now sold out everywhere in the US (including the Crucial site)
That’s concerning. I did read that the Zen 4 Ryzen chips didn’t really improve on the Zen 3 ones in terms of battery life, but 4 hours is pretty terrible even for the last gen Ryzens chips. I can do better even with my pre-Evo Intel power-sucking 16" Lenovo workstation!
Some thoughts: are you sure Windows and/or antivirus is not doing something in the background in terms of updates or scanning? What level brightness is your screen at? And what do you define as “light usage”?
Does the bios still only allow you to dedicate a maximum of 2GB to the iGPU? From what I’ve read, the Radeon 780m can have up to 8GB allocated, but it doesn’t sound like that’s an option with the Framework for some reason. Anyone know why?
I’m not a huge fan of the 3:2 screen, mainly because it makes the laptop relatively large (deep) for a 13.5-incher and kinda kills some of the portability factor. I’d much prefer a 16:10 screen. Definitely not a 16:9 screen though – those are hopefully soon to be consigned to the annals of history.
Looks like G.Skill sells two versions of that 64GB kit, one with a latency of 40 and one with 46 (specs seem identical otherwise). The faster one is on sale for $175 at Newegg and the other is $163, which seems like a pretty good price
I’m now seeing $72. Gotta love Amazon and its yo-yo prices.
Apple hardware is unquestionable superior to anything made by other PC makers IMO, but it locks you into the Mac ecosystem which is a deal killer for me. Doesn’t stop me being supremely jealous of the M3 power, overall design, and battery life of the latest Macbooks though!
I have Anker 65W and 100W GAN charger and both should work fine with the FW13 although one reviewer reported that a 65W charger (FW’s own) cannot keep up with power consumption during intensive tasks so the laptop keeps flipping between AC and battery power. General consensus seems to be get a 100W charger to be safe, especially considering they’re not much bigger than 65W ones.