Framework Laptop Shipping! Choosing Memory and SSD, and more.

 For those of you who ready by discussion of the Framwork laptop, it won't be a surprise, but I ordered the DIY edition from the Framework web site on September 5th.

I ordered the mid-tier i5 model, as I am on a budget here.  

It took a while to ship, but it finally did on October 20th, which does fit within their "Ships in October" estimate, with some margin to spare.  Unfortunately, even when it did ship, I had to ship it to the US, so it had to arrive there first (which it did, on October 22nd), to be repackaged and sent to me in Japan.    

Here is a photo of it taken by the person who opened the box to check it.  

So Exciting news (for me), my Framework laptop left the US and is on the way to me.

Interestingly, it went through both Alaska and China before making it to Japan.  

Not only did I have to pay about $80 for shipping and insurance form the US to Japan, but I also will have to pay an import duty as well.  (Even though I avoided US Sales tax in exchange...)

I also ordered these key cap cover stickers, but they haven't arrived yet.

As for why I ordered the RAM and SSD I did, let's discuss the possibilities using a slightly oversimplified Matrix:

You can think of there as being basically four main options:

1. The Poor Man's Configuration - Use the smallest reasonable memory and SSD you can stand, and take the less expensive and slower options.  A good example here might be 4GB of PC2400 memory (~$25) and a 256GB SSD (~$40).  This config will get you up and running for the lowest cost, in this case around $65 USD.  This can also be called the "Eco Config", since it should draw less power as well.  

2. Rich Man's Configuration - Use the highest possible speed and size, without worrying about cost.  In this case, we would use two 32gb sticks of 3200Mhz memory at ~$200 each, for 64GB of memory, but if you shop around, you can find the 64GB as a set for around $300 USD.  For storage, you could go with 4TB of Nvme Gen 3 (pretty fast) for $880, or 2TB of Nvme Gen 4 Storage (Very fast, but power hungry) for $340.  This brings your total cost to between $640 and $1180, which costs roughly as much as the bare bones computer again.  Note that battery like will suffer here for sure.  Adding more RAM usually takes more battery power, because RAM has to be powered whether it's used or not.  Higher performance SSDs generally draw more power as well, and bigger SSDs have more of those power hungry chips on them.  

3. Value Configuration (a.k.a. spacious config) - In this config we want the largest reasonable size to work comfortably, but don't want to pay a premium for speed.  This is not bad for heavy application usage on a machine that will work with slow internet.  You may want to carry around lots of files, and have enough memory to open a lot of them at once with out swapping.  You might get 4TB of a slower speed SSD for around $450, and 64GB of 2666 Mhz for around $230.  This makes for $670, which could put it over the "Rich Man's Config" depending on your choices, but I am confident you could shop around and save more.  Note that previously I would not have had an issue buying used SSDs, but with the strange cryptocurrency happenings lately, I would strongly recommend against it.  Used RAM might be fine, though.  With the Framework laptop specifically, you could add some of those SSD modules to increase storage as well.  

4. Speedy Configuration - This setup assumes your machine will be a satellite machine, not your main machine, and therefore most of your files will be stored elsewhere.  As such, you can do with a smaller drive and less memory, but in exchange, you want the memory and storage you have to be the fastest available.  In this case, we look at 16GB of 3200GHz memory for around ~$100, and ~$160.  This means you can get a small, but livable and super fast config for a little over $250 US.  This setup will of course slow down once you run out of RAM and start swapping - but at least your swap drive wil be super fast.  500GB isn't a huge amount these days, though, and even the fastest SSDs do slow down as they fill up.  If you subtract 16GB for swap memory, and another 20GB for the OS, then you have 464 GB left, since you should try to keep it around 75% free, that means a little over 330GB of usable space. 

Besides the above, there would be fifth main option which could go dead center, something like 1TB-2TB of storage and 32GB of RAM, and of course there are infinite variations.

I chose #4, but I only ordered 8GB of RAM for now.  The 8GB is on a single module, which means I can still add another later on when I feel like spending another $50, or whatever it costs at the time.  

This will not me my main machine, and I also have a NAS and a cluster of machines running Resilio Sync.  Due to that and the fact that I have portable WiMax internet, there is no need to start out with huge storage.  Since I know SSD prices will probably drop as power efficiency and speed goes up, it makes sense to me to wait to buy a huge drive.  Likewise, I expect DDR 4 prices will drop after DDR 5 goes mainstream.  

I bought this laptop to run Linux on, but the trust is I usually use Linux for server type use, and usually Ubuntu.  For GUI use, I would prefer something Debian/Ubuntu based with a GUI similar to OS X.  To that end, I have been playing with Elementary OS and POP!_OS recently, and I will probably go with the latter, as it seems more likely to be able to get Waydroid running on given my experiments thus far, and I was mildly horrified upon hearing that Elementary needed a complete reinstall to go from v5 to v6 - might that happen from v6 to v7 again?

Once the machine arrives at my house, I will run some benchmarks against my other machines:

1. A Lenovo Thinkpad X1

2. My 2019 16 inch Intel MacBook Pro i9

3. My 13 inch M1 Macbook Pro

4. Some other machines I have laying around if I have time.

A lot of people have pointed out that the battery life on the Framework is not great, especially compared to the M1 Macs.  Well of course not!

Whether you love or hate Apple, the M1 Macs are nothing short of revolutionary in terms of performance per watt.  My M1 Macbook Pro is the fastest machine I have ever owned, laptop or not, and it has the longest battery life of any laptop I have ever owned.  In a way, it is the perfect laptop.  Except, that is, that everything is glued in or soldered down.  

At the moment, all of the major PC makers other than Apple are using Intel or AMD chips, neither of which have anywhere near the performance to power draw ratio as the ARM chip Apple built.  That means neither Lenovo, nor HP, nor Dell or Sony can even compete on the same playing field - so why would you assume a scrappy startup like Framework could?

But it's not just the processor...

In fact, Framework using socketed memory means they are using DDR4 SODIMMs, and not LPDDR4.  the LP in LPDDR means "low power".  There are no removable low power chips at the moment, so this is a necessary loss.  

They are also selling some of the highest performance (pronounced: most power hungry) SSDs on their site.  Using those will certainly cut battery life.  

Finally, the laptop has just been produced, and many of the components are on the bleeding edge.  I think it will take a few months, some kernel tuning and BIOS revisions before it is as perfect as it can get.  The fact that it drains the battery fairly fast even in sleep mode under Linux right now is strong evidence of that.