One of my jobs during college was working with a company that repaired laptops for national brands. We did most of the big ones — I especially remember Thinkpad (Lenovo), HP, Dell and Apple. I’m currently working through a laptop problem and wanted to vent so I’m going to do that very briefly, then give my advice for what laptop you should get.

A brief review of the framework laptop

The whole pitch behind the framework laptop is that it is user repairable and upgradeable — EVERYTHING is. You can replace the screen, the memory, the storage and you can even replace the entire motherboard if a new processor comes out that you simply must have.

(this is in contrast with Apple, where basically everything is soldered to the board — in other words, if you decide you want more memory or storage later tough)

The other minor piece is that the ports are hot-swappable — basically you have four “expansion bays” and you can slide whatever port you want into each one — USB C, USB A, HDMI, Displayport, even ethernet (although it’s not a great implementation of a laptop ethernet port).

I absolutely love the idea of this laptop, and I was thinking how great it would be to use at work, where we go through a lot of laptops. So I ordered one myself to try it out.

It comes in pieces (if you order it that way) and you put it together yourself. I’ve worked on hundreds of laptops and it was by-far the easiest laptop to open, service, and close again.

And then it was a super pain to install linux on. Finally I gave in and bought windows and it was also a pain to install windows on. I found it it isn’t usually a pain — I had apparently gotten a bad board. I got it up and running and it was OK, aside from some minor hiccups, until all the ports stopped working.

Unlike most laptops I couldn’t just send it back or have it serviced. Instead they had me open it up and send them pictures. Then serial numbers. Then pull the battery and reset it. Then more pictures. Then model numbers of the SSD I used with it. Then they wanted me to reseat the memory and SSD. Then install a beta version of new firmware to see if that fixed it. Then more pictures, then …

You get the idea. The idea behind the laptop is great. The build quality is great. But the support is absolutely horrible, and unfortunately, given the nature of the laptop, you’re probably going to end up needing the support.

I love the idea, but I wouldn’t buy one if I were you.

So what laptop should I get?

If you don’t know a ton about computers, I recommend the new macbook air. Although they aren’t upgradeable, macbooks tend to last forever (I have one on my shelf my dad gave me that’s ten years old and it still runs), they’re easy to use, they’re fairly secure by default, they support basically everything … they’re just good solid defaults. They’re expensive, but like the ads say, they just work. Though you do have to embrace that dongle life, but it’s not so bad if you just get a halfway decent one for your desk.

But what if you DO know about computers, and maybe you want to install linux, or you need windows, or you just don’t like Apple’s “fancier than thou” attitude?

Then I recommend a refurbished lenovo thinkpad, specifically the T14s. The S stands for … slim, I guess? It’s the more svelt of the T series thinkpad laptops. You can always find them at the Lenovo outlet for fairly cheap (I checked today and they’re running about $800), they’re bullet proof, they tend to run great with Linux, and you can upgrade the RAM and storage (and that’s about it, really, but it’s still more than Apple lets you)

I really like the idea behind the framework laptop because it seemed more environmentally friendly. But if it craps out and you have to replace the motherboard every couple of years it kind of loses its edge (or after about six months, as is the case for me). Much like an Apple, the Lenovo will last a good while (I have one on my shelf I got from work almost eight years ago that I installed Linux for my kids to play with).