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hedora
chx
> Am I missing something?
Yeah. The company is three people with practically no money at hand. I can't imagine this being real. Check "full accounts made up to 28 February 2022" https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... with cash at hand being just 13,887 pounds. How on earth are you making a laptop from that? Framework started with a nine million seed round and had the former head of hardware at Oculus as the founder for expertise in this field. Now, almost eight figures is prolly overkill but I have hard time imagining low five figures being enough. It doesn't mean there's malicious intent here, they just might not be fully aware of the challenges here and will find themselves in way over their head.
Note there's no doxxing here, the CRN is on the contact us page: https://starlabs.systems/pages/contact-us
mihaaly
They seem to be real entrepreneurs running the thing from a farm in rural settings [1] where the director lives (same personal address declared). If I read it right they are in ca. 400k debt so far, working it down slowly. I am wishing them quick success as their product looks great. Perhaps if I will be patient enough waiting 5 month for delivery after payment and will not worry about if warranty (or even shipment) could be ever fulfilled by a tiny new company I will make a try myself. On paper this is a quality laptop that is so hard to find in the sea of trash. But perhaps will wait until more experiences are gained by other customers in a year or so (considering the half year delivery lag). I also wish they used less pompous text in the very first two senences of the headline in the style of hustlers with more mouth than content: "exquisitely crafted", "sets a new standard", "groundbreaking technology", "ultimate choice", "users who demand the very best". It is off-putting for me. No need to sugar the honey this hard.
I genuinely root for them.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863...
ahoya
That’s impressive, they are really bootstrap. The quality of their hardware and their support has been fantastic I highly recommend them if you can afford the weight
DoreenMichele
Frankly, if it's three people, you're lucky it's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors. If "we aren't polished at PR" is your big criticism, it's a nit.
If they are successful, they'll eventually hire someone and likely get some polish on those details.
azinman2
I wish them good luck, I just wish as you pointed out with the hyperbolic statements they weren’t trying to poorly emulate Apple marketing. I found the page very harsh graphically and full of elementary design mistakes (font ratios, spacing, layout, etc), and not great copy writing. I know people feel the need to maximize their product marketing, but if you’re going to swing this hard, hire someone who is good enough to do it for you.
brookst
“Sugar the honey” is a great turn of phrase and new to me. Thank you!
wtallis
From https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/about-us
>In 2017, we started using Clevo as a supplier. The result was; the Star Lite Mk I, the Star LabTop Mk II and the Star LabTop Pro Mk I. There were a vast array of options to chose from in these laptops, from wireless to memory to pre-installed distribution. You may be familiar with Clevo as they have a lot of resellers across the world. It was a step in the right direction but they left something to be desired when comparing them to the competition - the batteries were small, the bezels were big and modern standards such as USB-C charging were not available.
>We had to build our own. When 2018 came around, we started working on our very own laptops. We used a variety of suppliers, design houses and factories. It was 6 long months of tooling and testing on repeat until two new laptops were born in December 2018; the Star Lite Mk II and the Star LabTop Mk III.
Simply put, they have the same business model as any other small brand for laptops, and that business model does not involve owning your own factories. Now, their small size and limited financial resources certainly casts doubt on their ability to provide ongoing support for their products, but it doesn't preclude getting a product out the door in the first place.
mardifoufs
Wait so they design it in house? That's pretty amazing considering their small size, especially compared to system76.
jnsaff2
> that business model does not involve owning your own factories
Apple does not own their own factories.
chx
Do they? I was under the impression most small brands simply resell such ODMs as Clevo or TongFang perhaps they add RAM/SSD/such -- but they do not design custom motherboards and chassis.
tsmithe
I have one of their machines (a StarBook that I am typing this on), and it is excellent. It probably helps to have a $9m seed round -- certainly it means Framework can do much more marketing (including such as the Steam Deck stunt) and hire more people -- and I'm sure it's easier to raise those funds from the US, but it is clearly not necessary. I hope that Star Labs does well enough that they are able to expand, raise funding if they wish, and compete with better capitalized companies.
perihelions
- "Note there's no doxxing here,"
How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing? Do you guys -- I'm asking sincerely, I'm feeling extraordinarily confused and out-of-touch -- think there's some of genuine privacy interest here that you'd wish to respect? Some sort of "right to anonymous business", where you can hide all your sketchiness behind a shell company and people need to *morally* respect your wishes?
Because, if I heard someone "doxxed" a company's ownership and financial documents non-consensually, all I'd have to say to them is "good on you, Wall Street Journal".
gizmo
Having disgruntled customers show up at your office is not the same as them showing up at your home. It's not at all sketchy to want some privacy before you've gotten your office lease sorted. When starting a business you have all these circular dependencies, where you can't get a lease before you register your business, but when you register your business you need an address on day 1.
wpietri
> How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing?
I think "doxxing" has in some cases evolved from a sometimes-necessary norm in pseudonymous forums to a context-free knee-jerk reaction to somebody's details being out there.
I appreciate the norm when it allows people to safely be themselves among pseudonymous peers. Yes, by all means let's keep each other feeling safe. But like you, when somebody is doing business with the public, I think we should expect to know who they are. It seems insane to me that MrSquanchy69 can take in gobs of money, execute a rugpull, and have people saying, "bUt WhAt aBOuT tHeIr PriVAcY?!?" Public impact and public accountability go hand in hand.
ajb
They have 400k of stock, though. It's common for a company not to keep a lot of cash around and borrow as needed against stock, which I would guess they are doing as they have 200k+ of creditors.
So, my guess is that they used income to build up stock of their clevo lines in order to reduce delivery times and increase their market to delivery sensitive customers, and now they are leveraging that to invest in the custom versions. If they are doing their own sw and there product is an integration of off the shelf parts, maybe it's doable.
Edited to add:
Actually I misread the statement, they have 200k falling due in a year and a further 700k of debt. So that's nearly 1M of investment, which seems easily enough to do this development, given it's much less complex than the framework devices.
camgunz
It's a real company and many people have laptops from them. Here are a couple HN threads about it:
biehl
I have the Byte desktop machine from them. I waited quite a bit for the delivery, but the machine is very nice.
bogwog
This isn't a new company. They've made and shipped laptops in the past. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IuzQehsrA
ahoya
I have their latest starbook, just arrived a couple months ago and it is stellar. Covid delayed it almost a whole year, but in that time they upgraded frob adwertised 11th gen intel to 12th gen for free, quadrupling cores. It runs extremeley well with latest coreboot and everything. I considered canceling my pre-order because of the long delay, but Support was extremely quick and receptive and it turns out the trust they earned was warranted. I did a lot of research and really nothing comes close to these guys. This new one is expensive relatively, but the Starbook I have was a surprisingly good deal. No connection to them except a happy customer who can gladly recommend them.
Fully upgradable SSD and raM as well, I have 64 gigs and the touchpad is really really good.
kodah
I just spec'd one out and it was pretty similar to the I9 MBP. Personally, I'd pay that price for a Linux laptop that's on par with a MBP.
TylerE
Do we really think the build quality of these is even in the same state, much less the same ballpark, as a MBP?
koonsolo
How is the sound quality? Is it comparable to a MacBook?
komali2
I'm really curious about people that actually use laptop speakers. Even the best laptop speakers I've heard (I've heard MacBook speakers too) sound terrible. Other than for a quick video or demo or whatever, who is seriously listening to videos or music on laptop speakers... And why??? Even a cheap pair of earbuds sounds better to me.
teawrecks
I'm seeing conflicting comments about the RAM. You say you're an owner and it has upgradable RAM, other commenters here are saying the RAM is soldered. Is only this new model soldered?
ahoya
This new model is soldered unfortunately which allows it to use low power raM
ktosobcy
how does touchpad compare to MBP one?
ahoya
They are very good, multi finger gestures worked out of the box on fedora
aae42
this is what i want to know, the part you touch looks on point, what i want to know about is the software, there is so much secret sauce in a macbooks giant glass touchpad that actually makes it a reasonable replacement for a mouse
didn't feel that about any touchpad before the macbook, and it's why we loved thinkpad's so much because at least they gave you a nub
ahoya
[dead]
NovemberWhiskey
Have they actually made one yet? The pictures on the site all look like renders; and I couldn't find any pictures of an actual prototype anywhere.
azangru
> Have they actually made one yet?
Exactly. No real laptops so far; no videos with honest in-depth reviews; no information on the dirability of these machines.
If something is too good to be true, it likely is.
tsmithe
I am typing this on their latest StarBook. It's a great machine. As for durability, it has an aluminium body and seems sturdily built. I expect it to last a good few years.
daydream
There are comments here from people that have them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34760276
belter
If you are talking about YouTube reviews. Please tell me where you find in-depth honest reviews.
Because every channel I have seen on anything...Is claiming independent reviews, while getting product test samples loaned for 1 or 2 years. Engaging on a direct contact with the marketing departments of the vendors, and working under the certainty that if they ever do a thoughtful and true review with a bad rating, the vendor wont send any more samples.
Klonoar
There’s an entire subreddit that has people discussing theirs.
koonsolo
YouTube has review videos
LesZedCB
I guess it was for the discerning - but not too discerning - buyer
zxexz
I mean, all their laptops looks like that, and they have a pretty good track record of following through. I'm in the market for a new laptop, and a 4-5 month lead time is a bit too far out. Maybe I'll purchase one when they're actually shipping, but by then I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever frankentop I cobble together.
lhl
There are pics of a protoype in their Twitter feed. Also you can see lots of pics/videos of their previous model laptops: https://twitter.com/starlabsltd/
(Star Labs has been around for years making Linux laptops)
ActorNightly
You can buy the Starbook, and there are reviews on youtube.
adgjlsfhk1
Soldered ram is pretty unfortunate. They're also charging a ton for storage upgrades (e.g. $300 vs market rate of ~$80 for 1TB pcie 4.0 ssd).
lucb1e
As usual. Not sure why this is, they could just charge for the labor that it actually costs them to put a different SSD in plus material cost, but no, they always mark up ridiculous amounts. It basically forces people to buy a dummy SSD with the device plus a loose one and then put it in yourself... at least that's what I do for myself and family whenever it saves more than 50 euros and takes me 5-10 minutes (usually it saves ~100 euros to buy extra hardware on top of what you already get in the laptop(!)).
If anyone is interested in unusably tiny and/or slow SSDs, let me know because right now they're just going in e-waste.
(I have similar beef with drinks in restaurants at, e.g., ~100x markup for tap water. Why not just charge a normal price for both the food and the drinks, instead of me having to guess at how much I should be spending on drinks to compensate the normal-priced food? Or make both cheap and charge a table fee, whatever floats their boat. This incentivizes people to not drink enough; usually it's calories where people overingest, not hydration!)
wpietri
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I've bought many a device with the minimum RAM and disk space which I will then throw out and replace with third party stuff. I get why many vendors do it, but I hate the waste. I'm more willing to forgive it in a general-audience company than people who are selling to the kind of technical audience who can all do the swap.
cornel_io
I have literally never seen a restaurant anywhere in the world that charges for tap water, and I eat out constantly. Is this a thing now somewhere?
scns
If you search for wtallis in this thread you'll find a technical reason for soldered ram. Can't respond with a link since on mobile, did it several hours ago at home though.
userbinator
They've clearly learned some things from Apple.
MobiusHorizons
Unfortunately low power ddr4 (lpddr4) does not come on SODIMs, soldered ram is the only way to get it. I know everyone likes to shit on apple about this, (and they definitely should about soldered storage) but there are practical engineering reasons for soldered ram. Note that the framework laptop has abysmal battery life relative to the competition.
noobermin
It might have to do with cost, although I'm not sure.
cmeacham98
I would argue the main "catch" is the price.
Laptops with similar specs and features (minus coreboot) are available 25% to 50% cheaper from vendors that care a lot less about Linux support.
vladvasiliu
Do you have an example of a such a laptop at 25-50% cheaper?
The models I've seen from Dell and Lenovo with 4k screens and 64 GB ram tend to be in the 2500 EUR range.
And, for some reason, you usually can't get this much RAM and a 4k screen with an AMD CPU.
HP has EliteBooks with upgradeable RAM (both slots!) so you could do your own upgrade, but you'd have to put up with a ridiculously crappy screen. I also don't know if they've upgraded to ryzen 6000.
nicolaslem
> HP has EliteBooks with upgradeable RAM (both slots!) so you could do your own upgrade, but you'd have to put up with a ridiculously crappy screen. I also don't know if they've upgraded to ryzen 6000.
They have, I'm typing on one. The display I have is crappy BUT they have four or five different displays in the 14" 16:10 format and swapping one for another is relatively simple.
michaelteter
> strange ergonomic decisions
The keyboard is offset to the left because of the extra row of vertical keys on the right, so touch typists will have their right hand shifted toward the left more than normal. But the trackpad is still centered on the frame... so the right hand will be greatly overlapping the trackpad.
Visually, having the trackpad centered relative to the G/H keys would look imbalanced, but it would be ergonomic. But unfortunately they went for visual style over ergonomics on this one.
markphip
I do not really get why they would try to support both AMD and Intel .. given that these are obviously small runs. Where do they get the mainboards for this and how can they manage any testing and tuning? They do at least acknowledge that Coreboot for AMD might not be available at the time of shipping. It seems optimistic to say you can adopt it later when it is not ready yet.
Other than that, I would not mind paying a premium for a well made laptop with these specs. Still hoping System76 will get there someday.
throwbadubadu
Wow, looks and sounds just great. If I just hadn't bought a framework this would be tempting, as they even have an AMD option - however not the 4TB SSD (should be simple to add though)?
But happy that I have the Framework now and thus don't need to choose :D
lucb1e
Does anyone here run any of these OSes on any of the offered screen densities and resolutions? I have questions.
- Surely not every old program available from the repositories will work with display scaling, will they? I've never had to use it, maybe Xorg has some hack to scale certain windows at 2x so you don't need support from individual packages. I'm also thinking of things like Burp Suite, which have window-like objects that interact horribly with things like i3 (from what I see with colleagues), so those might have similar issues when you have to tell Xorg to scale individual windows up. Is this something you run into?
- How much of an impact does that resolution have on battery life and GPU performance? I do not need more than 1920x1080 pixels on a 16" diagonal, my eyes can hardly read small fonts on that DPI as it is (I'm ~30) and they're not going to get better with age. This laptop ships with either double or quadruple that, making me wonder what the trade-off is like of having this (for me) gimmick. Surely it doesn't double/quadruple the battery drain or halve/quarter the performance compared to a normal screen?
- I also don't see flickering at 60 Hz (heck, 24 Hz TV looks smooth to me), so 165 Hz seems again like a battery drainer and performance reducer. How much of an impact does it have to try and render 2.75x as many frames per second on a GPU? Does it simply use 2.75x more power for the GPU or reduce the number of drawing operations you can do on the GPU by 2.75 times, or does this not work that way?
Edit: this is currently at the top, but I don't want the top comment to be criticism. This product is awesome in virtually every other regard besides shipping time. Good physical size, decent number of USB ports, customization of the keyboard, c-c-coreboot?! Officially supported? I am definitely impressed. Heck, even the payment methods impress me, being able to select iDeal at a small foreign shop.
sarnowski
Regarding scaling: If you use 2x scaling it should be easy with any distribution. Fractional scaling is a bit trickier to get.
I am using a Framework with 1.5x scaling using Fedora KDE and it’s amazing. Didn’t find any app yet that doesn’t conform. One difference to years ago is Wayland vs X. With X it was a constant struggle for me while with Wayland and more years invested, scaling became a non-issue on Linux (for me).
Regarding burp suite, iirc this is a JVM based app. I am running Jetbrains products without any issues and no configuration needs. Assuming burp suite uses swing, I would assume no issue. Generally, you can quickly check with a VM. Using Fedora KDE is a great „Just Works“ experience.
mixmastamyk
Mint Cinnamon with X works fine at 1.5x on the Framework. Took a click in the display control panel.
saltminer
Xorg has a lot of accumulated hacks that make scaling work ok-ish. It falls apart when you have multiple monitors with different scaling, but for a laptop, just close the lid when you dock it and it should be good enough.
Wayland, after much feet dragging (why this wasn't a day-1 feature for a supposed Xorg replacement is beyond me), finally managed to cobble together basic support for non-integer scaling [0], so it should finally Just Werk (tm), regardless of if you scale at 2x, 1.75x, etc. without looking like a blurry mess.
I don't have experience with 4k displays in laptops, but I will say this: considering AMD's ongoing problems with idle power draw on >120 Hz displays [1], I'd recommend not getting the 165 Hz display if you're getting an AMD CPU.
[0]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/k92b2x/psa_if_you_have...
lucb1e
> It falls apart when you have multiple monitors with different scaling
Yeah that's my colleagues! This is why half the monitors in the office are not being used :D. Someone thought it was a great idea to get three or four 4k screens but only one person actually wants them; everyone wants their laptop as a second or third screen. (Personally I'm a single-screen type of person anyway, but what made me commandeer a 1080p screen is the very noticeable lag that my 2018 i5 Lenovo had when trying to drive a 4k screen with or without display scaling. Got a new work laptop now that ought to not have that problem, but I haven't bothered trying yet.)
Anyhow, thanks for the pointers! Especially that 120 Hz AMD thing sounds like a big caveat.
bradwood
Running an xrandr script with ’--scale’ when you plug in the externals works okay for me. I have a 4k laptop monitor and 2 X 1k externals. It's perfectly fine for work use cases.
This is on i3wm btw
sgtnoodle
Couldn't you just feed a 4k screen a 1080p resolution? It's a bit annoying if it defaults to 4K every time you plug in I guess. If you can use HDMI, you could get an inline EDID adapter.
kitsunesoba
Fractional scaling in Wayland still needs some work in my experience. Primarily, apps running through XWayland look blurry which sucks because there’s a decent number that font natively support Wayland yet (or have it behind an experimental flag with caveats, like how Anki loses its native titlebar and window shadow when Wayland support is turned on).
vladvasiliu
- AFAIK, it's usually the toolkits that do the scaling. So, it's indeed possible that very old apps, if they're still using old versions of the toolkits, don't support scaling. They'll appear non-scaled, so "at 100%".
- I don't have a 4k display on a laptop so can't comment on battery life. But for "desktop use" (read: non gaming) GPU performance has been fine for a long time. I have an old desktop at work with a 4th gen i5 and whatever the integrated GPU was at the time. It can drive a 4k panel at 60 Hz just fine. A somewhat newer laptop, 8th gen i5 with a uhd620 integrated GPU could drive its internal FHD panel and an external UHD display without any issue.
- For your eyes comment: the small fonts may be illegible because they're blurry. On FHD screens, I've found that bitmap fonts are much more legible at small sizes. I've seen some Dell with a 4k display at work, probably 15", and the small text was much more legible than on my 14" FHD laptop (compared using Windows 11 - the guy was a Windows dev).
- TV has a blurriness to its movement, so it looks smooth enough because it's never actually sharp. The point of higher refresh rates is not "flickering", but a smooth movement. Try reading a scrolling page on a 30 Hz, 60 Hz, 120 Hz screen. I mostly look at static text on my screens, so 60 Hz works well enough for me, and I prefer higher resolution / better colors to higher refresh rates. Don't know how this affects GPU usage, though I don't expect it to be "free".
regularfry
From experience on Windows, "very old toolkits" includes QT5. It gets very confused if the scaling changes while the screen is closed.
vladvasiliu
I only have experience with this on Linux, where at least it supports scaling, so that if you use a constant one (my case), then it's OK.
Older ones will simply ignore the scaling settings and draw the interface 1-to-1. One such application that comes to mind is VMWare's remote console (for esx). I haven't used it in a few years, but I remember at the time it was painful to run on a 24" UHD screen.
On the windows side, I think things are somewhat better than on Linux, but there still is confusion, including Windows 11 22h2's start menu. If you start the computer in 100% mode, then plug an external screen scaled at 200%, it works OK for the app list (what it shows on first click) but if you start typing everything becomes a blurry mess.
---
Edit: I actually think QT is one of the better toolkits, at least on Linux, in the case of scaling. IIRC it's able to adapt the scaling based on the screen DPI reported by X, so a full qt desktop should be able to handle situations like a high-DPI laptop connected to a low-dpi monitor.
Dylan16807
> my eyes can hardly read small fonts on that DPI as it is (I'm ~30) and they're not going to get better with age
If you double the DPI it's going to be easier to read those fonts.
acomjean
I have a bad left eye. I haven’t noticed increased readability from higher dpi screens. I went from a higher dpi to a 14” 1080 screen and notice no difference at equivalent font size. Of course that’s still pretty high pixel density.
pxc
Higher pixel density can help a bit if your vision is bad enough that you use a lot of screen magnification, as it means that the magnified text will be better-rounded and fuller, rather than almost unrecognizably pixelated.
For some visual impairments, though, the improved sharpness from higher DPI may be basically undetectable, which sounds like what you're reporting.
lhl
> This laptop ships with either double or quadruple that, making me wonder what the trade-off is like of having this (for me) gimmick. Surely it doesn't double/quadruple the battery drain or halve/quarter the performance compared to a normal screen?
From their configuration site:
"The 4K display consumes more power, averaging 8W but provides incredible detail and excellent scaling support that allows you to change the UI (User Interface) to a size that's comfortable for almost everyone.
The QHD display supports a refresh rate of 165Hz, which offers a silky smooth experience. It consumes less than half the power of the 4K display at 3.2W. Limited scaling support on Linux means that the UI on this display is relatively small compared to other display resolutions"
It seems like the QHD display would be the way to go for lower power. I'd guess the power would be lower if you didn't run it at the full 165Hz refresh (there's probably a 60Hz mode)...
lucb1e
It's not the screen that I was afraid of so much as the processing power. From my understanding, the main power draw of a screen comes from its light output and area size (they advertise with about double or triple the nits mine has) rather than from how many pixels it has. Regardless, it's a good point that I should not ignore the screen while considering the processing power needed to drive said screen!
lhl
Well, there is the backlight, but also the power usage of the TCON (timing controller board) for each display that will vary greatly. Usually the 4K ones end up being less efficient. If you get the 4K display, you can of course set the output to 1080p which would solve the "processing power" end. I think the difference between 1080p and 1440p (or their 16:10 equivalents) at 60Hz would be negligible from a GPU perspective (especially if PSR is set on), but ultimately you'd have to test the two different models with different resolution settings to really be able to tell.
dontlaugh
With imperfect eye sight, I find it much easier to read text with higher DPI. For me 11-12” is the limit for 1080p. At 16” I’d want at least 1440p. Even 4K starts getting blocky above 24” or so, 27” is barely ok.
bogwog
I use a 4K laptop with Fedora on Wayland/KDE, and display scaling worked perfectly fine out of the box.
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lucb1e
This is definitely cool stuff. When you want official vendor support on something like coreboot + various linux distros, I've come to expect you pay double of today's prices but get hardware from a few years ago. This looks like modern hardware and the premium is honestly manageable. Slightly above what I'd want to spend but I could see myself paying this for a great product, also because you get more than just 2 USB-A ports and more than just 1 USB-C port (that seems to be the best most other vendors have to offer)! However, what made me close the tab is the "we are not even going to give you a shipping indication other than to expect close to half a year" (knowing how these types of things like to change deadlines anyway, starting off at four months... no). If I spend thousands of euros now, I also want the product in a reasonable amount of time (say, 3 weeks including customization and shipping; 0.5-2 weeks for a stock product plus shipping).
My current laptop is still performing well enough unfortunately, but ask me again in six months when the units are in and available to be shipped, and good odds that I'll hit that purchase button!
Infernal
I’m really curious to know what piece of hardware you’re talking about, as you’ve apparently replied to the wrong post. But I really want the hardware you’re describing!
lucb1e
Oh crap, yeah you're right. Can't delete it now and move it to the right thread because of the comment heh. I thought I had the thread about this laptop open in this tab: https://starlabs.systems/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34759507
Not sure whether to re-post it there or flag my own comment or something.
dang
No worries! I've moved it now. You should be able to remove your /edit bit if you want to.
totalhack
Pricing seems extremely high for the specs once you start to configure.
I really want to see a company do something compelling here but there is always one thing that's off...pricing, screen, last gen processors. I switched back to Linux last year and ended up getting a $900 Lenovo that has been excellent. Would have tried System76 or Framework if their hardware could keep up.
steelframe
I agree that pricing might be their biggest challenge. Matte 4k X1 Carbon ThinkPads in like-new condition go for around $1k on eBay, and they run Linux fine, so long as you're willing to install non-free firmware. I'm not sure what kind of premium I'd be willing to pay to get the faster boot and libre firmware from a company with no track record at all in the marketplace. I've recently upgraded the SSD in my T480s that's running Debian, and I figure I have another 2 or 3 years before I'll feel the need to go shopping for something better. Maybe when the used ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 AMD machines start hitting eBay in force.
I also own a Framework laptop, and the 3:2 aspect ratio is a killer feature for me. It's really hard to go back to 16:10 after using that for a while.
geraldwhen
Prices are extremely high before you configure. These are apple prices without an apple warranty.
When I had keyboard issues I had my laptop flown out with 1 day overnight shipping and the same back to me. When the refurb I purchased has a loose hinge, I got a full refund with no hassle. When my laptop was stolen during delivery, I got a replacement sent out with a 12 minute phone call.
I suspect this small operation cannot match this.
totalhack
Fair, but you certainly pay for this in other ways with apple. I can afford to buy 2-3 laptops for the price you pay for one. And in most cases those types of events never come into play. Apple crushes on battery life but I've yet to come close to needing that much, performance is similar otherwise.
mihaaly
I missed that! I cheered for the success in a previous comment (despite not willing to give out 1300+ and not having it for long time).
But that is with i3 and 240G SSD?! My base config is 2300GBP, that is ridiculous. Then waiting the minimum of 4-5 months (for some on Twitter over 12 months and still waiting). After giving out this ammount having nothing for looong time. To a 4 person startup in debt and being sligtly longer in the market than the delivery window.
No way, it will never work.
rl3
They're selling a privacy-conscious Linux laptop with open firmware that's assembled in a place that isn't so privacy-friendly.[0]
I think a lot of people would pay extra for assembly in a western country. These appear made to order, so the risk of hardware implantation targeting is almost certainly real.
[0] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2059/5897/products/StarFig...
rl3
Update:
https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/why-choose-us
Assembled, imaged and programmed in the UK.
Configured by our own engineers, giving you peace of mind that you get what you want with no hidden extras.
Not sure if that's outdated or what to believe.
speed_spread
Going all-in on privacy and hardware trust, one could also wish for a Raptor Talos portable workstation running a POWER CPU. I don't think they'd scale down to proper laptop size though.
Transisto
Combined with the high risk of being a high target honeypot I'd be worried of that Chinese MITM.
ldelossa
I really want to like this laptop but...
If you go to their twitter, its a constant barrage of angry customers who havent received their orders in over a year.
I dont think im okay with shelling out $3000, waiting possibly over a year, and being told "we are working on it" the entire time.
I personally just went with Tuxedo for a linux first laptop.
blagie
Except for the wonky webcam (which I can live with), and the lack of GPU (which I'm less sure about; I do a lot of ML workloads), this laptop is exactly the laptop I'd buy, if I knew it actually existed.
Problem is, I'm not confident it actually will exist.
The webcam decision is wonky. My Thinkpad has a little cover I can slide over the webcam. I can buy aftermarket stick-on covers too. Why the complex magnetic mess + storage compartment?
whamlastxmas
Web cam is also mic and the ability to know it’s completely removed is good because you often see physical mic switches that only disable via software. Also there are facilities that don’t allow any hardware with either
pmontra
There are many great features in this laptop, mainly no numberpad and 16:10 screen. I didn't check weight and user serviceability. They don't have the keyboard layout for my county (Italy) but I can live with that because my fingers know where keys are and I work with the USA layout most of the time. The only showstopper is the touchpad without physical buttons. I copy and paste text the X11 way by selecting and clicking the middle button. How do you do that effectively without buttons? I always took care of buying laptops with three buttons above and/or below the touchpad.
hedora
They have a “custom” option for keyboard layout. It costs more; presumably, they could do Italian. I assume the extra cost is because someone has to physically put it in the exceptions box at the factory, due to small volume (not due to them designing that layout from scratch for you).
darrenf
Regarding user serviceability, for the Starbook (which I own) they have a complete pictorial disassembly guide: https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-com...
I’d expect the same tbh.
sounds
This new laptop has soldered-down RAM. It's due to the LPDDR5 which is only electrically able to reach 6400MT/s if the memory socket is skipped, so no blame for it. Just be aware.
pmontra
Thank you, so it's on my no buy list now. Too bad.
I elaborate: a faulty RAM chip happens. If it's socketed I buy a new chip and replace it. It might take a few days, about 100 Euros, problem solved. With soldered RAM I'm expecting to have to either buy a new motherboard from a company that by the time might even don't exist anymore or find some repair center able to dissolder the faulty chip and solder the new one. Time and cost are much worse.
I would think about it if this was HP, with on site next business day support, but they are not. And even with HP, what happens after support is over, which is typically three cheap years plus increasingly costly extensions? Last time I checked I got a quote for (I think) some 400 euro for a keyboard replacement. I bought a keyboard myself and replaced it. This brings us to the availability of spare parts, which might be a risk for this brand.
All considered this is not a laptop I can use to make money with.
pmontra
Thanks. It seems that the keyboard is the last component in the disassembly sequence. It's the component that I replaced most in all my laptops because I either dig a hole in the most used keys or I break the mechanics below them. They last me two or three years.
bombela
3-finger click
I do that often even on thinkpad with physical buttons.
toastal
Three-finger click is common for middle click.
initself
Needs a little red nub in the center of the keyboard.
fmajid
The HP DevOne has one. Shame about that washed-out glossy screen (some say it has a built-in privacy filter).
commoner
The HP Dev One follows the HP EliteBook's poor design of pairing the pointing stick with 2 mouse buttons instead of 3. Without the middle mouse button, you can't scroll with the pointing stick and you'll need to use the trackpad (or apply some hack to the 2 available buttons), which makes the pointing stick a less effective tool.
heavyset_go
You can scroll with the Dev One's pointing stick. Just hold down both mouse buttons, as two buttons emulate a middle click.
nicolaslem
I guess this design problem is no more because the latest elitebooks got rid of the trackpoint entirely.
heavyset_go
The Elitebook model that the Dev One is based off of has a SureView screen, which is what the Dev One ships with. That's to say it is an intentional privacy filter. I didn't find it to be washed out and the gloss is comparable to a MBP from a few years ago.
deusum
Reference is old enough that we're not sure if you're joking.
commoner
ThinkPads are still popular, so I don't see this as a joke. A pointing stick (TrackPoint) is excellent for people who want to use both the keyboard and the mouse while moving their hands as little as possible.
Unfortunately, the StarFighter has soldered memory, which is one of the main drawbacks of new ThinkPad models. Star Labs also sells the mid-range StarBook laptop with replaceable memory and the low-end StarLite laptop with soldered memory. On the other hand, Star Labs is Linux-first and pays the developers of the pre-installed Linux distribution configured in the order, which is an advantage over Lenovo for Linux users.
scns
As Billy Tallis from anandtech explains, soldered memory has its advantages too.
nine_k
Not joking at all, I hope. The trackpoint is very convenient: you don't have to move your hands off the home row just to move mouse pointer.
wyldfire
Good luck defending against Xur and the Kodan armada without 128GB of RAM. Sounds like Centauri sold you on another one of his Excalibur tricks.
colordrops
Can you explain, I don't understand your comment at all.
cheald
It's a reference to an 80s movie called "The Last Starfighter" - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/
japanman425
Is this a chatgpt response. What do these words even mean
b0afc375b5
I was confused as well. I looked it up and apparently it's a reference to The Last Starfighter movie.
wyldfire
Don't trust the posts above! These were written by spies from Rylos! Once we smash the Frontier we will be able to rid ourselves of the Star League!
japanman425
Down voted for not knowing the film inside out, great.
alkonaut
Wake me when they have shipped 10k units and I’m interested in buying the 10001th.
There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking involved in the lead time estimate.
LoveMortuus
Intel i3-1215U, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 4K display for €1.565,81, which is the cheapest that I could select feels a bit expensive...
A quick look on Geizhals[1], gives many alternatives, with better CPU and storage. The only thing that's probably different is the Linux aspect of the laptop.
[1]https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nb&xf=12_16384~2991_480~6752_Core+i...
But 240GB of storage... That's so little, even my phone (POCO X3 Pro) has 256GB and I paid around 220€ for the entire phone. For a computer 240GB just feels almost unusably small, unless if you're running ChromeOS, but that's something completely different.
trelane
Those are all windows computers.
localplume
Yeah I was looking at those specs, and these seems very overpriced no?
If you spec a Tuxedo Aura 15 Gen2 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...) to the same level (not sure what the equivalent to the CPU is for Ryzen though), and although the display isn't 4K its still much less (just over 700, so around half the price...). There are nice features that the StarFighter has than the Aura 15 Gen2 doesn't, but are those features worth basically 2x the price..?
lhl
While the StarFighter is a much more expensive product, I think the argument would be that it's fairly unique, arguably the highest end Ryzen 6000 developer laptop that an end-user can order globally (but not get delivered, sadly) atm. Comparing the Aura 15 Gen 2:
* One of the biggest spec differences is that the Aura uses a Zen2 based 5700U (Lucienne) vs the StarFighter's Zen3+ based 6800H (Rembrandt) so expect a +50% performance difference on MT workloads: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4156vs4749/AMD-Ryzen-7-...
* iGPU is also a big improvement. The 6800H's GPU is about 70% faster on synthetic and 90% faster on gaming benchmarks: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Vega-8-vs-Radeon-680M_10313_11... - it also has a newer VCN engine that supports AV1 decoding among other things
* The Aura has USB3 vs the Starfighter w/ USB4 (again, thanks to the new Ryzen generation), which will give you 40Gbps transfer rates, support for eGPU enclosures, etc
* Better display panels can be hundreds of dollars more expensive (here's a discussion of a $250 price gap for upgrading to a 4K panel from a few years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/izg598/no_4koled_pa...) - a 600nit vs 300nit display btw, is a world of difference
* 49Wh vs 85Wh battery is a 73% bigger capacity battery. At an equivalent power usage, that'd be the difference between 7h vs 12h of light usage for example and IMO isn't something to scoff at.
* Due I expect primarily due to it's Mg alloy chassis, the Starfighter is actually 250g lighter - 1.4kg vs 1.65kg, which is actually quite impressive for its size and battery capacity. The pogo-pin/removable webcam leads to a sleeker and compact frame that probably helps in shaving off size/weight even if you don't care about the privacy aspect
* While I prefer replaceable SO-DIMMs on my laptops, the Starfighter at least lets you configure w/ 64GB of LPDDR5 so you get the better power efficiency, performance, and weight savings w/o sacrificing upgradability (64GB is the max the Ryzen 6000 platform supports)
* coreboot option vs AMI BIOS - to me this is more of a neat nice to have, but I understand the sort of development commitment/investment in the future this thing is. Here's a discussion on Coreboot for Framework from their forums: https://community.frame.work/t/coreboot-on-the-framework-lap...
* Having been using a Framework w/ a fingerprint sensor that works in Linux for the past half year+ now, I will admit that it's hard to go back to something that doesn't have this, and I'd pay a fair amount extra for this...
Anyway, while you do pay a hefty premium for maxing out the specs (more than the cost of each individual improvement), it actually seems not so egregious when I add it ll up, if only because it seems like no one else is doing it. Of course, this calculus I think changes if delivery gets delayed and/if someone were to release a high-end Ryzen 7040 Linux-friendly laptop (Zen4, RNDA3, Xilinx AI accelerator) before then.
BTW, I think that the Tuxedo Infinity Book Pro 14/16 Gen7 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-1... and https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-1...), while Intel-based (12700H), with a bigger battery, better display, better IO, and lighter chassis than the Aura is much more competitive with the StarFighter. Sadly the IBPs don't have a US ANSI keyboard layout...
hajile
Do you know where there's any hard data on the actual speed of AMD's USB4 implementation in the 6xxx series? Everywhere I've looked, I get "USB4" then a blurb that USB4 can be "up to 40Gb/s" with the more honest stating that only 20Gb/s is actually required to meet the spec requirements.
What does AMD actually implement?
While we're on the topic, why is there basically no public information about Socket FP7 or it's chipset? Nothing on FP7r2 or FP8 either (by the way, upcoming 7xxx mobile chips support all three of these with likely different levels of motherboard capabilities). Why is there not much public for mobile AMD chipsets newer than a decade ago?
ahoya
[dead]
openplatypus
Crap, I am in the market for laptop now. I can stomach 4-5months waiting time
Meanwhile lots of brands are spitting 15"+ laptops with FHD dispalys like it is 2010s. eWaste :(
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This Linux laptop looks too good to be true.
It's available with an AMD or Intel processor, there aren't any strange ergonomic decisions (other than the stow-able web-cam). In particular, they centered they trackpad + keyboard, and it looks like it has decent thermals. The battery is rated for 18 hours. You can choose between a medium resolution, high frame rate display (UHD @ 165Hz) or a 4K 60Hz display. The screen is matte. They claim it POSTs in under a second.
The only real downside is the 4-5 month lead time. Am I missing something?