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9/21/23 - The Framework Laptop 13 Experience

I recieved my Framework Laptop 13 today! I decided to write a blog post about it becuase it seemed like a fun idea :)

First impressions

I really liked how they organize everything in the box, definitely felt professional. And free stickers?? Heck yeah!

Build process

The build was actually much easier than I thought it would be. All of the instructions are pretty clearly laid out on the website. As a lot of people said, the bezel is pretty flimsy, although when you put it on the laptop you can't tell at all. The only problem I had while putting it together was the input cover not fitting in perfectly, but that fixed itself as soon as I screwed it in.

Here's a picture of the completed build:

completed build of framework laptop 13 with red bezel

(ignore the cardboard mess in the background XD)

First boot

I didn't even check to see what happens if you don't have an operating system installed yet, I went ahead and booted from USB. The system took about a minute to boot, but this was because it was doing "memory training" (that's what they said online, anyway :P). It installed Fedora 38 Cinnamon without a hitch.

First boot into an actual operating system

Fedora 38 worked flawlessly! I was able to get completely moved into the laptop in about 30 minutes (but this was mainly due to a poor WiFi connection when downloading package updates and copying stuff over from my old computer). It may have been just because I've been using ~10 year old hardware for a long time, but MAN it is so fast! Even the base CPU (i5-1340P) is lightning quick when opening apps such as Firefox, which normally takes a long time.

~ Gaming ~

Here's how the Laptop 13 handled some of the games I own:

Superhot and Superhot MCD:

Minecraft:

Portal and Portal 2:

Perfect!

Terraria:

Perfect-er!

Risk of Rain 2 (through Wine / Steam Proton):

I also tried running OBS in the background, recording at 60 FPS, 1920 x 1280. Next to no frame drops on anything, which is a pretty massive deal! Maybe I can start doing YouTube stuff again :)

Minor gripes

3:2 as a monitor aspect ratio on a modern laptop is really strange, although it is pretty cool! (If I desperately need the traditional 16:9 ratio, I can always just switch the display resolution or use a separate monitor)

Touchpad is a little bit weird. You press it down with medium pressure and it makes a small *click* sound, making you think that it has clicked, but in reality you need to press harder! It's like how touchpads used to be on MacBook Pros, except the first click does absolutely nothing.

It's pretty difficult to swap out expansion cards, but I'm sure over time it'll become smoother.

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