Purchased one to try for work (perks of being in the IT department), just arrived today. Personally interested in running FreeBSD on it, and wanted to see how possible that is and what doesn't work (see https://xyinn.org/md/freebsd/wifibox for excellent write-up). Officially I need to test Ubuntu Desktop and Windows on it, but here are my initial impressions to date:
- quality is extremely high; I expected something to suffer for the cost, but it strikes me as a nicely manufactured laptop in every respect
- initial configuration, adding in external ports, memory and nvme drive, took all of 10 minutes from laptop opening to closing again ... amazing job they've done
- every bit of the insides of the laptop is labeled, it's clear and clean and there are 2d barcodes you can scan for all components to get instant documentation
- bios is legit, modern, nicely laid out, simple to configure
- from order to delivery took a few weeks, nothing extreme. Came direct from Taiwan
- the keyboard has nice raised keys, and I'm super comfortable typing on it. Only issue for me coming from a Mac, the function and control keys are swapped on the left side, but that's easy to fix up... overall, one of the nicest keyboards I've seen on a laptop
- weight feels like a current Macbook Air, just a little larger dimensions overall
- switches to hard turn off camera and microphone on the top ... nice!
Overall I'm extremely pleased with this laptop, and I'm thinking there is zero reason I'm spending so much money with Dell (our current standard). I was thinking of using Lenovo, but screw that.. if my testing pans out, this is our new standard.
We now support volume ordering in all countries we ship to. You can order multiple in-stock laptops per order. For larger quantities or multiple units of pre-order laptops, our B2B team can help you out: https://frame.work/support?category=business-volume-ordering...
Note that from a support/warranty perspective, this still uses the normal consumer paths. This is something we're exploring business-focused versions of for the future.
It's still the case. I reached out for business purchase orders and volume but you still order one by one. Since supply has been an issue, we just make sure to order a few about 2 months in advance of anticipated new hires that don't want macs.
Out of curiosity, how is the split between mac and non-mac between new hires? My company just recently added MacBooks as a new standard and everybody seems to be loosing their minds. There have been so many people ditching their perfectly up to date Windows notebook in favor of new shiny Macbook Pros (which is super unnecessary given that about 60% of the company uses their machines for nothing more than light office work and another huge portion with incompatible programs)
> There have been so many people ditching their perfectly up to date Windows notebook in favor of new shiny Macbook Pros (which is super unnecessary given that about 60% of the company uses their machines for nothing more than light office work and another huge portion with incompatible programs)
Maybe it isn't a necessity, but it is extremely nice to be able to go into the office without having to worry about having to charge the device at any point throughout the day at all. I legitimately stopped carrying a charger in my backpack. Sounds like a trivial non-issue, but it makes a difference to me.
I once had a day filled with 5 hours of interviews through videocalls on Google Meet, and my Macbook Pro (M1 Max) battery dipped only from 100% to 70%.
It is hard to overstate how freeing, at least personally to me, it feels. Maybe I don't need all the M1 power on a daily basis. But not having to worry about charging my laptop at any point during the day, regardless of the workload, is always welcome. Add the fact that I've never even heard the fans on my MBP (and neither have I felt it heating up much at all), and you got a pretty solid proposition to switch.
Also, if you are trying to build any large Node project on Windows, you are going to have a bad time. Node is just straight up not as efficient on Windows and takes multiples of time it takes to build on macOS/Linux.
I absolutely understand where you’re coming from, but I have a somewhat different perspective in our company.
Most people are deskbound and use their provided external monitor via the also provided TB3 dock. So charging is a non issue.
With our industry currently being extremely strained (industrial manufacturer in Germany), I think it’s fairly worrying that people spend money on a 2500€ upgrade that’s not justified by any productivity gains, but that’s also approved by the supervisor.
That's entirely fair, thanks for giving your perspective on this.
The part about the industry-specific situation is something I legitimately haven't even considered. That upgrade is indeed a very "nice-to-have", but feels pretty moronic if the company finances are strained.
Out of curiosity, did they have any explanation for their reasoning? Is it just due to some accounting magic, where the upgrade budget was allocated a long time ago, and it was more like "use it or lose it" (without a chance to just "save" that upgrade budget money regardless)?
Did a quick count just now and it looks like 1:10 (non-mac:mac). About 80% of our company is engineering and our codebase is fairly cross platform so anything ends up working. That being said, the M1s have mostly been a boon for us other than when it comes to some virtualization issues (and testing of Pis).
In your case though that definitely sounds like a huge waste of money. For that reason, we order from the following matrix to not waste too much.
Engineering/Developer Advocacy/Product:
Macbook Air - M2, 16GB RAM, 500GB Disk or Linux/Windows, Framework 14", 16 GB RAM, 1 TB Disk
People/GTM/Facilities:
Macbook Air - M2, 8GB RAM, 250GB Disk
Granted there's probably money to be saved on the non engineering side but those folks tend to be comfortable with macs already and those purchases will last a very long time.
The other note I'll make is IME macbooks are significantly easier to maintain via MDM tools.
Light office work still requires looking at screens, inputing things and the device being on.
Macbooks provide best in class displays, keyboard, touchpad, and battery life.
Not to mention many non-macbook laptops apparently not sleeping properly. No idea how widespread that one is but I see it in like every laptop thread including this one.
If folks are requesting new machines that aren't compatible with current workflows and those requests are approved, that seems like a problem with management more than anything else. It's the IT department's job to help people be productive, and sometimes that means pushing back when users are requesting permission to screw themselves with incompatible hardware.
- quality is extremely high; I expected something to suffer for the cost, but it strikes me as a nicely manufactured laptop in every respect
- initial configuration, adding in external ports, memory and nvme drive, took all of 10 minutes from laptop opening to closing again ... amazing job they've done
- every bit of the insides of the laptop is labeled, it's clear and clean and there are 2d barcodes you can scan for all components to get instant documentation
- bios is legit, modern, nicely laid out, simple to configure
- from order to delivery took a few weeks, nothing extreme. Came direct from Taiwan
- the keyboard has nice raised keys, and I'm super comfortable typing on it. Only issue for me coming from a Mac, the function and control keys are swapped on the left side, but that's easy to fix up... overall, one of the nicest keyboards I've seen on a laptop
- weight feels like a current Macbook Air, just a little larger dimensions overall
- switches to hard turn off camera and microphone on the top ... nice!
Overall I'm extremely pleased with this laptop, and I'm thinking there is zero reason I'm spending so much money with Dell (our current standard). I was thinking of using Lenovo, but screw that.. if my testing pans out, this is our new standard.