i would highlight two non-tech strengths of starlabs as well: they're based in Europe and from personal experience they have really good customer service

They use the same image on their mini pc's page. https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/byte

It's not warranty, it's Gewährleistung.

I just ordered my Framework without any memory or storage, hoping that by the time it arrives, I'll be able to pick up some RAM and an SSD for a more reasonable price. If not, I'll just grab something from a drawer and use it underspecced until prices normalize.

True, but contrary to the fruity models, some of these are upgradedable.

My Asus netbook started with basic configuration and was maximised during its lifetime, just like any PC desktop.

Do they actually have a business presence in the EU?

If not, how would those rules apply to them?

Edit: tbh, the new "user friendly" idea of automatically converting US prices to the local currency of the visitor in spite of the company not having any connection to the visitor's locale always makes me think of drop shippers, not of legitimate businesses.

Especially if i'm in a non USD non EUR country, I am fully aware that there are different currencies in the world, I already have an established process for converting between those currencies and it's likely to be more to my advantage than whatever Stripe offers so please cut it down.

doesn't charge by USB-C ?

Wait til you hear about Hacker News' level of compliance with the GDPR

They are free to charge you extra for taking the charger out of the box. So I'd grant them a bit of civil disobedience on this one and just take that nice GaN charger.

I can see the EU's take on this, and maybe overall this will even be good. I have some nice Anker chargers and can charge everything we have at home with them (added some USB-C to ligthning/micro-USB thingies here and there), but I'd be a bit annoyed if the EU would force my company operating with small margins to have 2 versions of my packaging workflow.

Maybe they should just "encourage" good behaviour? With a law that is less forcing, ie just say: "If you offer a version without charger, the price must be the same as with charger. " That would (slightly) encourage leaving it out, while not forcing companies' hands.

The laptop is being shipped anyway, so I assume the charger in there may be a "sweet deal" if you need one. 65W GaN chargers are a nice sweet-spot at the moment (size/power/price-wise), ie Ikea has one at 14 eur), wouldn't mine having one or two extra.

Always the play if you're comfortable sourcing and installing your own because their store will always have a decent markup.

USB-C is required from 2027 on

They are a UK company.

They don't sell you your OS, that's the big surface area that companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc have to swallow.

They also don't make these computers and are at the whim of their ODM, so unless you opt for Coreboot/Libreboot, there wouldn't be a possibility for that.

https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/starlabs/starfighter_mtl.... The previous version is already upstreamed, apparently.

Sensible thought. I very much hope there is a glut of one-three year old ram and GPUs on the market in about one year when the AI market "cools" and the ear-marked components return to the market.

The banks that lent the AI industry the money are already trying to sell their debt.

Except that if you want to save on RAM you'll also have to pick the lower resolution screen and lower rated CPU. These aren't easy upgrades later on.

Smart move!

You have lpcamm2 just sitting around in a drawer? Or did you get last-gen?

They sell to the EU, so they have to follow their regulations. If they don't, the devices can be seized by customs.

Tbh there are more issues if they wanted to be compliant with EU regulations. I'm fine that they aren't compliant (they aren't in the EU, after all), but it's something to be aware of when ordering from them.

They are mandated to provide 2-year legal guarantee under EU consumer protection law when they target EU consumers -> i.e. operate an eshop that ships to EU and sells in local currencies. Regardless of where they are located.

The easiest option to implement would be to have separate SKUs for the charger and the laptop. And not three SKUs: laptop with charger, laptop without charger, separate charger.

If you ship to multiple countries you can reduce the SKUs even more as the laptop SKU isn’t country specific anymore.

Offering a version without the charger for the same price would not reduce ewaste which is the point.

I'm curious: why is hacker news non-GDPR-compliant?

> The laptop is being shipped anyway, so I assume the charger in there may be a "sweet deal" if you need one

You do realize you’re paying for the charger, right? And you don’t like the option of not having to purchase the charger?

How does it compare to a MacBook Pro? (if you ever used one)

I'm looking get rid of my MacBook Pro, and I'd like to switch to a Linux laptop, but I'm really worried about battery and trackpad.

Would you like to have a version with a TrackPoint even if you have managed to live without it?

With all these boutique laptop brands, I hope that one of them will eventually produce a pointing stick keyboard offer a route off Lenovo.

what's your average battery life?

Still better than no upgrades at all like on Apple land, back to the 8 and 16 home computer days, only external upgrades and cable salad.

Unfortunately most of it will likely be HBM and datacenter GPUs and therefore useless for consumers.

Went with the AMD option for this reason.

Unless you meant buying an entire server (instead of laptop/desktop components), it won't work out the way you are describing. Prices may come down, but the components for the datacenters market aren't fungible with the components for laptop or desktop. You might not know what is being "earmarked" in this case?

Yes, the DRAM dies all come from the same wafer supply and fab capacity, and those limits are the cause of the current prices. However, once the memory OEMs have packaged DRAM dies into something like an LRDIMM or SOCAMM, the cake is baked. It's no longer usable in a laptop or desktop. No amount of X-year-old LRDIMMs (hypothetically) flooding the market will be useful for anyone's desktop or laptop. And then there's HBM, where the dies are directly on-package with the CPU or GPU.

Second-hand, revalidated server DRAM components may contribute somewhat to a price decrease, but those won't be the components you or I will be purchasing (unless you run a true server platform as a desktop, in which case, shine on you crazy diamond!).

The same is partly true for GPUs: there are PCIe versions, but most are OAM or SXM modules. You might be able to jury-rig an SXM module into a desktop? Adapter cards exist for at least some SXM versions, and you could figure out the cooling somehow? But it's probably more trouble than it's worth.

at least for a framework they are very easy upgrades tbh

And those EU consumer protection laws apply outside the EU?

I know that USers think their laws apply everywhere, but that's just a myth.

Wouldn't customs seizing the device be a bigger problem for the importer?

You can't delete your account by self-service, you have to email dang, which is probably non-compliance because it adds friction. It's a grey area, it'd have to be tested in court. I highly doubt anyone will bring a case though. That's like calling the police on your own drug dealer. (IANAL)

The laptop SKU probably would be country specific due to keyboard layouts though.

It's not $megacorp, try contacting them and asking.

I love cheap secondhand Dells and have been running them for decades. But it's absolutely the case that their build quality has been going steadily downhill for a long time, even for their business line laptops.

This laptop looks to be more in line with a MacBook in terms of build quality, with a price to match. It's being sold as a Linux laptop, what makes you think there will be driver issues?

that's actually one thing I don't like but they're essentially forcing you to go 4k for the 10khz pwm.

otherwise, why would you want a resolution you're going to scale to 150% or even 200% anyway just to be able to read it anywhere outside?

... and eating into your battery

I'm also the happy owner of a StarLite Mk IV. The perfect travel laptop. Thin, light, fanless, excellent keyboard and touchpad, matt screen, rock solid chassis, good battery life. I'm dreading the day when it finally breaks as there's nothing comparable on the market today. I wish they could do another run.

Very different niche from the StarFighter but StarLabs make excellent machines.

I have never owned an Apple product, but I have helped other people from time to time. It's hard to say because I'm not used to it, but the trackpad feels really snappy and precise, and the 120hz display also helps making it feel really smooth when scrolling

I am not sure since I have never gotten to zero. But I would think I could easily get 6-7 hours out of it, although it depends a lot on the type of work I do and whether I am in meetings. I use IntelliJ and run heavy test suites all the time, and that does drain the battery faster.

Starlabs is at least as repairable as framework, older, and coreboot.

Not out yet. On pre orders

It doesn't look exactly the same. Sure, if it had a tiny touchpad with separate buttons or missing indent so that it's inconvenient to open the lid or didn't have stereo speakers or was really thick then it would look even more different than an MBP... If one company nails some design elements before others, why should everyone who gets those elements too be blamed for copying it.

I love the fact that the bezel is held on by magnets.

Last time I tried to replace the display in a laptop, I had plastic bits of bezel flying all around.

In the opinion of the EU, they do as long as the customer is in the EU.

Everything else is just enforcement.

Clearly! I see how this is a bit unusual for GDPR etc in a services digital world, but for physical products it's extremely standard everywhere that local laws apply to foreign companies.

If you sell medical devices (apparently even down to toothbrushes) in the USA, you have to follow FDA rules. If you sell children's toys in the EU, you've had to follow EU consumer regulations (e.g. CE mark) at least since the 90s. Going back to the 70s, if you sold a physical product in the US as a foreign company you had to follow local rules about maximum delivery times and minimum warranties. If you don't follow the rules, your shipments get blocked at customs, and any marketplaces (Amazon) selling your products get fines as well for not verifying you appropriately, so marketplaces will verify and ban your business too if you blatantly violate local rules (e.g. selling devices containing radios without FCC approval). If you're selling laptops at any scale, you need to follow the local rules for every country you ship to.

There'll certainly be cases everywhere where enforcement isn't perfect (if you contact a tiny vendor in China and they ship to you directly and you sign for & pay the customs yourself, in practice you'll get away with it, or you can always travel to a country to buy a product and carry it back personally) but in the general case local regs on physical product sales are not unusual or optional at all.

They apply to products that a company ships to the EU, yes. As another poster points out, these could (in principle at least) be seized at customs if they are noncompliant.

Same goes for e.g. GDPR compliance. You need to comply with GDPR when offering services to individuals in the EU no matter where you are based.

You realize that the EU as a whole believes this and actively attempts to enforce it on citizens of other countries, right?

From consumer perspective it's the problem of the seller. I would ask for a refund and if they refused I would do a chargeback.

They don't have to do business in EU if they don't want to follow the rules.

Forgot about that one! And EU devices need an engraved trash-can (WEEE symbol)

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product-requirements/l...

It also helps that Framework actually releases their products when they say they will.

They do reply on webchat and are quite nice.

The ones that look more different are generally made of plastic and/or eschew minimalism.

minimalism as a design choice far predates Apple, and constrains design choices substantially.

Okay, but what does that mean for the temp of the case while sitting in one's lap. Can it be done without getting second degree burns?

The Intel 13th gen will draw ~1% per hour while suspended to RAM.

My findings on it: https://sjg.io/writing/suspend-battery-drain-framework-13-ub...

What? Hate the Insert key (break my editor button) to the point I often remap it rather that hit by mistake when missing delete. ;-)

I have some amount of confidence that the sellers on AliExpress will figure out how to create cheap hardware that makes use out of all of this when it hits the secondary market.

> which is probably non-compliance because it adds friction.

You're gonna have to point to part of the regulation where thats not allowed. there is a mechanism for deletion. so long as its done within 30 days its still within spec

I don’t see how that has anything to do with GDPR. An email is a perfectly fine way to initiate the process. It’s not a gray area

These are not laptop computers, they are notebooks. The only laptop I've personally seen had a 80286 processor... We call them laptops, but historically that name is wrong.

While it is possible to use a notebook on your lap, you are not supposed to. It is a terrible place that is unergonomic. You are supposed to put them on a table of some sort. If you are using it for more than something quick you should have a separate keyboard and mouse (ie attached to a docking station on your desk). The portable form factor is useful for meetings, presentations, or other such - but for real work they are terrible.

Since the lap what it was designed for, and a lap is a bad idea anyway: putting vents on the bottom isn't bad.

I don't know what "most" in your case means, but pretty much none of the new laptops I've seen have S3 support available in their UEFI. And even if you somehow patch it in, the peripherals don't have drivers anymore that would successfully resume.

I feared that I would miss it too much, but after a week I stopped reaching for it with my finger.

I don't know. I had dozens and dozens NVMe drives and only one 8TB. Guess which one failed? The 8TB one. That hurt.

Lenovo sells ThinkPad T-series laptops as “Linux-supported.” However, if you happen to buy an AMD version of one of these laptops, you may be surprised by how poorly the Wi‑Fi works. It’s been several years since the T14 Gen4 was released, and yet the Wi‑Fi is still not stable.

I’m not convinced here.

All the lower scale manufacturers have to charge more to make a profit. Plus most just white label an existing brand.

The other feedback in this thread isn’t great.

As for drivers, I meant for Windows laptops running Linux. But that’s pretty rare now.

4K is perfect because you can scale it to 200% and still have a lot of screen real-estate.

Personally, I'm highly allergic to fractional scaling. It's 200% or I'm not buying it!

Thanks to cookies and gdpr, warranties on electric items are two years in the eu.

16 is a desktop replacement size. And 120hz is great because it can play video/film natively.

Case temperature is very much at the discretion of the laptop OEM. Some OEMs take regulatory limits on skin temperature seriously and ship a well-tuned thermal control system that keeps the case at a comfortable temperature. Others push close to the legal limits to keep fan noise in check. Others ship plastic enclosures so they can get away with even higher temperatures (since plastic has lower thermal conductivity than metal, and thus a harder time cooking your thighs) at the expense of more noise.

The StarFighter has a metal case, so when running at high power levels (45W sustained according to the spec sheet) it will either get uncomfortably hot somewhere on the case or at least a bit noisy from the fans, but since it's a bit thicker than the 2019 MacBook Pro it should be able to cool itself more effectively. But when running at the performance level you're used to the power draw should be plenty low enough to make temperature and fan noise not a problem: roughly double the peak CPU performance means you can turn down the power limits a lot and still have a better-performing machine.

Thanks for the detailed write-up.

IIRC my Thinkpad T14 G2 has S3 and it draws 0.3% per hour, pretty much in line with what Macbooks draw when sleeping.

Every generation of CPU has high-power and low-power variants. The i9 is a high power variant that generates a lot of heat but what you want is the low power variant.

I recommend looking for a used laptop with a Core Ultra 7 165U (<$500) or a Core Ultra 7 268V (>$1000). Maybe an HP EliteBook. Either one would be faster than your old i9 and run much cooler.

Sure. And support is paying for people that are buying chargers that are too weak. Or otherwise crappy.

This is a Dutch source, but BTO charged 25 eur to remove the charger [0], because they prefer not to deal with people trying their own wonky chargers. Ok, so this was a 100 W+ laptop, arguably different (BTO only does this with 100 W+ models).

[0]: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/245774/bto-rekent-25-euro-boete-...

> You can't delete your account by self-service, you have to email dang, which is probably non-compliance because it adds friction

GDPR has nothing to do with friction I beleve.

Our lawyer told me that GDPR also applies to paper records, so there is some real-world friction right there.

The important part that there is a right - in whatever good/broken process it is enveloped is irrelevant.

Moreover does HN host PII data? Not if you don't give it to them.

Their Horizon model is probably closer to a Mk IV successor than Mk V. I would consider it as an upgrade path.

Giving consent required you to receive an email to verify your account. Revoking consent requires you to send an email. It’s symmetric, like poetry.

If you use (n)vim it's a good key to have.

How do you copy/paste in the different terminals then?

Linux does, my 12th gen Intel does, one year newer AMD doesn't.

Never. I'd rather use an external mouse than use a track pad.

It might be because most 8TB drives are QLC

I frequently sit on my balcony, with my MacBook Pro in my lap. I'm still alive.

I also frequently use that computer, that doesn't have vents on the bottom, for watching movies in bed. And I don't need to think about vents. My last non-Apple computer was some ThinkPad, with vents on the bottom, and I remember always chasing some book to put under the computer to make the vents free. Boy, how I hated that.

Just display a warning during purchase. This is a UI/communication issue. It’s up to the customer to decide whether they want to risk the opt out.

I bought a laptop without a charger the other day, plugged it into a charger I already had, and it works great (even under load). YMMV.

BTO does that because their laptops use more than what USB-PD can deliver (240 watt). That is an understandable use case for supplying a power adapter.

You are not wrong! That certainly looks like the intention.

You're admitting to not actually knowing the law, yet accusing someone of being in violation of it...

Some of GDPR's language around consent for data processing (which, I will note, you only need if you don't have a legitimate and expected purpose for storing and processing it!) has implications for friction: many 'cookie popups' are not compliant because they make not giving consent harder than giving consent.

But deletion requests are not so strong: if you make people really jump through hoops then you might get in some trouble, but the expencted standard is basically at 'sending an email and getting a result within 30 days'.

90% select, middle click paste. 9% shift+ctrl+c ctrl+v, 1% context menu.

I have used the insert hotkeys for that in my career but is negligible. Because it usually breaks editors and things. Makes them work like a hex editor. But I have a hex editor already. Don’t need that mode so easily reachable, perhaps if it required a modifier to reach.

Don't those use the "i" key?

I doubt any computer you can lift will kill you if you put it on your lap. It might be uncomfortable, but it won't kill you. (I'm not about to put some of VAXen I've seen on my lap even though I can technically lift them, but...)

People do all kinds of terrible things to their body. That you do something and seem to be getting away with it doesn't mean you should. Talk to a real doctor trained in this (your regular doctors probably is not) for details.

Depending on the data "sending an email and getting a result within 30 days" may not be basis for approving deletion request. You have no way to identify whether the data is associated with the person (if the data is not associated with the email).

So additional validation would surely be subject to friction.

reddit in a nutsh... oh wait...

Yes, but "i" is not a toggle.

When I'm working, I'm at my desk, with a keyboard, mouse, and monitors. But the reason why I have a light laptop instead of some beefy desktop computer is the convenience of having a computer when I'm not at my desk. At a café. Or to check emails when I'm at relatives'. Or to work on my hobby project in a car, waiting for my daughter to finish her training session. Or to be next to me, on a carpet, while I'm checking why the network under the TV is behaving strangely.

I've been living laptop life since 2002, IIRC. In all that time, the most stupid design decision I saw was on some HP EliteBook, where designers, in their infinite wisdom, put tiny legs on a laptop. Those four stupid pieces of plastic and rubber bite my legs every time when I try to use the convenience of having a mobile computer.

Fans on the bottom of the laptop case are firmly in the second place on my list. And no amount of ackchyually you're holding it wrong will change that.