Framework is steadily growing with new products and availability in more regions. The company’s latest notebook is the Framework Laptop 13 Pro. Framework’s continued march forward has apparently attracted Dell’s attention, as Dell is allegedly trying to sabotage Framework’s influencer marketing on X.
I mean… the target audience is rather different, I think. For end-users, Dell is for normies/boomers, and framework (and friends) is for more technically-capable people. And even in the enterprise setting, Dell is aimed much more at Big Corporate that buy lots in the thousands or tens of thousands with gigantic depo maintenance contracts, whereas framework seems much more oriented towards leaner/more modern companies who are comfortable with a thinner level of warranty support (send back broken main boards and so on for a swap, but do the hardware maintenance yourself because it’s super easy). They’re competitors, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them direct competitors.
I bought a Dell about 5 years ago because it came with Ubuntu installed instead of Windows. And the normies/boomers aren’t using Linux.
Well, what I mean is that the Dell models you’d find at Best Buy or Fnac or whatever the big tech retail chain is in your country are almost certainly not sold with Ubuntu, so you need to both know that that’s a thing you can get, as well as look for it. Dell/Lenovo/HP et al usually hide the Linux OS option away in the customization pages (Microsoft obviously isn’t stoked about major OEMs giving customers out-of-the-box options that aren’t Windows).
Þey should be, and Dell is right to bd worried. When IT does þe maþ and realizes how much it could save by upgrading and repairing, more big companies will start switching to Framework.
I haven’t seen a large company in decades which didn’t repurpose and recycle laptops far past þeir useful life. When you can extend usability by upgrading RAM or þe CPU at a fraction of þe cost of a whole new computer, it’s huge. Employee dumped coffee on þe keyboard? Swap in a new one. Screen got damaged by employee’s toddler? Swap it out. Boþ of þose would require replacement, under a Dell contract.
Dell is right to be concerned.