I don't understand what the advantage of an expansion card that sticks out like that is over using something external on a cable.
The main point of the self contained expansions is that you are unlikely to loose them and they can safely travel around with the device. With a card that protrudes like that, if you want to put the laptop in a bag, you have to take the card out, or risk damaging the card and/or laptop as the protrusion gets levered around. The expansion cards plug into USB-C connectors that are soldered directly onto the motherboard, so the risk of damaging the motherboard though the expansion card does exist (although it's probably not that likely, and any damage would probably be localized to just the motherboard's USB connector).
With a external Ethernet port, you can have the USB expansion card in between the motherboard and the USB Ethernet device, to prevent wear on the motherboard's connector when repeatedly connecting and disconnecting the device.
So what's the gain by using the expansion card format, when it can't permanently live in the laptop? You might as well just use a cable. I guess maybe if you only carry the laptop by hand and have to constantly use Ethernet, like if you're debugging a network installation, it would be good? But a regular USB Ethernet port seems like it would be more practical for most cases.
I was thinking the same thing. Sure, this is better than a dongle in some ways, but is still an order of magnitude worse than the normal, flush-fitting expansion cards.
I do recall someone on the Framework subreddit saying that they carry a laptop around with them on a shop/factory floor, but mostly use wired ethernet when they stop and put it down on a workbench. Using a dongle wouldn't be great because it'd be something that would swing around unpredictably as he'd walk around a crowded room with lots of people and machines running. So in this case, this expansion card would probably be a useful step up from a dongle.
Regardless, a retractable "XJACK"[0] from the PCMCIA days might have been a better choice for this, if the hardware could be made "short" enough in that dimension. Downside there is of course fragility; I imagine they're easy to snap off.
My Megahertz XJack never snapped off, but it felt precarious and ugly. Imagine some Cat-5 with RJ45 connector pointing down, snapped into this narrow XJack frame, stiff cable sticking up beside your typing fingers and tension pulling on it.
3Com also had a proprietary connector on the PCMCIA card edge, and an adapter cable of a few/several inches that went from that to a bulky RJ45 socket housing with an LED on it. It meant carrying the adapter with your laptop, but the experience during use felt a little better. The PCMCIA-side of the adapter stuck out a bit and wasn't a very solid attachment, but that might've been partly by design. If the cable gets jerked, the connector might pull out before dashing the much more expensive laptop to the floor.
Overall, I liked the Xircom RealPort PCMCIA/CardBus cards of the same era, which took up the space of 2 PCMCIA slots, and basically added 1 or more flush connectors to the side of your laptop. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=xircom%20realport
I thought it wouldn't be long lived - but I once tried to put as much torque and pressure on that jack on an older/broken card - and I was amazed at how much abuse it took - I'm not even sure I was able to snap it off. Much more rugged than it appeared (though the cards died all the time - we had stacks of them).
It looks to me like the RJ45 jack is taller than the expansion card slot, and the depth of the bump is more or less the depth of the RJ45 jack + the space needed to wire it in. I'm not sure what else they could have done to produce something that fits in the expansion slot. You can always just use a USB-C ethernet dongle if you think you're going to disconnect it every time it goes into a bag.
Just looking at it, as long as its manufactured to reasonable tolerances, you'd have to do quite a bit to damage the laptop via the protrusion. I'm not sure how big of a deal this is. I'd just throw it in a bag and not worry about it, protrusion and all.
Those fucking suck, and some of us use our laptops on our laps, with ethernet connected. Those expanding jacks basically only work while it is on a desk because if the cable bends downwards even a tiny bit it just comes out.
> I'm not sure what else they could have done to produce something that fits in the expansion slot
They could've made the expansion slot bigger. It's unlikely that Ethernet wasn't talked about at some point when they designed the laptop. They chose not to, which may very well be the right choice, but then we're talking about trade-ofs not about possibilities.
The size is surprising, it looks like something from early 2000's.
There are definitely small jacks [1] that seem to work fine. There's also plenty of 2.5G usb dongles that have a pretty small form factor. So it doesn't seem like there's a technical reason it has to be that big.
Perhaps the folding connectors don't have the long-term durability? (Though, a huge benefit of the Framework is a broken port doesn't mean your entire machine is broken).
Maybe component availability? Maybe it was they only way to build it at a reasonable cost for the sales they expect?
The issue with the folding connectors is that they fold down. Due to the Framework laptop's thinness, the port wouldn't be able to fully open if the laptop was sitting on a flat surface.
I fucking hate those folding connectors, they get wedged between the strain relief boot on the ethernet cable and are very difficult to unplug. I witnessed a classmate completely destroy the back plastic on his laptop because he couldn't get it out.
dont get me wrong i'm sure there are better designs than others, but when its bad, its really bad
Those strain relief boots are nightmares on ALL ethernet ports. I've had them get stuck on way too many ports/laptops/desktops/hubs/switches to count. The first thing I do on any cable is move that thing back or cut it off all together...
I used to work in an R&D lab at AT&T (the mothership, pre at&t = cellular/mobile). My laptops took many falls due to someone/something giving the Ethernet cord a tug so I was in the habit of not just cutting the boots but removing the tab that's designed to keep the cable in the socket. I still do that on whatever eth cable goes into my backpack.
It's also good around hyper and small dogs/children :)
Yeah, I don't know why those boots even exist. I go out of my way to buy cables that don't have them. Cables are cheap and easy to replace if they break at the ends. At least those plastic tabs tend to break off if you tug hard... not the doomboots though :(
I think the main difference between built in jacks on laptops and this expansion card is that this needs to have all the circuitry to be a USB ethernet adapter on top of the actual jack. I imagine it's a challenge to fit that in alongside the jack itself, although hopefully people will keep iterating on the design - maybe we'll see a better third party one if the Framework laptop is successful enough.
This is kind of my whole confusion about the Framework module thing itself.
The repairability and linux support of the device is very cool. The easy upgrade internals and well labeled bits are very cool, but the external modules seem kind of pointless to me. They take up valuable interior space and are basically snap in USB-C dongles anyway.
If you have a few of these square framework only modules in your bag is that better than having more universal mac style dongles?
I can customize the ports to my liking without having anything protruding from the laptop (aside from ethernet, which I agree removes the utility).
I like having a microSD reader built in for instance, even if most people don't need one. With most laptops now I'd need to carry a card reader around and it wouldn't be flush with the laptop.
The regular modules fit in pretty snugly and don't add any extra bulk to the device. So you can put it in tight bags or sleeves without having to carry anything else around while still getting whatever ports you need.
This ethernet module is a little bulky, but it still looks like it fits more snugly than any third party dongle would, and chances are you wouldn't want to take it with you when you leave the house anyway.
The bottom of the expansion cards is exposed though - it seems like it should be possible to do the fold open style of connector that a lot of laptops have built in without it needing to expand past the edge. But maybe including the circuitboard as well took up too much space.
Benefiting from the modules doesn't mean not using dongles anymore. Even assuming that modules aren't being swapped around, different people will have different sets that maximize their utility. For me it's one A, two C and one storage expansion; maybe for you it's three C; someone else really wants DP, etc.
On the other side, I'd also consider ethernet to be something already installed on the laptop, without needing an expansion card. I get the framework laptop philosophy and ideas, but needing an expansion card for something as basic as ethernet seems stupid to me. On the other hand, macs come without one too, so yeah... I might be getting old.
Disagree, don't waste my ports on something most people won't use on a thin and light laptop. Gaming laptop? I get it, but for most uses of this machine I'd rather just connect to WiFi
It's worth bearing in mind that _all_ ports on the device are expansion cards, including the USB-C port that the device needs to actually charge. In any case I think WiFi is 'good enough' for most use cases, and as such the number of laptops that provide ethernet as standard is rapidly diminishing. I very rarely need an ethernet port on my laptop, but for the times I do it'd be very helpful to have it installed rather than needing a dongle flapping about.
I prefer the "oldschool" way... give us a bunch of usb ports, ethernet, sd card reader, one or two video out options, etc. then add a few (back in the time pcmcia/expresscard) expansion ports for other things.
The current options seem like configuring a car, and having a steering wheel as an optional addon module.
Eh - I was mostly in your camp until I got a work machine with nothing but USB-C.
Turns out... it just really doesn't matter much, and there are a bunch of upsides.
Namely - I can charge on either side, with basically any decent usb-c charger, and I can plug it into basically any usb-c dock. Those are pretty huge points of convenience. They actively make my life a lot better (seriously - a single charger for all my devices while traveling is SO fucking nice - two laptops, headphones, phone, remarkable... one charger).
The only caveat? I have to throw a single usb-c dongle into my laptop bag for the occasional time I need it. My pick of choice is the pinephone dongle (https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-usb-c-docking-bar-dark-...) since it's cheap, has ethernet and HDMI, plus two usb ports, and works with basically every usb-c device I've plugged it into, on any OS.
Big plus? That dongle is way, way smaller than the extra chargers I'd be lugging around otherwise.
UPDATE: After replying to parent, I read further and saw others mentioned XJACK seventeen hours ago, the actual technology the PCMCIA I mention is using.
- - —
> card that sticks out like that
remember PCMCIA cards? back in those good old days of laptops taking a universal expansion card physical format, the Ethernet cards often had a spring loaded pop-out jack to hold the Ethernet cable.
This is a nice throwback to the form factor of PCMCIA cards for really old laptops - the original expansion card slot for notebook computers. [1]
The cards often had to stick out, whether to host a thick connector or an antenna. Here, we see a miniaturized version of that form factor...
Later, this was replaced by ExpressCard, but that never took off as much as PCMCIA cards. Back in the day, laptops came with one or two PCMCIA slots, which could be used to add full size IEEE1394, USB, Ethernet, or even Wi-Fi ports. I remember having to use an ORiNOCO Gold Wi-Fi card to get online back in the day. I had a desktop that had a slot in the front that it plugged into
I still remember using that in order to have WiFi on campus. This was in 2000 so it was quite amazing to have wireless internet and home wifi wasn’t that common since dial-up was still common.
You’re right, it said Orinoco in the label. Lucent Technologies was printed there too.
Orinoco cards were also great for wardriving, I paid a premium to get one over here in the UK (where they were way less common) with an external antenna connector on it.
My understanding is that, roughly, TB3 ⊂ USB4 ⊂ TB4. The USB4 spec is based on TB3, and (mostly?) requires TB3 compatibility, and TB4 is effectively USB4 plus bells and whistles. I think this goes to the point of USB4 ports with all the optional features qualifying as TB4 ports.
the modules are usbc, but the ports themselves are thunderbolt you can plug any thunderbolt adapter into the port directly rahter than use the "usbc" module (if you wish)
the main issue with plugging into the laptop is dimensions, because there is only so much clearence
Yeah, copying large engineering files over gigabit Ethernet is so slow. I’ve been waiting for ages for dock manufacturers to start putting SFP ports on their Thunderbolt docks.
5GbE or 10GbE on standard business equipment would be fine, but SFP equipment is more cost effective per gigabit than 10GbE at the moment.
A 28 port SFP switch is only around $1000 but a switch with 10Gbps on every port will set you back thousands and will only have a few ports. Not enough to do a whole office.
As long as the laptop has Thunderbolt 3 or 4 you can use a thunderbolt to PCIe enclosure with a SFP28 network card in it. It wouldn’t be very portable but neither is a fiber optic tether.
I think where these guys made a mistake was not designing some sort of back slot for things like this where you could put a slab on the back of the laptop.
Slab on the back would have enough space, it wouldn't look so weird and cheap, and you could put all sorts of fun stuff back there like an actual docking module.
Or extra batteries.
I would be amazed if this thing sells much at all, because having that big square thing come out of the side of the laptop just looks like it's asking to break. It looks wrong, it feels wrong, and it's just not going to work.
>> It looks wrong, it feels wrong, and it's just not going to work.
Eh, the RJ-45 jack is thicker than the laptop, I think this is good enough of a solution for now. And I’m someone that would spring for the ethernet adapter. I’d consider getting a framework, but I’d start by buying the low end of everything, and just see how many years I could keep running it, ship of Theseus style. That said, it wouldn’t be my main dev machine…
For occasional plugging in a dongle I keep in by bag would be preferred. For frequent plugging in that gets cumbersome and I'd prefer the module or if I were feeling extravagant a dongle permanently attached to each ethernet cable.
I wish there was a modern laptop with something like the Thinkpad Ultradock, where the laptop connects to a stand-dock via a connection on the bottom. If you do your typing on the laptop keyboard itself, they provide a nice bit of elevation, charging and loads of ports, and can be disconnected by just pressing a button.
I doubt we'll see it again, even Thinkpad ditched it iirc. But it feels like it'd be perfect for Framework, as the ports on the dock itself could be modular like the laptop. I'd largely solve the problem of this ethernet port not looking flush, as it'd set out of view.
> [...] via a connection on the bottom [...] Probably just wishful thinking
The bottom of the Framework expansion cards is exposed, so it would be possible to design an expansion card which exposed a dock connection on the bottom. It wouldn't be as good as the dock connection on these old Thinkpad and Dell laptops, which was centered, since the Framework expansion cards are on the sides and not on the center; but it could be made by a third party, without having to wait for the laptop manufacturer.
This just makes me mad that we never came up with a newer ethernet standard that allowed for smaller ports.
I know it creates a ton of compatability problems but its just so unnecesserily huge when you consider its only 8 pins. You could half the height and retain the lock-in clip functionality quite easily.
I think you highly underestimate the compatibility problems it would cause.
You'd have to replace the global networking infrastructure. Starting from every wall plug to the switches and backbone devices. The new connector would have to be easily crimpable, and hopefully as cheap as RJ45, I don't think you could go much slimmer.
All of this just so your end device can be a little bit slimmer. Definitely not worth it.
Using both at the same time so you could leave the backbone alone might work, but this already exists in the form of a usb type-c network adapter.
That depends on your definition of "mastered" we certainly know how to make them but I don't think there's ever been an example that wasn't cumbersome, fragile, or both.
> Why do we still have the RJ45 connectors at all?
> We've transitioned other technologies.
I wouldnt say we have transitioned to other tech. And we still have it because inertia. Same reason why serial is still widely used. Also, ethernet != RJ45. You can have hardwired point to point connections with ethernet as well, and those can be quite compact.
> Is the industry so focused on WiFi that they are just hoping it will go away for end user devices?
> Surely even if the data-centre a compact alternative would be a cost saving due to taking up less space?
> What am I missing here?
Ethernet is simply more reliable and scalable. Reliable in that there is basically no risk of it disconnecting, and scalable in that you can have hundreds of ethernet cables besides each other without much interference. With WIFI it'd become unusable.
Totally, but I specifically meant the RJ45 connector itself!
WRT other technologies, we've updated USB and Thunderbolt to use the compact USB-C connector standard. We've updated display connectors many times over the years!
And yes, there are legacy installations and so on, but that's never a good reason to not advance a technology!
We'd all still on SCSI connectors or SATA if legacy was a good reason not to evolve technology!
Just looking at a rack of patch panels and switches, you can see a lot of space is taken up with supporting the RJ45 connector itself!
None of the other comments really explain why we still use RJ45. Because it's a standard and legacy isnt a reason to not have developed a modern compact alternative!
I can not begin to imagine how many facilities on this earth require a man, a laptop, and an ethernet cable. Jesus it must be _a lot_.
Ethernet isn't going anywhere. Serial ports haven't gone anywhere. I literally was in a factory 2 hours ago where they are manufacturing new, >$100,000 machines that have both serial and ethernet ports, both of which will remain standards for god knows how many decades.
We use USB dongles for the serial stuff now, but even that is not possible for some applications iirc.
I'm sorry but your ageism offends me. Are we just going to exclude teens and children? Can a 15 year old not operate a laptop? "Man" and "Woman" imply adults, and ageism is not okay.
Do you see how fast this type of cultural revolution bullshit goes downhill? Someone else can always be more sanctimonious.
I of course used "man" in place of "person" as has been common (and correct) for thousands of years. Man can mean "mankind" or "a person", and does not exclusively mean "male", and never has. Sort of like how "guys" now means "people".
In fact, "man" meant person before it meant "male", it literally predates the English language. It's so old it predates writing. It's one of the oldest words we have.
Given you talked about "facilities" I would assume that you were talking about a professional environment, so assuming an adult seems fine to me.
Whether man has been correct and standard usage in the past is fairly irrelevant. People's attitudes towards gender have changed (for the better), and so our view of what is 'good' and 'bad' in written English have changed too. Particularly in a male dominated industry where women don't feel welcome, using phrasing that implies a job is only done by men is fairly unfriendly to half the population. It's not hard to use "person" or "they" or other gender neutral language and eliminate this particular problem.
Language is a tool to express our thoughts. As our thoughts change, so does language. If you don't give a shit about women in technology (or anywhere else) then fine, but don't be surprised if people who do then call you on it.
The reason I was in that factory today is because the woman who runs the tech company I work for sent me there, lol.
But go ahead, explain to me what a chauvinist oppressor I am.
I don't think it is language that keeps women out of tech, and I don't think this flash in the pan cultural moment is going to change our habits on a word that is older than writing.
What makes you think that? It's 2022 and half the world's commercial airplanes require floppy disks for navigation.
> What am I missing here?
40 years of accumulated infrastructure. Datacenters may have upgraded, other businesses have not. People generally don't re-wire buildings when the old wires still work.
It does look a bit cheap, and the protruding part is not aesthetically pleasing, but at least it has good specs. I wish they could make it work while keeping it the same form factors as the other parts.
The problem with the protruding part is that the Ethernet port itself is thicker than the laptop body itself. In this case, even if they were to go the route that some thin laptops use (hinged collapsible port), it would likely hit the table due to the thinness of the laptop.
If you put the port on a little cable, you're back to the USB-C dongle thing.
Also, most laptops with collapsable ethernet ports do indeed fold down. I've seen dozens of them, but I've never seen a port like the one you posted (probably because it's a terrible idea, but maybe for other reasons).
Yes, I know there is no good engineering solution unless you accept to have thicker expansion cards on both sides (e.g. with rubber pads on the bottom) that would be used as slightly elevated support for the laptop.
Does anyone happen to know whether there's been business analysis on a TrackPoint option for the Framework laptop?
Anecdotally, ThinkPads have a substantial following, and there's also been concerns about more recent Lenovo quality and design choices, and there's arguably a question-mark wrt some security threat models.
I'm curious what the business numbers would look like, for what Framework could do, and how many ThinkPad devotees they could convert.
Not an answer, but nrp commented previously ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32181892 ) that the tooling costs for a pointing stick would be in the region of half a million dollars. My gut feeling is that you could recoup that, but it might not be the most effective way for them to spend that capital right now.
If nothing else, I'd like to see a crowdfunding campaign for it so I can put my money where my mouth is ;-).
Very helpful, thank you. Looks like some of that cost is to redo something that was already done. If turns out that doesn't make sense right now, then maybe there's another opportunity if they later have to redo tooling anyway for other reasons.
I really like the USB based expansion card system. Not sure this is really the best implementation, but I could see a lot of applications for a similar format, if it didn't stick out as much.
We finally have one good connector that almost everyone seems to trust, that is both cheap and reliable. I bet there's a lot of places it can be used.
I'd like to see a home automation hub that had expansion ports like this for adding multiple radios.
Or a Raspberry Pi class device that just had these connections so you could choose exactly what ports you need.
But I kind of have some doubts about this particular use case. I think it will be pretty specialist.
USB to ethernet adapters are cheap. In the future, I could see moving towards direct USB connections. Routers might someday have a usb network port built in. You could have wall outlets that expose the network as a USB to ethernet dongle.
Long term that would seem to be a bit nicer, just not have any bulky Ethernet anywhere near mobile stuff , hide it behind permanently mounted converters.
It was already announced in early development that this is going to be an oversized expansion card. No bad surprises here. And if this is sitting as stable as the other expansion cards, then there should not be much of an issue transporting it.
I'm a bit surprised that there is no blog post about the release of the ethernet card yet.
I have a Framework laptop, and it's pretty nice, I guess, but I would not have minded it being a few mm thicker, and then this could have been a more normal module. I never understood the appeal of paper-thin laptops.
I find it even more strange design decision as this is marketed as repairable machine. Surely a few more millimetres would have made many many things substantially easier. And I'm pretty sure the core target audience would have accepted it.
It feels like we're way past the point of people caring about how thin a device is. There was a period of time when the biggest spec a phone could have was how thin they got it, but we've moved past that. Especially in a laptop, I worry about thermals, I doubt they're a problem on the Framework but I cant help but worry.
I use 10gig for a dedicated link to a NAS. It drives me nuts that easily-accessible networking is so far behind storage speeds. SATA-I (2003) is faster than gigabit ethernet. SATA-II (2004) is faster than 2.5GigE.
So why 2.5GigE on a laptop? So when you're at your desk, where your laptop spends 90%+ of its life, your bulk storage can have access speeds that are at least from this century, if only just.
The main point of the self contained expansions is that you are unlikely to loose them and they can safely travel around with the device. With a card that protrudes like that, if you want to put the laptop in a bag, you have to take the card out, or risk damaging the card and/or laptop as the protrusion gets levered around. The expansion cards plug into USB-C connectors that are soldered directly onto the motherboard, so the risk of damaging the motherboard though the expansion card does exist (although it's probably not that likely, and any damage would probably be localized to just the motherboard's USB connector).
With a external Ethernet port, you can have the USB expansion card in between the motherboard and the USB Ethernet device, to prevent wear on the motherboard's connector when repeatedly connecting and disconnecting the device.
So what's the gain by using the expansion card format, when it can't permanently live in the laptop? You might as well just use a cable. I guess maybe if you only carry the laptop by hand and have to constantly use Ethernet, like if you're debugging a network installation, it would be good? But a regular USB Ethernet port seems like it would be more practical for most cases.