MNT Reform Next

176 pointsposted 3 days ago
by _Microft
(mntre.com)

67 Comments

geerlingguy

3 days ago

The original suffered from an underpowered CPU and a high price, along with a fit and finish that looked great but compared favorably to 20 year old PowerBooks more than modern computers (even "thick" laptops today were much thinner).

Seeing this one become quite a bit thinner, using an Arm CPU (RK3588) that is about as good as it gets outside Snapdragon / Apple M in terms of efficiency... I think price may be the major turn-off, as I'm assuming it still won't hit under $1k fully built.

But if they could hit that number, more people would be willing to take a small hit in performance/compatibility to have a fully open design laptop.

amatecha

3 days ago

Performance-wise it's looking to be miles ahead of the ThinkPad X230's I daily-drive so I'm 100% on board (in addition to all the other gigantic upsides like open source hardware, repairable, LiFePo4 support, etc.)!

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

DoctorOetker

2 days ago

I wouldn't call Open Boardware a fully open design.

nxobject

3 days ago

I'm glad this revision's thinner – I wanted to actually be able to put the Reform in my backpack! Sadly, I'm not sure whether you can get both thinness and the trackball at the same time...

yencabulator

3 days ago

There were trackballs on phones at one time.. of course, the ball has to be smaller, but it's very much doable.

I'd actually expect a larger trackball to be harder to do well, it has to be sunken in to allow closing the lid, and that sounds unpleasant to use.

nine_k

3 days ago

Game controllers have really nice joysticks. I wish one (or two) of them were available next to regular keys, maybe instead of the trackpad.

Further, I'd like a split layout option for the keyboard, for the relaxed position oh the wrists, and better use of thumbs.

klardotsh

3 days ago

I was just thinking today about whether I'd enjoy a thumb joystick on this device, given that trackpads and I agree less and less these days (I have been on various trackballs for years on desktops to fend off RSI-like symptoms... recently tried giving the Magic Trackpad 2 another go because gestures and pixel-perfect scrolling rock, aaaaaand welcome back wrist pain! Back to my Ploopy Adept I went)

That, or trying to figure out a mini-trackball to fit where Next's trackpad is, maybe something sized like Pocket Reform. I don't love thumb trackballs (I'm a fingerball kinda guy), but I could make do.

amatecha

3 days ago

So awesome. Looking forward to being able to order one of these! There's no one else making computers like this, and I definitely want to not only personally benefit from the radness, but also help support them so they can continue to work on new hardware (and software)!

pengaru

2 days ago

Support these guys if you can afford to. It's a no brainer if you value a more open and diverse future for general purpose computing.

trhway

3 days ago

so, we're coming to having a laptop case with a keyboard, screen and battery - all standard interfaces - and in which we can replace, almost on the fly, the system board - using an ARM, RISC-V or x86 one or whatever else would appear - or even install a couple of such boards (NUC or even as small as those "gumsticks" boards) and simply switch between them (or run them in parallel).

naming_the_user

3 days ago

This is properly, properly cool. Not in the market at the moment but man. Those 18650's! Just awesome.

Klasiaster

3 days ago

Great to see it getting ready. Since the USB-C Power Delivery port doesn't support Display Port output, maybe there is a complex adapter that could splice the HDMI signal in (converted to Display Port) while still supporting data and Power Delivery?

ryukafalz

3 days ago

I have been wondering about something similar myself. It seems like each interface on the port boards has a separate internal cable, so even though by default PD is on the left port board and HDMI is on the right it might be possible?

myself248

3 days ago

At this point I'm 99% certain that the lack of a standard RJ45 for Ethernet is a not-so-subtle encouragement for people to dive in and start making their own port boards.

klardotsh

3 days ago

I'd personally have preferred another USB-C over this industrial connector style. I already carry around USB-C to Ethernet dongles and it's just a complete non-issue. This instead requires a bespoke dongle I don't own, and frankly, don't really need. I use Ethernet on my laptop exactly once a year, at a live event (a robotics competition) I work where radio interference leads the volunteer event staff to hard-wire our devices. Otherwise... the rest of the year I forget where the dongle is.

But hey, for the folks who really need Ethernet, I'm glad there's an option - even if it's an uncommon one.

theodric

3 days ago

I didn't buy the MNT Reform because it simply didn't have enough RAM to be useful to me.

Now this new one has enough RAM, but it dispenses with the trackball - which was the thing that initially drew my eye to the Reform - in favor of a painfully tiny trackpad.

I just can't win with these guys! So frustrating. I want to love it.

nine_k

3 days ago

I hope they will offer options for the keyboard, with a trackball or (better) a trackpoint.

Maybe not themselves but somebody who cares enough, given the complete openness of the thing.

nosioptar

3 days ago

I don't ever want to buy another laptop without a trackpoint.

fuzztester

3 days ago

trackpad, trackball, trackpoint ... interesting.

what are the pros and cons of them? I've only used laptops with trackpads.

nine_k

3 days ago

- Trackpad: multi-finger gestures. Usually no explicit buttons or scroll wheels detectable by touch, so you need to look down sometimes. Potentially the trackpad allows you to jot arbitrary gestures / glyphs, given proper software. Sits tunder your palm, so you have to move your hand significantly away from the keys to operate it. Good palm rejection is a must.

- Trackpoint: single-finger micro joystick. Sits in the home row, so you can operate it by barely moving your fingers along the home row. Requires explicit buttons; combined with them, usually emulates scroll wheels, etc. Tiny precise gestures are harder. Never bothers you while typing; can be operated entirely without looking, like a mouse.

- Trackball: I have little experience with it. Sits under your thumb usually. Allows for very precise small motions; big motions are harder. Has buttons (see trackpoint), sometimes a larger assortment, accompanied with scroll wheels, etc. Some balls have considerable inertia, some totally don't. Some allow for extremely comfortable hand placement, but it's not a given. Have hard time not being rather tall / thick. Need most cleaning of the three.

theodric

3 days ago

> Requires explicit buttons

I had a ThinkPad i1300 back in 2003 which allowed, in Windows anyway, a thump on the trackpoint to serve as a click. That functionality seems to have been abandoned during the couple of decades I was mainly using desktops and/or MacBooks, because none of my more recent ThinkPads offer it under any OS.

numpad0

3 days ago

That's a default off option in Control Panel. I'd recommend everyone enable that tap to click feature, sensitivity raised to ~240/255, and middle button as wheel click as must have QoL improvements for TrackPoints.

nosioptar

2 days ago

Not having to move off the home row with a trackpoint is great for RSI.

stonogo

3 days ago

The SoM in this is available for the original Reform. Plus other SoMs with 8gb or 16gb have been available for some time.

evgpbfhnr

3 days ago

https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-proc... 500/750€ for the som is a bit spicy considering the soc itself can be brought for $150 in orange pi 5 plus (16GB); being part of the business I know how big the economy of scale is, but it still is off putting as a consumer.

Hopefully selling it as part of the new laptop will allow sufficiently bigger batches to bring this down a bit

stonogo

3 days ago

If you're concerned about cost, the small-batch handmade laptop market probably isn't ever going to make you happy.

prmoustache

2 days ago

You can change the cpu/ram module on the original reform, or order one with a different module.

doublepg23

3 days ago

Isn't part of the ethos of the laptop being fully hackable? I'd assume you could design the case to your liking or upgrade the SoC.

fuzztester

3 days ago

What are they going to call it next?

megous

2 days ago

I have this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006205368963.html heavy copper heatsink on my favorite RK3588 board and it's still ~50 °C idling (with fan off) in open air setting with convective and radiative cooling only.

So good luck with having RK3588 under a touchpad in a box with no obvious airflow and actually using the SoC.

rjsw

2 days ago

The Pinebook Pro has the SoC on the underside of the PCB with a thermal pad connecting it to the metal lower case to make that a heatsink.

megous

2 days ago

Cu foil to spread the heat better on the inner backside of PBP would be even better. Magnesium alloys are not particularly great thermal conductors, so just the spot under the SoC is heated disproportionately to the rest of the backside.

schaefer

2 days ago

I am very excited for this project.

mproud

3 days ago

Looks fragile. And what’s the battery life like?

ryukafalz

3 days ago

If the previous two models are any indication (I own both) the final aluminum chassis will be very sturdy.

amatecha

2 days ago

> The 3D printed case you can see in the photos will be replaced with a robust CNC-milled, bead-blasted, anodized 6061 aluminum case.

Check out their most recent model, the Pocket Reform, to get an idea of the case quality https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform

dtx1

3 days ago

[flagged]

khm

3 days ago

I have daily driven this laptop since it came out. It's fine that you are not the target market, but there are enough people who don't care about all the points you made and have other priorities, even setting aside the weird airport comment (I fly with the Reform regularly):

I have schematics for every circuit and case part. I can (and have) use these to make whatever changes I want. If I run into trouble I have direct access to the engineer who designed them.

It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.

If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.

I do not have to use a trackpad. The keyboard is mechanical and several layouts are available, some from third party designers.

The design of the laptop was a public affair in which I directly participated. I can include patches in firmware bug reports and they will be merged.

Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.

I don't care that it's unfashionably thick, but others do, and I don't see any reason MNT shouldn't cater to them as well.

People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.

dtx1

3 days ago

> I have schematics for every circuit and case part. I can (and have) use these to make whatever changes I want. If I run into trouble I have direct access to the engineer who designed them.

And have you made any change to any circuit? Especially any change that you would have had to make to any of the other linux first notebooks on the market?

> It uses standardized batteries I can get from many vendors for the foreseeable future.

Yup 18650s are cool, yet I have replaced the batteries in many Thinkpads and Dells and never had an issue with finding a new one on ebay. Solution to a Problem that isn't really one if you buy any device not made from glue.

> If the screen breaks there are at least four different part numbers I can order to replace it.

Unless you are buying a Macbook that has been true for so many Notebooks.

> Instead of buying a new laptop every few years, I finally have one which has no secret sauce and I'm not locked into a vendor. Since I work in IT, I know how to take advantage of networking and distributed systems to leverage faster computers when I want to. In short, it's the computer I've always wanted.

There's so much secret sauce in these. Again, the Firmware of the RK3588 isn't open source. No one here has any idea how these chips work and what kind of backdoors or basic security failures they might have. This isn't an RiscV CPU with open specs, it's an off-the-shelf ARM SOC from a chinese vendor that has never managed to release a SOC that has upstream linux support even a year after being released. You are imagining this device as something it provably isn't

> People can and will pay for a sustainable product made in a first-world country by workers earning a living wage. If you want a cheap Intel laptop, there are hundreds to choose from. The existence of a product which doesn't fit the norm doesn't make it "shit," it just makes it something you personally won't buy.

You know, i personally find it pretty offensive to see a website claim their hardware is "Open Source" or "Open Hardware" and asking an unreasonable amount for it and then having to scroll through the website to find an "eh so this isn't actually open source we just screwed an SOM into a 3d Printed case and called it a day. There's still lots of firmware that is closed source".

I wouldn't be writing this if this was REALLY open source. If there were 0 binary blobs. But that's not something they have achieved. So now it's a Product, sold by a FOR PROFIT company and that has to compete with others. And this doesn't. And to argue like this was this ultimate open source no vendor lock-in forever free device this factually isn't is just disingenuous.

khm

3 days ago

Yes, I've modified circuits. I swapped out a capacitor in the audio circuit, I used to have cell protection bodged into my battery carriers prior to the advent of the revised version, and the second half of your question is silly, since there's only one "linux-first" notebook on the market, and the Pinebook Pro is not even nearly the same class of machine. It's a toy.

I have a stack of Thinkpads for which I can no longer acquire batteries. I'm glad you haven't had that experience, but you don't get to pretend I haven't.

The Reform design process specifically involved testing various displays. For other laptops you can, if you're lucky, get a part number for a hardware maintenance manual; failing that you get to disassemble it, find the part number, and look up compatible options. MNT had this information in the documentation at launch.

"Secret sauce" was a vague term. Let me be clear: I have a BOM for the mainboard of this laptop. I have the schematics, including KiCAD, for its PCB. The RK3588 is no better or worse than any other product on the market. For all the talk of RISC-V being open, you can't buy one capable of running modern software which is actually open. So, from my perspective, it doesn't matter if it's IMX.8, RK3588, RISC-V, or x86. It's the entire rest of the computer I'm concerned with, and the Reform is more open-hardware than any other computer, including the Framework.

You seem to be a 'single-issue consumer' with this binary blob fixation. I don't have any problem with that; I just don't care about binary blobs. I like open hardware for the maintainability and the extensibility. But at this point with incorrect comments like '3D-printed case' I'm no longer sure you're even arguing in good faith here, so I won't bother following this comment up.

amatecha

3 days ago

Because these computers have interchangeable CPU modules, you can indeed have a fully-open-source hardware stack on your MNT Reform. Before you go shitting on people who are trying to do something they believe in (and doing a good job of it), do some research and make informed judgements/comments.

https://mntre.com/modularity.html#our-cpu-modules

The RKX7 CPU module is completely open source firmware, and the LS1028A CPU module is also completely open source if you're not using the eDP display (i.e. in a rack/headless configuration).

yencabulator

3 days ago

Framework is moving in the right direction: https://frame.work/blog/open-sourcing-our-firmware

Framework also has a chromebook model that uses coreboot: https://frame.work/blog/introducing-the-framework-laptop-chr...

At this point, the fight is more against Intel and the copyright media lobby.

AMD has a lot of promise: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-openSIL-September-2024

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-announce...

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/hdmi-forum-r...

amatecha

3 days ago

This isn't useful feedback - you're just ranting. These different hardware offerings you mention can and do exist alongside each other. Other people are super-stoked on MNT's hardware and if you're not, that's fine. However, calling it "shit" or "beyond reason" is just trolling.

dtx1

3 days ago

[flagged]

ryukafalz

3 days ago

> for a notebook with a 3d printed case

Aluminum, not 3D printed. From the post:

> CNC-milled, bead-blasted, anodized 6061 aluminum case

turminal

3 days ago

As I'm sure many of the customers can tell you, the company and the products are very real. And they come in very real milled aluminum cases, the case in the images is 3d printed because it's a prototype.

F3nd0

3 days ago

> Realistically usable and proven to be more "future proof" than the MNT Reform Devices.

How is Framework 'proven' to be more 'future proof' than the MNT Reform devices?

> You know, with actual notebooks you might use them, this MNT Reform will be in your "theoretically cool but practically useless open source projects that I will never use and my children will throw into the landfill when i'm gone"-Drawer we all have.

Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.

dtx1

3 days ago

> How is Framework 'proven' to be more 'future proof' than the MNT Reform devices?

Framework has shipped multiple generations of hardware with upgrade SOCs/Mainboards in the same form factor. MNT Reform is already on their second generation case and mainboard form factor with no reasonable upgrade for their first gen in sight.

> Why should it? I can understand if it doesn't cover your needs, but to me it seems like a decent, functional laptop that might do just fine for a lot of people.

I challenge you to do any real work for a week on an RK3588. When your done, you will understand why.

F3nd0

3 days ago

> Framework has shipped multiple generations of hardware with upgrade SOCs/Mainboards in the same form factor. MNT Reform is already on their second generation case and mainboard form factor with no reasonable upgrade for their first gen in sight.

If you're referring to 'MNT Reform' as 'first generation' and 'MNT Reform Next' as 'second generation', I think you might be mistaken. Several processor module upgrades have already been made available for MNT Reform, and you can order one with RK3588 right now. (Can't think of other parts that would really need an upgrade at the moment, but maybe you have an idea?)

I recall them saying the 'Next' is supposed to be more of a 'normal' alternative to the bulky classic Reform, rather than some successor they'll be abandoning the old Reform for.

One could say the Framework is 'more proven to be future-proof', but I don't think calling it 'proven to be more future-proof' is fair on this basis, if I understood your point correctly.

> I challenge you to do any real work for a week on an RK3588. When your done, you will understand why.

Quite the bold assertion! I'm game. I'll let you know once I've had the chance to try and do any real work on an RK3588 for a week at minimum. I feel like my processing needs might be vastly inferior to yours, though, so it'll probably be fine. :-)

khm

3 days ago

I've been doing "real work" on the much slower IMX8 module since the Reform came out. I did an entire Masters degree on this laptop in addition to work.

Anyway, the RK3588 module works in the original Reform; the SoM form factor is shared among all three devices. I don't think you have all the facts here.

ryukafalz

3 days ago

> MNT Reform is already on their second generation case and mainboard form factor with no reasonable upgrade for their first gen in sight.

What do you mean? I've upgraded from the i.mx8mq module it shipped with to the a311d module, and the rk3588 module will be compatible with my first-gen Reform as well.

megasquid

3 days ago

Daily drive the a311d and it's solid. Nothing I wish I could do compute wise with it at the moment that I can't. The RK3588 will be a nice bump in performance though :)

amatecha

3 days ago

I spend hours on a ThinkPad X230 i5-3320m every day, on OpenBSD, with multithreading disabled (so it's lowered down to 2 cores). Take your gatekeeping elsewhere.

metalforever

3 days ago

The problem with your suggestions is that they don't have free firmware.

dtx1

3 days ago

Neither does the RK3588, which is precisely the point I was making.

From the MNT Reform Website https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform

> RK3588 > Binary DDR and GPU firmware

That makes it just as closed source as the corebooted novacustom stuff: https://novacustom.com/coreboot-laptop/

rjsw

3 days ago

The GPU in the RK3588 doesn't use closed source firmware.