I see your point, but what i'm talking about is the company generating a strong incentive to people to buy upgrades or replacements.

This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one.

Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't have a bias against it. But those suspicious "features" pulled me away from the 16" model for example.

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throwuxiytayq 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> a perfectly functioning main board

If I understand correctly, the problem was that the board was the exact opposite of that. The post title uses the phrase “bricked”.

I agree that FWs handling was pretty bad, but then again, what exactly is the proposed ideal-but-realistic solution they should have offered here?

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anthonj an hour ago | parent | next [-]

"Bricked" is a bad term for system without a proper software/firmware update path. A LOT could have been done here to improve "repairability" (with quotes, because this is a software issue on a perfectly fine mainboard).

A/B updates automatically recovering the bios is case of failed update, recovery from usb in case that somehow fails as well (InsydeH2O call it "crisis mode" I think). Lenovo support both. Dell too afaik. This is very much realistic to have, and I would expect it from a decent product. A computer without this feature is pretty much designed to fail more easily.

If for some very weird reason framework was unable to offer this, then at very least they could have placed a header on the board with flashing instructions on the website, instead of advising to buy new hardware.

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throwuxiytayq 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

I mean, sure, I agree it would be ideal if BIOS updates literally couldn’t fail - I meant to ask what they could have done to resolve this situation now.

But yes, lack of an USB bios recovery path is a pretty terrible design fault, and I’m surprised that they haven’t improved this by now.

	▲	anthonj 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		ah, you mean after the accident. Well for starter I would acknowledge the issue (thing that according to the liked thread did not happen, maybe it did not affect enough customers?). Then they should either provide an official recovery guide instead of letting customers figure it out themself on the forum (I can see various pictures of people hooking clips to the flash chip and wondering want to flash exactly), or repair it pro-bono since it's a job that probably take ~10 mins for affected customer and it's an issue caused by a design flaw.

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vel0city an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tons of motherboards for other computers have dual BIOS update processes so it can roll back to the old version if the upgrade is unsuccessful.

They could have also had the BIOS chip be socketable and sold it individually pre-programmed.

I agree not everyone does this, but its not like some incredibly out there idea.

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jakzurr an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Seriously?

ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 utility. That's from a 10-year-old MB. Probably a few other examples.