Never heard of this company but it seems they had the misfortune of launching an Open Hardware laptop around the same time as Framework but with a far poorer design.
Note that the framework isn't completely open source, it runs an Intel CPU so it's by definition running a proprietary blob.
When it comes to MNT, this guy went as far as reverse engineering all SD card drivers, writing his own HID drivers, writing his own display drivers, implememting u-boot support for flashing the BIOS etc.
Look at his github profile, it's kind of insane how he never gives up. [1]
It's pretty serious in terms of being able to claim it's 100% open. I mean, even the batteries are standard ̶L̶i̶-̶I̶o̶n̶ 18650 LiFePO4 cells that can be replaced without soldering or anything. [2]
Whereas with the Framework it's basically "just get a new mainboard" the very same as Apple's laptops are "repaired" these days, which I think is a shame...and they could've gotten much much further if they really wanted to.
In terms of practicality though, it's always the RISC vs Intel debate. Different markets, different expectations.
Besides safety they have the added benefit of significantly longer lifespans (charge cycles) compared to Li-ion. The downside being their lower capacity. The high capacity LiFePO4 in the reform are current 1800mAh (it might be 2000 on the new cells they swapped to after supply issues of the originals). Which is fairly low for a 18650, but not terribly worse than the 2500-3000mAh of li-ion 18650 cells.
For what it's worth, we're glad to see MNT building the Reform and now PocketReform. We don't consider them competitors (especially in relation to the colossal incumbents in the PC space) and are happy to see them championing open hardware.
Reform is far more hackable and open than Framework. Just using Intel puts you at a great disadvantage in openness, whereas the Reform uses a Freescale ARM CPU.
