My friend has version 1 of the Librem Mini and so far so good. I bought my Librem 15v3 in March 2018 and in January 2019 the motherboard died. It was under warranty, so Purism actually sent me a Librem 15v4 as a replacement, and it’s been fine for over 3 years. Well, the battery died in June 2021, Purism and almost everyone were out of stock, but I finally found one in China. It’s dead now, so now I need a new one. One nice thing is that the laptop runs fine without a battery. I wish someone would make a battery that lasts more than a year or two. I have an Apple iPad Air from 2013 whose battery is still fine after 9 years.
I agree that it would be really nice to have an easy-to-find page listing all hardware that’s known to work with the L5.
It would also be really nice for Purism to spend some resources making the documentation better so we don’t have to spend forever sifting through these forums to find stuff out.
In the old days when the battery died, you could always run it off the external power supply. Whatever happened to that? Sometimes I’d live with it for months or years even removing the battery so it doesn’t fuzz, treating it like a tower or desktop. Shutting it down at night and booting it up in the morning. Have circuit standards changed so they don’t allow that anymore?
My story is from different angle. Firstly due to the manual nature of my work (workshop, phone in pocket) I found myself being super afraid of the possibility of braking the screen on this expensive phone (as I did on all my previous phones regardless of casings) with nightmare of getting spares from US etc… This is phone for an office job, to be happily plugged in spare monitor for 8 hours.
Also, with the years I found myself distrusting Purism as company. They way of communication is not fully inline with the idea they are promoting - or I imagine it should be. I wish them best of luck as it is important job they are doing and I’m glad I have participated on it by supporting them by purchase. Now for sale
I also wish Purism the best. But after receiving the phone and it not working, and after several attempts at typing in codes,with suggestions from Purism personnel,it still wouldnt work. I sent it back April 1st 2022 and they signed for it on April 4th. Ive not recieved my money back as of yet. After a few emails saying as much and replies that things are a little slow right now that I would receive money back towards the end of the year. If and when I do receive money back ,I`ll post that fact that they were true to their word.
If you don’t want to press Purism to get your money back right away, that’s up to you. Just don’t be under the illusion that there is some valid reason why you are not getting a prompt refund now. Six months or more wait is unacceptable. Eventually, you will find that getting your refund is not a function of how long you wait. It’s about how hard you push. Purism is banking that your resolve and your legal rights will diminish over time. Get your Attorney involved or just resolve that what you paid to Purism was a charitable donation.
Sometime it is easier to convince a clerk to grant a store credit instead of a refund. Then you can use it towards buying some other product. A 14, server, or mini? You can corner the market on screws and rubber feet!
Well…I honestly feel Purism has good customer service values but may be in a pinch financially,hence the delay, and the patience on my behalf. I really wanted to keep the Lib5. It is a stout good looking phone. But for a 65 year old dude who is not Linux literate and trying to make a phone work properly by having to type code in “terminal”…then it still not working only to try some other code with no results is beyond good business sense. Why would a company send out phones that dont work properly? That is what blows me away. If they would want to send me a phone that actually works like they advertise.....Id be satisfied.
This just goes to show that “evil” companies like Microsoft and Google are still the best option when it comes to OS creation. Like it or not, these privacy violating corporations end up producing the most bug free, stable operating systems out of all the OSs in existence. In the end, I would say that open source is a failed experiment. Closed source is the way to go.
The human will always eventually finds a way. When I was seven years old, I saw a man (on TV) walk on the moon for the first time. Back then, only the US government and Russia could finance space flight at all. Just a few years ago Elon Musk started his own space flight company that quite frankly overshadows NASA now. But fifty years passed in the meantime.
Eventually, the ability to design and FAB a new computer chip could become as common as sending a print job out to a neighborhood printer. You can’t make a new phone without a good SoC as at the phone’s core. Maybe it’ll take fifty years to get there. Probably not. Either way, it’s a question of “when” not “if” it happens. The government and more-so the markets can not maintain total control of thought itself indefinitely. Someone will find a way to free-up the technology.
Altough his companies are known for not paying their bills on time. Albeit if NASA can’t afford it they won’t purchase it until the next funding bill. But Spacex can buy rocket parts on credit! (Seems a good time to start a new company: Spacely Space Sprockets anyone?)
Are you nudging customers to accept a “bait-and-switch” business model? It seems to me that Purism should honor their refund policy. I truly don’t understand why anyone would do business with a company that doesn’t honor their refund policy — it’s a violation of trust and would seem double unacceptable given their current niche (tech privacy/security).
not recieved my money back as of yet. After a few emails saying as much and replies that things are a little slow right now that I would receive money back towards the end of the year.
In my country, this is called “being bankrupt.”
Failure to file for bankruptcy in due time is not only grounds for a lawsuit, usually with massive fines, where I live, but also a criminal offense. And that’s for the individuals responsible for the delayed filing, not for the company.
I really want Purism to succeed, but I feel they’re crossing yet another line here.
I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated this comment. I’ve argued for over a year that it would be better for Purism to declare bankruptcy than it would to not properly adhere to their refund policy.
People in the US (and other countries) seem to not understand that bankruptcy is the proper legal solution to insolvency that has been designed to balance the needs of the company, creditors, and customers (past or present).
