Honestly, if the issue was JUST the SSD here I wouldn’t even care. I mean it is a user replaceable part. Chances are this SSD will last just as long as a more recognized brand. If it being made in China is an issue, I don’t see how the WHOLE laptop and any laptop you own isn’t an issue for you.
Made in China is totally different from Chinese brand.
Just wait for the USA version…
I understand the frustration with the laptop failure. I do because mine failed too; however, I want to say a few things that may be unpopular.
- I don’t think it’s right to disparage components because where in the world they are made. I have seen good and bad quality items made in both countries. Let us please leave the geopolitics out of the conversation.
- I would exercise caution when motivating Purism for their choices in hardware. Every business does need to make margin and we don’t know the kind of supplier/buyer relationships Purism has upstream. I believe this cuts both ways - anthropomorphizing the firm either way is mere rhetoric. It does not help passersby make informed decisions. I also believe it undercuts customer advocacy with Purism as well.
I understand the frustration. I really, really do. I, too, have an underpowered desktop due to a premature failure of a component. In my view, Purism is at a crossroads. The marketplace for FOSS is small enough that reputation really impacts business. And the aggregate of customer experience is what yields reputation. How many Purism customers will strongly advocate for buying Purism laptops now as opposed to saying something less convincing like, “I would wait and see”. There has been zero communication on the issues customers have had outside of “contact support”.
It’s my hope that they meet these challenges head on and overcome them. We shall see though, right?
Totally agree @Corbeau!
While a laptop dying is unfortunate, cases reported here don’t mention how it was used. I mean maybe they sat on the couch with it and a blanket for hours on end, with the vents partially blocked and the blanket resonating heat. We just don’t know.
I’m someone who pays attention to the thermals and does my best to encourage ventilation. It could be that my L13v2 lasts for 10 years or more as a result.
I do wish Purism had the capital to procure more replacement parts for their products, but I also understand that it isn’t an easy thing to do.
I would also comment, that their mainboard while possessing a few differences is very similar to other 13" ultrabook like laptops. There is no higher liklihood that the GPU will fail on a Librem then on an XPS, for example.
Pretty much all NAND Flash memory in the world is made by 5 manufacturers, which are Samsung, Toshiba (now split into Kioxia and WDC), Micron, Intel and SK Hynix. There are some differences in the SSD controller chips, since some do better wear leveling, have faster access times and more temporary memory than others. Just because you haven’t heard of Biwin and it is a Chinese company doesn’t mean it isn’t good quality. It is better to look at the type of NAND Flash and the manufacturer of the controller chip, than the brand name of the SSD in my opinion. I usually buy Samsung, Intel or Crucial (Micron) when I build PCs, because I don’t have time to investigate the quality of the underlying components, but Purism has the time to investigate and not waste extra money on a brand name.
For DRAM, the situation is similar with only 5 major manufacturers, although there are some minor manufacturers that you probably want to avoid, and again, the brand name is less important if you have the time to investigate who made the memory chips, which I assume that Purism does.
Crowdfunding the creation of new tech is expensive and takes patience. I believe in free software, I hate the loss of my privacy to surveillance Capitalism, and I worry about environmental cost of planned obsolescence, so I’m willing to preorder the Librem 5 as an investment in the future, but it certainly isn’t for everyone.
It took 5 years (Oct 2003 - Sep 2008) of development to get Android to its first commercial phone, the HTC Dream. iOS (formerly called iPhone OS) took over 2 years (2005 - Jun 2007) of development before the release of the first iPhone. Canonical developed Ubuntu Touch for 3+ years from 2011 to 2015-02-09 before the release of the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition. All of those companies had a lot more resources to throw at the problem than Purism
Purism’s laptops will always be a generation or two behind the latest tech curve, because it has to wait until there are FOSS drivers/firmware in mainline Linux for the hardware and it has to port Coreboot to that hardware, which takes time.
Doing small-scale custom manufacturing is expensive and it is hard to get replacement parts, which is why only Purism, Star Labs and PINE64 do it among all the Linux laptop sellers. Everyone else uses Clevo base models.
In order to get replacement parts, Purism has to either order extra parts when it does the initial manufacturing, or wait until it has a large enough quantity to order another manufacturing batch be made. Having extra replacement parts on hand, means that Purism has to order extra of all the custom parts during the initial manufacturing, which raises the price of the product, because Purism can’t guarantee that it will ever use those extra parts.
Another problem with being a smaller seller is that Purism has to sell one product to everyone. I personally think that paying the premium for a Core i7 CPU is not worth it, when it only gives you 10%-15% better performance, but some people only want the best, so Purism has to price its laptops for the people who want the best, because it only has the volume to make one model and Intel no longer makes mobile socketed CPUs, so Purism can’t customize the CPU without doing a separate manufacturing run.
The final thing to keep in mind is that Purism has the highest costs of any Linux laptop seller:
- Only Purism, Star Labs and PINE64 have to pay for small-scale custom manufacturing,
- Only Purism and System76 maintain their own Linux distro,
- Purism operates in San Francisco which has a very high cost of living and has 47 employees (although many work remotely).
According to Purism’s Team page, Purism has 3 developers working on PureOS, 1 Coreboot developer, 4 people providing tech support to customers, 3 hardware engineers, plus a security specialist. Purism has to charge a very high markup per unit to pay for their salaries, because it only sells a couple thousand laptops per year.
The question for the consumer is whether these extra costs are worth paying for, and that depends on what you value in a laptop.
Please do sell it for parts, since it is hard for people to get replacement parts.
@jukebox: Actually I have been waiting for a new sound card for almost 4 months now but still haven`t received any news from Purism if they will ever get them again for a Librem 15 v3.
I am not sure if one from a v2 would work but it may be worth the try.
Otherwise, sooner or later I will be looking for a new laptop and I am unsure if it will be a Librem one again…
Even with my hp pavilion, I’ve had to pull it apart from time to time and fix a few things. Have had to replace dvd drive and keyboard. One usb port is flakey now unless I push plug all the way in. And I’ve also had to spend lots of time learning things in Linux to keep it working properly. Previous hp laptop my girlfriend wacked and broke one side of hinge, and I had to take that apart and repair it as best as I could. Things break. My advise to you, is to try and fix it or have it fixed. At least on my box, the video is hooked up with a cable and a connector. If that connector were to get loose or corrode I can imagine that would be the first place I would look. But if you do take it apart, go slow, very slow if you don’t know what you’re doing at first. Make a list of the screws you take out and where they go back to. In my hp there are literally 100+ screws to get it apart and back together. I was amazed at how many tiny screws. Also get yourself a good magnifying glass and light. Most problems can be found with your eyes. Chances are that a connector is loose or something obvious like that, both with the screen and microphone. what have you got to loose. take it apart and learn. and chances are you might fix it. Good luck. (My dad said, the harder you work, the luckier you get.)
Mine came with a Biwin SSD as well even though they advertised using Samsung SSDs for their laptops on the forum at the time. I emailed them and told them to ship me a descent SSD, which they did. It’s a good example of how trying to save a few bucks can come back to hit you back in the ass and hurt your reputation in the process. Very sneaky of them. I wonder if they cut corners with other parts?
Thank you for this post! I’ve been considering Purism for some time and was about to cave to the image.
But it’s an expensive platform for what you get. While I support their values, I can’t afford to sacrificially do so. The current laptop is currently under powered for at least my purposes and not priced competitively. I feel their foray into a Linux phone race has been a major distraction from their core laptop line. Making an impressive, privacy first laptop with a solid supported Linux distro is a sizable and ambitious enough task for a small company.
Purism’s marketing is slick. They put themselves out there like they’re a Linux version of Apple: laptop, phone, and secure apps for everything you need! But they do not begin to have those kind of development resources to lean on, nor customer base. I wish they did, but that doesn’t change anything. I’d say “nor hardware quality too”, but as a long-time Apple user and dev, I know Apple’s hardware is in steep decline.
Perhaps they plan to abandon the laptop line to focus on for the phone and their privacy apps? If they can get it to work, I would be interested.
All the worthy values of Purism’s approach to privacy are only realized when I can toss my old device and really use one of theirs. Currently, for the phone and this laptop line, I can’t. Still, I’m pulling for this company and I appreciate their effort at transparency for the phone.
Some versions of Puppy Linux work without a Video card, or driver. Might be a way to test what is wrong?
Wonder if it would work if you put the original parts back into it?
Since a lot of manufacturers might put odd things in their firmware, I can guess that is why the Biwin was used.
I always suspect companies of going on the cheap and substituting cheap parts. Now I must worry about a part being privacy compromised.
I would hope they lean into laptops further. I feel that they quickly lost interest in them.
Me too, I mean I get how they could believe that the phone is a more efficient way to appeal to a broader spectrum of customers, but I also think it is muddy water and harder to truly compete in.
I agree. A phone is a second rate computer in my mind, currently forth rate if running Linux. I’m in the market for a good privacy honoring laptop and always will be, but old flip phones are looking better and better for making voice calls.
Hello, here is happy owner of Librem13 - v4, and also a FSF member.
I bought it few months ago and it works perfectly, from HW and SW point of view, including the boot that is super fast. They delivered to me in France from US at no cost. I contacted many times support team due to some delays caused by coronavirus and they replied always quickly via email (1 to 2 business days). I understand the challenges that small businesses can encounter as highlighted by @amosbatto, they can’t scale they investments in HW and SW over a large base of customers, but I appreciate the effort of transparency they did and the investment in providing a product like that to the FOSS community relying just on few staff.
Said that, I would like to ask @jukebox why he did not try to repair/replace pieces in his country (which one ?) . Was the guarantee of Purism already expired ?
I was happy as well when I bought it, let’s talk again in 2 years.
I pointed out already that I see no point in investing into a poorly made laptop which seriously failed already. It would require to replace the whole CPU, which I expect will probably cost 50% of what I has paid already, this is simply not economically viable.
The warranty is 1 year and of course it has expired. My current laptop is under 3 years warranty…
I am happy my topic spurred discussions about Purism’s approach to quality. Hope they will read it and make some conclusions (but most likely they will not, people are going to buy their laptops, no point)…
I’m glad you brought the thread up as well. If Purism wishes to truly succeed it needs the community to help steer it clear of practices that harm their ability to reach their social goals.
I was a diehard Thinkpad fan who saw the line continue to erode and fell away. That is what got me interested in Linux and the hardware to begin with.
Come full circle, and I’ve finally understood something. The customers which buy Thinkpads drive ALL of their design decisions. The neck beard with their 2000-ish Thinkpad isn’t paying any of Lenovo’s bills. However if you look at their current thinkpad line, and contrast that with other laptops from other vendors, you’ll see that the Thinkpad is still the best laptop in many ways. Thinkshutter, display shader, wireless kill switches, etc. are all features that have existed for a while and before Purism, for example.
I’m waiting for the X13 Yoga to finally release and I’ll be upgrading my x230.
I just renewed my Librem One account, so i’m still supporting Purism, but I really hope they learn from their hardware faults. I will buy a v5 when they’ve demonstrated that the hinge is no longer anchored with plastic, for example. One thing I’d also really like to see is a 13 inch model that is actually 13" and not a 13" screen in a 14" body. If Purism came out and said they were trying to become what Thinkpads once were, I do believe, i’d stick with them for as long as it took. hahahaha.
I agree, that would be the perfect solution. We are aware that Librem 13 inch = 325×219×18 mm is bigger in size than SLIMBOOK PRO X 14 inch* = 320×210x16,8 mm.
*The slim 4.2 mm bezel gives you a screen ratio of 86%, currently one of the highest in the market even above of the 81% from the DELL XPS 13 2019.
What? You mean a robust business laptop with a keyboard that’s actually usable for stuff other than “watching Netflix”? Where do I sign?
[EDIT] Oh yeah, and that unfortunately excludes your X230 for me…
I’ve thrown down on the L5 along with my L13v3. And I have the NitroKey. If they want a repeat customer, they have to meet your stated criteria for me to buy. So we are in accord. Give me a laptop that can last 36 - 60 months and I’ll be content.
Sidenote - I live a stone’s throw from a small airport where DC-3s and 6s take off on a regular basis in the summer. One of those planes flew drops over Normandy. It’s crazy to consider what’s considered long life in the digital world compared to other realms of technology.
I also hope that Purism continues to make laptops. I purchased a Librem15 v4 back in January 2019. I had a few issues with my machine early on, but they since subsided.
A few months ago, I purchased an OryxPro 17 inch laptop from System76. I had it built with cutting edge hardware. I think System76 builds high quality machines. Purism builds good machines as well.
The real difference is that Purism builds machines that are 2 iterations behind all other manufacturers, as was noted earlier in the post. Purism is able to do this since they emphasize security.
For me, I have two machines. My Purism is my go to, somewhat more portable and secure machine. My System76 machine is a desktop class machine with tons of high end components for when I program in Python, HTML, and some Java. Granted, I did not need as high as I purchased, but I wanted to play the occasional video intensive game.
It would be sad if Purism feels they are better suited to leave the laptop space and concentrate on phones. To concentrate on phones is very murky. Purism would be better suited to make laptops and keep the phone aspect a side project until the phones prove their worth to Purism financially.