As the owner of a Librem 13 v2 with display issues, I wanted to ask some direct questions in the hopes my fears could be abated.
Question 1.) Is the display cables connection to the actual display repairable without needing to replace the entire lid?
Question 2.) Is the defect that allowed the cable to back out of the display (that I am dealing with on my L13) something that has been addressed with the L14?
Question 3.) I have noticed that the ability to repair the device marketing does not appear on the Librem 14 website. Does this signify that this is no longer a priority of Purism products? This is of particular interest to me. I don’t think it is any secret around here that FOSS is of no real importance to me. I became a Purism customer solely because they championed the right to repair, and seemed to build products that made that possible. If this is no longer the case, I really have no reason to be a customer.
With processing power being sufficient for longer and longer, longevity and reparability is the only factors that I find of importance. I know that the size of Purism makes keeping stock of parts, etc. difficult, but it was at least acceptable to me because they were trying.
I appreciate any feedback on the matter. If reparability is a causality on the way to a better more private future, I’m afraid the battle may already be lost.
I think that they still give you the possibility. They showed the entire interior of the device and how it is actually connected. However, they did not focus their advertisement on it because the main improvement of this thing is that it is more powerful.
They want to sell new batteries (one thing that makes some devices becoming old quite quickly), although this might be problematic due to shipping restrictions because of the high flammability of lithium.
Speaking of replacement batteries for either the L5 or L14 is there a downside to buying one before you need it, simply because they are available at the time, and keeping it in storage until you do need it? is there a shelf life for storing a replacement battery?
My main issue is concerning the quality of the hinge. Was there test that were made to ensure durability? By default, a laptop is open and close often, so that will be a shame is the same problem occure with that newer model.
The Framework laptop, which you could check by following the link he provided (also reposted here: https://frame.work/), a laptop designed to be modular and repairable. It embraces the right to repair, and is being designed to help curb the huge amount of waste that happens particularly in the laptop marketspace.
Everything inside of the framework laptop can be replaced. You can even buy an upgraded mainboard to upgrade your laptop, similar to how you can buy a new mainboard and cpu, ram, etc, on a desktop.
Framework didn’t exist when I first heard about Purism, but if they had, I would have gone that route for sure.
I’m still here because of the L5 though. I think that is an area that Purism is trailblazing.
Framework is very promising, yes. They’ve also come under scrutiny from Rossmann, who asked many questions. Based on the information that they provide, how they interact with the community and the very satisfying answers that Rossmann got and accepted, there seems to be no major red flags as of yet. In other words, these guys could be the real deal!
They’ll also ship with an open EC out of the gate and are committed to Coreboot (though not immediately).
Just in case anyone wants the details, here is what one of the Framework guys says about Coreboot:
Qubes is a really interesting project, but right now we do not have a fully open source boot firmware, as the bios region is closed.
I am still interested in working towards a coreboot+tianocore payload that could run on the system which would be the first requirement to get certified.
One additional hurtle would be getting the Intel sensor hub firmware open source, as this is also a closed source blob, it could also be removed for something like Qubes support, but this would disable the ALS and IMU sensors. (Probably not a big deal).
Provided that the screen size is acceptable to you. I think 14" is too small already, so 13.5" isn’t any better, and I’m not a fan of 3:2 aspect ratio either. (They don’t say what the screen resolution is either?)
But then with no announced pricing, I don’t think you could say “for sure” anyway, unless money is no object for you .
13.5" 3:2 is slightly more area than 14" 16:9. In my experience 16:9 is terrible for small laptops, even 15" and 3:2 is nice.
They do list resolution as 2256x1504. At 13.5" I think that is a good balance between too coarse 1920x1080 and not well supported by current UIs at high DPI 3840x2160.
