With all the reports concerning various problems with the keyboard of the Librem 14 (mainly keys that does not respond properly), could Purism tells us what they are planning to fix this? It seems to me that the quality of a keyboard for a premium laptop is significantly important, for me anyway, and I would love to hear from Purism, regarding their plans in this regard. I certainly don’t want to order a broken laptop that is going to travel across the border twice at my expense. I am certainly not the only one to whom this possibility is not very attractive.
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Hi Amstram
I have a replacement Librem 14 on way as I type this, because the first Librem 14 I got, had keyboard freezing problems, which I had to sent twice. First time to Germany and the germen service center did not seen to fix it, then after a while, I had to send back to the USA (where Purism is based).
Thankfully for me they have sent me the replacement Librem 14.
The Keyboard would freeze every now and then, especially then you put the Librem 14 sleep for long duration and then have to try to wake it up, is when the keyboard would freeze most of the time.
Hopefully Purism will make better keyboards with there next gen Librem 14, whenever that will come out.
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This sort of thing concerns me greatly. I am really very close to shelling out what will be around $2000US for a laptop which is lot of coin. I’ve owned laptops since they became a thing and this will be my most significant outlay by a mile. I missed the $300 special the other week because the promised email Purism said they would send didn’t arrive which was a blessing now as that would have made me jump probably.
I’m undecided now between framework (doesn’t run qubes though I believe), system 76 or maybe Tuxedo. They all have their issues of course. I also have an L5 ordered out there on the never-never.
I really want to support Purism but the Librem One suite didn’t work for me or my friends and the Librem 14 has enough questions hanging over it to make me pause. And who knows when my L5 will arrive, ordered Oct 2019.
Are the Librem 14s now being shipped free of that solder blob addition that got tacked on? Is the hinge issue resolved? And now I hear about this keyboard issue. Sure, Purism will fix (some) stuff I hear, but shipping a laptop back for repair to the other side of the world and the time this would take is a deal breaker. Not to mention that a premium laptop should not have these issues.
If this seems like a rant, sorry. But the concerns with Purism just keep coming.
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Well. No one from Purism aknowledge or deny anything. Silence can be interpreted in many ways. Personally, if I was proud of my product, I would have defended it. That’s why I will interpret the silence as giving reason to the many cases of malfunction, and I will pass my turn on this one.
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You’re right that silence can be interpreted in any ways. I think what most likely happened is that no one realized things need to get acknowledged in public. Purism acknowledges issues by respecting warranty obligations and providing support to customers.
What would you like to be acknowledged, in what form?
The problem I have is this. There are many cases of keyboard malfunctions one can read on Internet concerning the librem 14. As I said in my opening post, as I don’t live in the USA, I don’t find it very convenient to have to send a defective device several times back. I’m fine with purism doing its part by providing a warranty, but it’s not enough to convince me to take the risk I may be the one getting a malfunctioning device. What I would like to have is the assurance that the device has been properly tested before leaving your warehouse, so that I don’t even have to ask for a warranty. It seems to me that the keyboard should be tested before being sent to the customer. That is the kind of thing that could reassure customer like me.
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One way I can reassure you is that all devices go through quality assurance inspection before getting sent out to customers.
Of course, that stands in contrast to cases of malfunction. Could you show which cases you are talking about?
I don’t think I need to document all the problems for you to know what they are, I guess. I’ll just leave the link to some reddit post about them:
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I forgot to mention the problems mentioned in this very post too.
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Here another customer who had to pay for shipping to send back a Librem 14 with keyboard malfunctioning:
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Here is someone who’s impression is that the Librem 14 seemed to have low quality control. The perseon ended up returning his Laptop.
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Slightly different, but within scope problem I observed. Originally I messaged support with my laptop about keys not being registered when I press them down. There must have been an update which fixed that since, but now I have the opposite problem where sometimes it does a double letter when pressing the key down once, which suggests a little more optimization is needed with it. Even typing this response out I had it happen once, and had to go delete the extra character.
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My complaints about my L14 keyboard would be that when i press a key the other keys on side is moving down too much as if the keyboard is missing screws, also the caps/lock key notification light looks very bad as if it is missing a tube that conducts the light towards the key , to prevent light leaks, it would also have been better if the light of the caps/lock key had been moved to the side of where all the notification lights are to improvement consistency but also the all HKS notfication light it leaking light for keyboard, so these of course is not looking good. 
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