I can totally appreciate this statement, and I’m certainly not inclined to let anybody off the hook for the miss on QA.
I guess I would just feel even more bothered if this was a Purism solution after receiving the units as opposed to manufacturers trying to meet deadlines. If this is a common enough occurance on production models it stands to reason that the mainboard should probably have undergone changes. That being said, not much can be said yet, the sample size is still too small.
I imagine that given the customer base of purism, its not a far likely that a strong agent tries to intercept the supply chain. If an obvious hotfix have slipped past the checking points and arrived to the customer, think about a more sophisticated supply chain attack.
I’m in support of purism and their goals toward privacy and security. But this mistake is of a high severity.
There should not be a sample size of even 1 for laptops marketed and priced at up to 3500 dollars for privacy and hardware security to ever ship to a customer looking like kids at a junkyard in pakistan added last minute soldering, 1 unit is one too many. It would not be accepted from a disreputable vendor, certainly not from one whos main and perhaps only selling point is security.
it does not really matter who came up with the “Solution” , it took a customer opening up their laptop for this to be discovered. That is bad for a normal vendor. It is B A D for a security focused vendor.
unknowningly is just as bad though…
this is a major PR disaster and security concern, and when security and quality are your main selling point for extremely expensive laptops. If i am even thinking that the inside may look like the “R-Tarded” version then somethings gone terribly wrong. I paid top dollar specifically for peace of mind, not to have to take it apart myself to confirm wether or not its the junkyard version…
I get what you are saying but his reply was also not in response to this specifically,but in response to someone suggesting that purism had people working overtime doing their own soldering last minute to fix/add something. Its great that is not the case but then what is the case? what the hell happened?
Tried to open a DM, just wanted to ask a little about your relationship with Purism and the story surrounding how you developed your opinions about Purism. If you can spare the time, I’d appreciate it if you could allow me to message you over the forums so I can ask without cluttering these threads.
Sorry, I don’t accept DMs on the forums here due to the high level of vitriol that I am generally met with. It’s bad enough over on reddit that I occasionally have to turn off DMs there as well. Most of the answers to your questions can be found in the blog posts I published on the Librem 5 back in late 2019:
You can also find additional contact information on my website if you’d like to reach out. In addition, I have created a thread on /r/Purism and my DMs are currently enabled over on reddit, if you’d rather just discuss things there:
Victim-Playing much? I try to figure out if Librem14 is the right laptop for me. The bad soldering is a major concern and delayed any decision making. Are your posts helping? No. It’s just vitriol with contradicting claims of Purism or 3rd parties making modifications.
We won’t know more unless we push Purism to reveal more. As things stand now the most substantive bit of information we have from Purism is my conversation with Kyle Rankin on an IRC channel on the topic. Beyond that we have a couple forum posts from Kyle and a couple Reddit posts from MrChomebox.
Purism has made no official statement. There are no blog posts. They have not reached out to customers. In my conversations with Rankin, he appears to already be maneuvering to absolve Purism of both blame and responsibility. It’s too early to say for sure, but if past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, I fully expect this to be swept under the rug at the earliest possible opportunity.
But hey, go ahead and put your money down if you’d like. We all have the opportunity to vote with our wallets. I’m just sad that you are still considering voting for an outcome that goes so much against your own best interests as a consumer.
I dont know jaylittle but this is a major foul up for any vendor,one whos selling point is secure hardware and privacy with massively upmarked prices for this custom hardware…well it nullifies the entire reason to purchase or pay the high price? If Dell or Lenovo shipped 1 one of these to a company,that entire company would tear up any further orders and look for a different supplier.
As customers we have to know what went wrong,and that our laptops will not be the junkyard solder batch, we paid a high price to have something above average in hardware security.
If nobody mentions the issue or makes an issue of it, the ominous comment about “looking into wether this affects longevity” sounds alot like looking into wether they can say F-it and ship all the R-tarded batch or batches and clear themselves of any wrong doing.
Now of course i could be wrong but when there is a really big issue and no answers,all theres left is speculation.
true but assuring customers that these ones will not ship and anyone who recieved one can exchange it free of charge would probobly go a long way to making people who are waiting on theirs,nervous that they will get the junkyard version and be stuck with,and purism waiving liability or some such feel a little more at ease. no need to talk to china for that.