What would reassure you?
knowing i wont have to open up my laptop to see wether or not its the wonky batch. How many units affected. What will be done about it? Nicole gave a reply but it raised a lot of questions too. At this point, i dont know either… i have to wait for more information but if nobody brings up or is allowed to bring up issues, there will be no impetus to adress them.
In short; more answers and information,which im sure will come ín time, and from there i can make up my mind. It’s also a bit uncanny that as soon as one expresses concern, the expression of concern becomes the main concern by some members.
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True there are certain fanboys on this forum that always defend Purism no matter what.
But since obviously Purism was aware of this issue for a while now, (except Kyle, who is obviously on a doesn’t need to know list) there’s no reason why we can’t all the answers today about all these questions, IF purism is willing.
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Even if I fully trust that the L14 is fully functioning without any problems, and that soldering will 100% not affect the unit in anyway, I expect, as a customer who paid $1300 for the laptop, to get a quality laptop.
Idk if I can find someone who paid that amount of money to be genuinely happy regarding the soldering job.
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3500USD for me, plus EU import fees, i need to know before it ships…that that…thing,we saw, wont be what i find if i open my laptop. I dont even want to have the thought now that i will either have to refund or open the laptop and hope i got the good batch so to speak.
Thats what the last post in the "Librem 14 in pictures thread " says.
This is NOT resolved,and if this is what counts for resolved, i will be refunding in full once that feature is enabled.
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Looking like purism is doing the “sweep it under the rug, nothing to see here” solution…
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Par for the course I’m afraid.
I hope this isn’t the case since I spent $3700 between the phone and laptop. I really want this to work because I don’t see many options for a secure laptop and phone. And even though I have a system 76 laptop (Serval WS), I’m not satisfied with the security features of it. Whole reason I gave that much money to Purism.
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Right there with you man, got the phone and the laptop for the same reasons as you have stated. I’m not getting any warm fuzzies.
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I’m just curious, what do you mean by “quality” if not fully functioning and not affected in any way? (Apart from the fact that the way I understand it explained here, the fix affects the device positively by improving compliance.)
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I’m just curious, do you really not understand at all what everyone is concerned about even after all the remarks and posts about the clearly poor soldering job? That you missed the point completely in all those posts and remarks?
Or are you being sarcastic?
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Follow this post to the thread Kyle Rankin closed. There is an issue with quality and probobly more and you can’t just wave it off when you are talking 1.5-3.5 thousand dollar orders from a customer base that is very secure and privacy minded. It cannot look like it was soldered by a 6 year old at a pakistani junkyard.
Look at this Customers pictures of his laptop,and his remarks:
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I’ve been following the hotfix situation throughout the forums and I’m fairly satisfied with the resolution. I say this as a soon-to-be L14 owner (arrives this week). Sure, it would be nice if there wasn’t an ugly-looking solder job on my board but I certainly understand the constraints that Purism is operating under here.
I wonder how many hotfixed motherboards exist in computers from the likes of HP, Dell, etc… that just weren’t discovered because their users are much less likely to open them up (if they even can) and inspect them; let alone the company itself posting screenshots of the board.
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A poor quality solder job will not last as long as a high quality solder job. Sure both are fully functional at the moment of completion but one will last longer and provide less stress on the downstream components over time as the joint fails over time.
I think that portion of the criticism, even if not always articulated very clearly or politely, is extremely valid and thus far it does appear that Purisms general response has been “this is fine”.
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Obviously there is a scale issue here. I can attest to the hundreds of HP, Dell, Toshiba, and Apple laptops that I have opened up, 0 have had this kind of fix applied. I suspect that it likely due to the fact that they are dealing with such large scale that if a batch of 500 or even 1000 laptops came in missing a piece they would scrap the boards and delay delivery instead of sending them to customers. Also they’re dealing with large enough scale that regulatory compliance is a part of the way testing process.
I do think it’s fair to hold purism to that higher standard though, especially since Purism does compare themselves to those companies to tout the things they do that those companies don’t. Those comparisons extend beyond just the parts that they choose to make them look good.
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I’m satisfied with Nicole’s response and assurances that this shouldn’t cause any issues with longevity, and greatly appreciate the transparency at this time.
Is it safe to assume with those assurances that Purism would be willing to extend warranty coverage for any laptops that it’s shown end up having complications (malfunctions/break) due to this fix? @Kyle_Rankin @nicole.faerber
I figure an official stance on that may help put others like myself at ease.
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What do you mean by “quality” laptop if not fully functioning and not affected in any way?
Its not an issue of functionality, but the way it was done. The poor solder job is in no way acceptable given the price tag of the unit. I, having paid over a thousand (others paying more than 3 grand) for the laptop, want no compromise on the quality of the done job.
Some will take it as is because they want their unit asap and want no further delays, but that’s their choice.
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Yeah I’m not an electrical engineer, but we’re talking about essentially grains of rice being held in-place by metal. My only concern would be wear from thermal expansion causing it to eventually crack but I imagine a beautiful solder job would have that same risk.
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Speaking as a J-STD-001 CIT, “quality” would be meeting the requirements set out in that standard.
The component placement and solder connections shown in these photos does not meet those requirements. It’s not a matter of opinion, I HAVE to reject stuff that looks like this.
Per 4.13, mounting of parts on parts need to be permitted by assembly drawings. I doubt you’d draw it like that. Even on the unit shown off in the blog post, it looks like you have a part hanging off the side and mostly above another part.
Per 4.18, the solder isn’t blending to the soldered surface because there’s a blunt spike on that one capacitor.
Per 7.5.4 table 7-4, the fillet is touching the top of the component in spots. There’s violations of side overhang, because the capacitor that slid off the side of the one it’s stacked on is effectively barely touching the terminations of the one beneath it. There could easily be no end overlap on end of these joints. I’d say there’s too much side overhang, as the land width is undefined and smaller than the component width.
Per 8.3.1, There’s a solder ball on top of one of the capacitors (in @craftkiller’s laptop). That’s REALLY likely to break off and short things out.
Per 8.3.2, per cleanliness designator C-22 which is to be used by default, flux can’t be just left on the board.
What needs to be done to address this is to redesign the fix. Make some documentation, like an official drawing, describing the fix. If you want to reassure customers, publish the drawing. I recommend using leaded capacitors that meet the values you had to insert, insulating the leads as needed, bending and attaching the leads directly to where they need to be so as to avoid problems with minimum electrical clearance, then staking the capacitor and lead wires in place, but what @NineX said might also work.
I don’t mean to sound angry, this is just is what that joint industry standard requires.
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