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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Sure, while we don’t think this would cause any issues with longevity, if it would give you peace of mind we will extend the warranty on the hotfix specifically for an additional year.
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Thanks Kyle, and sorry to beat this horse.
Does that mean extending the entire warranty of the laptop by 1 year for those who have this hotfix? Or extending the warranty of these laptops arbitrarily beyond that if it’s shown this part was the cause of a failure/malfunction.
I’m specifically thinking of a situation where I purchased 1-year warranty, and in year 3 this hotfix breaks off and shorts something else out… am I out of luck in the 3rd year? What about 5th year, and so on?
If this hotfix does not affect the longevity of the laptop, we should assume the more likely failures (really, anything else on that motherboard) would occur before or at the same time as this failure – in which case it should be reasonable to expect Purism to stand by the statement of longevity for this hotfix beyond a 1-year limit.
At least that’s my thought… think of it as a “defect”, that isn’t a full on recall, but open to resolution if it were to cause issues in the future (Purism doesn’t seem to have any reason to believe it will).
Hope that makes sense.
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Will anyone with a pre-order be allowed to wait until you guys can ship laptops that aren’t hotfixed?
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Not the entire laptop, simply issues related to the hotfix failing specifically. We think the laptop is solid, but if folks like yourself are worried despite our assurances, that the hotfix would be less reliable, hopefully extending the warranty for that specific thing would give you peace of mind.
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So did I miss your answer somewhere or have you still not responded as to who exactly did the hot fixes? Someone at Purism? Or elsewhere?
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May I ask what is your order date?
In Nicole’s response:
Well, sadly on the last mile some issue popped up - not a functional issue, but an issue with the voltage regulators (that’s the area where this fix is applied) that needed to get addressed. Since the boards had already been made and populated there was no other way than to do it this way.
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Thanks for that, but doesn’t really clearly state whether they had the manufacturer add it on or they did it themselves and if they were doing it themselves why wasn’t this presented to purchasers right away?
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if it was done by purism,which i give a 50/50 of because only the easiest of questions are ever answered it seems,leaving no clarity on this question…then it becomes rather impossible for them to admit they did it after claiming for days to have been unaware of it.
I have had so much confidence and earlier in the thread defended delays (I understand delays, i would have understood delaying further because of what was shown in pictures and where we now find us) but, i feel… unsure now. And trust is everything,when thats essentially part of what you are selling.
The phone developer chiming in feigning ignorance and complete inability to understand why someone might have questions certainly did not help ,and did no favours for you,purism or nicole.
Since i cant refund,as to my understanding that feature is not available untill the order que reaches me,i will wait since i assume you ,and by you i mean purism, want to communicate internally (i hope you do,it seems like you dont,to an extent) and release an update on this adressing the many questions that on the forums have gone unadressed.
there are simply,in my opinion , far too many questions about how this happened. Who knew what,and when? Why were others not informed? Why did a customer discover it? Did purism do it or their supplier? Etc etc. Answers have been given,but none that answer the questions… (my opinion). And i am not trying to be a negative nancy. I sold friends on Purism products and values, tried to contribute and learn and have had no issues with the delays beyond trying to suggest constructively that in uncertain covid times where suppliers might give you a date ,miss it and say “Sorry” leaving you to take the blame, to not announce things untill theyre actually in stock ,storage,ready etc.
In an odd way, this thread charts my own path to going from extremely excited to extremely anxious, regardless of delivery dates or delays.
Sincerely not meant to be a hater, just asking questions anywhere else would be absolutely fine to ask. But as i said in an earlier posts, some members and a phone developer, seem to be more concerned with peoples concern,than why they are concerned.
Nothing against Nicole,Kyle or Purism or its employees.
Sincerely,
Jon Kovach
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For two or three days, two of which have been a weekend, and during which Chief Technology Officer was out of reach. The expectation that everyone in a company knows everything about their products is unreasonable.
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True, but after 6 months of delays you’d think this would be a hot enough topic internally where senior management is particularly in-tune with all current issues.
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