I seem to believe in facts you got it right. Did I buy their laptop? For sure I did, it’s an honorable
guest on my desk now.
Should anyone buy this laptop instead of a Macbook or a Cabron? Well I can’t really answer.
Some people buy art for millions so why not a laptop that says its “free”?
As in, watch Braveheart, Freedom. Hard pick, unless you know they just want the quick buck.
Nobody else will tell you, but actually check competitors. Disabling ME is easy, I will soon write
a guide with pics so it won’t be Purism/System76/ThinkPenguin “main selling point”.
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That’s pretty much all I needed to know. Is Purism into profit? Yep and I don’t see anything wrong with that. Are their computers overpriced for the speed and performance you get, yep, they are. I bought mine knowing they are still a “work in progress” and I’ve had a few glitches to work through but I’m satisfied with mine.
I’m not an Apple or Microsoft fan. As a matter of fact I despise just about every big “tech” company because I know what they are doing and I don’t like it. Ergo, another reason for my purchase from Purism. No, I’m not going to expound on “why” I despise them. It would be a waste of my time. Many on this forum already know.
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I bought and use a Librem 13, the smaller companion to the 15. I travel with it frequently and have run PureOS and Qubes on it. I have never had a single issue with the laptop. There was an issue with the stock charger I was sent but the laptop itself I’ve had no issues with. I frequently use LibreOffice, Firefox, Evolution, VirtualBox, Signal, Slack, and Standard Notes without any issues related to performance.
The system did struggle with the number of AppVMs I ran (4) while I was using Qubes and I believe that may be an issue related to the core count/clock speed of the provided processors. I did not bother to perform any analysis and moved on from Qubes. It was otherwise a seamless install.
Durability, since it measured either through a period of time or through intentional abuse, is a difficult thing to gauge for new products. I cannot speak to the intentional abuse aspect, I’m a user not a tester, but I can say that I have traveled across the United States from the West Coast to the East Coast and throughout the mid-West without a single incident. I have owned the laptop for 6 months. I have made roughly 20 trips with an average of roughly 1800 miles and a standard deviation of approximately another 400 miles. I hope you find those numbers useful.
And always beware anyone who seeks to influence thought through hyperbole, no matter whether they are “pro” Purism or “con”. Evidence, plainly and honestly given, is always the best basis for decision making.
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S3ns0r,
It would be great if you would step back and take a full picture of what Purism as a company is trying to accomplish. The security angle you keep slinging is known to those of us who understand such things, and yet we are still here. Why? Because it is BIGGER than just security. Talk to many experts and they’ll tell you digital security is an illusion to begin with. You can only hedge your bets and try to minimize your risk factors.
But Purism is also championing user repairs, products that are intended to last and be repairable. They also focus on privacy. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, but the logistics of even creating a product are complicated, let alone running a full on tech company.
More importantly is that while there is still some matters of discussion regarding transparency or products adherence to FOSS standards, etc. the company has done more to demonstrate their genuine belief and adherence to these things than any other company trying to demonstrate they believe their mottos. (Google anyone) I didn’t even know a social purpose company was a thing before Purism.
No company consumed with making tons of money or deceiving customers would structure themselves in such a way.
I think all of this goes to give Purism slack that I wouldn’t normally give a tech company.
Who else is making laptops with user replaceable batteries these days? Or a phone? Their offering of Librem One services? You and I know, that we can spin up our own Mastodon, Matrix, email servers with PGP, etc. anytime, but the average person cannot.
All that said it is important to provide criticism, especially when constructive.
On topic:
I’ve had a L13 v3 since October of 2018. I’ve been on several business trips with it, and bring with me to work and home 5 days a week. I am very good with how I handle all of my electronics, but notwithstanding that, it has not had any quality control issues. Everything works as it should, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t continue doing so.
I’m very impressed with the company. I look forward to the phone being finished and attention being put once again on the librem 11 tablet.
One final note: Please note that this forum represents a relatively small percentage of Purism customers and potential customers. People are much more likely to voice a complaint than to communicate praise.
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untill then hold my steering wheel
Clearly mainly of the main points of Purism’s existence are lost on some people posting here. I don’t think anyone who has been using open source software for more than 10 minutes assumes that “open source” means 100% guaranteed security. Human beings across the board are terrible are designing complex systems that are bug free and that applies equally to closed and open-source software.
What open-source does give you is a certain degree of assurance that intentional “bugs” have not been introduced as a way to grant access to a customer’s machine in a manner that the user is unaware of or would object to. Could the NSA,FBI, DHS have people implanted in open-source projects and secretly installing back-doors in code that the whole world is able to review? Sure it’s possible, but the hurdles are much higher than with a closed-source project run by U.S. tech companies that have cozy relationships and multi-billion dollar contracts with many of those same agencies. We won’t even address issues of tech companies openly harvesting/monitoring user data for purposes of monetization/analytics with little to no means for the user to stop it, and who cough it up at the drop of a dime to the highest bidding data broker or govt. agency possessing a warrant/NSL letter. If such things are irrelevant to you then fine, buy a Macbook, Chrome-book, Dell XPS running Windows 10 or whatever, but clearly many people that spend money on a Librem laptop feel differently.
Secondly, the cost for a Librem is higher and the technology less bleeding edge compared to a similarly priced machine from Dell, Lenovo etc… for the simple reason of economies of scale and the supply chain/manufacturing issues that go along with that. I bought a Librem 15 because I support their ideological values, not because I cared about having the latest Intel CPU/Nvidia graphics card, nor do I care about playing the latest “first person shooter” video game at insane resolutions and frame-rates. I know I am far from alone is considering harware kill switches more than just a “gimmick” and I prefer owning a machine made by people that actually give a rat’s a$$ about trying to produce hardware that doesn’t exploit the user (as opposed to just about every other manufacturer.) I’m sick and tired of constantly reading about tech companies working endlessly to lock users out of the products we pay good money for or intentionally installing some garbage in firmware/microcode/OS that introduces security concerns and/or conveniently gives someone I don’t know the ability to manipulate my interaction with a product I own. Purism hasn’t fixed all of this but they are one of the few even trying. I’ve only had mine (Librem 15 v3) for just under a year and have had no problems. While it’s not a true long-term test, the fit/finish and durability has been above average for my uses.
Some people here seem to feel the complete opposite about the issues I mentioned above and if such a person bought a Librem 15 then yes, they got “suckered” and didn’t do their homework since most of these “concerns” could be addressed by simply reading the product page and Purism’s mission statement ahead of time. For everyone else it’s a worthwhile purchase to consider.
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It’s great to see Purism censoring people’s criticism and banning them for doing so. I had so much hope for this company but it appears you got some things to hide.
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What you see here is mostly the community being annoyed by trolling, therefore flagging it.
Censoring would be to remove all the BS he littered around.
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