The difference between Q3 and “few months” is that you are giving hope to the customers that it might be quite soon. If you know it’s not gonna be soon, you should not say that, because some customers will be upset. You probably have a hope in that yourself, which is why you are giving such estimates. I suggest to stop doing that and deliver earlier than promised as a result.
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Q3?! Is that for real?! That would be a truely and utterly depressing estimate.
If end of October 2017 order results in delivery in May 2021 then, we can guess, November and December 2017 orders may ship in June 2021, all orders later in July and August 2021. In this case it’s already Q3, isn’t it?
Honestly this nonsense is why the reputation of Purism out on other forums is absolutely horrible, it’s difficult to find anyone that doesn’t believe that as a company, they just keep promising and never deliver.
Just like "we will begin shipping the liberem 14’s in February yet no one has gotten any email address confirmations (it could happen, just no reason to think that based on past experiences).
In reality the answer is more likely the last week of February into March is the estimated start time for shipping.
And the honest answer for parity in shipping for the L5 is no sooner than the end of 2021, anything earlier than that will be met with heavy skepticism at best. To order an L5 now and expecting in less than 6-8 months is a pipe dream at best. So, prove me wrong Purism.
But to be clear, I firmly believe in what Purism is doing and I will eventually be ordering an L5 when funds become available, WHEN shipping times are accurate and short.
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I am sorry to say that, after having been dissapointed time and time again over the last two years, for me, by now all of the intitial joy and optimism have seeped out of this project.
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Except that we are currently shipping Librem 5s each week. Each step of the way we’ve published estimates based on the best information we had at the time. Unforeseen problems happened at various steps along the way that caused delays and each time we’ve communicated that. If we could have foreseen those problems then we would have (by definition) factored them into our past estimates.
We’ve also tried to communicate the status of things more and more, in particular over the last year. As we get firm dates we feel we can stand behind, we share them, when we don’t think we can make a good estimate, we say so. When things change, we share that. We’ve even shared a potential CPU supply chain issue that might affect things in the future.
And when we have a better estimate for when a brand new order will ship than “in a few months” we’ll update that too.
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So what’s the Purism definition of “a few”? More specifically, what’s the minimum in our context?
I’ve always personally thought of “a few” as meaning generically “three or more” because you’d say “one” or “two” if less. If someone told me they’d pay me a few thousand dollars for my used car, then showed up with $1000 or $2000 I’d be surprised.
In the context of months I suppose personally speaking the range would be (this is not some official Purism statement here, so please don’t jump to conclusions) I’d reasonably conclude “a few months” to range from as little as 3 months to maybe as many as 9.
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I am doing my best not to offend or blame anybody personally, or even Purism as a company.
It’s just that all the waiting and hoping and checking his forum is starting to take its toll. I had my hopes up before, but at the end of last year, I was thinking this time it would really happen: the L5 might arrive in a ‘few’ months.
Now I am faced with another 6 to 8 months (which is definitely more than a few) of the same. And I am really not looking forward to it, to say the least.
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That triggers me to ask, what is the definition of “reliable estimates”? Reliable is not the same as conservative.
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Is this thread really devolving into a debate on semantics?
If it is, at least point out that in order for the word “lying” to be accurate there has to be intent to deceive, something that so far hasn’t been demonstrated here, instead of trying to find loopholes to justify one’s displeasure (read: impatience) by demanding that this company adhere to one’s personal dictionary.
If people were half as patient waiting on the phone that’s never been built before during a globally-affecting event that’s never happened before as Kyle is in defining his interpretation of the word “few,” they could actually happily go about their day.
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“Backed by shipping data and other estimates through our supply chain we feel are reliable.” This is why we only sent out some shipping estimates instead of all–we had confirmed CPU supply for those orders and feel we can stand behind those shipping estimates as long as some unforeseen future crisis doesn’t hit.
As we secure more CPUs and have confidence in that and all the other timelines that factor into when a particular Librem 5 ships, we’ll send out more estimates.
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You can see it that way. You can also see that lots of the community/backers/customers (directly or indirectly 
) share the sentiment, that it is a negative surprise to them if “few” takes on to mean “5 or more” (ordering today) or even “7 or more” (ordering in November).
Instead of taking that into consideration (replacing “few” with “several”, “some”, “at least 5”, …), Purism again insists that they did their best to communicate to the best of their knowledge, setting up more upcoming customers for frustration, shared in social media.
The only light at the end of the tunnel here is that “few” is a self-repairing statement. End of Q1 it will (hopefully) be pretty accurate. So, it affects only the new customers of the next 60 days, and of course much less than those of the last 60 days 
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Seriously? You say a few months and you think nine months is part of that? Nobody thinks nine months when you say a few months! 
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Did you not read my post near the start of the “few” debate where I pointed out few could be interpreted as up to 11 months, more than the 9 Kyle mentions… I agree 9-11 is very much stretching the definition of few but I also haven’t seen a more useful alternative presented.
Saying Q# of year #### isn’t helpful as that needs constantly updated as time goes on and orders come in and supply chain issues come and go. Saying “in some months” is no better than “in a few months”.
Not providing any estimate at all just prompts for asking for an estimate so isn’t useful either.
Make love now, have your package delivered in a few months 
To be fair though: How many are a few, a couple, and several?
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I do, because you went on to explain why the semantics of the word “few” should have significant meaning.
I suggested “Q3 or later”. This can stay un-updated until July. And then they should know pretty well.
Incoming orders will not significantly change this. Think about it! If they currently would get about 500 orders per month, the statement (“few months”) would even be more ridiculous, as it would mean the list of backorders would currently (and until May!) not shrink!
Anyway, if Purism could internally agree what “few” really means (e.g. 3-9) they could as well just put their definition on that page. Like
“Delivery will take about 5 to 9 months, check our blog for updates”
But THAT then would actually be a statement that needs to be updated every month…
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I see your point, though I think for your example where orders coming in at the same rate as going out makes “a few months” better than “q3 or later” because a few months from the time of placing the order stays consistent whereas in 2-3 months Q3 gets closer but in your example the queue size remains the same giving a worse impression and then has to be updated to q4 or later and then in a couple of months q1 the following year etc.
Now in a scenario where they continue toward shipping parity until reaching shipping parity in q3 that change works in my mind, but I see no meaningful benefit over “a few months” in this regard as eventually a few months becomes actually under a month and exceeding the expectations set on new orders which I view as a positive experience while not requiring a change to saying “a few weeks” getting an unexpected spike in orders that then requires changing back to “a few weeks”. As much as I don’t like saying a few months to describe more than 6 months, I don’t think any of the proposed alternatives ate better.
Just my personal opinion.
Splitting hairs on the interpretation of “a few” for me is just the tip of the iceberg.
I ordered in 01.19. So I am no backer who invested his money in an uncertain project with potentially high risk of failing, instead it was pretty clear to me, with a delivery time of 3 months, product is close to finalization. And at that time I was promised (according to Purism homepage) to be delivered in 04.19.
So, 3 months.
I took this information from official Purism homepage and did not deepdive in this or other forums to find out if this might be misleading. Why should I have done? I trusted this information. After all ups and downs, we all are aware of, final statement was: “Shipping starts in 11.20.”
These are 22 months
Now after this delivery time is more than 7 times than what was initially promised, I still do not know when to be delivered. Assuming 08.21 is a correct estimate,
these would be 31 months. MORE THAN 10 TIMES !!! MORE THAN 2 YEARS OF DELAY!!!
@Kyle_Rankin: What do you think? How does this feel? Even with regards to currently listed “a few months” on current homepage?