I’m not sure the antennas are made for 5GHz (dual band). If not, they’ll work very badly if at all at 5GHz. The factory antennas could be upgraded to dual band and the card left at 2.4GHz.
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This is the most important feature I am waiting for. I do not even want to open the lid only to switch on and off the notebook (docks do have a button for that)
I expect that Purism will replace the Atheros Wi-FI/Bluetooth with Redpine Signals RS9116 in version 5 of the Librem 13/15, since that will fix its current problems with 802.11n and add Bluetooth.
For 802.11ac, I don’t think that we will ever see a solution that doesn’t require a binary blob in /lib/firmware.
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I’ve been watching Purism with interest for a while. I thought I should add my own laptop wishlist, in no particular order, which is partially in agreement with that of other posters:
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Price, at current levels, is not much of an issue. Take my money. Make me a laptop that doesn’t suck.
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Fix bugs in PureOS. Linux distros for laptops aren’t exactly hot new technology. Safety and quality rule at this stage of their evolution. Most of them evolve from some new cool features, to bugs in those features, to even more bugs, to public disdain for a project which keeps introducing new features without fixing much of anything (like Ubuntu). Please don’t follow that path, if at all possible. If you never introduce another new software feature ever, so be it. While you’re at it, have a look at the million other open bug reports on other distros, and see if they apply to PureOS. Fuzz relentlessly.
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I want UHD (4K) in a 13-inch matte screen. There’s a rumor going around that this takes a lot of power. But is that still true if we run it at 1080p for office work, then only move to UHD for video or gaming purposes? I think not. In any event, I’m willing to lose a bit of battery life in the quest for retinalistic resolution. 15 inches is OK, but not really ultraportable.
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I should be able to connect an external monitor at UHD as well, and it should just work. (Maybe it already does.)
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Thin? Lightweight is good, but I don’t care much. Just make something that works that I can lift with my nerd muscles.
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Touchscreen? Sure, so long as you offer a matte nontouch option for those of us who want to see actual graphics instead of finger smudges and reflections.
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More threads, more battery life. Maximum GHz is a stupid obsession that costs a lot and yields virtually nothing perceptible in terms of real world productivity. Beware Spectre and Hyperthreading. Kudos for removing the Intel SGX enclave shitshow.
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I don’t want a GPU. But, OK, a GPU expansion slot (is that even feasible?) is fine with me, for those who like proprietary hardware that also happens to be intractably bugridden and incapable of proper power management. In my view, this isn’t a gaming machine or a neural network training machine. It’s a maximum security laptop. Want to play a game? Get an XBox. Want to train your neural net? Rent cloud TPUs.
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Indicator LEDs on the bottom side of the machine. Do we really want LEDs (especially blue ones) lasering us in the face when we’re trying to watch a movie or get some sleep. No!
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USBC charger, located in the rear so the laptop can be plugged in while standing on its side, so we can work or watch movies while lying down without wearing down the battery.
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Hardware kill switches that don’t stick out and try to scratch everything that brushes against the laptop.
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Single-port audio jack that’s physically connected (even glued, if need be) to the chassis, so we won’t get anymore of those mechanical failure reports after a few months. If it absolutely has to be dual-port because you can’t kill only the microphone on a single-port, then OK.
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Case screws that never fall out, but can still be removed if necessary. Maybe dip them in caulk before screwing them in.
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Toggleable, dimmable keyboard lighting. Make an easy control for this in the firmware setup, or in the OS if necessary (via a Fn key combo). Ideally with a minimally annoying color, like red or perhaps white. But better an unlit keyboard than a color-cycling psychedelic annoyance from hell that won’t shut off.
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High dynamic range in screen brightness. Ultra-dim works great in dark rooms, and ultra-bright works great outside in the sun. Every laptop ever made seems to scale brightness linearly in response to the Fn key brightness controls. It should be scaled exponentially.
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ECC memory, at least as an option. Reliability matters. RowHammer sucks. Enough said.
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I don’t like bezels, but getting rid of it is a low priority.
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People seem to want an ethernet port instead of more urgently needed USB or Thunderbolt ports. Seriously? A USB dongle won’t work? …OK, OK!
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Rock solid wifi. If it’s up to 20% less max throughput than the competition, I don’t care. Make it safe.
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Anodized aluminum or whatever other metal would be great. Yeah, plastic sucks, and it broadcasts bus transactions with less attenuation.
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Battery is worth its weight. I believe 30K mAH is the max allowed for air travel purposes, but in any event, that value should be your ceiling. Ideally, we could choose to fill extra space with extra memory or extra battery or extra storage. Be creative here. Don’t create more base SKUs, but allow for customization.
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is there such a thing as usb to pcie 4.0 pcb slot ? (x4 electric at minimum).
usb is serial 
and for portable/external ssd drives it does work quite well but it’s for m2 …
would it work for a GPU ? laptops with thunderbolt seem to be able to use dedicated external GPUs for high end gaming but at that point i’d be considering a desktop/workstation machine …