Hey all, I noticed the screen on my L14 drooping slightly on the right. I took the bottom cover apart and I think the locations where the right side of the screen is screwed into the body has partially cracked, causing the screw to become loose.
Is there a way to replace just that plastic bracket that the screen screws into, or would this be a bigger repair? I unfortunately failed to take picture of the assembly when I had it apart but can do so again later if needed.
For now I’ve carefully tightened the screw carefully back to provide more rigidity to the right side of the hinge and this has improved things. I’m also a lot more careful about opening and closing the lid.
It is no longer in warranty, plus I kinda bought this laptop with the intention of it being something I can break into and fix when I need to. I wouldn’t want to ship it and wait for it to come back. Hence the preventive maintenance. The screen is not failing yet, but it will at some point in the not so distant future, so I just need the piece to fix it and be on my merry way.
I think I’ve identified what I need though and I"ll just message Purism support. Thanks all
For the record, the hinge has finally failed. The entire right side of the screen is no longer supported and I’m unable to close it safely.
No reply from Purism yet about shipping a new screen. What I recommend people do is purchase a used/second-hand L14, or the cheapest version from their website, to use as a parts laptop for the original laptop. Expensive, but the build quality probably necessitates it.
I will probably consider a refurb T440p as my next libre laptop.
You can easily get parts from Purism Support and at very decent prices. I can tell you this because I have done it many times and was happy to be able to repair this hardware by myself and maintain it in a working state. It is also something they seem to care about, this “repairability” (sorry for the neologism) that is broadly unavailable to proprietary/locked-in consumer markets.
It is a known fact that Support is currently understaffed and completely overloaded - we hope this situation will change, but it is sometime very difficult to find trained/competent people.
I think it would be worth insisting a bit and be more patient.
Totally understand, and I’m huge on repairability, hence why I’d like to just have the screen shipped. However, as highlighted by @Privacy2, the spare parts are theoretically available but not guaranteed, and the poor build quality essentially necessitates that hinges/other components will need to be fixed at some point.
And I also understand that their support staff are overwhelmed, but I’m still allowed to be a little bit annoyed that getting even a response, not even parts shipped, in 2-4 weeks, is sometimes not possible. Like you said, however, I will continue to politely wait. I really DO love my L14, don’t get me wrong, and want to keep using it.
I only mentioned the T440p because the base model is widely available for ~$150 dollars on eBay, it can be upgraded to a 4th-gen i7, 16GB RAM, IPS screen, TB SSD, etc for another couple hundred, spare/aftermarket parts are widely available everywhere from many vendors, and it can be modded to run with absolutely 0 proprietaty firmware blobs along with coreboot+heads. In terms of repairability and availability, it vastly outperforms the L14 (along with having the reputation of being one of the best built laptops of the 21st century). Of course, in exchange you have to deal with running an 11-year old laptop on hardware that isn’t getting any younger, but for software development and web browsing, there’s really no need for anything better.
Of course, that depends on the stock they maintain.
We all agree that hinges have been a real problem on L 13/15 and also L14 to a certain extent. For broken hinges on L 13/15, unfortunately a full replacement of the lid assembly is needed. For the L 14, I don’t really know.
Still, this is kind of old architecture. No more microcode updates since long ago, but surely many unresolved/unpatched so-called CPU hardware vulnerabilities due to speculative execution channels and Out-Of-Order execution. I wonder what lscpu would report here…
Sure, this is not everybody’s threat model and we have yet to see one of these hardware bugs being used in the wild - so this should not be a concern for most.
Yes agreed on the aging hardware I don’t think there’s a perfect solution, and I really do commend Purism on what they have achieved so far, it is no small feat. As maligned as management has been, they are the only company that currently manufactures a fully libre laptop on modern hardware, period. It’s clear “all” they need is a massive cash injection to bring the rest of the business (e.g. support) up to par with the impressive engineering effort they’ve undertaken, I just don’t know where that can come from.
I don’t think there’s a perfect solution, and I really do commend Purism on what they have achieved so far, it is no small feat. As maligned as management has been, they are the only company that currently manufactures a fully libre laptop on modern hardware, period. It’s clear “all” they need is a massive cash injection to bring the rest of the business (e.g. support) up to par with the impressive engineering effort they’ve undertaken, I just don’t know where that can come from.