First, I would like to make it clear that I am a supporter of the idea that Purism wants to defend, I know that times are difficult for them and I am willing to make concessions for the idea.
However, while I was extremely excited to receive my Librem 14 before it was finally produced, its release and the multiple problems associated with it have made me question my decision. Here, I would like to mention those problems, which make a consumer like me refuse to give his hard earned money to Purism.
I would love for Purism to address these issues publicly and let us know when they are resolved, but due to the many blunders and clumsy handling of the information, I doubt that will be possible.
That’s why I’ve created this post, so that we can informed each other of these problems and their resolution. I certainly do not want you to convince me that the things I consider problematic are not. You are of course entitled to see them as not problematic, but for me they are. And I may not be the only one who think like that. We’ll see.
So what are these problems? For me they are the following:
The soldering on the motherboard
The noise of the fan and its management
The electrical noise which has been mentioned several times
The durability of the hinge
Stability in the market and in the supply of parts.
All these elements are important to me, and suggest a higher quality product. Until I am certain that these issues have been addressed, I wont commit buying the Librem 14. And it’s a little sad because I know they would need my help to stay afloat, but 3000$ Canadian is also a lot of money…
Received mine about a week ago. It was there. At first I was also mad at purism for this before I received the Librem. However, it is what is. Purism is no Dell and in my opinion they made an awesome job with this notebook. Just look for other options. What is out there? Buy a Dell notebook? Wow you get max 32 GB Ram, a notebook without Pureboot (what a f*** nice feature) but with intel me and the rest fucked up firmware sh***.
Pardon my language
Furthermore Librem 14 style: Just unscrew 9 screws, open it up and install what you like. 64 GB of RAM. That’s awesome, esp. for hypervisors such as QubesOS (okay actually Xen is the hypervisor)
Regarding the electrical noise. I cannot here anything from mine. I’ve listened to the audio recording on the fa-noise-thread. I can understand the people, especially when they have pretty good hearing but for an ordinary mortal like me, I do not hear a thing with from my librem. Keep in mind that you are working on the notebook so fans will run from time to time.
Maybe I got used to my old thinkpad or it made me deaf. Man that has an electrical noise.
2+3. If you want the perfect notebook regarding fan-noise etc., you will need to buy a Aplle Mac M1. However, keep in mind that you can not really go more closed-source.
The durability of the hinges seem to be having been a problem with the librem 13/15. I don’t have one but, I think, I read it somewhere.
I dont know how it exactly looks from the inside but on the L14 you got one huge hinge. It looks very solid and feels very solid. If you apply the usual gently force, I think, it will not break until you have your second new laptop after the Librem (regarding Moore’s Law).
Purism was founded in 2014 (according to Wikipedia). They seem to be doing a pretty solid job at keeping afloat.
What do you mean with that? Do you mean supply parts or just that you do want the market to cool down and Pursim having everything in stock? The latter will still take some time I think.
Regarding suppy parts: What supply parts does someone need? If anything breaks just go to your nearest shop and buy it. If your motherboard or CPU breaks, it is too late anyhow. Probably no manufacture would replace one of it since they can usually only malfunction when the user did something colossally stupid.
Also let me refer you to above: Easy to open and to exchange parts. Just buy it and install it.
I don’t want to say 3000 Canadian Dollars are not a lot. I just want to say think about it. Think about where Purism comes from, where it has been (compare L13 to L14 what a leap) and where it is going.
You could wait for the Librem 14 v2 (probably 1 year or longer). I think it is going to be even better. However, I think when buying from Purism, there will always be little “hotfixes” and “bugs” unless privacy becomes fashionable in the near future and Purism the Dell of Privacy (what they, in my opinion, have earned).
I for one have no fan noise or electrical noise at all. My only issue is I am having difficulty adjusting to the right shift key, feels like a million miles away and tough to reach. I miss the correct key 9 times out of ten on a good day. Much rather swap that with the PgUp key if I could. Otherwise, I’m having fun learning Linux and really like the laptop so far!
I haven’t opened the case to examine the solder, but it’s working, so why tempt fate?
I have none of the first 3 remarks.
No bad soldering, no noise whatsoever (I’m not running heavy duty shizzle or games here though).
I have the same issue as Bass - the right shift button is quite a stretch for my pinkie, but hey, that’s it when it comes to the hardware/case.
I have encountered some issues with installing specific software, because PureOS is not a widely used Linux version. For most of software I can get away with the Debian 10.0 version and basic commands in the terminal. However, with some software it’s a real hassle, because I’m not familiar (yet) with all the possibilities in the terminal, installing software using the sourcecode and manually overriding values to adjust the installation commands to PureOS. For PureOS there aren’t as much helpfull forums as for example Linux Mint (what I used to run).
So that can be quite inconvenient; spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to install certain packages. For me it’s part of a learning curve, and I’m curious to learn and see how to use commands etc. However, I have some friends who are at the verge of buying a Librem, but are taking a step back because of this userfriendlyness thing. (I know, the world got spoiled with Apple-intuitive-operatingsystems that do everything for you).
