after a lot of consideration I’ve decided to buy the Librem 14. I read a bunch of complains about delays and a few more people complaining about general problems and so on, but at the end of the day they are one of the few that are trying to support FLOSS and privacy. I understand all those problems and they don’t really bother me that much, as a firmware engineer I do know the problems that can arise when working with hardware, specially when you want to test it.
My biggest complain is the price for when selecting additional memory or changing the storage. I wasn’t going to order one because of that reason, but after some more thoughts I figure that in a way I’m paying for all the development they’ve done to coreboot, pureos, libremkey, and so on.
Yes, it is not perfect and I’d like a few changes here and there, but it is perfect for the moment and we should definitely support companies like Purism before it is too late.
I think you are right to consider what you are paying for in this way. Although perhaps not stated officially, I think some of the things Purism are doing/selling are meant to generate income, pure and simple. Probably the additional memory charge is one such thing, there are also others. If we think about it, as you have done, it’s not really strange. Purism are doing some important things that need resources and the money needs to come from somewhere. (Unlike some others they will not get funding from Google et al)
And I think I do not tell any secret here in confirming that, yes, the high price point of everything, also RAM and SSD, is simply to recoup our development investment in so many areas.
So thank you so much for your support which helps us a great deal staying afloat!
@egp You mentioned you would like to change some things. I’d be interested in it! I can not promise these changed to materialize any time soon but nevertheless it is important for me/us to know about our customers’ wishes so that we can at least try to implement them.
Your approach is beneficial to more than just Purism here. People today take for granted the massive amount of work that software development in general is. They think that because companies like Apple can leverage that work due to EXTREMELY over priced products that software development costs nothing and hardware is the only cost.
Got into a small spat with someone on the Fediverse that was trying to lambast Purism with the Pinephone. People think because the Librem 5 is so expensive comparatively that it is highway robbery, but the truth is, the software development for the phone was always the most expensive component.
Software is hard and expensive. People would do well to understand this.
This is also the approach that I am taking. If one actually does the work to figure out how much economic value is being stolen from each us by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, etc, one begins to see this as the cost of security for protecting one’s privacy. And this is only considering the raw economic cost, not the moral issue of having one’s privacy violated.
But you are not only underwriting the cost of development, but the growth of a culture.
I disagree. It isn’t always true at least. Don’t think so? Please look into encryption and then write a e2e protocol for xmpp that doesn’t already exist, but will be better in several key ways.
I’m not sure of your logic here. I could understand if my previous example was to write another fart app, but I didn’t say that.
But I don’t wish to derail this thread any further. If you really don’t understand what I’m saying. Just DM me and we can talk about it. I think if you would thoroughly read what I’ve already written you’d see what I’m saying is pretty clear.
currently my main problem is with Intel itself, so nothing to worry about, but I’ll get back to you as soon as I have it in my hands and can inspect it. It does looks amazing from all the pictures.
i’m all for supporting Purism and other companies that are furthering the development of free-software AND open-source-software (not everybody has access to fully-liberated hardware).
in my part of the world, importing goods above 4000 EUR will result in a significant financial penalty for ME.
if at checkout my online-cart @Purism, holds more than that, i will incur additional ‘penalties’ for clearing customs.
sure if you are between the limits that were set up by your customs officials you will not need to worry about this and instead can support Purism all you want but otherwise …
it might also be that you have RAM and SSDs lying around that you want to fit into Purism hardware and so you have that to consider as well.
the BEST compromise would be to have an option to DONATE or ‘fund-your-app’ the amount you would otherwise be paying to Purism by configuring a laptop/mini computer with RAM and SSD(s).
i for one always choose the 3 year warranty before checkout just for supporting Purism !
Well i totally agree.
People here do not understand, that actually designing hardware that will 100% work with linux, that will be working with coreboot, at same time limiting closed-source firmware isn’t easy task, especially in laptop context.
Additionally development of Coreboot bios for the device, testing it, same with PureBoot, again testing it, Liberation of EC Firmware… All require developer time (devs are not cheap) , QA (eg. EC can simply fire your device if something went wrong)…
Even build and testing PureOS - even if it is base Debian only tweaked with some branding… (those tweaks require testing).
Company is small, so they are producing limited number of units, let’s be honest, those units will be couple thousands, so leverage on suppliers is smaller. Apple produces millions of units, sent world wide… so they can more aggressively negotiate with suppliers.
Personally i put myself half way, by selecting 32G ram in single module (secondary i will just add on my own) and single ssd 240G (i will replace it with 1T unit on my own), so i still put some additional $ to support company, and did not feel that i overpaid.
About delays… well, small companies are at the end of queue…
Personally i prefer to wait couple month and get better product, than get it on time with hardware issue. End of story.
I ordered all the things for all the reasons shared above. I think everything but the screen cover. If one values things, one lifts to the best of their ability. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a $2500 laptop. So that’s what I did. We are not just supporting a company but careers for staff members who have taken a risk on a new thing.
as an aside note : in the region of the EU i’m currently residing in i have access to an online web-site that specializes in indexing partner sites that sell at retail prices to home owners and businesses. that way people can see the evolution of prices over a few years and can choose what THEY deem the BEST price and go to the web-site in the list that has the BEST offer at the current time.
it’s a very lucrative market (for MOSTLY IT stuff) but sadly so few locally built/manufactured products. you can get very good prices on RAM and storage-media in general. 2017-2018 was an OG year for Samsung.
