
Librem Laptop RAM and Storage Bump, 32GB Max RAM - jrepinc
https://puri.sm/posts/librem-laptop-ram-and-storage-bump-32gb-max-ram/
======
showerst
Is it just me or do the hard drives on this thing seem weirdly expensive? The
RAM is the same price as System76, but it's $999 for a 1TB NVMe drive vs $335.

Any idea for the reason on that? Otherwise it would be price comparable to a
darter or galago pro.

~~~
woodrowbarlow
might be a premium for drives with open-source controllers.

~~~
beatgammit
Huh, I didn't think about that. I know they do open boot loaders, but I just
figured they'd leave the drive alone. Afaik, even Richard Stallman doesn't
care about drive firmware, but I could be wrong there.

But that is a valid reason. I've thought about buying a Librem laptop, but the
price always turned me away. I know part of this is scale issues, but it feels
bad to pay 2x more for something with worse performance, and the hardware
switches and open boot firmware don't seem like enough to justify it. But I
guess they won't be able to drop prices until they get enough volume, so maybe
that's the answer.

------
eveningcoffee
Can we please also have a track point with 3 buttons? Thank you!

~~~
smacktoward
Has anyone outside IBM/Lenovo ever managed to ship a TrackPoint that worked as
well as the "real" ones? I love TrackPoints, but my experiences with them on
non-IBM/Lenovo machines have been disappointing at best.

(Which is bizarre, since the first TrackPoint machines came out in the early
'90s, so you'd think any patents IBM/Lenovo lean on for their great
implementation would have expired long ago by now. Unless there's some
patented discoveries they made after the first versions shipped.)

~~~
darkpuma
I've been thinking about making my own with load cells, but I guess looking up
those patents and seeing how IBM/Lenovo did it is a good idea before I start.

It really doesn't seem hard though. It seems to me the trickiest part is
getting the acceleration curves set correctly so that it feels nice to use.
But that should be a matter of software/configuration, not hardware. High
resolution readout from the load-cells seems essential, so that you can have
precise readout of very low forces, giving the trackpoint a light and airy
feeling without compromising precision.

------
lemcoe9
I must be losing my mind, because Puri.sm is charging $1,599 for the following
laptop:

\- Dual-core Intel Core i7 7500U

\- 250GB SATA (yikes)

\- 802.11n (not ac) wireless

\- 8GB of RAM

\- Intel HD Graphics 620

\- USB 2.0 ports

And for the "best" offering which is $3,997:

\- Dual-core Intel Core i7 7500U

\- 2TB nVME (not dual-SSD)

\- 802.11n (not ac) wireless

\- 32GB of RAM

\- Intel HD Graphics 620

\- USB 2.0 ports

This is a joke, right? 802.11n is completely unacceptable in 2019, as is
charging $4k for a computer with Intel HD 620 on-board. What a joke.

~~~
beatgammit
Finding hardware with solid open source drivers (or writing them if they don't
exist) and disabling Intel's backdoors is hard work, as is ensuring that
everything works with an open bootloader. And they have to do quite a bit of
this themselves since they need hardware switches to disable the camera and
WiFi.

I'm guessing prices will come down if volume of sales goes up, but they're
always going to lag the competition because they have to do more work than the
competition (every new Intel line has differences in how to disable their
backdoors).

I would totally buy one if they only charged a $300 or so premium _and_ if
they had a TrackPoint and middle mouse button.

------
fmajid
802.11n? It's 2019, for crying out loud, I can understand not having WiFi 6
yet, but this is way too retro...

I was looking at a ThinkPad X! Extreme yesterday. Better specs (8th gen Intel
CPU, dual M.2 slots, GeForce 1050, 802.11ac of course) for less money. The
System76 laptops also look more modern.

~~~
bubblethink
It's easily replaceable. They choose it because ath9k works without blobs. You
should know what you are buying. Not the wifi card, the ram or the storage.
Not even the cool-aid. You are buying a laptop that comes without bootguard
enabled and can run coreboot. That's it in a nutshell. system76 is also a
decent option since they have also started working on coreboot
([https://github.com/system76/coreboot/](https://github.com/system76/coreboot/)),
and you can hack on it if it interests you. system76's products look more
polished since they are clevos made for a wider audience.

------
the_fonz
That processor is really old 6th gen and underpowered. I got a faster and
newer _quad core_ 8550U in a Lenovo T480 with 9 hours of battery life in dual
batteries. Plus, I have a 1 TiB Samsung 970 Pro. Sure, they do better on
firmware tracing and privacy, but if it's not a competitive and good value,
it's risking not being a survivable business model. The PC business is
competitive and runs on slim margins, so if they shirk or shrug at keeping up,
their business is going to die.

~~~
beatgammit
People that care deeply about privacy aren't nearly as price conscious as the
average consumer. You just can't find many options that come out of the box
with Intel backdoors disabled and completely open WiFi firmware.

I want a Librem, but I'm finding that the price premium is a little higher
than such a small risk is worth to me. I hope they can bring prices down so
people like me can justify it, but that probably won't happen for some time.

------
jakeogh
I want one, and am willing to spend a bit more for the work they do, but not
having a ethernet jack is a deal killer. I don't want to carry around an
adapter.

------
kylek
I'm really hoping they up the CPU (are newer AMD mobile CPUs any good?) and
drop the SATA drive for another/a larger battery in the next rev. Only things
making me hesitant!

I really do applaud their efforts though, I really dig the company and am even
giving PureOS a spin (only complaint so far is their frankenbrowser vs. not
just using Icecat). The price/performance just isn't where it should be.

------
prolepunk
Could this be something that everyone who is dissapointed with recent hardware
offerings be switching to?

Upgradability and fixability is there, though the price is a bit steep.

~~~
infecto
Price at least feels the same as a MacBook and I imagine the touchpad on this
is horrendous in linux.

~~~
prolepunk
I don't understand why everyone keep saying touchpad works bad in linux. I
have 2 laptops:

* Acer Chromebook 720 with pretty bad hardware touchpad, but it works with linux OK (I prefer using mouse)

* Thinkpad T420, good hardware, works with linux really well. Supports vertical and horizontal scrolling, some gestures (laptop is from 2011, I prefer using touchpad).

I suspect it's because Apple line of products don't have good linux synaptics
support or something like that?

Here is a guide on how to set up touchpad on linux for most desktop
environments, xorg along with some troubleshooting tips --
[https://wiki.debian.org/SynapticsTouchpad](https://wiki.debian.org/SynapticsTouchpad)

~~~
yaseer
No, it's because Apple's touchpad hardware is superior, and the industry
benchmark. I say this grudgingly.

I have given up on Apple's laptops for a host of reasons. The touchpad is the
main thing I miss.

It's not a question of a driver update. The perfect precision of their
touchpad hardware has not (yet) been matched.

~~~
seba_dos1
It really isn't. I'm a GNU/Linux user, but I have access to a Macbook and,
what's more, have the Magic Trackpad 2 right in front of me. It's just a
regular touchpad hardware, comparable to one in my Lenovo laptop, but with
"force touch" \- which if you don't care about silent clicking is just a
gimmick that doesn't make much of a difference.

(if you do care about not making clicking noise without having to "tap", then
well, it is somewhat exceptional - that's why I own it)

The "secret sauce" is simply in the application support for gestures. Even the
driver isn't that exceptional (just well tuned), it's all toolkit and app
support. On GNU/Linux you have several ways to support multitouch gestures,
but all of them work as simple triggers - a completely different experience
that what software on macOS usually provides.

~~~
yaseer
Unless we come up with some objective criteria to compare touchpads, this may
be a subjective judgement.

Nevertheless, there are a large volume of people who subjectively believe
Apple's touchpads 'feel' better and more precise, beyond just multi touch
gestures.

You could compare it to the handling of a car. There is some consensus luxury
cars feel better to drive.

~~~
seba_dos1
From what I gathered, it's actually another thing: there is a large volume of
people using misconfigured or simply bad software with their perfectly fine
hardware touchpads. Apple ones, that are actually well configured out-of-the-
box, then "feel" better and more precise, and clueless people incorrectly
blame their hardware for sub-par experience.

Been there, done that. I've blamed a touchpad of my work machine (which was
actually a higher model of the same line as my personal laptop), but it turned
out it used a different software driver (accidentally - I've swapped their
SSDs and it turned out that the quality of their touchpads swapped as well
:D). Also, both of these touchpads felt simply awful on Windows. After that
I've spend some time figuring it out and it turns out that these days it's
actually hard to get a crappy touchpad (unless you pay really crappy money for
a whole machine). It's all in software.

------
holstvoogd
Great news, now I know what my next laptop will be after 17 years of macbooks
:P

~~~
hosay123
Until they fix that weird off-centre trackpad, I'd continue suggesting people
go Dell XPS, also the only PC laptop with a trackpad response even approaching
that of a Macbook

~~~
nfoz
I will not buy a laptop that doesn't have physical buttons on the touchpad.
The reliability of knowing that my clicks are exact, saves me time and
frustration. Sadly this is my only reason to not own a Purism.

But if you are considering the Dell XPS, I recommend you instead check out
their Latitude 7xxx series. (On the website you find them under "For Work"
instead of "For Home"). Like the Dell Latitude 7390 or 7490. Yay for real
buttons. And pretty good in other areas as well, such as the keyboard quality,
and ports.

It doesn't have touchpoint though. I just want a touchpad with real buttons.
There aren't many options for that anymore. Another nice and relatively
unknown option is the VAIO (no longer from Sony).
[https://us.vaio.com](https://us.vaio.com)

I would LOVE to get a Purism if only it had the buttons.

~~~
seba_dos1
Isn't it a clickpad (the whole touchpad being a big button)? I despise
tapping, but I don't mind clickpads with softarea versus separate buttons.

~~~
nfoz
Not sure. I hate the Lenovo style "the whole clickpad moves so much when you
click that you're almost certain to miss" thing. But I also hate the soft "you
have no idea if you just clicked or not, do you" thing too. So I really need
my buttons and don't remember which variant the XPS has :)

------
thinkingkong
Can I please redesign your entire ecommerce experience? This laptop looks
awesome and is actually price competitive but the discover and purchase
experience is abysmal.

~~~
voidlogic
>discover and purchase experience is abysmal.

    
    
      0. Home page
      1. Select product: https://puri.sm/products/
      2. View prod descs, select product: https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/
      3. Scroll down, view prod desc, click shop now
      4. At product configuration page: https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-13/
    

Seems pretty normal to me... now normal isn't "great" but abysmal is a bit
strong.

------
random878
Serious question...

How did this submission make it to the #10 slot, after being posted 38 minutes
ago, and with a handful of comments?

This is a very boring update about some product specs. I cannot see how it
could be interesting enough on it's on to merit such a rapid response. It's
not even remotely interesting on its own (it's essentially a boring advert).

I noticed the same happened with a Purism advert yesterday.

I'm a natural cynic, so perhaps I'm fooling myself into seeing what I want to
see, but is this an example of shilling? Does HN have a history of promoting
adverts masquerading as content (Reddit style)?

~~~
sctb
Your reaction is understandable, but there are many topics that HN readers are
just personally really into. When those interests don't line up with our own
we usually look for some explanation to bridge the gap. But shillage is not
that bridge; it's just a quick and easy move to resolve the cognitive
dissonance.

> _Please don 't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and
> is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at
> the data._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

