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Why aren't HNers more excited about their laptop? I only see the the Liberem phone related posts on the front page every few months.

pengaru 6y ago
Their laptops are overpriced closed mediocrity with a not so great reputation when it comes to reliability. I'm still rocking used Intel ThinkPads, can run ME-cleaner and install coreboot myself, and rip out the internal wifi card in favor of a USB wifi dongle I can unplug for HW kill switch equivalence. They cost a few hundred bucks, support 16G RAM, and have epic keyboards+reliability. The mntmn reform 2 [0] looks like an OPEN laptop effort far more worth supporting than anything Purism does in this space IMHO. Purism doesn't produce anything remotely resembling open hardware AFAIK. [0] https://mntre.com/reform/ https://mntre.com/reform/
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  It's worth noting that the MNT Reform runs on the exact same SoC the Librem 5 does.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    It's also worth noting that the Reform utilizes a necessarily large heat sink in a spacious case, for that same SoC the Librem 5 shoehorns into a handset, despite not even having WWAN electronics heat to dissipate. Expect the Librem 5 performance to be heavily throttled for thermal reasons alone.
    - seba_dos1 6y ago
      Nah, I'm compiling plenty of stuff right on the phone (Librem 5 Dogwood) and it rarely hits the thermal throttling threshold. It has plenty of mass to dissipate that heat now (the whole metal plate behind the screen), earlier revisions had much worse thermals. This week I've played games on it for almost an hour attached to external 1080p screen and it was pretty warm in touch, but not hot at all; the CPU sensor showed 55°C and quickly cooled down when it went idle. Of course Reform is going to perform much better at sustained high loads, that's obvious, but Librem 5's thermals really aren't bad. If anything, its thermals have the opposite problem - the lower bound of its temperature is rather high (around 30°C) as it doesn't suspend. Regarding the upper bound, I really don't think about it at all during my regular usage.
emptysongglass 6y ago
Their laptops are terrible. I've used 3 of them and they all had major quality control issues. Finally, they just gave up and offered me a full refund after 2 years of being unable to offer me a laptop that wouldn't fall apart in my hands.
fsflover 6y ago
Happy owner of Librem 15v3 here. Their quality was not perfect from the beginning, which negatively influenced their reputation. However AFAIK they solved practically all problems with the hardware. Also Librem 14 looks amazing!

pengaru 6y ago

Their laptops are overpriced closed mediocrity with a not so great reputation when it comes to reliability. I'm still rocking used Intel ThinkPads, can run ME-cleaner and install coreboot myself, and rip out the internal wifi card in favor of a USB wifi dongle I can unplug for HW kill switch equivalence. They cost a few hundred bucks, support 16G RAM, and have epic keyboards+reliability. The mntmn reform 2 [0] looks like an OPEN laptop effort far more worth supporting than anything Purism does in this space IMHO. Purism doesn't produce anything remotely resembling open hardware AFAIK. [0] https://mntre.com/reform/ https://mntre.com/reform/

seba_dos1 6y ago
It's worth noting that the MNT Reform runs on the exact same SoC the Librem 5 does.
- pengaru 6y ago
  It's also worth noting that the Reform utilizes a necessarily large heat sink in a spacious case, for that same SoC the Librem 5 shoehorns into a handset, despite not even having WWAN electronics heat to dissipate. Expect the Librem 5 performance to be heavily throttled for thermal reasons alone.
  - seba_dos1 6y ago
    Nah, I'm compiling plenty of stuff right on the phone (Librem 5 Dogwood) and it rarely hits the thermal throttling threshold. It has plenty of mass to dissipate that heat now (the whole metal plate behind the screen), earlier revisions had much worse thermals. This week I've played games on it for almost an hour attached to external 1080p screen and it was pretty warm in touch, but not hot at all; the CPU sensor showed 55°C and quickly cooled down when it went idle. Of course Reform is going to perform much better at sustained high loads, that's obvious, but Librem 5's thermals really aren't bad. If anything, its thermals have the opposite problem - the lower bound of its temperature is rather high (around 30°C) as it doesn't suspend. Regarding the upper bound, I really don't think about it at all during my regular usage.

emptysongglass 6y ago

Their laptops are terrible. I've used 3 of them and they all had major quality control issues. Finally, they just gave up and offered me a full refund after 2 years of being unable to offer me a laptop that wouldn't fall apart in my hands.

fsflover 6y ago

Happy owner of Librem 15v3 here. Their quality was not perfect from the beginning, which negatively influenced their reputation. However AFAIK they solved practically all problems with the hardware. Also Librem 14 looks amazing!