In reality none of the "privacy freaks" will ever purchase one, I've recommended these to various privacy-minded people I know and the majority either (1) can't

In reality none of the "privacy freaks" will ever purchase one, I've recommended these to various privacy-minded people I know and the majority either (1) can't see past the fact that it's IBM hardware (not hip), or (2) make up excuses the like of "DO YOU REALLY believe IBM would do a system without a backdoor? A system with a starting price of $5,500— it must be a rip-off, not good enough a deal for me!" I know there's plenty of nice and horrible people in everything but honestly if I got two bob a piece for every FOSS cheapskate I've encountered is too similar to one another for me _not_ to attribute this to cheapskate mindset. People who are saying things like "Mac is a rip-off!!! bad deal, Intel better performance" all the while being clueless on power consumption, for example. It's much cheaper to just say something seemingly profound like "There is no true privacy, we're all pwned by NSA!!" than to purchase and actively integrate an expensive RISC ISA system based on free hardware into your workflow... A the end of the day, we only have ourselves to blame.