 Hey, what's up everyone so too lazy to do video editing, so we're doing one recording my face And in this video, I wanted to talk about Purism laptops. This is actually a question. I get a whole lot. So For people who don't know purism is this company out there that Sort of portrays himself as selling free and open source hardware and software. They have these laptops purism laptops I think they're called the Libram whatever You can check out their website. It's p u r i dot sm So they're an interesting company. They're really into this stuff They want to produce like totally free Laptops and make a business out of it basically so a lot of people Because they're so well advertised nowadays. They become a big thing. I get a lot of questions about purism Like what do I think about the company? Do I recommend the laptops yada yada yada? So first off I'm not this isn't going to be a review of purism laptops because I don't own one I can't tell you the specifics But based on what I know about the company based on what I know about the hardware I just wanted to give you some comments on it So as to the main question Do I recommend purism laptops to people who want to just have a totally free system? To that question if I had to give a binary answer it would have to be no And there are a couple reasons for that now. This isn't going to be a negative video on purism In fact, I might even have a little helpful advice for those of you who might be connected to the company But let me explain explain why my answer is no. Okay, so first off One thing that purism will admit is that purism laptops. They don't actually live up to their name Okay, they're not pure in the sense that they do have a free operating system They do they run a variety of GNU linux. That's a hundred percent free. It's basically like the FSF approved distros So that's totally good But they have they don't have a totally free bios or even though they use core boot They still have remnants of the Intel management engine So those of you who don't know the Intel management engine is the bane of modern computing all Intel you know processors since when like 2011 have this management engine all i5s i7s stuff like this And basically it is an extra processor that can look in your RAM can do all these malicious things can send your data Over the internet and it can actually do a lot of things. We don't even understand We only sort of understand a little bit of what the different modules might do So purism laptops have not gotten rid of this management engine It's not something that people in the free software community have overcome yet now for earlier processors like the Intel Core 2 Duo That you can have a totally free computer with you can totally get rid of the management engine So in the other room I have a Libre booted x200 And that is totally devoid of the management engine this computer right here. This is the x220 think pad You it's not actually fully Libre bootable. You you can do What you can do with purism laptops you can put core boot on this you can run What's called the management engine cleaner and that gets rid out of rid of like 80% of the management engine But not the the core components which you know, we still don't necessarily fully understand what they do Okay So that's sort of where we are now purism laptops as I said, they're not really a hundred percent pure to their name In the sense that They are not a hundred percent free now. I'm not making perfect the enemy of good Purism laptops are much better than just having a random acer labs laptop or something like that or having some kind of Mac device They're much better than that. But the elephant in the room is that purism charges something like You know a thousand and a half dollars for these laptops So like a fifteen hundred dollars Which is a lot of money Now part of that I understand because purism is not just the company It's a startup that wants to make effects in the field So a lot of that enormous price is going to people who are trying to get rid of the management engine or develop other Technologies, so if you're buying a purism laptop Buy it for that reason partially But in terms of if you just want a free computer like I just want a free computer and I want to you know Do my fang on it purism laptops are not a good choice for that So the two things are you one you can have a hundred percent free laptop if you go with one that has an Intel Core 2 Duo And those of you who have asked me before will know I totally think that modern Processors are extremely overrated I really get the same kind of performance out of an Intel Core 2 Duo that I do is of an i7 I don't play games that might be why but I think that the celebration of modern processors is Just pathetic sometimes. It's almost there. They're not all they're chalked up to be So that's one thing so you can have a hundred percent free device But if you think purism is free enough you can get a device like this and so this is Intel or excuse me a think pad x220 right I bought this thing for $90 on eBay You can get refurbished ones for around 200 or so usually I think I think the median is probably 150 or so Which is a tenth of the price of the purism laptop? You can install core boot on these you could bought buy them with core boot already on them And that would help you out it even more So you can get a computer like this for a small piece of the price And you can have it just as free as the purism computer In every respect you can put a hundred percent you can put core boot on it You can run the management engine cleaner you can put a hundred percent free GNU Linux distro Whatever you want So in that respect purism laptops aren't necessarily special Again, this thing here is just as good So that's one of the reasons I think that the free software element Again, well to restate what I said earlier if you want to get a purism laptop Do it partially because you want to support their company for their social goals or whatever Not necessarily because they're good deals now if you want a hundred percent free computer There are lots of little companies that do them. There are lots of people who sell on eBay I got my x200 from just some random guy who was Libre booting stuff on eBay But there is mini free which is closely related to Libre boot. They sell free computers Torinas their Vikings Viking something I don't know what the organization's actually called but there are a lot of different Companies that actually sell a hundred percent free devices or core booted devices you can look for those as well So that that's one point now my other point is more generally about what purism as a company is doing Which I'm again, I'm not against I think it's totally great that they're out here and doing these things and popularizing the ideas And I I'm not if you come away from this video thinking thinking this is like anti-purism and I've absolutely isn't But there's another field of the battle for end-user freedom And there's a and this field I don't think purism is fighting very well on That is they're doing great in the free software stuff. They're selling mostly free computers, which are good It's good to get that out there. It's good to have basically normal people talking about it but the other side of the corn other side of the corn the other side of the coin is that of sort of modular computers and You know having computers that aren't based on well, let me put it this way So traditionally computers are made just by some company. Okay, they put them all together They sell them if you want your computer repaired you have to go go to a specialist Some companies like Apple are very picky about that. They want they develop their hardware To be difficult to manipulate you want to go to approved vendors or and stuff like this And they make it very difficult for you to modify your computers now one of the exceptions to that historically has been the old thinkpads This is one of the reason thinkpads are a big deal Because thinkpads aren't really aimed to random people. They were originally aimed to corporations That wanted to have long lasting laptops that you could repair, you know over the course of years and years So that's one of the reason thinkpads are good now purism laptops I think if anything should be going towards that old thinkpad like style in the sense that So if you look at the purism laptop But again, I don't physically have but I've seen a lot of reviews and I can tell you what it you know Generally what it looks like if you want to open it up you go on the back You unscrew everything that allows you to change the RAM that allows you to change You know the hard drive and whatever now these classic thinkpad computers if I want to change my hard drive I just unscrew this one thing pull it out now the hard drives out if I want to change my RAM I just unscrew these two things open it up. There it is And that sounds like a minor point But there are a lot of things that purism could be doing that I think a lot of people actually really want They want to have computers that you can very easily take to the store and the you know Even if you don't know anything about repairing them to this them yourself Hopefully you can do that if you you know you're into computers But you know you also want to make laptops which any any jackass could repair if you brought them to their store And even more than that I think there are there are a lot of startup ideas So one of the one of the biggest out there, which I really think is the direction that computers are going to have to move in Is the what's it called? I wrote it down the EOM a 68 Okay, so if anyone hasn't heard about these I should probably actually do a video on these as well But there's this little startup, which is much smaller than purism and what they're doing is they're creating laptops Which are partially 3d printable And the other part is made out of basically renewable materials. So these laptops are made part partly out of bamboo Slut little slips that you put in They're partially 3d printed and you might say all 3d printed. I don't have a 3d printer who has a 3d printer Well, the point is you don't have to rely on one company Let's say Lenovo to you know manufacture your You know device if something breaks on your device you can just go to anyone in the world who has a 3d printer And they can print it out really easily So I don't have a printer but I can go to my university and pay them a little money and they can print out, you know Whatever part I need for that computer so So that you know if you have a paradigm like that The production is very decentralized and that's something I think that purism and other kind of companies should be aiming for You want to be in a position where indie users can you know You want to have computers that last last for indeterminate amounts of time like if something breaks I can repair it or I can get someone else to repair it like now, you know these EOM may computers or whatever You know anyone who has a 3d printer can say I know I now have a computer manufacturing business where you can come And give me your broken computers and I can fix them And the other thing about the EOM a whatever computer is that they and again This is something I think purism and other companies should look at is they really They're really aiming toward long-term computing in that the EOM a is actually on one side There's the shell of the computer. So there's a laptop But the actual computer is a little I guess slip thing that fixed fits in your wallet It has a processor. It has a hard drive and you just slip it right into your laptop and use it Or you can take it out and put it in the desktop or if you need a new computer You don't have to replace the whole laptop. You just replace this little, you know slip Or if the laptop breaks, you don't have to worry about the slip now This is the kind of manufacturing that I think start-up should be aiming for in that you want to be able You want everything to be little pieces that you can put together You want manufacturing to be as decentralized as possible and so my advice the purism This is sounds like it's not even relevant to purism, but it's not just advice for purism. It's advice for other startups Go in that direction try and make Production is decentralized as possible Now granted these companies are motivated by profit motive partially I know there's a you know, there's a lot of wanking about oh god, you know We're all about we have social purpose and blah blah blah, but they still need to make a kind of profit And it's not necessarily good to just say okay Here's the blueprints for all of our stuff, but I think people who are genuinely motivated by that kind of stuff should be making computers that you know are you know bits and pieces that any kind of person any person can sort of put together and That's I think You know the direction we should be moving in we shouldn't be making Monolithic computers which come as one big thing well that you they want to come as one big thing But they're made out of different pieces that you can replace if you don't like it if or if it breaks or something else and Really any repair shop could put together a computer based on these parts. Um, so anyway, that's my idea so it's a very long review of Purism laptops or I guess my thoughts about them. So again, I don't Disrecommend them. I don't say don't buy purism laptops I think you should buy them if you're interested in supporting the startup or other people who are interested in free software But that's my advice for not just purism But other companies who are interested in really increasing end user freedom that is They're doing good in free software purism is doing good with respect to free software But I'd like to see them and other people be more interested in you know really Making it easy to modify computers and fix them because we don't want to be reliant on manufacturing Companies and assembly lines for all life, you know You want now that we have materials like 3d printers or you know this kind of reproducible stuff That's the direction that computer manufacturing should be moving into now There are still components like CPUs that might not be possible for but we're moving in that direction and I think people should embrace it So anyway, I guess that's about it. So throw your comments if you have any that's my review. So see you next time