I'm surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It's one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.
Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
51–60 of 145 posts
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#52I'm surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It's one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.
How is it any worse than the rest of the keyboard, in terms of ergonomics?
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#53I'm surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It's one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.
How is it any worse than the rest of the keyboard, in terms of ergonomics?
I just found this which says exactly what my thoughts are
http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stupidest-trend-...
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be pretty hard to run netflix in emacs anyway
don't say things like that out loud. the emacs repos are already too crowded. we'll have a netflix-mode by sun-up.
I wouldn't worry too much, as there isn't a netflix-mode-by-sun-up-mode, as far as I can tell.
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#55This appears to be similar to the open source hardware Novena laptop ( https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop ), but closed source hardware. From the Purism crowdfunding campaign: "The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software." It seems like the Novena came first and is substantially more free/op…
Novena has the bottom-up approach of Bunnie saying "oh here's a cool chip. I'll build something around it and see how complete it will be in the end."Purism seems to say "Let's make a machine that lives up to everyone's expectation, and let's try and remove all closed source blobs from it". They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware. I doubt they'll be as successful as Bu…
> They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware.
Do they consider CPU microcode updates to be secret firmware?
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#56I'm excited about a company that will ensure a good, compatible experience with linux on a laptop. I develop on mac osx and linux vms (vagrant). I want to move to linux but the linux desktop experience just isn't there yet.
I personally use LinuxCertified laptops, and I have no problems. No Microsoft Tax, no incompatible hardware, build quality as good as a Thinkpad (my old Gold Standard Laptop), and they even allow you to spec out a custom system with an updating price on the webpage (within reason, but there are quite a few tweakable parameters).
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#57For that price the components seems rather inadequate. 4GiB RAM for $1800? Come on.
Yeah. It doesn't even come with cake!
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#58Partially offtopic, but looking at the case of that laptop I wondered if I am the only one that slides them to the right to have the touchpad and the spacebar aligned with the central symmetry axis of my body? That means having 2/3 of the screen to the right of my eyes, which is a waste because I end up piling windows with important information to the left, for not having to tilt my head to the right.
I believe that the reason for that (IMHO) ergonomically poor design is the will to include the numberpad. With the exception of Macs it's difficult to find any 15+" laptop without a numberpad. Is that feature so important? My numberpad lies there unused since I bought my zbook 15 one year ago. Maybe if I were playing games I would find a use for it. I write specs or code, so there are no many numbers I must type and it's easier to reach for them on the row above the letter keys.
How about optional cases without a number pad and centered keyboard and touchpad? I'd pay an extra for that (plus another extra for a 16:10 screen, but that another story). Or maybe people wanting a number pad should pay an extra. I wonder what are the numbers for the two groups of people "I must have a number pad" and "I don't use it".
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
No need to travel to China for that. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2014-New-arrival-Free-shippin... But yes, the few European vendors have no stock and on Aliexpress this is the single result.
There's no way I would spend $100 on something on aliexpress, last time I used them I was shipped an empty bag.
Well you could try to get a chargeback if they don’t deliver a proper product.
Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop
#60This appears to be similar to the open source hardware Novena laptop ( https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop ), but closed source hardware. From the Purism crowdfunding campaign: "The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software." It seems like the Novena came first and is substantially more free/op…
I'm interested if anyone has any insight into why there is a such a push for "Free" software (for example by the FSF, Richard Stallman), but not also "Free" hardware.