This is the first I've heard of Puri.sm. It seems like a very ambitious company. I'm not sure features like this are important enough to me to persuade my buying decision. However I love the idea of having another choice besides apple when it comes to hardware. I've just been really unhappy with everything else. I'm excited for another choice when looking for a high-end laptop!
I, too, welcome the existence of a company trying to compete based on preserving privacy and users' freedoms rather than invading it and spying on everything.
Personally, I would consider having hardware switches to disable external sensors and wireless communications channels in a laptop to be a significant factor in a purchasing decision. Other things being equal, I would opt for such features, and I would be willing to pay a bit extra to have them.
Unfortunately, it appears that other things are not equal. Unless I'm missing something, these systems seem to be relatively expensive for the rest of their spec.
More significantly, there is only so much you can do with hardware alone. For now, we also have the usual problem with installing an entirely free/open source software base, which is that much of the software that is useful for getting real work done is not from the FOSS world and the closest FOSS equivalents are not competitive if they exist at all. Being on-line is essential for a lot of activities, but as soon as you're on-line there is still a problem if you don't trust at least the OS and networking software as well as the hardware, and in a Windows 10 world that surely won't be true for many who would be interested in this kind of hardware in the first place.
Still, this seems like a step in a healthy direction, and for that alone I wish them success.
Testing it in the marketplace and tying the financial incentives to good ethics are both good decisions. They're really putting their work and money where their mouth is. I challenge others to do the same in terms of hardware purchases.
My favorite part is that they're going to support Qubes OS [1].
That's why I'm hoping their next Skylake generation will come with an option for a 6820HQ or 6920HQ CPU [2] (4 cores/8 threads/8MB L3 cache), as well as options for 16 and 32GB of DDR4 RAM (but I assume they'll have that covered) and at least a relatively fast NVMe 256GB SSD drive just so I can run Qubes at maximum performance. Fingerprint authentication (along with software support for two-factor auth at login) would be nice as well.
I do think they need to drive their prices down in the future, though ($2,000 for a "private laptop"). Privacy and security shouldn't be just for the rich. Their laptops feel like they are at least 50% more expensive than what they should be. I imagine this will get better with scale. Their laptops also don't have to be "Macbook Pro quality". I think some compromises there in thinness and build quality can be reasonable, if it means dropping the price by $300 or so.
