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.
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.