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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has awarded its Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Taurinus X200 laptop sold by Libiquity.
This is the first product of Libiquity to achieve RYF certification. The Taurinus X200 has the same architecture and certified software as the Libreboot X200, which was certified in January 2015. The Taurinus X200 can be purchased from Libiquity at https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200.
The Taurinus X200 is a refurbished and updated laptop based on the Lenovo ThinkPad X200, with all of the original low-level firmware and operating system software replaced. It runs the FSF-endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system and the free software boot system, Libreboot. Perhaps most importantly, all of Intel's Management Engine (ME) firmware and software has been removed from this laptop.
The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The Taurinus X200 comes with the fast and secure Libreboot firmware and the FSF-endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system. Importantly, Intel's Management Engine (ME) firmware with its applications like AMT (remote out-of-band management/backdoor system, part of "vPro") and PAVP (audio/video DRM) have been removed from this laptop.
The laptop ships within the USA and may be purchased from the Libiquity Store.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:05AM
People pay upwards of $30k to drive old as fuck cars in their original restored condition.
This is about 1% of that cost, for a fully restored laptop, that cost 3 times as much brand new six years ago. It has strong aftermarket support, a very informative community at forum.thinkpads.com, and is more durable than any of the trash that you sell. Some people, like those vintage car owners, will pay for this.
The rest of you can spend easily as much money on gimmicks to protect your "security", like Kaspersky and Windows 10.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 01 2015, @11:13AM
Except restored classic cars are worth several times their original value while this thing is worth exactly 75 bucks [ebay.com] and all the downmods? Not gonna change that. BTW all me to LMAO, they must be making a fucking killing on these per unit, I bet if I were to buy 'em in bulk from a refurb they probably go for less than $50 a piece...say what you want about "Apple Tax" and "Windows Tax" but you don't see either of them making $400 a unit in profit on a bottom of the line system!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @01:49PM
A restored classic car is worth whatever the cost of parts + labor is.
A better example: take one of those $75 ebay X200's, replace the palmrest/keyboard plastics with new ones, replace the heatsink with a new one (since the original fans were prone to dying) and then use Middleton's BIOS or something similar to get rid of the BIOS whitelist so you can put in a newer Atheros wifi card. You're now at $250, plus time for labor. That was closer to $500 in the summer of 2013 when I did exactly that.
Continuing the car example: Only the unscathed (undriven) low-mileage matching numbers cars are worth several times their original value. And even then, a horrible investment compared to putting that same money in an index fund and letting it sit all those years.
Libre laptops don't have economies of scale to drive the costs down. They provide total ownership of the software stack, which is a value to some people. The rest of us can block TCP port 16992 at the external firewall (hopefully not powered by an Intel chip) to keep the Intel Management Engine from talking to whomever it talks to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @03:32PM
Never heard of paying for convenience? Lots of people do not know how to setup a laptop that fully respects your freedom, or do not have the time. This is nice for them.
You probably get downmodded because you make inflammatory comments about basically anything related to Free Software, even going so far as to mock those that try to help others obtain freedom. Also, most of your comments mention secondary issues like price or quality, which is not the point of Free Software.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by skater on Thursday October 01 2015, @11:26AM
People pay upwards of $30k to drive old as fuck cars in their original restored condition.
Generally, not as a daily driver. They use them for occasional cruising, car shows, etc. The owners almost always have another car that's good for driving on a daily basis. The equivalent for us would be keeping a PCjr around for the nostalgia or so you can play River Raid off the cartridge now and then - you wouldn't fire it up to browse Solyent and other news sites.