I am ordering a lot of stuff from Tehnoetic right now. While I agree the price is pretty high, I think many people in this thread neglect how valuable service, bug help and return policies can be. Before ordering from Tehnoetic I bought a BBB, a Samsung S2 and an Asus C201 which, while interesting projects, took a lot of my time to free up and even more to get working. On the flip side, Tehnoetic seems really happy to install, advise and support many libre options I wouldn't be able to handle in my personal time. For instance, they offered to install external WiFi drivers and Replicant 6.0 on an S3 for free and soldered/removed many components from my Think Pad.
In contrast, the S2 I bought used had a flakey USB port which was unreturnable/flashable a predictably bad Replicant install given the devices flaw (how does one write data without a port?), I accidentally broke the internal drive on my C201 flashing parabola to it (always back up your GPT tables before gdisking kids), and it turns out setting up a Parabola BBB server just isn't my cup of tea. :-] I love tinkering, but since I have a bit of money now I figure it's high time I let others do that work for me so I can do more enjoyable tasks like learning to code and make libre video games. (That said, I haven't asked ThinkPenguin how to update my LibreCMC router for about three years now. I have no idea if ThinkPenguin, Minfree or Libiquity would be nearly as accommodating as Tehnoetic has been that far in a products life, but I don't think it's fair to critique the quality of their service without shooting them a quick email at least) P.S. please pardon grammatical errors / obscurity of this email. It's written with a Nexus 5 with a broken screen on a late night city bus WiFi. =] On February 22, 2017 4:17:37 PM CST, [email protected] wrote: >I really hate how so many of these shops drive up the price of their >equipment. I know it takes time and effort to install these operating >systems, but the price they're asking for a Galazy S2 is insane when >you can >buy them for almost 1/4 of the price elsewhere and install the OS >yourself. > >Same with the X200 libreboot laptops. In 2017 there's no reason to >purchase a >dual core machine for upwards of $400 USD. I believe this turns people >OFF of >using free software because the machines are not on par with other >cheaper >technology and (as far as the phones go) they are missing features >believed >to be standard such as wifi. > >I understand that these are mostly small shops, and I also understand >that >using free software isn't about convenience it's about freedom, but how >can >we expect to bring free software to the public eye when the recommended > >equipment is outlandishly expensive? -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
