Technoethical T400s now available
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Tiberiu,
Do you mind me bringing my recent customers here too, asking them to comment on the excellent service that they received?
because i have a lot of them recently, and they'll probably tell you that minifree is doing a good job
Frankly, I think you're just being childish at this point. As of right now, I'm not going to continue playing your little game. I'll just continue being better than you instead.
;)
I am a member!
Trying to spin it again? As you know, I was talking about customers of Minifree that have been mistreated by you.
Go to any company on earth that is large enough, and you'll find that a minority of their customers will give pretty bad reviews, almost indictments you could say. It happens.
Bringing a few people here who had a bad experience (because yes, I am only human and do make mistakes sometimes) is an excellent way to make Minifree appear worse than it actually is. In reality, the vast majority of Minifree's customers are happy with the service that they receive.
Even if you did get maybe 5, even 10 people, to come here, I have plenty of other people on my customer logs over the past 4 years who could all tell you that they received an excellent service at Minifree.
You accuse me of FUD... but, oh, the irony!
Yeah, I'm out. See you at FOSDEM 2018, i guess
I am a member!
Since you go on accusing Technoethical, below another complaint from one of your customers:
"Buying from Minifree was a nightmare experience (I will spare you the details) and I don't want to interact with [Leah] anymore."
Are you aware that this is not proof of anything? I could say that you killed my dog.
This just reeks of desperation on Tiberiu's part. Unhappy with my (quite legitimate) criticisms of him, he proceeds to slander me and spread false rumours about Minifree mistreating its customers.
He wishes to discredit me, by (as of right now) spouting outright lies about my company, simply because I criticized his company...
Tiberiu, you do realize the extreme irony in your current behaviour, right?
You are outright engaging in slander against me. My criticisms against you were real, and you respond with unsubstantiated claims that Minifree is somehow mistreating its customers.
I do sometimes make mistakes. I'm sure you also have unhappy customers from time to time aswell.
Do you even realize that what you're currently doing is wrong?
Every unhappy Minifree customer in history has either been sent a replacement system, or otherwise had their issue rectified, or we've refunded them. Minifree is not in the business of defrauding its customers, as you seem to be claiming it does.
The reality, however, is that we have very few unhappy customers. What Tiberiu is doing is picking out a handful of people (who may indeed be real. We don't know that yet, Tiberiu hasn't proved it) who were unhappy with Minifree, and trying to make it looks like *all* of our customers are unhappy. This is obviously false.
Tiberiu, I'm not going to stop. You can't intimidate me. I'm going to continue defending myself against these claims that you're making against me.
You are fairly represented on the Libreboot website. I think you ought to be more grateful.
Not to mention that without you (Leah) working on LibreBoot and Chris getting the AR9271 firmware liberated, there would be no Technoethical! Technoethical does good. However, Tiberiu's behavior (as shown in this thread) toward those who made his business possible in the first place is abhorrent.
Indeed. I worked hard for a solid 3-4 months getting X200 stable in Libreboot. Another 2 for the others (T400, R400, T500 - I still plan to port R500 at some point, whenever I have the time). Tiberiu then starts also selling Libreboot, thus competing with Minifree. He then tries to claim that Minifree is being anti-competitive! And all simply because Minifree lowered it's price...
He is literally attacking the very woman who got him into the position of good fortune that he's currently in, where he's able to sell this hardware to the public. The very woman who, out of good faith, personally wrote https://libreboot.org/suppliers.html and made sure that all Libreboot sellers, including Technoethical, were listed!
...and worked hard to convince the person vetoing its addition to the site (Alyssa Rosenzweig) to allow the page to be added to the site.
Believe it or not, I do actually separate Minifree and Libreboot. I gave up leadership of the Libreboot project, since there was a conflict of interest. I am now merely a contributor, and others run the project. See:
https://libreboot.org/management.html
Hell, I even forked out 90k USD of my own money to have the D16 server board ported to Libreboot. The FSF now uses this to run all of their servers, including gnu.org. I delayed selling D16 for a year on Minifree, since it wasn't fully stable in Libreboot... and then it flopped. And that's fine! As long as I can still eat. I consider it a donation of 90k to the free software community.
That 90k donation led to the creation of Vikings, a libreboot-powered hosting company. There is literally a company on earth right now that will give you a hosting solution running entirely on Libreboot hardware. 1Gbps internet connection and everything, in a data center.
All I did was raise some technical criticisms about the T400S. He wrongly interpreted that as an attempt by me to somehow "smear" him, which just shows how paranoid he is. I'm perfectly happy that Technoethical exists. I mean that, genuinely.
Who knows. Maybe my effort to port X220 to Libreboot will actually succeed. It already can boot entirely 100% libre, without the ME firmware present, but with a hardware-enforced 30-minute reset when the ME firmware is not present; it's the 30 minute timer that I'm trying to disable.
Then maybe if I'm successful, Minifree will get RYF on the X220. And then Technoethical will start selling the X220... and complain that Minifree is being anti-competitive for releasing everything including full source code, under the GNU General Public License and listing Technoethical on the Libreboot suppliers page.
And here I am, thinking.... gosh, I started this project in my bedroom when I used to lived with my parents 4 years ago, and now a guy named Tiberiu is complaining that I personally made it possible for his company to even exist (as far as the Libreboot part of it is concerned) ;)
LOL
Leah, the Libreboot T400 Does not have a free EC firmware, right? Also, another question: the exterior appearance of the product as it is? Excellent, or can it have any mark? (Because they are not new products)
Hi Thvie,
The EC firmware is indeed non-free, as it is on all other Libreboot-preinstall sellers too:
https://libreboot.org/faq.html#ec-embedded-controller-firmware
What you're purchasing is a system that has a free BIOS replacement (Libreboot) and free operating system (Trisquel GNU+Linux). This is the same as other Libreboot X200/T400 sellers.
Swiftgeek, who I work with in #libreboot IRC, is working on a libre EC replacement on these laptops, but the work is not yet complete.
Generally, the systems that Minifree ships are in excellent physical condition. We always ensure that laptops are of high quality.
~Leah
And what do you think about it? Do you think it will end up in a short-medium term? (libre EC for thinkpad)
I think that the lack of libre EC on libreboot-supported thinkpads is a great shame, and I hope that swiftgeek well be successful in his work to liberate it.
There are some laptops (Rockchip ARM chromebooks) in Libreboot that have libre EC, but in return for lack of wifi or video acceleration.
This issue is yet to be solved.
It is sad that once again there‘s people with the same goals fighting against each other.
It looks to me that you, Leah, like to pick a fight. In almost each of your comments you point out how much cheaper your laptops are. People can read and choose, you don‘t need to say it a hundred times.
It looks like you can‘t handle competition. You are indeed much cheaper, so why do you feel the need to advertise your product in this thread over and over again? You don't sell T400s so you could be relaxed.
I had thought about offering to install libreboot in the past (just on a very very small scale) but it is „discussions“ like these that kept me from doing it. I just keep on spreading the word.
I am a member!
I know what you mean. We were ready to start selling T400 with Libreboot back in December 2015, but we were discouraged by Rowe. Below exerpts from the e-mail exchange, as response to her invitation earlier "Yes, please do tell us how Minifree mistreated you."
--------%<-----------------
On 05.12.2015 12:50, Tiberiu wrote:
> Hi Francis,
>
> Tehnoetic is ready to sell T400's with Libreboot. We think your project
> is very important and we want to join the efforts, by organizing
> Libreboot flashing workshops and by selling laptops flashed with
> Libreboot, by offering a fraction of the sales in the form of donations
> to Libreboot and by dedicating time to help further develop Libreboot
> software.
>
> We will apply for the RYF certification and we would like to be listed
> on the Libreboot suppliers page too, if that's possible:
>
> http://libreboot.org/suppliers/
>
> Please let me know what you think about the things I proposed above. I
> want to go public after we discuss this.
>
> Looking forward to hearing from you.
>
> Thanks in advance and happy hacking!
>
> --
> Tiberiu
> Founder, https://tehnoetic.com
On 05.12.2015 14:03, Francis Rowe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Please don't do this
On 05.12.2015 14:07, Tiberiu wrote:
> Hi Francis,
>
> Why not?
On 05.12.2015 14:10, Francis Rowe wrote:
> Minifree already funds the libreboot project. Libreboot costs a lot to
> run, especially now (I'm in a contract with a developer, paying them
> to do work for me).
>
> You doing it would mean that I get less sales. Even if you donated to
> libreboot, it would still only be a fraction of the income that I
> currently make. I either spend it on libreboot, or save it for future
> investment in libreboot.
>
> Also, I don't have a reliable way of accepting donations at the
> moment. If you were to promote Minifree instead, that would benefit me.
On 05.12.2015 14:11, Francis Rowe wrote:
> That said, I think you should organize workshops - that is a good
> idea. If you are involved in a local GNU/Linux Users Group for
> example, people can bring their laptops to get them flashed. I don't
> mind that. But competing with Minifree will hurt the libreboot
> project, not help it.
--------%<-----------------
Also, if you wonder why Leah is currently spamming random threads in the Trisquel forum, it's because she doesn't want this thread to show up on top of first page. By replying to all these threads, she has temporarily succeeded to move it on the second page (screenshots attached). That's how desperate she is to hide the truth about her practices.
i wasn't trying to hide the truth. i was trying to hide your *slander* against me since you obviously want to try to discredit me and spread FUD about *me* as much as possible, despite claiming that I'm doing the same to you. you are openly attacking me in public. this goes beyond mere criticism, which is all i did.
you are quoting an email from a long time ago, when conditions were very much different. *Today* all I was doing was legitimately criticizing your project. Minifree is doing just fine, in fact it's doing much better lately and I'm not worried about Technoethical at all.
With Minifree's new lower prices on the T400, we now get high sales volumes. You could make 50 sales and it wouldn't bother me at all. What I did instead was expand the market itself, by making Libreboot more accessible.
The emails that you quote are referring to the 90,000 USD that I've paid to Raptor Engineering for the ASUS KGPE-D16 and KCMA-D8 ports to Libreboot. By the way, it's because of this *personal sacrifice* that I made (D16 totally flopped on Minifree. I've made 3 sales of it in the last year), that the Free Software Foundation now runs fsf.org and gnu.org on a libre-friendly server - they run all of their services on Libreboot D16 servers.
Tiberiu, if you don't cease this smear campaign against me, out of principle I will have no choice but to take you to court for libel charges. *You* know as well as I do the conditions under which I wrote that email to you. And honestly, if someone came to you and said "mind if i compete with you? lol", how would you respond?
I never said you couldn't start your own company. I just did what any sane business person would, and responded "I'd rather you didn't", pretty much. You're a hypocrite if you criticize me for this, since I'm pretty sure you would do the same.
These days, I couldn't care less if you made 50 sales a month. In fact, I'd be happy if you did. I was *only* pointing out flaws in your new T400S product, nothing more. Minifree will chug along just fine regardless.
but forget that for now. you've done something MUCH worse just now:
wow. just now.
deadnaming me on trisquel forums
you realize deadnaming a trans woman is a *huge asshole thing to do*, right?
My name is not Francis Rowe.
My name is Leah Rowe.
shame on you!
*That* is the lowest you could possibly do. I'm quite frankly disgusted that you would stoop so low.
Perhaps you're just unaware of the damage that you just caused.
Tiberiu, I no longer care about any of what has happened today between you and I, regarding Technoethical. Now it's *personal*.
Deadnaming me (telling people my former name, from before I came out as transgender and started calling myself Leah Rowe in public) is NOT COOL.
I'll still work with you, and you'll stay listed on libreboot.org - Libreboot is democratically controlled, and others would block the move, even if I wanted to (hint: I don't. I'm happy for Technoethical to remain listed on libreboot.org, that's why your new T400S product is linked on https://libreboot.org/suppliers.html)
but don't expect anything good from me from now on.
The *2* people that I *very* recently referred to your company, so that they could send their X200 Tablets to get them flashed via your service?
Such acts of goodwill will never be seen from me towards you, ever again.
I'll push harder on swiftgeek to set up a libreboot flashing service, instead, to flash X200 Tablets. And maybe even do it myself. My AUYUE 2703A+ is collecting dust. It needs some love.
Leah, the libreboot firmware has a GUI to disable SATA ports, and finally configure the "BIOS" as with a old BIOS or UEFI? (modify voltage, modify freq, tweaks in general) or only with compilation? or only via terminal? If so, I do not see any guide in libreboot.org
Hi Tiberiu,
Alyssa Rosenzweig, Libreboot's sysadmin and spokesperson, just emailed me. She CC'd you too.
She yelled at both of us, telling us we went too far, that we are both being childish and that we shouldn't fight.
And I'm inclined to agree. Let's end this here. Alyssa has interjected and told me to behave, and to be nice to you; I choose to comply. Her advice has been wise and appropriate many times in the past. Thus far, I've done well in listening to her.
Technoethical T400S is awesome. Please everyone go buy it.
Seriously. It has a displayport on it and everything.
And it's a bit lighter than the T400, and has a nicer keyboard with a bigger ESC key (handy for Vim). It also uses slightly less power.
Tiberiu, why don't you get more involved in Libreboot directly? Since you sell it on your laptops, that probably means you know quite a wee bit about it. You could work on improving the documentation, for instance.
We badly need contributors in the Libreboot project. Patches welcome! :-)
https://libreboot.org/git.html#editing-the-website-and-documentation-wiki-style
While I do personally believe that some of your reactions to me were quite crass and... a bit shit, frankly, it was not without provocation. I apologize. I will agree to stay out of your way, from now on.
~Leah
I am a member!
Hmm, I wake up in the morning only to see 23 new comments in this thread shredded by Leah yesterday with her false claims about T400s.
Leah, I see that during night you've put to work quite the machinery to fill another page of this thread with comments taking your side, a thread that was not about you or Minifree. You even went so far as to calling me twice, even though I wasn't online (and sleeping).
I don't care who says what (I didn't even read most of the 20+ new comments). Restrain yourself, because you are the one that is causing damage to both Technoethical (by lying) and Minifree (with your behaviour).
And I expect you to apologize publicly to both me an my team Technoethical for the drama that you've created. That is, if you have changed a bit.
Hi Tiberiu,
See:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available?page=1#comment-116270
I didn't call you during the night; I don't know your telephone number, and I don't care to know it.
Once again, as in that post: I apologize. Let's agree to make peace, and move on. This pointless squabbling will get us nowhere. For what it's worth, I do think you have a good product, and I hope you're successful with it.
I started this chaos, and I shouldn't have. It won't happen again.
~Leah
I am a member!
You write: "I didn't call you during the night". But you have, in this forum, replying to comments that weren't mine:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available?page=1#comment-116274
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available?page=1#comment-116275
You also write: "I don't know your telephone number, and I don't care to know it." This is stupid. I was clear that "You even went so far as to calling me twice, even though I wasn't online (and sleeping)." Emphasize on *online*. And the context was "[you] fill another page of this thread with comments".
Regarding Alyssa, please spare me the childish talk. I don't appreciate being e-mailed privately on public matters. I will therefore ignore that subtopic entirely.
I can't accept your apology yet. Do you admit to falsely accusing that the T400s has heat problems, disregarding the test results we've run to prove you wrong?
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available#comment-116154
I can't accept your apology yet.
Impressive: although you should be the one apologizing, Leah does and you still cannot accept her apology?!
"It won't happen again."
Perhaps not the best thing to try to say now but as hard as one tries to prevent oneself from doing something, inadvertently or otherwise.....one doesn't really, ABSOLUTELY know, do they?
As a libreboot user myself, I want to thank everybody who made it possible. I also want to thank all people who offer librebooted computers. There's not enough of people like you in the world, so it's a pity to have some of you at odds with each other. Thanks to CalmStorm too, for trying to calm the storm - although even the best intended effort got misunderstood. The word FUD should never have been written however insistent the criticism were - it was at that point that the discussion was trashed.
You propagate ideas of libre software and at the same time sell 10-years old PC's hardware for that libre software for triple price, doesn't sound very ethical.
Minifree's prices are much more adequate.
They are now. I remember the discussion about Minifree because it's been one reason I registered here:
Just take a look:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/minifree-price-change
I think it is a bit unfair pointing fingers.
I am a member!
I won't repeat myself. If you want an explanation, please read with attention my comments here:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available#comment-116154 (the paragraph before the last quote)
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available#comment-116185 (items 8 and 10)
Plus, the laptops are 9-year old (X200, X200T, T400, T500) and 8-year old (T400s) respectively. Every year counts for freedom, so please make sure to not round up the age next time.
/tct
Back on the track: I have now purchased a T400s and I must say I am really looking forward to have this machine liberated. It is very nice :-)
Nothing that can't be solved with love and friendship. Wait, I meant with a duel, an old-fashioned duel.
For the user, the more sellers, the better. The lower the prices, the better.
But this whole thread feels like spam (and takes the potential client for an idiot).
Heather, if I read this correctly, the RAM is not soldered on a T400s: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T400s
Those who have bought a T400 in minifree, could you make a small review? Some photo showing laptop etc. :)
I am a member!
Please feel free to submit reviews in the dedicated forum threads such as:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/libreboot-t400-minifree-reduces-price-once-again
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/libreboot-t400-returns-minifree-trisquel-preinstalled-permanently-reduced-price
/tct
I think the only thing that this immature argument has done for me is made me less likely to buy from either party.
It is no surprise that a thread like this did happen, since two companies compete with each other.
I was watching the whole discussion and conclude that the argument was fruitful in the beginning, showing a healthy competition and a lot of pros and cons of both parties.
However, it elevated to a personal level quickly, and I do believe that technoethical was the main reason for this.
In the end, Leah made a smart and mature move by apologizing and trying to end this battle, while tiberiu refused to accept and damaged his image even further.
Leah, I know how hard it is to hear somebody spreading false claims about or at least presenting oneself in a negative and biased way, and I do get very emotional in those situations. However, I learned that it's clever to stay polite and calm, since in the end it will make your oponent look bad and it might even help you.
I think this is what happened now, so you definitly did the right thing.
Most of the time I hear from Tiberiu he is blaming others for their actions, like when he had this ridiculous avatar or was fighting with thinkpenguin.
Then he is constantly whining about how he is not able to compete with minifree's prices, calling their price policy even to be illegal in some countries.
Well, welcome to the tough reality of a merchant!
There are always bigger competitors when you start a business, and they can get stuff cheaper and make you having a hard time.
Nobody promised to you that starting a business is easy or will necessarily succeed.
It's tough and a lot of times, smaller companies cannot persist against bigger rivals.
That's normal in the world of business and you should stop whining about it.
Just try be creative and determined, maybe offering things nobody did so far.
Most of all: change your behaviour in public. You're making it impossible for your company to grow if you create such a bad image of yourself as you do at the moment.
How is my comment biased?
But Magic Banana asked the very same question and did not get any answer from you.
Most likely, every unpleasant comment is just "biased" to your eyes.
I am a translator!
>How is my comment biased?
But Magic Banana asked the very same question and did not get any answer from you.
Most likely, every unpleasant comment is just "biased" to your eyes.
lulz, indeed, that appears to be the case :D
I am a member!
By using words like "whining" and "bitching", you and Magic Banana prove you are hostile towards me.
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available#comment-116061
A new forum member doesn't even need to go through the hassle to track your past comments in other threads, it's clear that you are biased.
I call again on respecting Trisquel community's Code of Conduct:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/technoethical-t400s-now-available#comment-116123
/tct
Interesting. You wrote to Leah:
"I'd say you're the one desperate, judging by all the lies and contradictions you've submitted"
but you feel yourself offended by the word "whining", immediately calling me biased.
F
FO
FOC
FOCU
FOCUS
Libre
Hi Heather.
That is not a T400s. I don't know which model it is, but the T400s looks like this: https://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-t400s-laptop-review-2247655/
there are a lot of pictures near the bottom of the page
The post got too enraged. I am also sorry for my comment.
I am a translator!
>The post got too enraged
Yep. Let's slide it to the trolly lounge! :)
I am a member!
You go ahead, maybe others like you will follow you inside the lounge. Your efforts to throw this thread in the trash bin are noted.
We at Technoethical would like to be able to continue answering questions about our T400s laptop installed with fully free BIOS and OS.
A bit off-topic here I guess but that's not how the word "effort" works
I think this forum is not the right place for advertisement in the first place, at least not in the sense of posting threads.
You should rather but an advertisement like thinkpenguin does.
If a user on her own mentions problems regarding trisquel and your notebook, of course you can join the conversation and give technical support.
But let's imagine the market is growing and ten competitors all praise their new offers in this forum, maybe even starting to fight along the way - it would be chaos.
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