Re: [libreplanet-discuss] talos

[J.B. Nicholson]

Fabián Rodríguez wrote:
> * Give $10 or $250 - no options in-between

The price gap that mattered more to me was the machine price gap -- $3700 
for a mainboard ("CPU, RAM, power supply, storage drives, and chassis sold 
separately") and $7100 for a working computer without monitor. That's both 
significantly more money than I can afford and there is no small machine -- 
I don't know what could have been reduced to save on costs (I also don't 
know what the options were to achieve that), but I know I don't need a 
server-grade computer even if it is ATX-compatible (and would therefore fit 
in many readily-available cases). I'd like to play high-res videos (2K or 
4K, at most), run an emulator (such as MAME), run many programs at once 
without fear of overheating the CPU and causing it to stop due to thermal 
shutdown, and occasionally encode audio/video for my own projects.

I'd never need so many cores (up to 96 logical cores), more than one 
gigabit ethernet connector, so many slots (I'd have a hard time justifying 
a need for more than one for video and only if the onboard video wasn't 
good enough to do the above). But this was a far more capable computer than 
I'd ever need and quite a risk considering the architecture was not so 
popular (there are free or free-able distros that don't provide precompiled 
binaries for this architecture). Maybe a laptop version of this system 
would be a better fit for my needs (a Librem laptop with this hardware 
inside would be fine and I wouldn't care about ATX-compatibility and with 
this Librem could actually make good on their promise for free firmware).

> * No T-shirts, no stickers

This didn't bother me. I would have made my own t-shirts if I wanted one. 
Perhaps projects should clearly license their logos, fonts, and related 
materials so people could make their own non-commercially distributed goods 
(stickers, t-shirts, mugs, and anything else people can readily make or 
have made for them these days).

> * 6 months shared SSH-access for 250$?

This pricing made no sense to me but I considered it mostly about donating 
to the project.

> * Absurd amount of information to digest in every update (even for me)

I like the detailed info they published, I'd even recommend other projects 
do this because that detail level shows me what project workers (who are 
doing the bulk of the work including all the day-to-day tasks) are thinking 
about and what issues they consider relevant. I don't see how that is at 
all harmful to me because I can choose how much to read and when to read 
the posts. I think a general-purpose audience is not well-served by such 
posts, however. I'd bet non-technical users would appreciate something more 
plainly worded. The technical info should be available, perhaps posted to a 
blog hosted elsewhere on the company's website.

I am concerned that when the crowdsupply.com page goes away, so too do 
these updates which are still interesting information and valuable not only 
for future reading but reference to others.