On 29/09/2018, ron minnich rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 1:59 PM Sam Kuper sam.kuper@uclmail.net wrote:
Small momentary switches cost pennies and laptops usually have about a hundred of them fitted, of various kinds. (Power on/off/suspend; volume up/down; keyboard keys; maybe others.) So, fitting laptops with momentary switches is definitely acceptable to manufacturers.
I'm guessing you don't work in a company that designs or builds laptops :-)
True enough. I have worked at a company that designed and built other consumer electronics, though, and spent time with people speccing PCBs and custom silicon.
b/c they agonize over parts like this. I ran into one situation where the ODM removed a single pulldown to save cost. One little almost-too-small-to-see part which cost a fraction of a cent. But a laptop BOM is a consequence of thousands of decisions of this type.
Nope, the switch is definitely a non-starter, esp. given that there are solutions that don't require it.
It's not just the part. A single simple part like that has all kinds of follow-on effects that are not obvious unless you've been at a company which designs and builds consumer electronics.
Thank you for the perspective. I do understand that changing one component can affect others.
Purism isn't a typical laptop company. The addition of hardware switches, to control webcam, mic and Wi-Fi, is one of the USPs for their Librem models. These undoubtedly had knock-on effects for the BOM. Purism was undeterred by that. In that context...
I'm just asking for one more switch.
So, Youness and others at Purism: if you are reading this, please do spec a momentary switch to control flashing on future Librems. Your security-conscious users will thank you for it.