> All other laptops use hardware chips coupled with software that can betray you. News stories have shown how these chips can surreptitiously transmit voice, networking, picture or video signals. Other chips are used to install spyware, malware or viruses.
This advertising copy implies, without basis, that other computers are deliberately designed to be insecure and contain hardware that is intended to "install spyware, malware or viruses", and that their computer is completely free of any firmware vulnerabilities (or, by another reading, contains no firmware at all).
I don't think that either of these claims stands up to any real scrutiny. At best, it's a wild exaggeration of the facts that 1) computers have network hardware which can be used to transmit information, including audio and video recordings, under the command of software; 2) driver and firmware vulnerabilities exist; 3) there have been a small number of incidents where computers have shipped with a BIOS that triggered a Windows feature to automatically install software from the BIOS.
None of these are problems which Purism can claim to have solved with their computer design. Hardware "kill switches" are at best a clumsy workaround -- isolating a computer from the network severely limits its utility -- and using open-source firmware is not a guarantee of safety.
Besides, if they're so proud of their hardware choices, surely they should be willing to go into some more detail about the hardware they decided on, and the reasons they made those choices?