Questions about Nitropad V54+56 before buying

NitroPad, NitroPC
1

Hi guys,

I have several questions, which I hope someone is able to answer here, before buying a Nitropad:

  1. Does anyone know how/where they are produced? In the Factsheet Nitrokey advertises “Made in Germany”. However, as everyone knows “Made in Germany” is nowadays most of the time nothing else than “Brand in Germany”.
    Since the Nitropad and Novacustom Notebooks are basically identical, I am asking myself whether Nitrokey uses the same manufacturer in China. Yes, Novacustom Notebooks are basically manufactured in China, which can be seen from the specification page.
    So does anyone know whether Nitrokey basically does the same as Novacustom and has (almost) the whole device manufactured in China?

  2. Both Novacustom and Nitrokey are offering Heads only in the Dasharo variant. However, both say that support is only one year and each year costs over 70 EUR, which I find very expensive for open source software. A friend of mine owns a Librem 14. Heads was pre-installed there and he can easily update via an update script provided by purism without any “support lock-in trap”.
    What happens after the one year? Can you no longer update the firmware if you don’t pay? How do updates work after that year, if updates are possible?
    If I like the service, I might extend it; however, I just don’t like “lock-in effects” which are used by the big US companies.

  3. Can you buy the notebooks also without RAM and SSD, saving a few more bucks. I have some fitting RAM and SSD lying around. It’d be literally such a waste to not use it.
    On the configuration page selecting 8GB RAM and 250 GB SSD seems to be mandatory.

  4. Can you get heads pre-installed without buying a Nitrokey, since I already own one and don’t need another. I just need it flashed and can do the remaining installation myself.

Thanks a lot for your answers and comments.

Best!

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2

Hello,

  1. Both are same hardware.

  2. After one year you will not have access of Dasharo Pro Package for Desktop features.
    You will be still able to update the firmware but you won’t be able to use the Dasharo Tool Suite and you will need to build the release image.

    1. I’m not sure please ask shop@nitrokey.com
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3

It also seems like you can switch from UEFI to Heads and vice versa. So you can also get rid of or add Heads if you want, which might be helpful. The following seems to work, as I gather from the description, for the NitroPad too:

Also, I’d be careful with Purism, as their Laptops are not Certified for QubesOS (which I suppose you want to use with Heads). It seems like the trust between Purism and QubesOS is not very strong, after Purism did some questionable things (Discussion on Purism - General Discussion - Qubes OS Forum)

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