Hello out there in the forums!
I haven’t posted in a while, so I hope everyone has been well. I recently purchased a new laptop from System76. (for those of you who don’t know of System76…they are a vendor of Pre-installed ubuntu Linux systems…Desktops, Laptops and Servers). Overall I am very pleased with my new laptop and figured I would tell you all about my experience with this company and the computer itself!
The Laptop:
It is a Pangolin Performance series. A sharp-looking machine with plenty of bells and whistles…My configuration ended up as follows (** denotes an upgrade from the base configuration):
Display: 15.4' WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) **
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS w/ 256Mb DDR2 (they have very recently changed this to an NVIDIA GeForce G105M)
Audio: Intel HD audio
Hard Drive: 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA II **
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40 Ghz 1066 FSB **
RAM: 4 GB DDR2 800 **
Ethernet: Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless: Intel Wi-Fi link a/b/g/n up to 450 MBS *** and Bluetooth
Optical Drive: CD-RW/DVD-RW
Extra goodies: HDMI port, eSATA port, SD reader, Fingerprint reader, integrated 2.0 Mp webcam
Pre-installed OS: Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid ibex x86_64
Weight: 5.8 lbs
All of that came up to about $1115.00 US (including a $25 coupon and ground shipping)
Now the price may not be as competitive as some of the major vendors, however I like to support smaller businesses wherever possible (as well as support vendors offering Linux!).
Order experience/Customer service
One of my biggest pet peeves is calling a customer service department and having to talk to a computer or navigate though an endless menu of “press 1 for X”, “press 2 for Y”. With system76, I was connected to a real live human being within seconds. The people with whom I spoke were very courteous and helpful. I was able to communicate via e-mail with the same people to whom I spoke on the telephone. There were a few delays on my order as one of the parts was out of stock at the time—this added about 3 weeks to the expected ship date. After talking to someone at customer service, who apologized for the delay, they offered me a refund or if I was willing to wait, they would upgrade me to next day shipping and throw in a targus laptop backpack. I opted for the shipping upgrade and the backpack. Just a few days after this conversation, I received my laptop (about a week and a half earlier than had been expected). I wasn’t expecting it until the following week! I checked me email and found that system76 received their parts early and shipped the order the night before! A pleasant surprise to say the least.
The Pangolin experience:
The laptop arrived very well packaged and wrapped, allowing for no movement inside the box during transit. As far for looks, this is an eye turner. My favorite feature being the lack of a “windows” meta key. In place, is a key with the ubuntu logo.
The laptop came pre-installed with Ubuntu 8.10. System76 packages all the necessary drivers with a few tweaks—so everything that I tested worked out the box. After a few hours of fighting with Synpatic and APT (Ubuntu’s package manager for those of you that do not know…) I removed ubuntu and installed opensuse 11.1. On that note, this review will be an indication of how the laptop performs with opensuse as opposed to ubuntu.
There are a few things on the laptop I did not test while running ubuntu…please keep that in mind.
The grand majority of the hardware was recognized and configured by the suse installer, requiring very little tweaking on my part. Graphics are beautiful and smooth on the HD screen coupled with the NVIDIA GeForce 9300M graphics controller. One thing that does not work at the moment is “audio over hdmi”. I’ve done substantial research on that problem (gone through these forums as well as several other places) and believe that it is an issue with alsa/pulseaudio.
The integrated webcam was recognized and works perfectly under Skype. The internal microphone works, but is not recognized by Skype. (Apparently, internal microphones are historically problematic under Linux).
The Bluetooth module was NOT detected by opensuse. However, I have no need for it and have not done anything to get it working.
The fingerprint reader also was NOT detected by opensuse. I tried installing drivers from the opensuse build services to no avail. I ended up downloading the system76 driver .deb package and converted it to a tar file using “alien”. Then used the source code from that to build a driver—it worked. However, while it’s a cool device, biometric authentication is still a relatively new technology and is far too picky for me to use on a day to day basis (you have to scan your fingerprint just right in order to get it to read properly).
Suspend and Hibernate so far have worked with no problems.
Battery life so far on the laptop (when running in power save mode—CPU clock speed becomes 800 MHz as opposed to full speed of 2401 MHz) is about 2.5 hours.
So far temperature hasn’t been an issue as there is a decent-sized vent on the left side of the computer.
The somewhat beefy CPU and 4 GB of RAM make this machine perform just as well (if not better) than your average desktop. Virtualization, video encoding, compiling kernels…whatever you want to throw at it…the CPU will handle with a smile.
Conclusion:
The greatest thing about this laptop is its lack of the dreaded M.A.T. (Microsoft-Added-Tax). While I found comparable laptops with a copy of windows for about $150 less…I know NONE of my money is going to Microsoft when I buy from system76. All of my money is going towards the hardware itself, not an operating system that I will never use again. System76 is a great example of how one can make money from open source software; they are selling hardware, support, and service. I’m very pleased with my new toy and hope this review may encourage others to support Linux vendors!
Thanks for taking the time to listen!