On 9 February 2012 17:25, Simon Greenwood <sfgreenw...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have been planning to buy a new laptop for a year or so. When I first > started looking System76 had their 13.3" Lemurs but I didn't really have the > spare cash to buy one. After having an eBay bonfire of my spare computing > junk and a decent little tax rebate I decided that it was to go for it. > After much debate about Ultrabooks (the jury still seems to be about Linux > support) against something like the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 (lovely, supported > but rather pricey), I went to have a look at System76.com again to find that > they now have a 14" Lemur and, like all their laptops it can be configured > with a wide range of options. > > I went for the i7 processor, 8Gb of RAM and the hybrid 500Gb SATA/4Gb SSD > disk. Total cost including shipping but not UK VAT was just over £680. VAT, > which I had to pay in cash to the UPS driver, was £130, so for just over > £810, I have a very able PC that runs Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit out of the box. > > The machines are made by Sager with configuration done in-house by System76. > It looks not unlike the last generation of black Macbooks, bigger than my > last couple of machines, but not as big as a 15.6" machine, and with a > glossy finish. It has a chiclet keyboard with an Ubuntu key, which is a > great touch. The keyboard is pleasingly clicky if a little bit noisy. > > When I booted it I had a bit of confusion about the SSD disk - I assumed it > was a separate disk device and that the OS could be installed on it for > speediness. It's more like a large, smart cache where often used files get > stored for faster execution, and it does make a noticeable difference. This > is a common misconception about the disks (Seagate Momentum XL) though. > > So impressions so far - it has a US keyboard obviously, which is a bit > different to use. I'm not quite a touch typist and I need to see the keys as > a visual cue. I tried switching to a UK keyboard layout but I couldn't find > the '|' key, so switched back to US-English with Euro key, which is roughly > mapped on the correct keyboard. I'll reassign Shift-4 ($) to '£' at some > point. > > The screen is very good and very bright. The brightness keys seem to be the > only thing that the System76 drivers control but they do make a difference. > > The touchpad is a little odd - it's actually toggled on the keyboard with > Fn-1. This might be configurable and it did fail briefly at one point last > night and required me to log out and log back in again to get it to work. I > had a similar problem with the Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 11 that I've been using > for the last few months although that happens a lot more, like every few > minutes, so I'm not too worried as yet. > > Sound needed a little bit of work to get everything working properly. I was > playing with headphones last night and it took a bit of trial and error > twiddling between the Sound control panel and alsamixer to get them working. > > Battery life isn't brilliant, three hours at a push (there's an option for a > 9-cell battery but I didn't bother as it won't be going too far from home > usually). > > All in all so far, a very good buy, certainly cheaper than the equivalent > machine in the UK, even including taxes, not that I actually found one that > I liked. The impression of running Ubuntu out of the box is very positive > and confirms that it's now a viable alternative to Windows and OS X. > > If you're looking for a decent hi-spec machine for desktop Ubuntu, I'd > recommend them. The basic Lemur, which is an i3 with 4Gb and a 500Gb SATA, > is $649, which, even allowing for £100 in taxes and delivery is still pretty > good value. Now to persuade Sager to make one with a UK keyboard... > > s/
www.pcspecialist.co.uk resell clevo/sager machines exactly the same as System76, I have found them to be cheaper to some extent because of delivery. The clevo/sager shells run sweet as a nut and couple them with some good quality components and you're on to a winner. The best thing is that they ship them without OS if you choose. -- Regards, Kris Douglas. www.krisd.eu -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
