[ubuntu-uk] System76 Lemur

[Kris Douglas]

On 9 February 2012 17:25, Simon Greenwood <sfgreenwood at 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