On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Jim Herrmann kclug@itdepends.com wrote:
The more I look at it and compare, this System 76 machine actually looks pretty good. And it comes with Ubuntu 10.10. http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=113&os...
Thoughts? Anyone had a System76 experience?
I bought one of their higher-end laptops about 4 years ago and have had a really good experience with it. It's running Ubuntu 10.10 like a champ and still as snappy as day one which I think was 6.10. I haven't needed any support on it, so I can't speak to that from my personal use perspective. That said...
Late 2009, near the holiday season, the company I work for was in a pinch because we had just landed some significant new business and needed to quickly procure some laptops and workstations for new employees. Because of the holidays, Dell couldn't fulfill our order in time, but System76 could. We were wanting to experiment with a new vendor anyway and also eager to deploy desktop GNU/Linux for these new positions which were mainly using web-based logistics software.
It turned out to be a pretty poor experience overall. We bought 10 or so of their laptops (which were lower end based on availability) and 15 or so small form factor workstations. I don' t know exactly how many are still in use, but it's not very many, if any. None of the laptops we deployed at our HQ are still operational. There were hard disk failures, display adapter failures, keyboard failures, you name it. The failure rate of these devices within their warranty period was much higher than any other vendor we'd used prior to that. After the first couple of RMAs they essentially gave up and started inventing reasons why the failures were our fault so they wouldn't have to honor the warranty on them.
My intent isn't to bash them or distribute FUD, but just to give an idea that their niche likely isn't as a business supplier. It could be that they were overly eager to win our business and got in over their heads... Or that our expectations were too high... Or that because of the timing of the order, we got some hobbled together lower end hardware.
With all that said, if you go with System76, my recommendation would be to stick to the higher end of the spectrum. Even given our bad experience at work, I'd likely consider them on my next laptop purchase.