Buying a New Laptop

[Joe Holloway]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Jim Herrmann <kclug at 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&osCsid=j80qvmcncigmf60sf0b2ffv9q0
>
> 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.