Buying a New Laptop

[Jim Herrmann]

So, you think if I buy the $1300 laptop from them, it'll be a good reliable
machine, and I will have supported a Linux distributor with my purchase?
That's the way I'm leaning now.  It looks like a bad ass machine.  It's got
4 memory slots, as opposed to most machines 2 slots.  It's got Nvidia with
1.5GB VRAM.  I think I'll upgrade to the 500GB hybrid drive with the 4GB SSD
on board.  That sounds sweet.  I also like the fact that the display is a
matte finish.  One of the options is to have another hard drive in place of
the DVD drive.  That sounds like Ultra Bay technology, which would be
IBM/Lenovo.

>From my cart (what do you think?):

[image: Gazelle
Professional]<http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?products_id=113%7B1%7D827%7B56%7D941%7B55%7D811%7B60%7D932%7B3%7D935%7B4%7D839%7B64%7D978%7B6%7D757%7B9%7D35%7B10%7D38%7B54%7D426%7B11%7D40%7B12%7D42%7B62%7D716>
*Gazelle Professional*<http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?products_id=113%7B1%7D827%7B56%7D941%7B55%7D811%7B60%7D932%7B3%7D935%7B4%7D839%7B64%7D978%7B6%7D757%7B9%7D35%7B10%7D38%7B54%7D426%7B11%7D40%7B12%7D42%7B62%7D716>
* - Operating System Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) 64-bit*
* - Display Resolution 15.6" Full HD LED Display with Matte Finished Surface
(1920 x 1080)*
* - Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M Graphics with 1.5GB GDDR5 Video Memory*
* - Processor 2nd Generation Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache,
2.00GHz )*
* - Memory 4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 2GB*
* - Hard Drive 500GB 7200rpm SATA Hybrid Hard Drive with 4GB SSD*
* - Optical Drive Bay 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super-Multi Drive*
* - Wireless Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN
Module*
* - Extra Battery no extra battery*
* - Extra AC Adapter no extra AC adapter*
* - Car AC Adapter no car AC adapter*
* - Laptop Bag no bag*
* - Hardware Warranty 1 Yr. Ltd. Warranty and 1 Yr. Technical Support*
* - Recycle Your Old Computer no, thank you


*
On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Joe Holloway <jholloway7 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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