New Darter User Experience?

[Linuturk]

Has anyone purchased the new Darter yet? I'd like to know what you think of it, and if you have had any problems?

Have you installed anything besides Ubuntu, like Fedora?

[limey_rick]

Hi there,

I just got a new Darter last week. I purchased one with 4GB of RAM, 200GB of 7200 RPM storage and an extra extended life battery.

Shipping was a bit slow due to a large number of orders, but as I spent a fair bit of time researching what I wanted I was patient and the laptop came in just over three weeks. By the time it had arrived though, the prices on System76's website has dropped for the same laptop by about $150 so I guess I'll put that down to bad luck.

The laptop is nice looking, a good size and light. I was happy with how it looked, but one small annoying point was the "Powered By Ubuntu" sticker on the keyboard shell, which had been slapped on crooked. A minor point I know, but stuff like this winds me up, particularly when you spend a fair bit of money and creates a poor first impression.

So I fired up the laptop, created my account and I am off. Darter finds my home wireless network, I connect quickly and easily - great - so I then start installing all the restricted packages for music, DVDs and so on, checking them all out. I get all of these working fine, no problems, but the sound from the darter is not ideal at first. Had to troubleshoot this a bit and found a couple of threads that indicate you need to make sure the master and PCM channels are set to max. Even with the sound maxed out, the laptop speakers are not the best, but I'm ok with that since I will most often be using headphones. With headphones, sound is much better, but it is not as loud as I would have liked. Searching many forums and contacting System76 support suggests that this can be a general issue with LINUX using ALSA, not necessarily a problem with the laptop HW. Indeed, I have an Ubuntu desktop with a dedicated sound card and the sound is not as loud as the same machine running XP.

Next I wanted to install LAMP, but unfortunately for me, while using tasksel I managed to remove GNOME by accident so decided to re-install the whole system again. When I did this the laptop started fine, but the display was corrupted. I managed to login, but the displayed desktop was impossible to read. I decided to install 7.10 and then did an online update to 8.04 which resolved most of the display problems, but left a few glitches when logging in. After I got to this stage, I tried another complete re-install of 8.04 and since then, everything has been fine. A complete re-install of 8.04 and System76 drivers was dead easy compared to what I normally would have to go through for a windows machine.

I've been using it about a week know and I am very happy. The graphics are very sharp, bluetooth works fine (I can connect to my cell phone) and printing through a network is fine too. Overall its a very nice looking system and is pretty much just what I was looking for. In addition, being a System76 newbie, I found their support and forums very useful.

[thomasaaron]

Email me your shipping address, and I'll get you a new Ubuntu key sticker.
support(at)system76(dot)com

[limey_rick]

No worries as I already sent in a stamped addressed envelope to System76 this week.

[scojo]

I just got my new Darter via UPS last night.

It is a really nice little machine. I got 3G of ram.

So far this little thing is running perfectly. I haven't had any problems that I'm aware of. I'm only moderately proficient at linux, so I may not be the most reliable authority, but I've been very happy so far.

One thing I can't get over how quiet this is. I was running various *nixes on my 3 year old Gateway laptop and it seemed like the fan was always maxed out. This thing is generally quiet. Very nice.

[thomasaaron]

limey_rick,

The envelope you sent in won't yield a key sticker. That's just for the powered by Ubuntu stickers. Give me a call or send me an email for the key sticker.

[jstorm940]

I just received my new darter. 4gb ram / 320 hd. So far it seems pretty good. Not a great fine of the shiny
black case but...battery life is ok. Still conditioning the batteries so I do not have great numbers yet.

The one problem that is bugging be is the etho network interface. Wireless seems to work great but
when trying to use a static address setup via the network admin tool I seem to run into problems
at work with accessing the gateway. DHCP seems to be ok both at work and at home, but setting a static
ip address is giving me grief. TIme to delve into route add I guess. I am wondering if anyone else has had issues with 8,04 (and I think it must be an Ubuntu issue, not system76) and static ip assignments to eth0?

[Modax42]

Are there any graphics issues with the new Darter laptops? I have read in other threads that x4500 graphics are not supported, but presumably system 76 has a work-around. Does anyone have any info?

[thomasaaron]

There are no graphics issues with the new Darter under Hardy.

[Modax42]

There are no graphics issues with the new Darter under Hardy.
Thank you. I ordered my new Darter a few days ago, so this is definitely reassuring.

[weverjames]

good luck, modax.
I bought a gazelle value, no more than 1 year ago. Now my DVDCD drive is not working.
I hope is not a hardware problem, but I havent found a solution for this.
My Desktop dell preloaded with ubuntu is running fine, though ( 2.5 years now).
Now I am hesitant to do business with system 76, till I can fix my laptop (I am planning to replace my desktop/laptop to my parents, as I am moving).
You will tell us about your experience.

[thomasaaron]

James, you have already posted your request for help in another thread, and you've been invited to contact us for direct technical support.

This thread has to do with the new Darter Ultra.

[Modax42]

good luck, Modax.
I bought a gazelle value, no more than 1 year ago. Now my DVDCD drive is not working.
I hope is not a hardware problem, but I haven't found a solution for this.
My Desktop dell preloaded with ubuntu is running fine, though ( 2.5 years now).
Now I am hesitant to do business with system 76, till I can fix my laptop (I am planning to replace my desktop/laptop to my parents, as I am moving).
You will tell us about your experience.

Thanks, I will do that. In any case, I bought the extended 3 year warranty and technical support with my Darter, so if there are any problems down the road, I should be covered. I know a lot of people like to skip the extended warranties for their laptops, but it sure paid off with my current system, which suffered a motherboard failure after 18 months.

[Modax42]

My new Darter Ultra has arrived!

I haven't tested everything yet, and so I will post part 2 of this review in a few days once I've had a chance to try everything out.

The shipping was very quick: although I live in Canada, my Darter arrived a mere 8 days after I ordered it. The laptop comes securely packed, with many layers of packaging to remove. Undoubtedly this is to ensure that the Darter is not damaged in shipping.

The laptop is small, light and sturdy. Although I am not a laptop connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, I would say that the Darter is very well built. It has a lovely glossy piano black finish, which will surely attract dust and fingerprints, but System 76 has provided a complementary pink microfibre cleaning mit, which should come in handy for this reason.

All the components I ordered were faithfully delivered in the package, including the extra AC adapter and the extra 8 cell battery.

The computer boots up very quietly, and it generates little heat. Using it on my lap feels natural; it is a world apart from my old Compaq which runs loud and hot.

Setting up the computer is utterly hassle free. Gone are the days of creating windows recovery disks, installing norton internet security, installing microsoft office, uninstalling the glut of bloatware...all gone! Yes, those days are gone. Take that windows users!

The keyboard, although it is smaller than the one on my compaq, is well laid out and very tactil. I was quickly able to begin typing accurately on it at my natural speed. The trackpad is much better than the one on my compaq and the buttons feel very nice. I still prefer to use a usb mouse, however.

The Darter has a very powerful wireless connection. On my compaq, which has a broadcom 4318, I can only see my personal network, and the network of the people next door. On my Darter, I am able to see wifi networks from across the whole neighborhood!

The sound is rather weak compared to my compaq, but I imagine that this is pretty typical for ultraportables.

One complaint is the battery life on the 4-cell. It only seems to capable of 1 hour and 50 minutes when doing a light mixture of web browsing and word processing, which is a far cry from the 3.5 hours advertised on the System 76 website. I haven't tested the 8-cell yet, but I hope it lasts more than proportionately longer!

I used the sound recorder app to test the built in microphone, but it does not appear to be working, as I heard nothing on playback.

I tried to install skype, but it appears that 64 bit is not supported, but you can't blame system 76 for that.

3D acceleration performance, at least with the current drivers, is extremely poor. My nintendo 64 emulator was unplayable, averaging just 15 frames per second at 320x240 QVGA resolution. My friend's laptop running 8.04 with Intel X3100 graphics runs that emulator flawlessly out of the box at 640x480, so I hope that as the drivers for the X4500 HD mature, the performance will improve dramatically.

Another worrying thing is that whenever I minimize a window, it disappears from the desktop and I am unable to bring it back without using the ALT+TAB command. How can I get these windows to behave properly?

[Modax42]

Another worrying thing is that whenever I minimize a window, it disappears from the desktop and I am unable to bring it back without using the ALT+TAB command. How can I get these windows to behave properly?

Okay, I found the solution to this problem here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=878999&highlight=minimized+windows+disappear

[Modax42]

I tried to install skype, but it appears that 64 bit is not supported, but you can't blame system 76 for that.

This is also a non-issue as I found in this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=432295&highlight=skype

[newdarteruser]

This is also a non-issue as I found in this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=432295&highlight=skype

Does the built in webcam work for you on skype?

[Modax42]

Does the built in webcam work for you on skype?

unfortunately, no. Although the webcam is working in Cheese.

[thomasaaron]

Did you install skype following the mediabuntu repos?
http://knowledge76.com/index.php/Installing_Restricted_Formats

[Modax42]

I got my webcam to work in Ekiga softphone, and skype isn't really necessary right now, so I can wait until there is better support for the x4500.

A couple of other updates:

the battery life on the 8 cell unit is very disappointing. I was hoping it would last about 6 hours, but I only managed to get 3 hours of light word processing and web browsing while on Quiet Mode with the brightness turned down to the lowest settings. :icon_frown:

I followed the provided instructions to get the fingerprint reader to work, but was disappointed at how difficult it is to use. I will try it again, but I think most of the time it will be faster just to type in my password.

On the positive side, I was able to configure compiz-fusion exactly to my liking, and performance is very good. Overall I am satisfied with my purchase.


Any tips on improving the battery life?