System 76 vs Asus K55A

[chisle]

Hey guys i wanted your guys expert knowledge and advice on this dilemma. I was looking at a new laptop that i will be installing ubuntu on of course. what i was looking at what system 76's Pangolin Performance model with 8gb ram, and 750 hybrid hdd with the 8gb ssd as well as the bluetooth combo upgrade. all these upgrades brings the price to $893. Then i was also looking at a similar configuration through Xotic PC. The reason i was looking through them is i am able to upgrade the laptops to have simiilar configurations. I was looking at the Asus K55A-DB51. I am upgrading the ram to 8gb, putting in a 60 gb SSD as well as a second 500GB HDD and the bluetooth combo as well. the system 76 and the Asus both have a 3rd gen i5-3210M CPU as well as the same intel HD 4000 graphics card. The ASUS comes out to $894 with all the upgrades. So they are probably as close in comparison as one can get accept for the HDD's. I just wanted to get your guy's opinions?

[freechelmi]

In short : If the system76 specs/price is on Par with Asus one equivalent :

Buy system76 without any hesitation

[Welly Wu]

I had an ASUS N61JV-X2 notebook PC which I purchased from Amazon a little over two years ago and the internal fan died in less than 22 months of hard usage. One thing to note about the System76 laptops is that the fan is easily replaced by System76 without having to disassemble the entire unit and the replacement fee should be a nominal fee. System76 guarantees that their computers will run the latest stable versions of Ubuntu and if you run into a problem, then they will work with you to fix the problem to your satisfaction. I can pretty much guarantee that you will get a great user and customer experience if you decide to purchase the System76 laptop PC. My System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) is the best notebook PC or computer that I have ever used and I have tried Dell, Toshiba, ASUS, etc. in the past. They were okay computers at the time, but they developed serious problems in under 2 years of ownership. Trying to install and run Ubuntu on these computers was a pain in the neck and I wasted a lot of time trying to get various hardware to work properly with Ubuntu. You should keep that in mind. It could wind up swaying your decision to buy the System76 Pangolin Performance notebook PC.

[Welly Wu]

By the way, the Intel 60 GB SATA-III 6 GB/s SSD should be noticeably faster than the Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB with 8 GB SLC NAND FLASH SSD hybrid hard disk drive, but you will not notice that much of a difference. I would say that you get the System76 Pangonlin Performance notebook PC because the Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB with 8 GB SLC NAND FLASH SSD will be very fast after you use it under normal conditions after the first week. It will offer SSD like performance after the first week and you get 750 GB of storage capacity which is considerably more than the 60 GB SSD and 500 GB hard disk drive combination. In the end, you will wind up spending less money to upgrade the RAM and disk drives in the System76 Pangolin Performance notebook PC in the long run because you will find its performance to be very good and you will be able to store a considerably larger amount of data on your laptop PC. The Intel Core i5-3210M CPU is very fast and it is suitable for most everyday tasks and it is energy efficient. The Ivy Bridge CPUs are terrific in that they support Intel Secure Key technology, AES-NI, and Intel VT-x along with Intel HD Graphics 4000 which will play older PC games at over 30 frames per second. They are good for full HD 1080p resolution pictures and movies and video clips.

Get the System76 Pangolin Performance. You won't be disappointed.

[chisle]

Thanks Welly Wu, since i have been in the market searching I have not been between system 76 lemur and the zareason ultralap 430. Accept if i go with that model PC, it wont be from zareason it will actually be from cyberpowerpc.com, because they offer then same ultrabook but for much less for the upgrades i want to make. I actually have a spread sheet if you wouldnt mind checking out and giving me your feedback. I think i have been leaning more towards system76 based on the support for ubuntu through them, but the ultrabook is pretty tempting due to portability and how long the battery lasts which is about 6 hours. well apparently cant upload excel spread sheets so here is the link to it.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/U...aming_Notebook

Same ultrabook zareason is offering but for less money, and i assume given the specs that ubuntu should run pretty well with little trouble with drivers and things.

[Ubun2to]

but the ultrabook is pretty tempting due to portability and how long the battery lasts which is about 6 hours.

Laptop batteries...the biggest lie in the computer industry.
The way manufacturers test batteries is simple-
1. Dim screen down to 0% brightness (or install some mod that makes it so dim that you literally can not see anything, as in make the brightness -100%).
2. Turn off all connections (Wifi, Bluetooth, cellular data, etc.)
3. Turn off everything necessary for the machine to run (basically the only things turned on are the hard drive, screen, keyboard/mouse, and explorer.exe).
4. Wait and see how long it takes for the laptop to die without touching it.
I personally take the battery claims with a grain of salt-expect 3 or 4 hours for a 5 or 6 hour claim. For Linux systems, the battery life is less than that for Windows due to kernel inefficiencies.

[chisle]

i know system76 batteries dont last that long to begin with, to be expected with some of the hardware they are running, but have the optimized ubuntu to work more efficiently with the battery or have they left that alone?

[ubuntu27]

For better battery life you can always install Jupiter Applet

[Ubun2to]

i know system76 batteries dont last that long to begin with, to be expected with some of the hardware they are running, but have the optimized ubuntu to work more efficiently with the battery or have they left that alone?

Here is what I have on my Lemur Ultra (these were the default settings):
WiFi-enabled.
Brightness-100%.
Bluetooth-disabled until activated (I only turn it on when I need to transfer data to my phone-it really knows how to help sap the battery).
Processes-seems that all the default processes and services are running in my analysis.
Unity-Unity 3D (2D is obviously less resource intensive).
Mine can last 2-3 hours using the default configuration, up to 4 hours if I disable WiFi, and lower the brightness.
I do not think they modified the kernel-otherwise it would most likely show on uname -a when compared to my HP desktop.