Please share your experiences with System76

[jml]

Been playing,...err working with my new Darter for about a week now. It still rocks in my opinion. I carry it to and from work and its nice to have such a light weight piece of hardware. Battery life seems pretty good. I say seems because I have not had to rely on running only on the battery yet, but judging by the battery indicator, I should get about four hours of use from it. The fit and finish is very good. Screen looks great, and the wide screen format really is better for watching movies.

joe

[icewater]

Hi icewater - Sorry about the delays with the extra battery and not getting back to you. Please shoot another email to sales (at) system76.com and I'll make sure it's picked up and handled. (Our manufacturer has missed their battery shipments for 3 months. I have an extra battery at the Denver office I'll get right out to you.)

thanks, i got the battery in time for my conference.

[icewater]

i'm going to a conference in a couple weeks (hope the battery arrives by then), and maybe i will have a more useful evaluation of the system after using it on the road.

...so i've left the conference (still on the road). this will be a short "review" because - with a single exception - the serval met my every need, and when i have nothing bad to say, i say nothing at all

i think i did the right thing getting ubuntu preinstalled on hardware known by the vendor. at the conference i saw people having trouble getting connected to the wireless network - instead of participating, they spent all their time trying to get networking to work.

ok, here is the single exception i mentioned: using wireless devices of any kind were not allowed in the plane. since the laptop has a booting problem when the networking kill switch in the "off" position, i ended up not using it on the flight to the conference. maybe there is a workaround, but i didn't feel like experimenting while in flight...

FWIW, i saw a lot of ubuntu, and several System76 notebooks there.

[maniacmusician]

...so i've left the conference (still on the road). this will be a short "review" because - with a single exception - the serval met my every need, and when i have nothing bad to say, i say nothing at all

i think i did the right thing getting ubuntu preinstalled on hardware known by the vendor. at the conference i saw people having trouble getting connected to the wireless network - instead of participating, they spent all their time trying to get networking to work.

ok, here is the single exception i mentioned: using wireless devices of any kind were not allowed in the plane. since the laptop has a booting problem when the networking kill switch in the "off" position, i ended up not using it on the flight to the conference. maybe there is a workaround, but i didn't feel like experimenting while in flight...

FWIW, i saw a lot of ubuntu, and several System76 notebooks there.

It's odd that you'd see a lot of System76 notebooks...what kind of conference was this?

[jml]

One further observation on my Darter. I find that the signal strength and therefore the connection speed to my wireless network is much better with the Darter than it was with my ThinkPad plus NetGear WG511T wireless card. From a distance of about 25 feet through thick plaster and lath walls my Darter shows a signal strength of 4 bars (nearly 100%,) from the same location I would get at best two bars (about 35-37%,) with my ThinkPad. Not sure if this is a configuration proble, or a problem with the Atheros Drivers installed by Ubuntu. I also am now picking up two outside access points I never new I was within range of. One is encrypted, but one is wide open.....But I'm being good,....really.

Joe

[iMav]

I find that the signal strength and therefore the connection speed to my wireless network is much better with the Darter than it was with my ThinkPad plus NetGear WG511T wireless card.

Hey jml.

Is your Darter replacing your Thinkpad as your primary mobile machine? And, if so, which model Thinkpad? Do you find that you miss the trackpoint?

[jml]

No, my Darter is replacing my 12 inch PowerBook, which I still keep around for iTunes duty.

My ThinkPad was used as my "Desktop" computer. Its a model R40e. I tried to carry it around but its too darn heavy. As far as quality, its tops. Built like a tank, and weighs like one to. And yes, I do miss the track Point, but I started using laptops before there was a Track so I am adapting. Another thing you may consider is to add a small ubb mouse to your kit. That way if the track pad begins to irritate you, you can switch to the mouse. If you are interested in getting a refurbished laptop, here is a link to a company I bought an older R30 from. The prices are pretty good, they refurbish the laptops and usually replace the battery if needed before they sell it.

http://www.usanotebook.com/index.php

My problem is now I am spoiled by my Darter. Everything works, nothing to Tweak. So far its been as stable and reliable as my PowerBook, and noticably faster, and that's saying something.

Joe

[icewater]

It's odd that you'd see a lot of System76 notebooks...what kind of conference was this?

it was PyCon 2007.

[maniacmusician]

it was PyCon 2007.

ah I see

[demarcoc]

I've been using a new Pangolin laptop for about a week now. Here are my experiences thus far.

You should know that my knowledge about Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular, going into using this laptop was zero. I had already been using open-source software, particularly OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird, but I knew nothing about the OS (and I still don't know much).

Here are the pluses and minuses thus far from my experience...

PLUSES

+ The laptop is very attractive, as is the Ubuntu OS itself.

+ The customer support, which seems to consist of a single individual, is excellent. I've called the tech hotline more than once, and had zero time on hold. More importantly, the tech support guy (Carl) was very helpful, and actually asked me additional questions about how the new laptop was going. I've never, ever, had anyone in tech support do that before.

+ Basic functionality on everything was there out of the box. In particular, my wireless networks both at home and in my office were recognized easily, and connected right away.

+ The GUI interface (GNOME) is easy to navigate, and made sense to a total newbie like myself. There was no need to run any commands in Terminal to get things up and running, to install and update programs, etc.

+ The "one-click" update for all the installed software is extremely convenient. On first boot, only two updates were applied to the OS, which is Ubuntu 6.10.

+ Installing a printer on this is a dream compared to my old Windows laptops. My two HP printers were autodetected, and drivers were installed very quickly. I was up and printing on both machines within a minute. In particular, you don't need to install the tons of software that HP includes on their install disk, nor do you have the associated tons of HP processes constantly running in the background.

MINUSES

-- The build quality on the laptop is not the greatest. On my particular machine, the keyboard isn't seated properly, with a small warp towards the back of the keyboard, and an associated large ridge on the panel in front of the display. I will probably take the thing apart to fix this, but not until my warranty expires.

-- The laptop has no hardware volume control.

-- The speaker quality is quite bad for a recently built laptop.

-- Neither Suspend nor Hibernate work properly on the machine.

-- There are random intermittent failures of keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org; for example using Ctrl+O to open a file works maybe half the time.

-- The touchpad occasionally doesn't work at bootup, requiring a reboot.

I've been an early adopter of a lot of open source software, and I've found that the ones that hang around get substantially better over time. I'm hoping that some of the glitches I'm currently facing will be addressed in subsequent versions of Ubuntu.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase, and with getting out of the Microsoft lock-in plan...