# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Ubuntu Specialised Support > System76 Support > [ubuntu] Lemur UltraThin - Underpowered? Low memory?

## Ian505

I've been drooling over a S76 Lemur UltraThin for a while now, as my 8 year old Compaq Presario 900 is really showing it's age. The optical drive kicked the bucket a few years back, I've closed the lid on a mouse cord and damaged the LCD, no integrated wifi and the PCMCIA card slot is becoming flaky. 

I am planning on buying the Lemur as of now, but need a several questions answered first.

1. [ANSWERED] Is the Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3Ghz sufficient? Can you play 1080p YouTube videos on it smoothly, assuming you wait for it to buffer? The same for Hulu at 480p? What can't it do? - No 1080p, streaming or otherwise, but YouTube HD and Hulu 480p works. DVD-quality (720p) in h264 works as well.
2. [ANSWERED] Is the CPU soldered in? - Yes.
3. [ANSWERED] Is there only one DIMM slot on the machine? Is the memory upgradeable, or soldered in? - One, user upgradeable DDR3 slot.
4. [ANSWERED] Is it possible to disassemble the laptop for cleaning? It doesn't need to be easy, and ribbon cables aren't a problem, but I do like to do it ever few months. - A few panels on the bottom that allow for blowing dust out, but total disassembly will void warranty.
5. [ANSWERED] How long does the battery last? I would assume the LED screen would help increase battery life significantly. - No scientific testing done, but appears to be ~4-5 hours.
6. [ANSWERED] Is the hard drive user upgradeable? I want to be able to upgrade it to an SSD next August when the prices become reasonable. - Absolutely yes.
*7. What voltage DC does the machine run on? And if it's 12V, is it REALLY 12V or is it like a car battery where it says 12V but is really 13.8V?*
*8. Is the battery user-replaceable? Will you stock replacement batteries in the future, to replace those that've worn out?*
9. [ANSWERED] Does it get hot? What I mean by this is does it make your legs warm enough to make it uncomfortable on a hot summer day? - Not too bad, though would probably be uncomfortable in the sun on a summer day.
10. [ANSWERED] Is it noisy? Are the fans loud? A dB rating would be nice... - Not particularly - the HDD is the loudest of everything.
11. [ANSWERED] Will a third party USB optical drive work as a boot device? - Yes.
12. [ANSWERED] How long does it take to boot? - Roughly thirty seconds.
13. [ANSWERED] Once booted, are all the menus instantly responsive, somewhat delayed, or painfully slow? - Not lightning fast, but responsive enough.
14. [ANSWERED] How much is shipping to 20637, assuming the bag was not purchased? - $15.66 as of Tues November 24, 2009 @ 5:48PM

If you only know the answer to some of the questions, please _please_ post them instead of waiting to get all of them to post. Also, if you aren't absolutely sure of the answer your giving, please say so.

Thanks,
Ian

*NOTE - If you have anything you can contribute, please do so even if a question is marked answered!*

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## jjacobs2

1.  It doesn't seem to work with the youtube 1080p quality videos but if flash provides gpu accelerated h264 decoding for linux at some point then it should work.  Hulu 480p works and youtube HD works.  I am able to play 720p h264 mkv files on it easily, although not 1080p.
2.  Not sure if it's soldered in but you could only replace it with another 10 watt TDP processor which would limit your upgrade options to 1.4 or 1.6 ghz at best. 
3.  Yes, there's just one slot and from what Tom said it seems to be user upgradable.  
4.  I don't know for sure but I can't imagine being unable to open a laptop.
5.  Battery life seems to be about 4-5 hours but I haven't fully tested that. I also didn't make any effort to boost battery life beyond default ubuntu settings (powertop etc.)
6. The hard drive should be easily replaceable (haven't tested though.)
7.  Tom did indicate they would be user replaceable and spares would be available at some point in the future.  Larger sizes are probably not going to be available although it looked like they had bigger sizes in the manual.
8. No idea.
9. It's not bad.  I suspect it would warm up somewhat but not unbearably in the summer, unless you were in direct sunlight.
10. I have the 7200 rpm drive and I can definitely hear it running unless I have music or a video on.  If I had a 5400 rpm or an SSD I don't think this would be an issue.  It's not obnoxiously loud though.  
11.  Yes, I did test this and it works fine. 
12.  It seemed like about 30 seconds.
13.  Reasonably responsive.  Not the instant response you get from SSDs but they come up within a few seconds.
14.  Shipping to Illinois cost $15.57.  State tax is collected but not county/city taxes.

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## thomasaaron

> 2. Is the CPU soldered in?


Yes.




> 4. Is it possible to disassemble the laptop for cleaning? It doesn't need to be easy, and ribbon cables aren't a problem, but I do like to do it ever few months.


There are a couple of panels on the bottom you can remove to blow the dust out. As far as dismantling the entire machine, that probably would void your warranty.




> 6. Is the hard drive user upgradeable? I want to be able to upgrade it to an SSD next August when the prices become reasonable.


Yes.




> 9. Does it get hot? What I mean by this is does it make your legs warm enough to make it uncomfortable on a hot summer day?


It doesn't seem hot to me. But that's always a tough one to quantify, and the folks that ask it are usually more aware of heat than I am. I'll let users chime in on it.




> 14. How much is shipping to 20637, assuming the bag was not purchased?


Click the "Add to Cart" button, and there will be a shipping calculator at the bottom of the page.

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## Ian505

Thank you very much for the replies. I greatly appreciate them. I have only one question...

...jjacobs2 - Can you rephrase response to your number 7? I can't seem to make sense of it...

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## jjacobs2

Sorry, 7 and 8 are swapped.  I was talking about the battery.

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## Ian505

Is there a higher resolution version of this image?

http://system76.com/images/lemu1_open_large.jpg

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## Paul Stone

jjacobs2,

Can you divulge who the manufacturer of the HDD is?  I would like to compare the manufacturer specs in order to help decide between the 5400 and 7200 RPM drive.  (Although, I'm not sure whether to believe manufacturer(s) who claim that their 7200 RPM drives draw the same amount of power as their 5400 RPM drives.)

Have you observed any differences (performance, heat, battery life) between drives with the two different rotational speeds?  Do you have any recommendation?

Also, I notice that there is a price drop of $30 on the Lemur.  Is that temporary?

So many questions...  :Wink:

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## Paul Stone

Oh, it looks like the price drops are for a Thanksgiving sale, so I guess it is temporary.

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## thomasaaron

> http://system76.com/product_info.php...products_id=97


No. But there are some different angles here...
http://system76.com/product_info.php...products_id=97




```
Can you divulge who the manufacturer of the HDD is?
```

I *would* but it's difficult to say, as we often change brands to give customers the best bang for the buck. Probably Hitachi right now.




> Have you observed any differences (performance, heat, battery life) between drives with the two different rotational speeds? Do you have any recommendation?


TA: 7200 RPM drives use more battery than 5400. If you are not doing heavy read-write operations, you may not notice a big difference except for boot time and opening applications.




> Also, I notice that there is a price drop of $30 on the Lemur. Is that temporary?


Black Friday Sale.

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## greg_g

Tom: Honestly, how does the build quality of the Lemur feel? Can you compare it to the Daru2?

Thanks for answering these questions, they are really helping me decide on buying the Lemur this Friday  :Smile:

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## thomasaaron

Hi, Greg.

Long time no see (...hear? ...write). Happy Turkey Day.

Well, it is much lighter than the DarU1. For an ultra-thin lappy, it is reasonably solid, I think. Very nice, attractive machine.

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## greg_g

Thanks, Tom.

Yes, very long time since I've been on the forums. Still a '76 fanboy though  :Smile:

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## Paul Stone

Found this chart listing the performance of the SU7300 CPU in comparison with other CPUs.  Just kind of gives you a general idea of where it falls, performance-wise.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_look...00+%40+1.30GHz

Looks not too bad to me.  Remember, this is an ultrathin laptop.

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## jjacobs2

Paul, it seems like the 7200 is fast but noisy.  I'd recommend the intel ssd or just get a cheaper ssd separately and add it in.  It'd be much better in performance, power, heat, and noise.  The main reason I wanted the HDD is for the storage space or I would've gotten the SSD in the first place.  

Build quality is ok.  It's definitely designed for light weight more than durability but I don't feel like it's too fragile.  If you're expecting it to get banged around a lot this probably isn't the best laptop to buy though.

I'd take those passmark benchmarks with a grain of salt.  You can see on there that many of the processors benchmarked were not running at full speed for the benchmark.  Since the architecture is the same you should be able to compare clock speeds with other core 2 duo models to get an idea how they compare.  The base model in the pangolin is roughly comparable to a 1.8 ghz core 2 duo from what I've read.

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## Paul Stone

> Paul, it seems like the 7200 is fast but noisy.


Thanks for the info.  That's disappointing.  Is it a whine, clicking sound (seek to track), or the fan which generates the most noise? I'm not too worried about clicking sounds or fan noise, but a high-pitched whine might be difficult for me to tolerate.  I once had a desktop computer with a Quantum Fireball HDD that drove me up the wall.

Regarding seek to track, depending upon the manufacturer, it may be possible to adjust the hard drive performance so it's quieter, by using a manufacturer-supplied utility.  Basically, this would just cause the seeks to take a little longer, so they would be less jarring (clicks would not be so loud).

This post reported that the fan makes a lot of noise when the SSD is installed.

Also, I know someone who bought the MacBook Air when it first came out, and it kept overheating, so he had to return it to the factory, where they basically scaled down his CPU. So, I guess those SSDs can run pretty hot.

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## Paul Stone

> Regarding seek to track, depending upon the manufacturer, it may be possible to adjust the hard drive performance so it's quieter, by using a manufacturer-supplied utility.  Basically, this would just cause the seeks to take a little longer, so they would be less jarring (clicks would not be so loud).


Automatic Acoustic Management.  Use at your own risk.  Looks like hdparm might be able to do it.

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## msrinath80

> I've been drooling over a S76 Lemur UltraThin for a while now, as my 8 year old Compaq Presario 900 is really showing it's age. The optical drive kicked the bucket a few years back, I've closed the lid on a mouse cord and damaged the LCD, no integrated wifi and the PCMCIA card slot is becoming flaky. 
> 
> I am planning on buying the Lemur as of now, but need a several questions answered first.
> 
> 1. [ANSWERED] Is the Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3Ghz sufficient? Can you play 1080p YouTube videos on it smoothly, assuming you wait for it to buffer? The same for Hulu at 480p? What can't it do? - No 1080p, streaming or otherwise, but YouTube HD and Hulu 480p works. DVD-quality (720p) in h264 works as well.
> 2. [ANSWERED] Is the CPU soldered in? - Yes.
> 3. [ANSWERED] Is there only one DIMM slot on the machine? Is the memory upgradeable, or soldered in? - One, user upgradeable DDR3 slot.
> 4. [ANSWERED] Is it possible to disassemble the laptop for cleaning? It doesn't need to be easy, and ribbon cables aren't a problem, but I do like to do it ever few months. - A few panels on the bottom that allow for blowing dust out, but total disassembly will void warranty.
> 5. [ANSWERED] How long does the battery last? I would assume the LED screen would help increase battery life significantly. - No scientific testing done, but appears to be ~4-5 hours.
> ...


Just an FYI for anyone still interested. The Lemur (lemu1) can (I REPEAT CAN) play 1080p videos effortlessly. I just tested it with this[1] trailer. I've noticed that using the multi-threaded version of mplayer (i.e. mplayer-mt) is required when playing certain HD videos which would otherwise struggle. With mplayer-mt ANY video file I throw at it gets played smoothly.

After about 4 months of usage, I now have an average battery life of 2 hours and the fan now makes a distinct sound whenever it turns on. In a quiet room, this is very noticeable, with ambient noise, not so much.

Of course I should also mention that I run a Debian (squeeze) 32-bit bigmem kernel on the Lemur.

References:
[1] http://www.dvdloc8.com/clip.php?movieid=12954&clipid=1

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## tonyyarusso

Spare / replacement batteries for the first-generation Lemur are available on http://www.system76.com/product_info...products_id=68 .  I would assume that ones for the second-gen either are the same or will be posted on that page shortly.

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## isantop

> Spare / replacement batteries for the first-generation Lemur are available on http://www.system76.com/product_info...products_id=68 .  I would assume that ones for the second-gen either are the same or will be posted on that page shortly.


Exactly.  They should also be the same price ($95), although the battery itself is just a little bit different.

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## lue42x

> Found this chart listing the performance of the SU7300 CPU in comparison with other CPUs.  Just kind of gives you a general idea of where it falls, performance-wise.
> 
> http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_look...00+%40+1.30GHz
> 
> Looks not too bad to me.  Remember, this is an ultrathin laptop.




...wow, the Lemu1's processor ranks pretty well.  How is it possible that a 1.3 ghz core2duo processor ranks so well against processors with higher ghz numbers?

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## savantelite

I would like to mention "Why you should buy a lemur"

Buy a Lemur for 
     comfort
     Nice keyboard
     very light
     great display
     low heat
     plays hdmi video very well 

"why not to buy a lemur"
     Not as durible as netbooks. Ultra thin with big screen. 
     small battery. expect 2 and half hours of use
     netbooks are around 4 to 5 and half hours of use. 

I run my lemur with and intell ssd 80 gig. Its the one they install. Very quiet.

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## Flyers2391

> ...wow, the Lemu1's processor ranks pretty well.  How is it possible that a 1.3 ghz core2duo processor ranks so well against processors with higher ghz numbers?


From what I've read it isn't so much about clock speed anymore (they peaked due to heat), more the processor architecture.  

So a newer architecture will run your software better than an old architecture at higher GHz

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## houstonbofh

A bit jerky at 1080p but I that that is due to scaling.  Might be smoother on an external monitor.

Power 19v at 3.42 amps.
Battery Model Number W830BAT-3 (SCUD)

And I love the system.

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## zool---

You might want to read this post I just found, it's a very positive review:

http://minimallinux.com/post/2557888...emur-ultrathin

Cheers,

z.

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## JavaNut13

You guys are saying about 4-5 hours battery. I found this post: http://blag.depotwarehouse.net/2011/...in-review.html which suggests 2 hour battery life.

Are you using the standard battery or extended 62 WH one (if you are, is it physically extended out the PC?)

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## dmoconnell

I've would actually like to know myself. I've heard people say either 2 hrs or 4 hrs. (yes i am talking about the same battery (the 31WH not the 62WH)) and that the bigger battery gets double the standard.
The S76 facebook page says 4 hours for the standard battery and on here they said 3 hours for the same battery.
Can someone from System76 please give what the real battery time is for both batteries, or better yet please send me a free one so i can test it  :Very Happy: 
Dm

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