The Hunt For The Perfect Laptop Continues
This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.
The hunt for a perfect laptop continues
This is a bit of a rant; feel free to skip it if you’re here for the KDE content. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and …Adventures in Linux and KDE
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infinitevalence
in reply to crankyrebel • • •TwiddleTwaddle
in reply to infinitevalence • • •infinitevalence
in reply to TwiddleTwaddle • • •beastlykings
in reply to TwiddleTwaddle • • •jumping_redditor
in reply to TwiddleTwaddle • • •Kongar
in reply to crankyrebel • • •I’ve been daily driving a framework 13 for like 9 months now. I’m pretty happy with it as a Linux machine.I can and will nitpick here to some of the points made in the article - but I’d buy another / recommended it regardless.
That’s it. 9 months of daily use, I love it, that’s my complaints list. The idea here is that someday, a better trackpad, or keyboard, or speakers will become available-and it’ll take me 5 minutes to upgrade. It’s a desktop laptop. And for me, everything “just works” on fedora 42.
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dan
in reply to Kongar • • •I've got a Framework 16 and love it.
Framework are nowhere near the scale of any of the large manufacturers, and they've had to spend a huge amount of time and money on R&D, so their laptops are probably always going to cost more. IMO it's worth the price though, given you can keep updating it over time.
vfscanf()
in reply to Kongar • • •tuckerm
in reply to vfscanf() • • •Kongar
in reply to tuckerm • • •tuckerm
in reply to Kongar • • •Kongar
in reply to vfscanf() • • •SkaveRat
in reply to vfscanf() • • •MoonMelon
in reply to Kongar • • •I've been getting annoying amdgpu crashes every now an then. I've tried all the various BIOS and kernel params but so far nothing has worked. Next step is rolling back a kernel version, at least that's what I've gathered from all the threads about it. It's bothersome but not frequent enough to be a real pain.
(This is an amd framework 13 with fedora 42 / wayland)
beastlykings
in reply to Kongar • • •Another vote here for framework 13. Love mine.
I've had mine about 4 months, minimal issues. I got a 7840U slightly on sale when the new AI 300 series came out.
I'm also running fedora 42, but it's Bluefin, based on silverblue. Everything works out of the box.
My biggest complaint is the sleep battery drain, iirc it's something like a few percent per hour, so I just get in the habit of turning it completely off if I'm not home with it plugged in. Otherwise it's dead when I need it, which sucks.
Also the fan can be a little loud and overzealous under barely moderate load, though I've found keeping it in power saving mode helps keep things cooler. Though I've been using it for note taking during some schooling this week, and it's been stone cold and silent, lasts all day on a single charge. So it definitely depends on your load. I appreciate having the power available when I need it, but wish it was better at keeping itself underclocked (or whatever it needs to do).
And finally the stock Wi-Fi 6 card in it gives some people problems with certain routers. Though I've only ever had problems with my parents starlink router 🤷♂️
That's a quick $20 upgrade though, to Wi-Fi 7, I just haven't needed to 🤷♂️
But still I'd buy another in a heartbeat.
Keyboard is great. Screen (2.8k) looks great to my eyes, though others say it has issues. No flex in the body. Touchpad is a little funky, but still great.
Plus when I want to upgrade the platform in a few years, or any component breaks before then, I can just fix it or upgrade it.
Highly recommend.
windowsphoneguy
in reply to crankyrebel • • •Übercomplicated
in reply to crankyrebel • • •bour
in reply to Übercomplicated • • •The build quality of my starbook is great.
The biggest + for me is how helpful, polite and friendly the support staff is.
Psyhackological
in reply to Übercomplicated • • •Übercomplicated
in reply to Psyhackological • • •Psyhackological
in reply to Übercomplicated • • •Hmm I have Serval WS which quality is top notch.
The keyboard feels nice.
The screen is 4K 144Hz.
All of the elements are aluminium so there is no bending. (Except some parts like probably keycaps of the keyboard and so on).
Sorry to hear that you have this experience. However I think you can count on System76 because they give for their laptops lifetime support.
Übercomplicated
in reply to Psyhackological • • •The Serval WS is also more than twice the price of my Pangolin... and I had a one year warranty, so I'm not sure what you mean with lifetime support. As for the specs (i.e. the screen etc.), yeah, they are great. But the case is very poorly designed on my pang12, and gets bent out of shape, which can cause mechanical failure in the hinge, quite frequently, despite the aluminum chassis. My complaint is just that it is far from rugged, which is problematic for me, as I travel a lot with it. But your mileage may vary.
PS: one more thing that really bothers me is the known problem with the touchepad on the pang12, which regularly fails. Mine also came with a faulty motherboard, which suggest bad quality control. Over all, these issues have caused me to lose faith in System76 hardware.
Psyhackological
in reply to Übercomplicated • • •I understand.
Regrading warranty I meant lifetime support for problems related to your System76 laptop. The warranty for a hardware is gone I think but I guess when you describe your issues correctly and they won't resolve it maybe they will suggest you something friendly.
And I get your point with the case. Tbh looked like it.
Hmm do you have up-to-date firmware? I had similar issue resolved by it.
Also faulty motherboard sounds like manufacturer issue not yours.
ter_maxima
in reply to crankyrebel • • •Nalivai
in reply to ter_maxima • • •Interstellar_1
in reply to Nalivai • • •onlooker
in reply to Interstellar_1 • • •BusyBoredom
in reply to onlooker • • •owlriver
in reply to BusyBoredom • • •BusyBoredom
in reply to owlriver • • •It seems to be getting a little better lately, but historically they just didn't give firmware updates. I went 3 years without a stable bios update for my 12th gen Intel mainboard on linux despite known vulnerabilities since launch (just got its first update last month).
I actually upgraded my mainboard within that time, so I went the full lifetime of the product with an insecure BIOS and none of the firmware improvements that were promised at launch like thunderbolt 4 certification. For all practical purposes, firmware support ended when it left the factory until just last month.
That said, my new ryzen ai 350 main board just got its first update to patch some vulns that were disclosed a month ago. So still not in time for the coordinated disclosure, but a month is way better than 3 years so I'll take what I can get.
papertowels
in reply to onlooker • • •onlooker
in reply to papertowels • • •papertowels
in reply to onlooker • • •Interstellar_1
in reply to onlooker • • •BunScientist
in reply to ter_maxima • • •Decker108
in reply to crankyrebel • • •I don't really get these nitpicks. If you're planning to use the laptop as your daily driver, do what every other power user does and get a set of good peripherals.
rothaine
in reply to Decker108 • • •Walk into class
Pull laptop out of bag, put it on the desk
Whip out mechanical keyboard
Mouse, small set of stereo speakers
Pull out a large object wrapped in a blanket
Everyone else watches confusedly
Take off blanket, unveiling a 28in monitor
Whip out power strip
Put power strip on the adjacent desk, no one is sitting there anyway
20ft extension cord
The outlet is on the far wall, run the extension cord between the desks
Apologize to everyone bumped into a long the way
Play World of Warcraft the entire time
dil
in reply to crankyrebel • • •linuxPIPEpower
in reply to crankyrebel • • •I have also been confounded by the situation.
It is even worse when you are on the secondary market. The company's product pages are broken. Trying to compare across different release years is way harder.
I assumed the reason for this had to do with the production systems and supply chains. They can get a certain number of x parts at y price from a factory located in a given location. You get enough parts in proximity to each other and you make it a model.
Its one thing for a small company to have enough components to have only a few models but with the volume dell or HP moves, they would need to really invest in suppliers or actually make the components themselves.
I dont imagine the marketing people have come up with all the options, they're just the ones who have to try to sell want they're given.
Cricket [he/him]
in reply to crankyrebel • • •Thankfully I have some requirements for laptops that very significantly narrow my options:
- It must have a good, ergonomic keyboard
- It must have a good pointing stick
That only leaves Thinkpads for me to consider.
Beryl
in reply to Cricket [he/him] • • •Cricket [he/him]
in reply to Beryl • • •solomonschuler
in reply to crankyrebel • • •You seriously can't go wrong with the lenovo thinkpads on eBay. I Got a thinkpad E14 ryzen 7 (7th gen), 48gb ram, 1tb ssd for $400 on ebay with a small hair crack on the hinge.
At the end of the day, a laptop is a laptop, and the cost difference between a $2000 brand new laptop and a $400 used laptop there really is no argument/justification to be made to buy a $2000 laptop in less-intensive tasks. Here's a better instance of your money: find a $400 laptop with semi-good performance (ryzen 3 or intel equivalent) put $1600 to a gaming computer and setup a virtual environment with a radeon or rtx gpu at your fingertips.
pineapple
in reply to crankyrebel • • •0t79JeIfK01RHyzo
in reply to pineapple • • •pineapple
in reply to 0t79JeIfK01RHyzo • • •Well I say it's no wonder people gravitate towards it but I don't actually like it myself.
It sucks that they make it basically impossible to upgrade snything. And that there storage and RAM upgrades cost several times more than they should.
I have a Macbool air (not by choice) and I installed asahi linux a couple of weeks ago. Main take away is that it's really good except for software support. I've had a bit of trouble finding programs that work well on arm even open source projects often don't compile there programs to work on arm.