I wish a person could order one of these without the numeric keypad. I deeply hate being off-center to the screen when typing on these larger portables.
I have no idea who thought this was a good idea. The trackpad is even off to the left to accommodate it.
I'm not a fan of symmetry for symmetry's sake, but I do think some affordances for the human body might be a good idea. How do southpaws enjoy this keyboard setup?
The ergonomics of laptops are bad enough without stuff like this.
It's oh so terrible isn't it? I feel like this is one of those flexible majority things that Nassim Taleb talks about [1]. The vast majority of people don't care one way or the other. There is a small minority who wants the numeric keypad and an even smaller minority that despises the numeric keypad and will never buy a laptop that includes one. For me, it's always been yet another selling point for the Macbook.
You interact with a computer only through the screen, speakers, microphone, and keyboard.
So of course, the advertisement for every laptop emphasises internal component metrics that don't actually matter that much. "Now with X8-7820Z SUPER!" or whatever.
Instead they have terrible screens, tinny speakers, noisy microphones, and non-customisable keyboard layouts. The latter of which are always cramped, and I mean always, even on 17" laptops.
Do you have any idea how cheap it would be for these manufacturers to allow you to choose your keyboard layout? It's a removable tray already! They can be swapped out in seconds! There are multiple keyboard layouts available from the parts manufacturers!
i deeply hate being without a numpad. I understand it's duplicated space, but typing numbers on a numpad is just a million times faster than going above the alphabet keys.
I use a tenkeyless on my desktop for exactly this reason. I could always shift a normal keyboard over to center it, but then my mouse is way off to the side.
I have a 2013 Pangolin and the keypad & touchpad are the worst parts. They're decent machines otherwise, but the off-center keyboard and touchpad with no tactile feedback make it very hard to navigate around the interface. Looks like they might've fixed the touchpad at least in this reboot.
Uhh I understand that good Linux support is valuable, but the price premium for that is just too high.
For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb):
Pangolin - 1200$
Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1]
For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb):
Pangolin - 1542$
HP 15z - 640$[2]
I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support).
> Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support)
My own experience with thinkpads has been one of non-stop frustration with battery life. The T495 advertises something like 14h of battery life; the actual battery life I got running stock Ubuntu on it was.... less than 3 hours, and that's with power optimization packages that do things like making USB no longer work installed. I recently switched to a system76, and so far its battery lasts easily 6-9 hours depending on what I'm doing.
After ~10y straight of ThinkPad T-series, I won't be getting another one. The BS you have to go through to get firmware updates with important security and bug fixes is ridiculous. On paper they're in fwupd/LVFS but in practice it've very spotty. After a full day of trying other approaches, I eventually succumbed to installing Windows and Lenovo's adware-encriched update manager on a spare SSD just to be able to use my Thunderbolt port with my official Lenovo dock.
On top of that, every series have been getting worse and worse maintainability/extendability/serviciability for pretty every generation. The latest vanilla T-series are comparable to the first-gen Carbon-X1 in this regard.
...Now if only System76/any of the others in the open-laptop space could figure out a way to do more than 1080p on a 13-15" panel. It's 2021 and I can buy a decent 2K 10.1" USB-display online for $200, why are there no options for that many pixels on a new customizable laptop starting at $1200?
Before you conclude that Thinkpad have good Linux support, go on over to lenovo's Q&A forum and look up battery issues for the t14. At this point in time I've spent so much time on this that I could have easily saved 5k or 10k by having a machine that just worked!
Today you can get a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 13.3" Ryzen 7, 16G RAM, 1T Disk, QHD screen for about the same price.
And in september and november Lenovo will launch additional QHD IdeaPad Ryzen models for an even lower price.
QHD (1440 resolution) is important to me because I've become accustomed to it on my workstations. And my work got me a Thinkpad Yoga X1 4th gen which has an internal resolution of 2560x1440 so now I just can't go lower than that.
That is the problem with basically any commodity market. The margin are so thin, it sort of hard to compete without the economy of scale. Not to mention the selling point of Linux support doesn't exactly have a large TAM.
I have a System76 Serval WS with AMD Ryzen 9 3900 and Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti manufactured last year. The laptop's internal display went wonky late last week but an external display still works fine. It's annoying to reboot -- the GPU drivers aren't loaded yet when the boot disk passphrase prompt is shown, so the external display doesn't show the passphrase prompt (and importantly: whether unlocking succeeded). It's within a 1-year warranty for parts & labor. I'm currently talking to with System76 support staff to ship it back for repair. The process has, so far, been easy and straightforward.
In the past they had pushed a driver update that disabled the laptop display when multiple monitors are connected. I had recognized the problem since their system drivers are open source and was able to recommend & review a PR to fix [0]. It was nice to see that patch go in.
I say it every time every time one of these threads pop up and I’ll say it again here: if it’s not 16:10 or 3:2 I’m simply not interested.
I buy devices like this for productivity. I don't care about black bars when watching videos because I don't watch videos on it. What I absolutely care about is the extra inch of text in my terminal or text editor.
I miss 16:10 for coding use, but that ship has long since sailed. It's not like laptop manufacturers arbitrarily made the decision. TV display resolutions drive the market, display panel manufacturers target that market, and laptop manufacturers come along for the ride. There's no competitive advantage to fighting that reality. The sooner you come to terms with it the better off you'll be.
I love System76, and I use and love Pop!_OS (despite the offensive and undignified name). I tried to buy their beefy Thelios desktop with wood paneling (but they don't ship to my country). But... on what planet is a 1080p screen still OK for a mid-range or higher laptop in 2021?
For laptops, I've used Apples and Dells over the past 7 years and I don't think any of them were that low resolution.
I want to buy their shit; I even bought their insanely expensive $300 keyboard just because I think they are awesome. But I wouldn't buy a 1080p laptop in this day and age for any price.
Pop OS (as sane people call it) also happens to work fabulously on high resolution monitors! I run it on a 4-year-old 32" 8K Dell UP3218K monitor at 200% pixel doubling, and it looks fantastic — much better and way crisper text than any Mac (e.g., my work M1 Mac Mini with hyperexpensive 6K XDR Display or my 27" 5K iMac Pro).
For that Dell display, 200% is perfect, but Reddit says fractional scaling also works great on Pop OS. So it's not like they have some technical reason they need to use blurry low-res displays.
It's just kind of weird. I would absolutely buy this otherwise, but the weird retro display is a deal-breaker.
(I don't give a shit about the off-center keyboard or numpad though, so I guess we all have our own individual deal-breakers....)
As an aside: Pop OS is really awesome, though — a great distro for those of us who were always rooting for Linux, preferred open source and felt like we were the kind of person who wanted that approach to win out and would likely use Linux, but mainly ended up usually buying Macs for purposes of convenience and just getting our shit done. Pretty much works great and stays out of your way. :-D
Graphics AMD Radeon™ Graphics
Storage 1 x M.2 SSD(SATA or PCIe NVMe). Up to 2TB total.
In the configurator you have to pay attention to the read speeds to figure out if you are getting a SATA or PCIe drive. There is no indication for which brand of drive they are using. I have a few SSD controllers that are on my do not buy list, like anything made by Sandforce[1] after we lost almost an entire lot of computers to premature firmware failures and got absolutely no support from the vendor for even just resetting the firmware and starting over.
While you're right that the brand is not listed, every single drive in the configurator lists NVME. The "Storage" specification you show is just what the M.2 connection supports as far as interface. So if you have an existing SATA M.2 drive, or want to buy one to save money, you can.
The graphics are integrated into the APU, so you can look up their specifications.
> There is no indication for which brand of drive they are using.
Yes, though they tend to use quality parts. My 2019 Darter Pro (darp5) was configured with a one of the NVMe options and shipped with a 'Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus'. No complaints on hardware quality or longevity so far. </anecdote>
Just to add my anecdatum: I am on my third or fourth System76 laptop, the others are all still working just after a few years I need to upgrade. One is now the living room stereo and one is the gaming room stereo. The point I'm making is that they last for years, I think my oldest is a decade old and still works fine. So, just one person's experience but there it is.
Obviously the "Linux-first" is a big value-add for this brand, but the hardware for the price isn't amazing.
$1200 gets you a Zen 2 (previous generation) 6-core, 12-thread CPU[0], 8GB RAM, 240 GB NVME, 15" 1080p (did not see brightness/color accuracy mentioned.)
But I like my laptops to come with fast refresh and a dedicated GPU, and I run Windows, so I'm not their target audience. Would love to hear how this is received by those in the right market segment!
The price is a bit too high (as always with System76). Last year, for the same price ($1,199) on sale, I bought a ASUS Zephyrus G14 with a Ryzen 4900HS and RTX 2060. Right now, you get it (for a bit more) with a 5900HS and RTX 3060.
Both the 5900HS and the 4900HS will beat the low-wattage 5700U in performance handily. The G14 has a 76 Wh, so despite the “higher”-power (35 Watt) CPU, it’ll still get a LOT of battery life.
There's no mention of the color gamut on that display. Necessary 1080p complaints aside, I couldn't buy a Linux laptop last year because all of the displays are trash. If you're lucky you can find 100% sRGB, but I and many others need 100% DCI-P3 and it's just not on offer. My 2-year-old $450 phone has P3 coverage, but almost nothing in the laptop space does.
I have bought a few System76 laptops, though not this variant - I like to buy the ones that ship with coreboot.
As for the price difference: you can buy the base model of the System76 and upgrade ram/disk yourself. This is harder to do on the Lenovo ones; it seems the T14 has (some of) the ram soldered on (ugh).
But, it is nice to see that you can actually buy a T14 with Ubuntu preinstalled (if you are willing to wait 4+ months...), and they list it next to the (more expensive!) Windows version:
The thing about Lenovo is one can get a 4 year, on site, service contract for less than $500. If a keyboard key breaks, no problem, they swap it and come to your house.
Over the hears I've had monitor pixels die. They don't care, they'll replace it.
And unlike with Apple Lenovo doesn't mind if you replace the hard drive or other components yourself, the warranty is not voided.
Linux is a side project for Lenovo though. System76 is a Linux-only vendor which means every interaction is with someone who knows what the heck they're talking about.
When typing, my right fingers always resting covering 4 arrow keys (provided it's a full-sized keyboard and arrow keys are separated from the rest with enough blank space). I use right fingers to reach Home/End/PgUp/PgDn buttons, INSERT/DEL on numeric. So it's quite useful to have them all close-by.
[+] [-] protomyth|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnzim|4 years ago|reply
I'm not a fan of symmetry for symmetry's sake, but I do think some affordances for the human body might be a good idea. How do southpaws enjoy this keyboard setup?
The ergonomics of laptops are bad enough without stuff like this.
[+] [-] throwaway9980|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
[+] [-] jiggawatts|4 years ago|reply
So of course, the advertisement for every laptop emphasises internal component metrics that don't actually matter that much. "Now with X8-7820Z SUPER!" or whatever.
Instead they have terrible screens, tinny speakers, noisy microphones, and non-customisable keyboard layouts. The latter of which are always cramped, and I mean always, even on 17" laptops.
Do you have any idea how cheap it would be for these manufacturers to allow you to choose your keyboard layout? It's a removable tray already! They can be swapped out in seconds! There are multiple keyboard layouts available from the parts manufacturers!
Can you order such a thing? No.
[+] [-] loudtieblahblah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superbaconman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohazi|4 years ago|reply
I guess now I could look at the X1 extreme, because that has a 15"/16" display and no numpad.
[+] [-] Fatalist_ma|4 years ago|reply
For the base variant(5500u, 8gb, 240gb):
Pangolin - 1200$
Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 - 430$[1]
For a higher-end variant(5700u, 16gb, 500gb):
Pangolin - 1542$
HP 15z - 640$[2]
I admit these are the absolute cheapest ones I could find(using noteb.com), but even the more premium laptops like Thinkpads are way cheaper(and AFAIK they also provide very good Linux support).
[1]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-3-15-15-6-AMD-Ryze...
[2]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laptop-15z-ef2000-touch...
[+] [-] vbuterin|4 years ago|reply
My own experience with thinkpads has been one of non-stop frustration with battery life. The T495 advertises something like 14h of battery life; the actual battery life I got running stock Ubuntu on it was.... less than 3 hours, and that's with power optimization packages that do things like making USB no longer work installed. I recently switched to a system76, and so far its battery lasts easily 6-9 hours depending on what I'm doing.
[+] [-] tempest_|4 years ago|reply
The thinkpads (at least the X,T and P models) tend to be a different story but even that is changing in recent years
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
On top of that, every series have been getting worse and worse maintainability/extendability/serviciability for pretty every generation. The latest vanilla T-series are comparable to the first-gen Carbon-X1 in this regard.
...Now if only System76/any of the others in the open-laptop space could figure out a way to do more than 1080p on a 13-15" panel. It's 2021 and I can buy a decent 2K 10.1" USB-display online for $200, why are there no options for that many pixels on a new customizable laptop starting at $1200?
[+] [-] lighttower|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] istingray|4 years ago|reply
Linux is at best a side project for Lenovo and Dell.
[+] [-] kongin|4 years ago|reply
This has not been the case in 5 years.
[+] [-] INTPenis|4 years ago|reply
And in september and november Lenovo will launch additional QHD IdeaPad Ryzen models for an even lower price.
QHD (1440 resolution) is important to me because I've become accustomed to it on my workstations. And my work got me a Thinkpad Yoga X1 4th gen which has an internal resolution of 2560x1440 so now I just can't go lower than that.
And yes I am a full time Linux user.
[+] [-] Mikeb85|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ksec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asddubs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] istingray|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inetknght|4 years ago|reply
In the past they had pushed a driver update that disabled the laptop display when multiple monitors are connected. I had recognized the problem since their system drivers are open source and was able to recommend & review a PR to fix [0]. It was nice to see that patch go in.
[0]: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-driver/pull/182
[+] [-] jagger27|4 years ago|reply
I buy devices like this for productivity. I don't care about black bars when watching videos because I don't watch videos on it. What I absolutely care about is the extra inch of text in my terminal or text editor.
I didn't think this was a controversial opinion.
[+] [-] bo1024|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caymanjim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenhuang|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veidr|4 years ago|reply
For laptops, I've used Apples and Dells over the past 7 years and I don't think any of them were that low resolution.
I want to buy their shit; I even bought their insanely expensive $300 keyboard just because I think they are awesome. But I wouldn't buy a 1080p laptop in this day and age for any price.
Pop OS (as sane people call it) also happens to work fabulously on high resolution monitors! I run it on a 4-year-old 32" 8K Dell UP3218K monitor at 200% pixel doubling, and it looks fantastic — much better and way crisper text than any Mac (e.g., my work M1 Mac Mini with hyperexpensive 6K XDR Display or my 27" 5K iMac Pro).
For that Dell display, 200% is perfect, but Reddit says fractional scaling also works great on Pop OS. So it's not like they have some technical reason they need to use blurry low-res displays.
It's just kind of weird. I would absolutely buy this otherwise, but the weird retro display is a deal-breaker.
(I don't give a shit about the off-center keyboard or numpad though, so I guess we all have our own individual deal-breakers....)
As an aside: Pop OS is really awesome, though — a great distro for those of us who were always rooting for Linux, preferred open source and felt like we were the kind of person who wanted that approach to win out and would likely use Linux, but mainly ended up usually buying Macs for purposes of convenience and just getting our shit done. Pretty much works great and stays out of your way. :-D
[+] [-] jandrese|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://computerlounge.it/how-to-unbrick-sandforce-ssd/
[+] [-] neogodless|4 years ago|reply
The graphics are integrated into the APU, so you can look up their specifications.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-5500u
https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-5700u
[+] [-] nicholasjarnold|4 years ago|reply
Yes, though they tend to use quality parts. My 2019 Darter Pro (darp5) was configured with a one of the NVMe options and shipped with a 'Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus'. No complaints on hardware quality or longevity so far. </anecdote>
[+] [-] wmf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagger27|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rossdavidh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neogodless|4 years ago|reply
$1200 gets you a Zen 2 (previous generation) 6-core, 12-thread CPU[0], 8GB RAM, 240 GB NVME, 15" 1080p (did not see brightness/color accuracy mentioned.)
But I like my laptops to come with fast refresh and a dedicated GPU, and I run Windows, so I'm not their target audience. Would love to hear how this is received by those in the right market segment!
[0] A bunch of $600-700 laptops with this CPU: https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-5500u
[+] [-] ruined|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winter_blue|4 years ago|reply
Both the 5900HS and the 4900HS will beat the low-wattage 5700U in performance handily. The G14 has a 76 Wh, so despite the “higher”-power (35 Watt) CPU, it’ll still get a LOT of battery life.
[+] [-] arnaudsm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lenkite|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgewsinger|4 years ago|reply
It will run with an 11th gen Intel compute pack (x86 ), and have premium specs (roughly double the resolution of the Valve Index).
Turning it on will boot you into SimulaVR's VR window manager (built over the Godot game engine) with hand tracking. All open source.
It's intended to be more comparable to a Linux laptop (like System76) than a VR gaming device like the Quest.
[+] [-] Rd6n6|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toastal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] second--shift|4 years ago|reply
Lenovo T14's are going for 65% of the asking price of one of these, if you don't care about intel vs amd.
[+] [-] cure|4 years ago|reply
As for the price difference: you can buy the base model of the System76 and upgrade ram/disk yourself. This is harder to do on the Lenovo ones; it seems the T14 has (some of) the ram soldered on (ugh).
But, it is nice to see that you can actually buy a T14 with Ubuntu preinstalled (if you are willing to wait 4+ months...), and they list it next to the (more expensive!) Windows version:
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...
[+] [-] istingray|4 years ago|reply
System76 is all in on Linux support. That's why I support them.
[+] [-] mybrid|4 years ago|reply
Over the hears I've had monitor pixels die. They don't care, they'll replace it.
And unlike with Apple Lenovo doesn't mind if you replace the hard drive or other components yourself, the warranty is not voided.
[+] [-] istingray|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vizzah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schaefer|4 years ago|reply
https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/pang11/README.html
[+] [-] antattack|4 years ago|reply
[1]https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.A82AA.002