System76 Gazelle/Serval worthy options for my needs?

[cryogenic666]

So, my nearly 4 year old Thinkpad T61p finally bit the dust outside of its warranty. It's been repaired one before in-warranty but now it's finally officially dead. So, I need a replacement. I've been eyeballing the W520 since they've been announced, but it turns out that the System76 machines have virtually the same specs and same hardware for considerably less money. There are a FEW differences, but I don't think I'll really notice them (the i7-2630QM vs i7-2720QM isn't a huge jump for me). Both of them seem to have the most important things I want in a laptop. 1920x1080 screen, nVidia graphics, quad-core Sandy Bridge and 4 DIMM slots. I won't be using it for gaming at all; it'll be a work laptop. I don't travel on business or anything like that, but I DO transport the laptop back and forth to and from work (often on a bicycle). So I guess my question is are there any owners of System76 laptops? How's the build quality? The keyboard? I'd especially like to know how they're holding up after a year or two of solid usage. Are there any other brands I should consider? The Elitebook is several hundred bucks more expensive, so not an option. $1800 is about my limit for price.

 

[ed29a]

These are fairly new laptops, so you can't have over a year of usage to judge it. They are based on Clevo P151HM1 and Clevo P170HM models. I run Ubuntu 10.10 and Win2008 R2 on the Sager NP8130, the P151HM1 model. Use it for pretty much everything: gaming, development, VMs, name it.

Good:
- Screen is absolutely gorgeous (the matte version).
- Price is very good.
- Powerful machine, does whatever I need.
- Rift, Civ V, SC2, WoW play at high to ultra settings.
- Sata00 is on the SATA III port.
- DVI out for second monitor. And DVI is on the back, not side.
- USB 3 ports.
- SPID/F out.
- Stays cool on your lap, exhaust vents are on the back, right under the screen.
- Swapping ODD for HDD is a 5 minute task (requires a 45$ caddy).
- Linux drivers for every base component (didn't try webcam/mic, but since System76 is selling it, should work fine). Realtek/Jmicron have native drivers for NIC and WiFi. Nvidia drivers work as well, even if driver complains that it can't recognize the card).

Bad:
- Fingerprint reader is a piece of crap.
- eSata (Sata02) and OOD (Sata03) are wired to Sata II port, when I replaced my ODD with a hard drive, it couldn't use full 6gbs. Not important now because I am using a Sata II hard drive. If I want to upgrade to SSD, it will be annoying.
- Fans crank up under load, not the quietest. Mind you, never had a high end laptop like this before so can't really compare.
- Upgrading NVidia driver is not as easy to install/upgrade as Radeon drivers for Linux. You have to log on in a text base terminal and run update again. This is done everytime you upgrade the kernel. Not really laptop issue, more an Nvidia issue. Still ... annoying!

Ugly:
- Upgrading memory is a major pain in the ass. Two of the slots are right under the keyboard, pretty much have to disassemble the machine. If you order one, make sure you mention that they place the memory under the keyboard. The two other slots are easily accessible.

 

[cryogenic666]

Thanks for all the details. I guess I should have been a bit more clear in that I understand you couldn't possibly have a year of usage on THIS model... just was curious of perhaps how the build quality of older models held up over time. The nVidia driver issue isn't so bad if you use pre-packaged drivers via your distribution (I run OpenSUSE and they have a repo) and/or dkms. That's very interesting to know that not ALL of the ports are SATA III, so any high-end SSD swap would need to have the SSD in the current HD's slot and the HD moved to the ODD's slot.

Having said all that, what's your opinion of the keyboard? It LOOKS like it should be pretty nice, but I've been using Thinkpads for the better part of 4.5 years now so I'm cautious to switch.

On another note, I'd completely forgotten about Sager. Thanks for reminding me. Looks like they're running a somewhat better deal on an equally-spec'd machine (obviously, since they're essentially the same laptop). I just wonder how warranty support is. With Lenovo, I call them up and they send a box overnight with a shipping label to overnight it to them. Then they repair it and overnight it back to me. I literally had to go without my laptop for less than a week when I had to send it back the one time.

 

[ed29a]

Ubuntu didn't offer me to install pre-packaged drivers, so I went straight to Nvidia, worked without issues, other than warning me that it can't find the video card (was in January, so maybe drivers weren't up to date).

I like the keyboard a lot more than the one on my Dell Inspiron 630 laptop, my only complaint is that the keys for arrows (U,D,L and R) are right under the Enter and right Shift and not spaced out like other keyboards. Mind you, many 15 inch laptops don't have arrow keys at all. The keyboard doesn't feel like an Acer laptop keyboard that is probably made by Fisher Price, this has a distinct clicky feel/sound to it and in my opinion a very good build. I develop on this machine so keyboard is fairly big. Don't have any issues with it really.

Again, purely subjective, if you like Acer keyboards, sorry for calling them Fisher Price!

I bought mine with a 2 year warranty from a local Sager reseller. If I have issues, I drop off the laptop at their shop and they take care of the rest.

 

[cryogenic666]

One thing about the keyboard that looks nice is the inclusion of the number pad. As far as Acers go, I actually just used one a little while ago and it made me want to pull my hair out. Absolute piece of crap! It seems as if the keyboard on the Sagers is closer to the Macbook Pro keyboard than the cheaper end of the spectrum. It's probably going to be another couple of months before I decide to do anything, but the fact that Sager has the same laptop as System76 for less money is rather interesting. Lenovo does often run huge specials mid-year, so I may end up with a Lenovo for a similar price. We'll see.