dave.ofmassdestruction.com

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but for some reason never hit the “publish” button.

At work we support the fine folks at System76. Why? Well, we use Ubuntu and its easier to get some hardware in which you know it will work than trying to coax it to. Personally I use the Darter Ultra which is their ultra-portable model. First impressions tell me that this thing could be far more “ultra” in its “portable”. I also have an HP NC2400 on my desk and that redefines the category coming in at 2lbs – nice. The Darter is bigger and heavier than I expected but its still very manageable (I’ll try to remember to revisit that after my trip to Rwanda).

Out of the box the Darter looked good, felt a little cheap but not too cheap, and there was a rattle…. hmmm. Flipping it over and looking through one of the vents I saw that the rattle was a memory card flopping around inside…. not good. I fixed that, would everyone be comfortable doing so? I am not sure if that is the fault of the manufacturer (they are built in Taiwan or somewhere similar, contracted out from System76) or the folks at System76 as I don’t know where they apply the chosen specs the customer wants. Nonetheless, I fired it up after reinstalling the memory and all worked well.

Until, I put a disc in the DVD drive. The drive ate it. Literally. An email to System76 got a very prompt reply apologizing and informing me of the new drive being sent. Cool. It arrived a week or so later, works great.

The other problems I’m having are GNOME/BIOS/Other:

First, the battery applet in GNOME was telling me lies. You’re plugged in (no I wasnt), Your battery is dead (no its not). I have seen reference on the System76 forums that this is a BIOS problem and they are working on it. I have to say that while I have received a great amount of support, questions, and suggestions from one particular guy at System76, I have never been told that personally. Who knows. Its not a deal breaker.

Second, the network applet is screwy – and this might just be a GNOME problem. Nonetheless, I cannot simply select a wireless network and join it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I have to select manual configuration and set it up as it would have set it up automatically and it works. I don’t know why. Also, once I’ve gone wireless, I can never go back wired with the network applet until I’ve logged out. I have to use another tool (ifup) to go wired. Annoying. Again, I think this might be a GNOME – or perhaps an Ubuntu problem.

Finally, when headphones are plugged in, the speakers still output sound. D’oh! I’ve read on the forums again that this is about to be fixed in an update.

OK – so whats the tally? 5 problems. Some serious, some not. Still, not the most pleasant experience with a laptop that I’ve had – but also not the worst (Dell still shatters the record there). The wireless problems I can kinda live with and I see windows users having equal or worse trouble (I’ve not seen OS X users having trouble though). The battery thing is annoying and I can’t tell how much charge I have left, but its no big deal. The speakers are funny and the network is lame.

I will reiterate that the support guy has been super nice and responsive – but I think he is very overworked. System76 seems to be a very small company and that’s great to support but they could use a little bit better manufacturer.

I am going to give this laptop a grade of B- at least for now. If those last few problems are resolved that could rise, though it will never rank at the top.

• A+: Apple Powerbook ti
• A: IBM Thinkpad 330(I think that was the number).
• B+: Apple Macbook, IBM Thinkpad 600
• B-: System76 Darter Ultra
• F: Dell (forgot the devil spawns model number)