Top Secret: Unboxing System76’s Unannounced Laptop!
Get yourself some water and a napkin because this is a drool-fest. Gizmodo eat your heart out.
I stirred up quite a bit of excitement with my previous post concerning a new System76 laptop prototype that I spotted at my CoLoCo presentation to NCLUG. I am now able to release some of the backstory and details.
A few days before the presentation I emailed Carl from System76 with my dream specs for a laptop. He replied the same day that he had just gotten a prototype of their new machine that matched my specs to the letter minus a DVI-out connection. Carl brought it up to the presentation. I was so impressed I, like others, asked when I could put my order in. I shot Carl an email the next day and he did something special. As many of you know System76 is not only a big Ubuntu supporter but they also very much support LoCo teams. I’m fortunate enough to be currently running the LoCo where System76 resides. As a special favour he allowed me to place an order before the company was tooled up to take regular customer orders on this new model. I thought, “wow, that’s really nice!” so I put in my order about a week ago expecting it to be mid-February when the first production run completed and I would take possession.
Imagine my surprise when Carl called me today, Saturday, and told me my laptop was ready. System76 did a final production ready test run this week and Carl was able to snag me one of those machine. (You rock Carl!) I understand they are still tooling up the manufacturing floor (and their website) to handle this new model so right now I am the luckiest geek on the planet for about two more weeks. 
If you follow the System76 Board on the Ubuntu Forums, you’ll know that System76 has recently announced updated specs for many of their Ubuntu laptops in the last week or so. Be sure to check those out when you are done reading here.
Ok, I can’t keep stalling. Here’s what I know of Specs and Pricing. I don’t have all of the details but I will tell you what I believe I know. Keep in mind this could change or I could be flat out wrong.
- It’s a laptop
- It’s call the Darter
- Base model is under $1000 USD
- Weighs a smidgen over 4 pounds
- It’s 3.5 cm thick at the widest point
- 13″-ish display
- 5 hours of battery life, probably more if wifi and bluetooth are disabled and CPU scaling turned on
- Should be available to the public in the next two to four weeks.
My machine (which is probably mid-way above the base model):
- Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz 4MB 667FSB
- 1.5 GB DDR2 667 MHz
- 60 GB 7200 RPM
- Intel 802.11 a/b/g Wireless
- Bluetooth
- SD Card slot
- Intel 945GM
- CPU scaling works
- Network manager works
- Suspend/Hibernate works
- It screams compared to my 3ghz P4.
- I told my wife I’m sleeping with my Darter tonight.
Thumbnails - Click for 800×600 res (so much for my bandwidth)
Perspective Shot against my workstation:
That is so flippin awesome!! Next laptop I’m gonna buy better be that one of whatever system 76 comes out with next
I’d consider getting the machine if it used hardware that either didn’t require firmware to operate (preferable) or used free software firmware. Will this laptop work without non-free software?
An easy test should be to try running the gNewSense GNU/Linux live CD on it and see what works. Would you try this?
I’m running gNewSense on a laptop with a Ralink wireless CardBus card (ASUS WL-107G) and the machine works well. On a desktop, I use gNewSense with ethernet and the system works well there too.
Looks nice. I wished I could get one for work and get rid of that Windows PC.
Hey hey;
That’s a nice Python book you have there Joey.
We’ll have to throw back some e-mails on why you chose python over perl or ruby someday.
oh and yes;
Nice laptop too.
Har har
What about the CTRL key? It isn’t in the lower left corner. Personally I’m always pressing that fn key if I want the CTRL key.
Is that a Windows key I see?!??
Обсудите эту новость на news2.ru…
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[...] Source: Joey Stanford [...]
[...] Stanford, can be found at his blog. del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Technorati Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL) SIMILAR POSTS: Nokia Electronics launches the new Nokia N800-the internet tabletEntry levelIOMEGA external hard driveToshiba’s first HD DVD-R laptopThe Creative Xdock Wireless unveiledAsus announce/launch three new products [...]
[...] For the uninitiated, System 76 offers workstations and notebooks preloaded with Ubuntu Linux, and they have an amazing laptop coming out soon as well. Technorati Tags: colorado, denver, linux, system76, ubuntuShare and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] dowiedziałem się przypadkiem o firmie "system76". jest ona podobno jednym z największych "supporter’ów" (nie mam pojęcia jak to przetłumaczyć by zachować sens) ubuntu. a co robi? sprzęt. pecety. i laptopy. bez windowsów, za to z linuksem. jeśli kiedyś stawialiście linuksa na lapie wiecie, że nie jest słodko. hibernate, suspend, grafika, dźwięk, apm/acpi. wszystko to generuje problemy. ale nie na sprzęcie system76!. oni budują i konfigurują wszystko od podstaw tak by śmigało i nie generowało problemów. a do tego - specyfikacje są naprawdę niezłe (nie będę cytował bo to i tak trzeba zobaczyć, a przecież nie zrobię kopii całego site’u). co ciekawe - we wzornictwie widać ewidentne wpływy apple’a. w szczególności w modelu koala (desktop, wyglądający mniej więcej jak macmini). dodatkowo - dowiedziałem się, że za mniej więcej 2 tygodnie ma wejść do sprzedaży nowy model lapa. specyfikacje: [...]
Wow. I gotta get me a Darter as soon as they get released.
[...] algo más de un mes muchos vimos el análisis que Joey Stanford hizo de un nuevo portátil que la empresa system76, que vende ordenadores con Ubuntu preinstalado, [...]
[...] offers a core2 duo processor, 5-7 hours of battery, and it’s under 1000$ starting price!read more | digg [...]