💾 Archived View for sdf.org › stug › phlog › 2022 › 20221127.txt captured on 2023-01-29 at 05:02:35.
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27th November 2022 - New Laptop ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So I have bought a new laptop. This is a bit unusual for me as I have previously bought second hand as a rule. However, I have been looking for a replacement smallish laptop to replace a Thinkpad Helix2. This is a convertible affair where the keyboard detaches. I have found it a fairly annoying machine physically as it is heavy and tends to suffer from wobble. I also find I cannot carry it around without worrying about bits flexing. With a recent business trip, I found the keyboard part to have started rattling. It appears a speaker has become loose. The performance side is pretty good though. The battery has reached a point where it is being a pain too. I have started having to carry the power cable for meetings. So what did I replace it with? A Starlabs Starlite. *Cue hipster vibe* You probably have not heard of Starlabs. They are a British company who specialise on Linux laptops. This is their cheapest and smallest laptop. It has an 11 inch screen and uses an Intel Pentium N5030 processor with 8GB of RAM. So it is not going to win any speed competitions or be able to do anything while building programs. Well that doesn't bother me. Most of my computing is running the odd python script, typing stuff, small scale writing programs, internet browsing and of course using SDF. This is a light laptop with an aluminium frame and no fans. Perfect! Battery life is pretty good at 8 hours and I seem to have been getting that regularly. The feel is premium and the build quality seems great. The keyboard is a good set of compromises for the small size. I can comfortably touch type without issue really. Well until I need some punctuation that is. One advantage of Starlabs is being able to use a FOSS bootloader. I can swap between coreboot or a non-FOSS option. Since receiving the laptop, I have been using coreboot and found no issues. It was lovely not having to make a liveboot USB and install my desired OS. Starlabs offer a variety of linux flavours and state whether your choice will lead to a donation being made to that distro team. When I received the laptop, I only had to select a language, keyboard layout, user name, password, laptop name and I was done. I am currently running Manjaro XFCE. I would normally run i3 on a laptop but community versions of Manjaro were not offered pre-installed. XFCE has been a pleasure and made some things a lot easier. I may well keep using it on this machine. At �400, this is not a cheap laptop but it does not feel cheap. Instead, it feels more 'premium' than many more expensive machines I have played with. I think I have had value for money with this. Another key feature of interest with Starlabs is the fact they sell spare parts and provide assembly instructions for their laptops. This is a key reason I have been buying Thinkpads so it is nice to find a supplier who is doing similar. I feel that Starlabs are doing interesting stuff and deserve some support. I am glad such a company exists and I do not have to worry about import taxes making it cost prohibitive to buy from them. Finally, who doesn't want a laptop with a key labelled as 'super' instead of using the Microsoft logo? It is a silly cherry on top. [1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite for product page