UX302LA -- I5-4200 Edition
After having to deal with a nightmare issue on the Dell XPS 13 Developer's Edition (plagued by Coil Whine) ... I ended up going to Best Buy and purchasing the Zenbook UX302LA on sale for $899. I love it so far -- great laptop. Nice blend of features, quality of build, weight/form factor, etc ...
I immediately upgraded the laptop -- super easy -- so the current specs are: Intel i5-4200 Processor (HD4400 GPU), 10GB of RAM, 240GB Samsung SSD (w/Windows 8.1), and then I took the m-sata 24GB Drive that was in there and used that to install Mint Linux 16. I am able to dual boot to either system in just seconds. Total Price spent: $1190.
As far as the included m-sata SSD, it is a half-height card (pci-e). I have found that I can upgrade that with a few choices to a 64GB card by Sandisk for $80. I don't really need extra space at the moment so I am waiting a bit to see what other choices are available. The card was originally included in the system to use as a cache for Windows 8 to boost boot/load times. Since I switched to the SSD, the card could be used for other things like a clean install.
Linux Mint installed with just a few issues experienced along the way. Most are easily solvable and there are plenty of documentation on the forums. It seems like the new 3.14 Kernel will work great with the hardware in this laptop.
After having to deal with a nightmare issue on the Dell XPS 13 Developer's Edition (plagued by Coil Whine) ... I ended up going to Best Buy and purchasing the Zenbook UX302LA on sale for $899. I love it so far -- great laptop. Nice blend of features, quality of build, weight/form factor, etc ...
I immediately upgraded the laptop -- super easy -- so the current specs are: Intel i5-4200 Processor (HD4400 GPU), 10GB of RAM, 240GB Samsung SSD (w/Windows 8.1), and then I took the m-sata 24GB Drive that was in there and used that to install Mint Linux 16. I am able to dual boot to either system in just seconds. Total Price spent: $1190.
As far as the included m-sata SSD, it is a half-height card (pci-e). I have found that I can upgrade that with a few choices to a 64GB card by Sandisk for $80. I don't really need extra space at the moment so I am waiting a bit to see what other choices are available. The card was originally included in the system to use as a cache for Windows 8 to boost boot/load times. Since I switched to the SSD, the card could be used for other things like a clean install.
Linux Mint installed with just a few issues experienced along the way. Most are easily solvable and there are plenty of documentation on the forums. It seems like the new 3.14 Kernel will work great with the hardware in this laptop.
Comment