System76 To Begin Their Own Product Design & Manufacturing

[starshipeleven]

Why is everyone talking about laptops when the article says they will begin with desktops and laptops won't come until much later?

Because none is giving a fuck about OEM desktops, probably. It's not a secret that most people buy laptops and not desktops since around Sandy Bridge times.

[starshipeleven]

If you like the Apple way of laptops, don't ask for a imitation, buy one. I want a machine to work for me, out of the box, no USB adapter (that kills all you gain with a thin design) at all. The infrastructure of the places you work/visit will not change just because you fell for the idea that type C connectors is the answer for everything.

I don't dig your idea of enterprise grade hardware at all. Enterprise means ease of maintenance and robustness, not shiny, Apple-like-almost-impossible-to-fix machines. Also, be able to upgrade RAM and storage with available parts is a must, not a thing of the past, unless you like the idea of programed obsolescence. And there is a lot of things in a laptop that can go wrong and need to be replaced with new parts. Screen, keyboard, memory chips, storage, wifi, all of these can and will broke in a heavily used machine and you need to fix it. Apple computers are not immune to this at all.

Or you may think is money well spent buying extended warranty for your hardware, if things go wrong.

Keyboards need to have a solid surface, so when you press a key you didn't get distracted by the whole surface going up and down. This has nothing to do with key travel.

This, many times this.

[starshipeleven]

What you really want is an AMD APU with 8-16 GB if HBM built in.

Yeah, I guess HBM would also be good enough.

[jaxxed]

I'd like an option with AMD cards instead of Nvidia...

I was thinking that it would be nice to see a full AMD stack if the Zen APUs are decent. This announcement is perhaps right on time if that is to be an option.

[Sonadow]

I am not in favor of this.

Having their own production line and design translates to higher costs, especially for a small and niche system builder like System76. I have no desire to fork out top dollar for a notebook utilizing the same commodity hardware as every single other notebook that is being sold on the market today.

Besides, I don't see what is wrong with selling rebranded Clevos like what every other boutique and performance laptop vendor is doing today. Clevos are widely regarded as the cream of the crop where consumer-grade notebooks are concerned, especially with regards to hardware accessibility and upgradability, as well as build quality. And speaking as someone who routinely switches out the WiFi card in notebooks to mess around with Linux drivers and compatibility, this is a huge plus.

I can only foresee System76 going down the 'closed up and soldered-down' route once they start making their own designs, as it's always the superslim ultrabooks that most people want nowadays. And that's already a huge minus in my book.

The only value I can see System76 beinging to the table, if they even have any interest in doing so, is to implement Coreboot + an appropriate UEFI payload in their machines .

[Sonadow]

I'm not in favor of this.

Own production line translates to higher costs, especially for a small and niche system builder like System76. And I'm not about to pay top dollar for a machine that uses the same hardware as every single commodity notebook out there on the market.

Besides, what's wrong with Clevo notebooks? Clevo's hardware are considered to be the cream of the crop for consumer-grade machines which hardware accessibility and build quality is concerned. Most Clevos make it very easy for users to access most of the hardware within the notebook to carry out self-upgrades, and speaking as someone who always changes WiFi cards regularly, this is a huge plus.

I can only see System76 going down the 'everything closed up and soldered' route if they want to launch their own production line and design, all simply because people love nice and thin machines.

The only value I can see System76 bringing to the table, if they even have any interest in pulling it off, will be Coreboot + TianoCore (or any alternative UEFI stack) at the firmware level.

[cjcox]

Hopefully their devices will not be as expensive as the Model S.
I'd rather like a Volkswagen.

I'm hoping it costs a lot less than a car myself...

[davidak]

Why is everyone talking about laptops when the article says they will begin with desktops and laptops won't come until much later?

Probably of the same reason why they say they want Open Hardware but assume that it will never happen. They havn't read the article carefully and don't have read the original, linked article at all.

The original article says:

Our CAD work will be Open Source and our design will pay tribute to computer science.

http://blog.system76.com/post/159767214983/entering-phase-three

I also think they said once that they investigate in supporting coreboot on Twitter but i can't find it. I would really like that too!

[devius]

Why is everyone talking about laptops when the article says they will begin with desktops and laptops won't come until much later?

[M@GOid]

As a 25 year ThinkPad abuser, since the Lenovo purchase, only the sub $600 models that share components with the Lenovo consumer line have the crappy LCD's. Depending on the supplier, most of the $1000+ Thinkpads have decent screens and keyboards. I have found used ThinkPads to be excellent Linux testbeds. I finally had to retire my T40 because the latest distros needed a CPU function that the Pentium M couldn't provide. We are talking a 15 year old model here. That's a pretty good shelf life!

I have a T430 (and it have a poor screen), and now I know why people like these so much. The funny thing is people say the old ones are actually better built, witch amazes me because this one is already much better than all consumer grade machines I used before. I got it used, and now I say to everyone who asks me for advice that buying enterprise machines (even used ones) is a much better investment than buying cheap, brand new consumer machines.