The biggest problem with superfish was not the surveillance itself but instead that it broke SSL and thus exposed all "infected" systems to a plethora of attacks. Because Google controls both the operating system and the browser, installing a malicious certificate would not be necessary to achieve similar levels of surveillance.
If the new Pixel goes the way most Intel-based chromebooks have, then it should be possible to have a completely generic Linux / non-Crouton device. I believe support for unlocked SeaBIOS is the feature you're looking for.
I read somewhere, however, that without a hardware developer-mode switch, running out of juice can cause the device to revert from developer-mode and wipe your non-chromeos environment. Check the recent Hacker News thread on the new Pixel for more details.
Only difficulty you might run into is adapting applications to scale text and graphics up, as the screen's DPI is very high. For example, Chrome's bars (navigation, tabs and bookmarks) are still sized in fixed number of pixels and look painfully small.
I have a Samsung Series 9, which was renamed to the Ativ Book 9 in recent years, so they may have improved on some of the below issues.
1. Some of the media keys don't work on Windows 8, even with Samsung software (laptop shipped with Windows 7, and they offered limited support with Windows 8).
2. The touchpad is awful. I can click on some right sides of the touchpad and it left clicks, or sometimes it right clicks when I click on the left side. My old netbook and dell laptops had much better touchpads. Thankfully, the touchpad is rarely used.
3. Usb or mini hdmi devices sometimes disconnect if I wiggle or bump the plug.
4. Ports are too close together. I have 3 or 4 flash drives (some fairly slim - http://www.testberichte.de/imgs/p_imgs/Mushkin+Ventura+Pro+%...), and none of them fit in the left port, because they hit the power cable. In the right port, they're also tight if I have headphones plugged in. You really need to be careful with the cables and devices you own, because you only have a millimeter or two of clearance between them.
5. The power cable on the side is annoying. When I move the laptop when it's plugged in, the cable always wants to fold under the device. I guess it's better than my dell, where the cable would pull out the back at the slightest movement.
6. Battery life is poor. I keep the battery saver enabled, which only charges the device to 80%. It goes from 80% to dead in about 1 to 1.5 hours, with just general browsing on the internet.
On the plus side, the screen is perfect, it's extremely lightweight, very quiet, it's now my favorite keyboard, and it's fast enough for everyday work. So, it has flaws, but it's the best laptop I've owned to date, and I'd either buy the newer model or one of apple's offerings the next time around.
If you read the comments in the link you shared, the 2015 XPS 13 looks like a train wreck. It could be months before those fixes are into the kernel. Barton and his team seem to be doing a great job, but the greater Dell seems apathetic.
Saw one of these in person the other day. I was impressed with it. It definitely looks better than most laptops. And, honestly, it looks like they blatantly made the designed based on the MacBook Air. Even the keyboard.
No delete either. Though Fn + arrow keys does page up / dowm, home, end.
The lack of ethernet and (ports in general) is annoying for me. Had to use another laptop when my home router forgot its password and I needed cable to log into it. Need an extra cable to plug it into monitors, or TVs.
Seconding this. Macs are definitely the nicest overall quality in terms of laptop hardware, and are also the most prolific in terms of hardware sold, so driver support is excellent. Macs also give you the most options for operating systems, allowing you to run OS X, Windows, or Linux with minimal hassle or hacking around.
I really wanted to get a macbook air to run arch linux on, due to its form factor, awesome battery life and reliability, but was dissuaded from doing so by the good folks over at freenode.org/linux..
Really? I ran archlinux for 6 years on a mac. At the beginning it was annoying to configure everything.. especially the non-standard stuff like the VPN in my university. But then, after a few years everything worked just fine out-of-the-box. The trickiest thing was to get the boot loader and the partition right. Sometimes hibernate was a bit tricky too, mostly because if you don't configure it right you need to restart the laptop, which is annoying. But other than that, it was totally fine.
i had the same problem and was looking around for a new notebook. ihad some performance issues with my previous one, lackness of gpu proccessing and couldn't run multiple monitors at the same time for a long time, i wasn't able to calculate molecular foldings and handle very big chunks of data at the same time with it, by the way that machine had a first-gen i5 and nvidia gt330m (1gb of anciency). so i ought to buy a new laptop; my little goliath.
anyway this is what i am trying to say: define your needings then go shopping, or ask with that way.
you know there is a huge scandal and they are trying to cope with that with giving huge discounts! i think it is a good time for buying a lenovo, if only you'll run it as a linux box. by the i hate windows and i'm so lucky they don't care. i think windows should be a keyboard company, their keyboards are definitely awesome. < update was for keyboards >
having used mac all my life, i have high expectations in terms of portability, reliability, compatibility, aesthetics, etc etc. but seeing as the way macs are built, it's very difficult locating apt replacements. Right now, I've zeroed in on Toshiba Portégé z30, which is the closest approximation I could find!
What about the new Razer blade ? I'm in the same situation as the OP but my company is keen to get me the laptop I want (my Zenbook was great but its 4GB or unupgradable RAM is a bummer) so I don't really care about the price.
Wait til april. I've been waiting for a while, it looks like lenovo is going to start shipping laptops with 16gb sticks around april (couple of non official confirmations) (this will also cause the price of the ram to drop down from its current 300usd price point I hope)
The main issue with most ultrabooks is they only get a single sodimm slot. Or in other words have a hard limit of 8gb. These 16gb sticks[1] have been round a while but an issue with the cpu's prevented them from registering, the broadwell series has sorted that.
As for recommendations, I was tossing up between x1c 3rd gen and a macbook / second air / 16gb mbp. I'm now holding out for april and likely going to go with a thinkpad X250 - its a bit fatter but its 12.5" and has upgradable insides (ram/hd.) This is mostly down to the fact that I prefer a solid keyboard over anything else and the x1c just doesn't have the travel to make it worth ditching apple. (I'd take another MBA over going with x1c)
Options:
- x1c - nice but too thin for key travel like a fatter thinkpad, qhd will kill battery life, at least it has track point
- x250 - fatter but small, good kb with decent travel, upgradeable / replaceable insides + battery, shitty screen
- mba - can't really complain, had my mba since late '11 no issues what so ever.
- mb - nice everything, only a single port though, depending on usage you might not be able to deal
- mbp - far better spec's than all and still cheaper / thinner than lenovos (aus taxes destroy lenovo v mac..)
All of the above will run linux but have some issues until problems get sorted, nothing a deal breaker. For me, the x250 is in first place but I don't mind a fattop and the keyboard is far too important to me. (I don't mind crappy screens while coding so much) Trackpoint vs mac trackpad is a 50-50 for me also but I wouldn't want anything less than either of those.
I am running double-system(windows 10 and ubuntu) at Samsung Ativ Book 8, they both run smoothly, and battery life can reach about 7 hours for both system.
I like the low-end Asus machines. They're not as nice as Asus Zenbooks but still nicer than anything non-Mac in regard to build quality, keyboard feel, and ports.
36 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 83.1 ms ] threadIt is, with Crouton. https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
Or to be more precise, run the two concurrently.
I read somewhere, however, that without a hardware developer-mode switch, running out of juice can cause the device to revert from developer-mode and wipe your non-chromeos environment. Check the recent Hacker News thread on the new Pixel for more details.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/03/14/1454240/tested-l...
Only difficulty you might run into is adapting applications to scale text and graphics up, as the screen's DPI is very high. For example, Chrome's bars (navigation, tabs and bookmarks) are still sized in fixed number of pixels and look painfully small.
1. Some of the media keys don't work on Windows 8, even with Samsung software (laptop shipped with Windows 7, and they offered limited support with Windows 8).
2. The touchpad is awful. I can click on some right sides of the touchpad and it left clicks, or sometimes it right clicks when I click on the left side. My old netbook and dell laptops had much better touchpads. Thankfully, the touchpad is rarely used.
3. Usb or mini hdmi devices sometimes disconnect if I wiggle or bump the plug.
4. Ports are too close together. I have 3 or 4 flash drives (some fairly slim - http://www.testberichte.de/imgs/p_imgs/Mushkin+Ventura+Pro+%...), and none of them fit in the left port, because they hit the power cable. In the right port, they're also tight if I have headphones plugged in. You really need to be careful with the cables and devices you own, because you only have a millimeter or two of clearance between them.
5. The power cable on the side is annoying. When I move the laptop when it's plugged in, the cable always wants to fold under the device. I guess it's better than my dell, where the cable would pull out the back at the slightest movement.
6. Battery life is poor. I keep the battery saver enabled, which only charges the device to 80%. It goes from 80% to dead in about 1 to 1.5 hours, with just general browsing on the internet.
On the plus side, the screen is perfect, it's extremely lightweight, very quiet, it's now my favorite keyboard, and it's fast enough for everyday work. So, it has flaws, but it's the best laptop I've owned to date, and I'd either buy the newer model or one of apple's offerings the next time around.
The lack of ethernet and (ports in general) is annoying for me. Had to use another laptop when my home router forgot its password and I needed cable to log into it. Need an extra cable to plug it into monitors, or TVs.
anyway this is what i am trying to say: define your needings then go shopping, or ask with that way.
my needings was as yo can figure, was listed above. so i bought an lenovo a z5070 < http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z50/?sb...: >
you know there is a huge scandal and they are trying to cope with that with giving huge discounts! i think it is a good time for buying a lenovo, if only you'll run it as a linux box. by the i hate windows and i'm so lucky they don't care. i think windows should be a keyboard company, their keyboards are definitely awesome. < update was for keyboards >
The main issue with most ultrabooks is they only get a single sodimm slot. Or in other words have a hard limit of 8gb. These 16gb sticks[1] have been round a while but an issue with the cpu's prevented them from registering, the broadwell series has sorted that.
As for recommendations, I was tossing up between x1c 3rd gen and a macbook / second air / 16gb mbp. I'm now holding out for april and likely going to go with a thinkpad X250 - its a bit fatter but its 12.5" and has upgradable insides (ram/hd.) This is mostly down to the fact that I prefer a solid keyboard over anything else and the x1c just doesn't have the travel to make it worth ditching apple. (I'd take another MBA over going with x1c)
Options:
- x1c - nice but too thin for key travel like a fatter thinkpad, qhd will kill battery life, at least it has track point - x250 - fatter but small, good kb with decent travel, upgradeable / replaceable insides + battery, shitty screen - mba - can't really complain, had my mba since late '11 no issues what so ever. - mb - nice everything, only a single port though, depending on usage you might not be able to deal - mbp - far better spec's than all and still cheaper / thinner than lenovos (aus taxes destroy lenovo v mac..)
All of the above will run linux but have some issues until problems get sorted, nothing a deal breaker. For me, the x250 is in first place but I don't mind a fattop and the keyboard is far too important to me. (I don't mind crappy screens while coding so much) Trackpoint vs mac trackpad is a 50-50 for me also but I wouldn't want anything less than either of those.
[1] http://www.intelligentmemory.com/dram-modules/ddr3-so-dimm/
E.g., http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-vivobook-x202e-dh31t/
Once you swap in an SSD it performs well enough for normal dev work.
Nothing compares to apple hardware for me.