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Lemur Pro (Early Christmas gift to me)


Murph

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The wife and kids decided the old man needed a pick me up because the last month or so has just been one beat down after another at work, constant issues at the house which cost money and aggravation, worries about my father and his health, and dad was at the end of his tether. I almost retired from my job. My oldest got onto my computer and started looking at things, and she saw that I had looked at a Lemur Pro (this was before I had gotten into the Darter Pro), and they decided after listening to me fuss about lack of drive space to up the drive to a 500 gb one. Also they knew I wanted another Linux machine. So they ordered it. It came in last week, and the first thing I did after expressing my appreciation to my wonderful family was to open it up, and stick in the spare 8 gb stick of ram so that I have 16 gb. My wife used the money she was saving for her "gift to herself", so I will respond in kind. While I was looking at an AMD HP Envy, I am not going to send this laptop back.

Now on to the initial review:

Specs: i5, 16 gb of RAM, 500gb Samsung SSD, Intel WiFi 6 card.


1) Keyboard- much like that on the 2015 MacPro, decent, not as much key travel as the Darter Pro, which in my honest opinion has one of the better keyboards of any laptop I have ever used. Short key travel, a bit tight due to the size of the laptop in general. I have not done enough typing on this yet, but for lots of typing, I think I will prefer the Darter Pro keyboard.

2) Screen- Wow. Very nice, bright, clear, crisp no complaints. No dead pixels, a good 1080p 14" screen. See here for additional information on the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RizvGLIVGQQ

3) Upgradeability: 8gb soldered onto the motherboard, but one open slot for a max of 40gb of ram. I added one stick of 8gb for 16 gb. TWO NVMe slots, the second slot is keyed to only take NVMe drives, you cannot use a SATA stick on this one. I tried to stick the 240gb SATA stick that came with the Darter Pro in the slot since it was on hand, and would not fit. Removing the back to get to the guts is easy. Remove the screws and lift the lid, much much, much easier than the Darter Pro in terms of access. No more having to lift of the keyboard to get at extra screws.

4) Battery Life: One word- LONG. I added TLP, and the battery monitor is showing between 9-21(!) hours of life on this battery with reasonable screen brightness. This thing is an all day lollipop. Just amazing battery life. Power brick is TINY, and I mean tiny. It is the same 65 watts that the Darter Pro brick pushes, so I wonder if they could be used on each other? Cord is a bit short, I would have liked another foot of cord.  UPDATE: OMG this thing will not die!  Holy Sh*t!  

5) Weight: Darn near weightless. This thing is so light, that it will be a pleasure to carry. Yes it is plastic, but so are most these days.

6) Trackpad: Smooth, and integrated no buttons. Not as huge as the Mac touchpad, but pretty decent size. Feels better than the Darter Pro trackpad.

7) Ports- 2x USB A and 1x USB C, HDMI, Micro SD card, NO Ethernet port. I miss the Ethernet port.

😎 Wireless: I saw they got the best card, the Intel WiFi 6. Connected no issues, and fast.

9) Software: Once more the Coreboot monster raises its head. Although this time WiFi worked under Mint with NO issues. Just no keyboard lights. Tried POP OS, and tried to like it but just could not do it. So I installed Mint Cinnamon and added the System 76 PPAs. This allows for firmware updates, and the laptop had a firmware update waiting. Mint looks better on this laptop than on the Darter, could be a function of the screen. Installation of Mint was completely painless. Of note, other than the keyboard lights, and the firmware updater, Mint 20 ran perfectly, no glitches, no errors, no issues without the PPAs. Loads Mint at boot quickly. The Mint installation was utterly painless.

10) Speakers: Meh. Typical laptop sound. Nothing great, not terrible, but nothing to write home about. I have yet to find a laptop with decent speakers.

In summation: For a light, small, easy to travel with laptop, this thing is going to fit the bill. I feel more at home with Mint, and so on it went. For lots of typing at the house, I will most likely use either my desktop or the Darter Pro for the keyboard. But for being mobile (as far as we can in these days), this thing is going to be a good machine for that.  UPDATE: Took it to the hospital with my yesterday while my daughter was having surgery, and I barely moved the battery after over an hour of use.  Amazing.  

 

UPDATE:  The battery life is insane!  It just keeps going and going for my usage.  Keyboard is ok, much like that on an HP Envy or Spectre, or perhaps a pre-f**ked up keyboard Mac.  I am really liking this computer.  I mean I like it a lot, no regrets on the purchase.

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