This laptop in my option has a sleek workforce look to it. It has quite a hard durable plastic casing leading me to hope that if i were unfortunate enough to drop it i would not be down a laptop.
On to the linux part:
Ubuntu its self works pretty well. I only tested the alternative install so I cant comment on any issues with the graphical live disk only that it worked fine for me after booting into ubuntu.
The first problem i noticed was the lack of out the box wireless support.
This laptop has a different ID for its wireless module and so requires the compilation of the wireless-compat package in order to get it working. After this the laptop uses the ath5k module without any apparent issues.
The second slightly odd thing i noticed about this was that if you plug a long ethernet cable into it it doesn't work but a shorter one does. Not sure why but worth mentioning anyway ;)
The last and most irritating issue is the acpi support. This laptop uses the insyde H20 Bios which, makes the fn-fx utilities useless as well as not being able to suspend on closing the lid or control the fan!
The fan at first does not function at all, but at 79c it will automatically switch on full blast and prevent the machine overheating.
The fan will then stay permanently on until reboot.
Overall most stuff just works but the acpi issues will plague the user of this laptop if they plan to use it as a portable and not a desktop replacement.
Pros:
- Volume knob works straight away
- even though the acpi functions are not complete the brightness controls work
Cons:
- No out the box wireless but it can be fixed
- Major Auxiliary Acpi issues
- Fan does not work correctly 79c before it kicks in!
