Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

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MurphCID
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Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

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.

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.

8) 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.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Portreve »

Very cool. Awesome family.

I have an i5 HP Envy desktop and I like it. It sure blows the doors off my 2011 i7 MBP.

I'm also very happy with the NVME drive it came with (I bought a separate one that I swap in and out when I don't want to run Win10 (which is like 99% of the time).
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

I'm glad you got a machine that you like! One reason is the graphics card on your new machine is Intel. Why on Earth anyone would make a Linux machine that uses an NVIDIA card is beyond me.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Portreve »

Lady Fitzgerald wrote: Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:57 am I'm glad you got a machine that you like! One reason is the graphics card on your new machine is Intel. Why on Earth anyone would make a Linux machine that uses an NVIDIA card is beyond me.
My Intel-based HP Envy tower has an Intel UHD Graphics 630 chipset in it and I've been extremely happy with it. I haven't tried a KDE distro on it, but I did test Ubuntu 20.04 on it for a while and it ran it nicely as well.

I guess an AMD GPU would be the way to go if one wanted something higher-end. However, you won't be doing it in this computer since all it's got is a 300 watt PSU and good luck trying to change it out. If you want to do that, there's no substitute for building your own system with a standard ATX case.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

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Well I like both of them in some ways, and am upset about other things as we have discussed. The Coreboot/lighting thing still annoys the bejeebers out of me, but I have to live with it. The battery life is insane on the Lemur Pro though. I would have been happy with an HP Envy laptop, but this is what the wife and kids got me, so I am appropriately and sincerely grateful. So I made fresh scones, cooked their favorite meal, and watched "Safe Haven" with them (*gag*).

The hinges on the the lid are very stiff, and you cannot one hand open it. Bezels are decent, not too narrow to provide stability.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

This is a Mint issue on the new laptop:

1) Printers- Darn it Mint found my printer and installed it right away, now I have NO excuse not to work.....

Have not had a real chance to take it out and road test it, but tomorrow it is going with me to the hospital. My oldest is having surgery, and because of stupid COVID rules, only one other can go with her. So I will go and wait while my wife goes to work. Hopefully it will be done relatively quickly, but the battery shows 21:10 left at 83%. So the laptop will go with me, along with my iPad (books). I plan on giving it a test while waiting.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

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I hope the surgery goes well.

Damn inconvenient when printers work isn't it ;)
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

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Lady Fitzgerald wrote: Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:57 am I'm glad you got a machine that you like! One reason is the graphics card on your new machine is Intel. Why on Earth anyone would make a Linux machine that uses an NVIDIA card is beyond me.
Just a question really. I have more than a dozen Linux computers with nVidia graphics that are outstanding. What is the issue with nVidia?

MurphCID, congratulations on the new computer!
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

DisturbedDragon wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:18 am
Lady Fitzgerald wrote: Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:57 am I'm glad you got a machine that you like! One reason is the graphics card on your new machine is Intel. Why on Earth anyone would make a Linux machine that uses an NVIDIA card is beyond me.
Just a question really. I have more than a dozen Linux computers with nVidia graphics that are outstanding. What is the issue with nVidia?...
NVIDIA generally doesn't open source its drivers so they aren't baked into Linux Mint, making it a PITA for beginners to install Linux. Also, some programs that run off a USB stick won't work on machines with NVIDIA cards because of the driver issue. I didn't have the problems I'm having now on my NVIDIA equipped machine on the Lenovo machine with Intel graphics I first started using Linux on.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Barbados99 »

Just reading this today made my day. Congrats MurphCID. What a good family you have to do that for you.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

Barbados99 wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:54 pm Just reading this today made my day. Congrats MurphCID. What a good family you have to do that for you.
Thanks I do have a wonderful family, and I am truly blessed to have them. I'll be at the hospital tomorrow while my oldest daughter gets a golf ball sized lump removed from under her left arm. They did an initial biopsy, and said it seems to be ok, but they will check again tomorrow. She is NOT going to be going back to work on monday I hate to tell her.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

The battery just will not die! Also this thing is a fingerprint magnet.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by DAMIEN1307 »

fingerprint magnet
Well, at least your in the right business for that...lol...DAMIEN
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by antikythera »

MurphCID wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 1:51 pm The battery just will not die! Also this thing is a fingerprint magnet.
You could wrap the lid and keyboard tray in a vinyl of your choice. It would actually protect the laptop while making it unique to you.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

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MurphCID wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:11 pm
Thanks I do have a wonderful family, and I am truly blessed to have them. I'll be at the hospital tomorrow while my oldest daughter gets a golf ball sized lump removed from under her left arm. They did an initial biopsy, and said it seems to be ok, but they will check again tomorrow. She is NOT going to be going back to work on monday I hate to tell her.
I hope it all went well with your daughter's surgery today.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

DAMIEN1307 wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 1:53 pm
fingerprint magnet
Well, at least your in the right business for that...lol...DAMIEN
LOL I suck at taking prints except with this computer......
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

Barbados99 wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 2:59 pm
MurphCID wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:11 pm
Thanks I do have a wonderful family, and I am truly blessed to have them. I'll be at the hospital tomorrow while my oldest daughter gets a golf ball sized lump removed from under her left arm. They did an initial biopsy, and said it seems to be ok, but they will check again tomorrow. She is NOT going to be going back to work on monday I hate to tell her.
I hope it all went well with your daughter's surgery today.
Thank you! The surgeon said he thinks he got it all, and it looks good. She is home, on her laptop playing a game right now! He said that it appeared to be fine, they will just confirm and let us know by next week.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by MurphCID »

antikythera wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 2:44 pm
MurphCID wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 1:51 pm The battery just will not die! Also this thing is a fingerprint magnet.
You could wrap the lid and keyboard tray in a vinyl of your choice. It would actually protect the laptop while making it unique to you.
I have my Buckaroo Banzai, Texas, and SFASU stickers on it.
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

MurphCID wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:53 pm ...I have my Buckaroo Banzai, Texas, and SFASU stickers on it.
And here I thought I was being excessive:

IMG_0076.JPG
IMG_0078.JPG

But, then again, there is this guy:

Screenshot from 2020-09-11 14-38-37.jpg
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Re: Early Christmas gift to me (Lemur Pro)

Post by antikythera »

I had a large white line art of tux on my laptop lid for a while. It started peeling in parts though as there were sharp edges on it and the adhesive wasn't that strong so I took it off in the end. It came from unixstickers but that site seems to have vanished.
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