[Raion]

So, I ended up coming into a bit of money, some of which I spent on bills, some of which went to buying a truck, and the remainder was split between investing towards the mouse pad stuff and THIS. 

I am pleased to say I have my new favorite laptop, replacing my old trashbook pro which served as a stop gap after the untimely demise of my laptop of the last year or two (A Zenbook UX301L that a Chinese clone battery swelled and broke the case on). The trashbook, a 2011 Macbook, was dumpster picked and repaired (bad RAM, bad HDD) and was okay, but has some ugliness to it and such. Plus an absurdly bad resolution of 1280x720.

Okay so to discuss what I got:

I pad $878, opting to buy the DIY Edition, which requires a bit of assembly (about as much as assembling an AR-15 lower to an upper - not much). I provided my own RAM (currently 8 G due to my DDR4 RAM being delayed, I picked up a DDR4 stick locally for a stopgap, M.2 Storage and Wireless card. I got the base i5 CPU, as that's plenty for me for the time being. I can always upgrade to another board and I just didn't have the cash for a bigger one. It doesn't matter, I'm happy. 

It came four days later, arriving via FedEx 3-day. 5 captive t-5 bits (a driver is included) open it up, and one cable connects the top case to the rest of the system (Magnets help ensure you're not putting stuff together cockeyed. Assembly took all of 5 minutes.

What did I put on it? Not BSD, because I won't use FreeBSD 13-CURRENT (which has necessary fixes for it) or OpenBSD (I have a dislike of that OS overall), and NetBSD has no support for the graphics modules right now (TigerLake) so after trying several distros, I got Artix OpenRC Linux to work. I'm sure that Vishnu is disappointed I didn't go with slack, but I don't have patience for that kind of experience sadly. Artix has some annoyances, but I did get it up and running. 

Let's go over the bits of the system:

Design: I love the design, definitely 9/10 there. The logo is great, as is the keyboard, thinness, modularity of the 4 USB-C expansion bays etc. I'm currently rocking 4 USB-C, but plan to get some others (some expansion drives, and a few USB-A plugs)

Performance: Quite good!

Repairability: Everything inside is documented and sold in modular parts! LOVE IT. Apple has no excuse (Sorry Guardian452, this proves you wrong on the glue argument you threw out years ago. 

Screen: Love it. 3:2 > 16:9, wish I could get more squarish monitors. The color contrast is great, and the screen is easy to fix if accidents happen!

Keyboard: Good as far as laptop keys go. I don't mind chiclets, but some people do and for them I say "Design your own!" 

Sound: The speakers get quite loud but if they rest on your thighs they'll get muffled. 

Verdict: GET IT.

Desktop photo (The browser covers her swimsuit, it's not lewd or anything but I wanted to save you guys a bit of headache.):     

Other photos: 



Also, satellite internet sucks, hence the delay here