Detailed spec below; here is a brief report on my new Ultranote, which arrived today. Quality is comparable with any machine in the same price band, and it's a good looking and comparatively light weight piece of kit. The trackpad works well, and the keys have a good amount of travel, although the space key needs to be hit pretty much in the centre to register - something picked up by other reviews. This was not a power machine or something to game on, but will be used for word processing, email, web on the move, so I resisted the lure of the newer M.2 PCIe drives. The only intensive work I do is moderate photo editing, which is why I opted for the full HD screen (which actually takes some getting used to, everything being that much smaller). No dead or stuck pixels! I can't speak for battery life, though the power manager on my desktop reckons I've at least five hours now I've unplugged it.
Now to Linux: a flawless install! I've been an XFCE user for quite a while, and before that Gnome 2, but was so taken by the new Plasma desktop that I decided with the extra power on my new kit to Kubuntu a try (which in fairness is now less of a resource hog than it used to be). I plugged in my USB, hit F7 for the boot menu and took it from there. I kept the existing EFI partition and deleted everything else, setting up root and home on my 240G SSD, and let the installer run. I settled on the minimal install, which took about ten minutes, then used Muon to add everything else I wanted. Everything worked out of the box except F1 to disable the touch pad and F11 for flight mode.
PC Specialist kept me informed throughout. I ordered on 4 June and had it 9 days later. The only slight glitch was the delivery instructions: PCS tell you not to sign for receipt until you've opened the box and checked; the DPD driver told me once I'd opened it he couldn't take it back, and all I could do was check the box. In the event all was fine!
Hope this is all helpful to anyone else thinking of buying this model for Linux.
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Chassis & Display
UltraNote Series: 14" Matte Full HD 60 Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel ® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor i5-8250U (1.60GHz, 3.4GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 610/620/630 (CPU Dependant) - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk
240GB ADATA SU650 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Audio
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Now to Linux: a flawless install! I've been an XFCE user for quite a while, and before that Gnome 2, but was so taken by the new Plasma desktop that I decided with the extra power on my new kit to Kubuntu a try (which in fairness is now less of a resource hog than it used to be). I plugged in my USB, hit F7 for the boot menu and took it from there. I kept the existing EFI partition and deleted everything else, setting up root and home on my 240G SSD, and let the installer run. I settled on the minimal install, which took about ten minutes, then used Muon to add everything else I wanted. Everything worked out of the box except F1 to disable the touch pad and F11 for flight mode.
PC Specialist kept me informed throughout. I ordered on 4 June and had it 9 days later. The only slight glitch was the delivery instructions: PCS tell you not to sign for receipt until you've opened the box and checked; the DPD driver told me once I'd opened it he couldn't take it back, and all I could do was check the box. In the event all was fine!
Hope this is all helpful to anyone else thinking of buying this model for Linux.
--
Chassis & Display
UltraNote Series: 14" Matte Full HD 60 Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel ® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor i5-8250U (1.60GHz, 3.4GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 610/620/630 (CPU Dependant) - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk
240GB ADATA SU650 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Audio
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
