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Experience with Tuxedo outside of Europe? Or other non american companies? (aussie.zone)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm considering buying a laptop from Tuxedo, but I'm in Australia and I'm not sure how bad that idea is. Does anyone have experience or recommendation? I would not buy from any american company though. Is there a risk to not go through the country, or that I would have to pay a massive tax on it?

I bought 2 lenovos before. It seems to be getting worse for Linux and Amd. My first one was awesome, the second one had so many issues and I have to use a usb wifi and blacklist the internal one, so I probably want to skip lenovo this time, even if I have to pay a lot more.

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[–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

This company https://slimbook.com/en/kde?

They seem to have everything I want. Multiple drives, sd card, lightweight, etc. I just can't find the actual power requirements.

Which one did you get? What are you not happy with on the hardware integration? And do you know what happens if you need warranty?

The only think I don't like is that this AI 9 365 seems to be just slight better than my current one, Ryzen 7 7840U, so many years later, while much more expensive. But I guess the days of getting twice the performance every 2 years died a long time ago.

It has "AI" in the name, so that makes up for the lack of real improvement /s

Edit: further researching, it seems that although the performance is not much better, the power consumption is much higher. That seems to be the case for all this new "AI" stuff. So maybe I'll keep with my problematic lenovo that doesn't require a new solar panel....

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I got a Titan with expanded drives. I increased the RAM size myself which was inexpensive at the time. I wanted a laptop capable of large CAD projects and other nonsense that I have to do for work.

    The PSU brick is a 19.5 V supplying 230 W. I have a dock which supplies power over USB-C, but that seems to act only as life support. The computer needs a lot of juice. However, it it pales in comparison to my desktop computer requiring a 1kW psu to boot. Your frame of reference may be different from mine.

    Hardware integration is fine, but not perfect. I have had trouble with their built-in core priority scheme which seemed to struggle with eco mode. I tend to leave it docked at one of my workspaces though, so I leave it on high CPU mode.

    With my docks, I run 2 screens in Ultra HD quite easily in addition to the laptop maxing at 2560x1440. This includes when I do something stupid like compile code with a CAD drawing on another screen while watching shows in a browser with a million tabs open.

    I run into weird challenges with the hardware that might be only specific to me. E.g., I hate black metal laptops because I do a lot of field work. Summer means burnt wrists. But, this comes with the territory of a laptop targeted for gamers. This may be relevant depending on how far in the outback you are with that solar panel!

    The speakers suck, but that's more of a laptop problem than a this-laptop problem.

    The company was responsive when I had questions. I had an SSD die (not their fault), and they supported well to help me buy a replacement from a US vendor to reduce cost of shipping it back to Spain.

    The Ryzen 9 5900 laptop had just been released by them when I bought it. The timing was right for me. I don't know your needs, so I can't help with that. Of course, looking for Linux-first hardware you will be limited by the slower lifecycle and availability due to demand.

    This was not the "perfect" laptop for me when I bought it, but it was the one that ticked enough boxes to be "good enough" in my budget. I am still happy with my choice.

    I smell bullshit with the AI thing, but that is just branding I suspect. The specs look similar enough and match my use case. What I call a CAD box or CUDA box somebody will use for AI.

    I know you are avoiding US manufacturers, and I'm not here to convert you on that. However, I recommend looking at the System76 computers, since they still seem to be what many upstart Linux-first shops chase. It will give you an idea of what you should look for as good options elsewhere.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    My case is very specific because I live in a van, so power usage is a massive issue. My first thinkpad is roughly 45w, which is awesome. The second one can get to more than 60, which is bad, but it's close to twice the performance of the first one, so it's ok.

    Now it seems that they use like twice the power of my second one, while being just a fraction better. That's not ok. Kind of the main reason I wanted to upgrade was to see if I could get more performance with the same power usage, which is already kind of as high as I want to go. The current result is disappointing.

    230w would be like 4 times more than I'm ok with. Even if usb-c could do that, which is anther requirement I have (no AC power).

    So I might stick with what I have...

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Oh yeah, you aren't going to fill that niche unless you move into something outside the Linux-first group. Even my System76 Lemur draws 65W.

    I'd love to hear if you find something else out there. Sometimes I need to order field gear for very remote jobs, and more recommendations are always welcome. I hate only using those ginormous toughbooks.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago

    Well... my issues with my current thinkpad https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/thinkpad-t16-gen-2-16-inch-amd/len101t0076 are: -non expandable memory. 32gb would be nice -non expandable drive, I'm still using the old one just because I have a 1tb m.2 that I can't use on this one. (but you can put another wifi, or a 4g modem, I don't remember, some bullshit they thought would compensate for this) -bultin wifi barely works. -no micro sd card, which would be useful for me. -I had massive battery issues. They replaced it, but it now often goes from 50% to 2% for no reason. No recalibration fixes it.

    Other than those things, I quite like it. It's powerful for its energy usage.

    But seeing how many issues I wrote... yeah I guess it's not something I one can recommend. All issues are debatable, but the battery and wifi can't be ignored.

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