From Gigabyte to ZaReason!

About a month ago I needed a new laptop and bought a hot-of-the-presses Gigabyte P44W v4 from NewEgg.  In a previous post I described my experience with the Gigabyte.  My initial reports were positive, but unfortunately I quickly soured on the machine.  It suffered from a number of problems that were showstoppers for me:

1. I never got the nVidia proprietary drivers installed correctly.  The CPU (i7 4710MQ)'s integrated graphics and the discrete nVidia card never worked correctly.  The binary drivers would never correctly detect the discrete card.  Nouveau would work (unreliably), but X would always fall back to the iGPU.  What was the point of a 970M w/3GB?
   
2. Kubuntu 14.10 was never very happy.  I quickly backed away from Kubuntu 15.04, which is the first Kubuntu to feature systemd and Qt 5/Plasma 5, but even my workhorse 14.10 wasn't reliable.  I suffered from frequent lockups and long pauses.  It wouldn't always start up consistently, either.
   
3. Wireless range was quite poor.  I never had a problem with my Dell talking to my wireless router (D-Link Dir-645) through multiple walls and between floors, but the Gigabyte was barely able to hold the link open.  Throughput was poor, and I ended up having to actually go into the room with the router to do any downloading.

Because the laptop was so new, I didn't have any previous experience to mine (how did we live before StackOverfow and Google?), so I felt adrift.  I ended up pulling out my RAM, SATA and mSATA SSDs, replacing the OEM components, and returning it to NewEgg.  They quickly gave me an RMA and a full refund, including shipping.  STILL LOVE NEWEGG!!

I was looking for a laptop that had been vetted for Linux, and I ended up wading into the land of "Linux Certified" vendors, the most famous being System76.  After a lot of searching, I settled on ZaReason, a small system builder in Berkeley that has been around for 7+ years.  I liked ZaReason because it's computers were completely configurable (every component), their laptops all had removable batteries, and, of course every system came with Linux preinstalled and thus were guaranteed to work well with my favorite operating system.

I settled on a Verix 547, which has a 15.6" FHD screen (which is nice!), 2 2.5" SATA III ports, 4 SO-DIMM slots (up to 32GB), and a big 9-cell battery, amongst other goodies.

There are some trade-offs, however:

1. The systems are more expensive.  The components seem to be of high quality, but I paid about a 20% markup on the ZaReason as it was out of the box.
   
2. I really mean complete configurability.  In addition to choosing all the normal stuff (CPU, RAM, HDD/SDD size, etc.), I actually had them not supply any RAM or storage in my laptop.  Yes, it basically came in an unbootable state!  I had a very specific way I wanted to install Kubuntu and I didn't feel like describing it down to every detail for them.  They did test it on their own, but when the sent me the system with the components ripped out.
   
3. They really worked with me.  I sent a bunch of questions about how reliable they found the 970M to be with Linux, how they set it up, etc.  Tony @ ZaReason always got back to me quickly and with a positive, "Yeah, we can do that for you" response.  They even gave me a refund for the stock components I had them remove!  So, I saved about $100 by not including the stock 4GB of RAM or the 500GB HDD.
   
4. They provided an educational discount - as I'm enrolled in the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech, I could take advantage of it.  Every 5% helps!
   
5. The laptop uses a generic shell (case) rather than any customized, vendor-specific, space-optimized case.  So, it's BIG - like 2.1" thick!  It has a huge bezel, which makes room for a full-size keyboard w/number pad (bleah).  It's also about 6 pounds, so this is NOT a Macbook!  This might fit into the "luggable" category.
   
6. Shipping is slower than for a pre-configured system, so don't expect your rig to arrive just a few days after your order.

Overall, the ZaReason Verix 547 is working out well.  Maybe it'll be another post to describe installing Linux and getting the Optimus config working.