27th November 2022 - New Laptop
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I have bought a new laptop. This is a bit unusual for me as I have 
previously bought second hand as a rule. However, I have been looking 
for a replacement smallish laptop to replace a Thinkpad Helix2. This 
is a convertible affair where the keyboard detaches. I have found it a 
fairly annoying machine physically as it is heavy and tends to suffer 
from wobble. I also find I cannot carry it around without worrying 
about bits flexing. With a recent business trip, I found the keyboard 
part to have started rattling. It appears a speaker has become loose. 
The performance side is pretty good though. The battery has reached a 
point where it is being a pain too. I have started having to carry the 
power cable for meetings. 

So what did I replace it with? A Starlabs Starlite. *Cue hipster vibe* 
You probably have not heard of Starlabs. They are a British company 
who specialise on Linux laptops. This is their cheapest and smallest 
laptop. It has an 11 inch screen and uses an Intel Pentium N5030 
processor with 8GB of RAM. So it is not going to win any speed 
competitions or be able to do anything while building programs. Well 
that doesn't bother me. Most of my computing is running the odd python 
script, typing stuff, small scale writing programs, internet browsing 
and of course using SDF. This is a light laptop with an aluminium 
frame and no fans. Perfect! Battery life is pretty good at 8 hours and 
I seem to have been getting that regularly. The feel is premium and 
the build quality seems great. The keyboard is a good set of 
compromises for the small size. I can comfortably touch type without 
issue really. Well until I need some punctuation that is. 

One advantage of Starlabs is being able to use a FOSS bootloader. I 
can swap between coreboot or a non-FOSS option. Since receiving the 
laptop, I have been using coreboot and found no issues. It was lovely 
not having to make a liveboot USB and install my desired OS. Starlabs 
offer a variety of linux flavours and state whether your choice will 
lead to a donation being made to that distro team. When I received the 
laptop, I only had to select a language, keyboard layout, user name, 
password, laptop name and I was done. I am currently running Manjaro 
XFCE. I would normally run i3 on a laptop but community versions of 
Manjaro were not offered pre-installed. XFCE has been a pleasure and 
made some things a lot easier. I may well keep using it on this 
machine. 

At Â400, this is not a cheap laptop but it does not feel cheap. 
Instead, it feels more 'premium' than many more expensive machines I 
have played with. I think I have had value for money with this. 
Another key feature of interest with Starlabs is the fact they sell 
spare parts and provide assembly instructions for their laptops. This 
is a key reason I have been buying Thinkpads so it is nice to find a 
supplier who is doing similar. I feel that Starlabs are doing 
interesting stuff and deserve some support. I am glad such a company 
exists and I do not have to worry about import taxes making it cost 
prohibitive to buy from them. 

Finally, who doesn't want a laptop with a key labelled as 'super' 
instead of using the Microsoft logo? It is a silly cherry on top. 

[1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite for product page