New Hardware Review
System76 Serval WS and Pixel 8 Pro
Self-taught software developer since childhood. Android developer since 2009, now using Kotlin & Compose. Designed, developed and published various apps. Strengths: inventive and open-minded. Interests: smart contracts, single-board computers, AI.
It has now been about a month since I got some new equipment.
System 76 Serval WS
Pixel 8 Pro
After 15 years of being an MacBook user I went back to my Linux roots.
When thinking about which new laptop to buy, I decided that I had had enough of Apple's high prices and lack of customization options.
I've considered getting a Puri.sm laptop but I wanted a bigger screen, a faster CPU and more RAM.
System76 seemed to embrace the open-source philosophy much more strongly.
I'm giving the Ubuntu based Pop!_OS a try but I might install a different distro at some point.
Yes, I had to use the terminal to do various customizations, but I actually like that!
My old MBP had only 2 USB-C ports but in addition to that i now also have 2 old-fashioned USB ports, an SDcard slot, an Ethernet port, HDMI and video out port .
I got 96 GB DDR5 5600 MHz RAM and 4 TB PCIe4 M.2 SSD storage which is more than i will be needing in the foreseeable future. There's space left for a second SSD.
It has a state of the art i9-14900HX CPU and i'm not experiencing any speed issues
I got the 17.3" Matte 2K QHD (240Hz) display. They also have a higher resolution one but I really dont need it. It's ginormous compared to my old 13" MBP.
One thing that I don't like so much is the loud fan.
Occasionally the track pad seems to get stuck for a second, and I have not yet figured out why this happens.
Although it's purely cosmetic, I love the colorful keyboard backlight.
System76 fully supports the right to repair.
https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/serw13/README.html
I've been using a pixel 5 since January 2021 and it stopped receiving security updates so it has become unsafe for the most critical tasks.
Decided to get the pro version of the Pixel 8 as it has a telephoto and ultrawide lens.
I enjoy the AI features and I'm eager to see how these features will improve in the future.
This phone is supposed to get 7 years of updates so keeping the battery between 25~75% to make it last 7 years.
Since the latest update, it allows connecting to an HDMI device, so I want to try out desktop mode
