- i7-6500U
- Intel 520 Core Skylake integrated graphics
- 8GB Ram
- 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6GB/s (540MBs R/520MBs W)
URL: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/lafiteII/
This laptop uses the same Aluminimum chassis as the Apple MacBook 13.3, but the spec of the internals is obviously way more than that of the Apple and for 1/2 the price of their top spec. Given that Apple still only use an inferior i5 processor (4th Gen) and not even an i7, this laptop is far superior.
I got it to run Linux as I always do, and in this case Fedora 22. Installing F22 was the easiest install ever, and with the SSD doesn't take hours to do the fsck that it does on standard hard disks. After installing from a live USB version of the OS the only extras required were;
- Tether my phone to the laptop to do an update so that the wireless driver installed. The base image for the live image does not include the wireless driver, and there is no ethernet connector unless you by a USB adapter (which I have for the USB 3.1 port).
- The only other issue, even after the update was the screen brightness, which can be fixed through grub by adding the following;
- Edit the file /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet acpi_backlight=vendor i915.preliminary_hw_support=1" - Run the following command to update the boot loader;
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
After that the laptop is fully working, with all buttons. The HDMI port though needs to be connected on boot to make it work with an external screen. I also purchased HDMI to VGA connector since I have to connect to projectors that are so out of date, and also a mic/headphone combo cable. The 3 cables (includes the ethernet/3 USB connector) were purchased from Amazon for less than £20.
Makes those of you with an Apple look like you are using something from the 1950s ;-)
