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by robertfw 4538 days ago
I've been using one of these with the HD screen since the spring, here are some thoughts:

Nice: - Good battery life. With screen on full, wifi on I can get between 3-5 hours depending on CPU utilization. With screen brightness turned down, wifi off, low utilization, ~6 hours

- Keyboard and mouse pad are great

- No issues with unsupported bits and pieces from ubuntu, with exception of video output via usb

- the battery strength indicator on the side is handy for quickly checking if i need to grab my power cable without having to turn the machine on as well

- Display quality (minus the glossy finish) is great, wide viewing angle, vivid colours

Naughty: - Glossy screen is a pain in the ass. Forget about using in sunlight, I also need to adjust mine to avoid getting the overheads in our office.

- Temperature management is pretty poor - the air vents on the bottom don't have much clearance even on a flat surface, and don't seem to move enough air. I worry about the long term lifespan of this machine because it regularly operates > 70c. When I can, I sit the machine on a laptop platform with a fan.

- (minor) the function keybind for adjusting the volume requires 2 hands - the fn key is on the lower left, while the volume up/down are on f11/f12.

- only 2 usb ports and no SD card reader.

Overall I've been happy with it.

3 comments

3-5 hours is good battery life in 2014?
I go crazy under 6 ... That's why i'm spending more and more time behind my chromebook; it has all day battery life. My laptops hardly make 3 hours and it makes me not want to use them for much of anything anymore.
It's the one thing that hasn't improved over the years.
My laptop goes easily to 7-8 without changing my usage significantly, 9 if I'm only doing email. I hardly carry the power brick outside the house anymore.
How about the backlight bleeding issue (especially bothering in the terminal window)? This is why I returned two laptops from the older models and decided to stick with Macs!
> I've been using one of these with the HD screen since the spring,

So not the Haswell version the review is about?