hamamelisuk
Member
Please see https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?48524-Installing-linux-on-Ultranote-III-14 which gives more details of the Linux setup & performance.
Requirements
I wanted a 14" high resolution & performance laptop to replace my 7 year old Samsung Q210 which was lower resolution, heavy & shorter battery life. You can see the two laptops alongside with their power supplies in the first photo. I use the laptop on the move but also attach 2 monitors and exteral keyboard so that I do not have to sync the laptop to another computer. It has to perfom like a PC with this setup. See photo one with 2 VDUs and external keyboar. Another shows the laptop connectors. Note on the Left the Pinzi SATA to USB3 connector which cost me about £3. It is fast but much cheaper than the higher spec Startec offering for backing up to an extenal HD. External USB3 would likely be as fast. I had a WinXP partition on the old laptop. The new one is entirely Linux and everything appears to work out of the box.
Chassis & Display UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Dual Core Processor i5-6200U (2.30GHz, 2.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 520 - 1.7GB Max DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Memory - Hard Disk NONE
480GB KINGSTON SSDNow M.2 2280 G2, SATA 6Gb/s (550MB/R, 520MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 8x Samsung Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Sound Card Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
Wireless Router/HomePlugs NONE
USB Options 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery UltraNote III Series 32WH Lithium Ion Battery
Operating System NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Notebook Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Warranty 3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee 1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Originally I wanted a i7 processor and a M.2 SSD Drive 500GB Crucial MX200 M.2 2280 SSD (upto 555MB/sR but both were out of stock so I opted for an i5 (much cheaper and marginally slower) & Kingston M.2 SATA which is a little slower, I believe.
Case
The case is fine and the weight 1.6Kg with battery and no HD, quite a bit less than in the spec. The power supply is quite light and has a standard plug so can easily be replaced. The screen is fine and if pixels fail I have the quarantee. The case is plastic & I miss the LEDs for Caps & Num lock. Logging on can be frustrated by not knowing if Caps Lock is on or not.
Processor
This is about 4 times faster than my previous in the Q210. On mains power it is about twice as fast as on battery. If I run windows at all I use an emulator, VirtualBox, under Linux and the virtualisation will make this probably faster than running it native. The startup will be faster as I will store the machine state.
RAM
I went for 8GB which I can increase later. With Linux 4Gb was fine before so 8 should be more than adequate. I do a lot of data processing using Lyx, Latex, knitr, R with ggplot2 for graphics. Also GIMP and Photoshop. The memory is under the keyboard and only 3 screws need to be removed to access it.
HDD
I have used an SSD for years and liked the idea of an M2 but I had to opt for the Kingston which I think is slower than the Crucial. To install a HD, which I do not have, it is necessary to remove 18 screws on the back, so I have not taken the trouble to look inside but I have a copy of the service manual -see below. I would prefer to be able to open a small flap with a single screw rather than to have to remove the entire back to put in a HD or replace the M2 card.
Graphics/Screen
The graphics card worked find with the drivers in Linux kernel 4.2, LinuxMint17.3. However, in media players the output needs to be set to X11 because full screen operation did not work with OpenGL. The HDMI & VGA ports operate perfectly with/without the laptop screen (using ARandR) and the laptop wakes up from suspend or hibernation.
Keyboard & tocupad
The keyboard is nae bad but the space bar needs to be hit near the middle or the stroke does not register. The old Q210 had one of the best laptop keyboards I have ever had so I will miss that.
Touchpad is fine and big. I use external keyboards often putting the laptop on a couple of books to raise the screen.
BIOS
I switched off UEFI & Secure boot. I am doubtful about the security of the former. But I believe that booting would be faster wi UEFI on. I will explore this. This is all explained in the manual on CD.
Workshop Manual.
I obtained a workshop manual for the Utranote3 which is a Clevo N240JU. This can be seen in the photo of the laptop back. The same manual covers the bigger N241JU which appears to be by its specs to be identical except a bigger screen and a backlit keyboard. I think this is PCS 15.6" Ultranote III.
Final Thoughts
PCS were fine to deal with except that there would be delay with the memory and I had to change this. Also the i7 processor was advertised but no available - I think that is sorted now. The delivery was exception with me being informed exactly where my parcel was by DPD.
I have been using the Ultranote for two weeks and I like it. In summary, it is lighter & faster than my old Q210, with a bigger & brighter matt screen and longer battery life. It seems to be about half the price of a comparable machine from John Lewis. The big advantage for me is the literally everything works with LinuxMint17.3 (based on Ubuntu 14.04) out of the box. I shall put a more detailed discussion of Linux and the Ulltranote3 on the Linux Forum in due course.
I am indebted to andwal696's review of the Ultranote3 (https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?48994-Ultranote-III-14-quot-Review) as a guide for this.
Thanks to PCS for a fine machine.
Requirements
I wanted a 14" high resolution & performance laptop to replace my 7 year old Samsung Q210 which was lower resolution, heavy & shorter battery life. You can see the two laptops alongside with their power supplies in the first photo. I use the laptop on the move but also attach 2 monitors and exteral keyboard so that I do not have to sync the laptop to another computer. It has to perfom like a PC with this setup. See photo one with 2 VDUs and external keyboar. Another shows the laptop connectors. Note on the Left the Pinzi SATA to USB3 connector which cost me about £3. It is fast but much cheaper than the higher spec Startec offering for backing up to an extenal HD. External USB3 would likely be as fast. I had a WinXP partition on the old laptop. The new one is entirely Linux and everything appears to work out of the box.
Chassis & Display UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Dual Core Processor i5-6200U (2.30GHz, 2.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 520 - 1.7GB Max DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Memory - Hard Disk NONE
480GB KINGSTON SSDNow M.2 2280 G2, SATA 6Gb/s (550MB/R, 520MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 8x Samsung Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Sound Card Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
Wireless Router/HomePlugs NONE
USB Options 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery UltraNote III Series 32WH Lithium Ion Battery
Operating System NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Notebook Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Warranty 3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee 1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Originally I wanted a i7 processor and a M.2 SSD Drive 500GB Crucial MX200 M.2 2280 SSD (upto 555MB/sR but both were out of stock so I opted for an i5 (much cheaper and marginally slower) & Kingston M.2 SATA which is a little slower, I believe.
Case
The case is fine and the weight 1.6Kg with battery and no HD, quite a bit less than in the spec. The power supply is quite light and has a standard plug so can easily be replaced. The screen is fine and if pixels fail I have the quarantee. The case is plastic & I miss the LEDs for Caps & Num lock. Logging on can be frustrated by not knowing if Caps Lock is on or not.
Processor
This is about 4 times faster than my previous in the Q210. On mains power it is about twice as fast as on battery. If I run windows at all I use an emulator, VirtualBox, under Linux and the virtualisation will make this probably faster than running it native. The startup will be faster as I will store the machine state.
RAM
I went for 8GB which I can increase later. With Linux 4Gb was fine before so 8 should be more than adequate. I do a lot of data processing using Lyx, Latex, knitr, R with ggplot2 for graphics. Also GIMP and Photoshop. The memory is under the keyboard and only 3 screws need to be removed to access it.
HDD
I have used an SSD for years and liked the idea of an M2 but I had to opt for the Kingston which I think is slower than the Crucial. To install a HD, which I do not have, it is necessary to remove 18 screws on the back, so I have not taken the trouble to look inside but I have a copy of the service manual -see below. I would prefer to be able to open a small flap with a single screw rather than to have to remove the entire back to put in a HD or replace the M2 card.
Graphics/Screen
The graphics card worked find with the drivers in Linux kernel 4.2, LinuxMint17.3. However, in media players the output needs to be set to X11 because full screen operation did not work with OpenGL. The HDMI & VGA ports operate perfectly with/without the laptop screen (using ARandR) and the laptop wakes up from suspend or hibernation.
Keyboard & tocupad
The keyboard is nae bad but the space bar needs to be hit near the middle or the stroke does not register. The old Q210 had one of the best laptop keyboards I have ever had so I will miss that.
Touchpad is fine and big. I use external keyboards often putting the laptop on a couple of books to raise the screen.
BIOS
I switched off UEFI & Secure boot. I am doubtful about the security of the former. But I believe that booting would be faster wi UEFI on. I will explore this. This is all explained in the manual on CD.
Workshop Manual.
I obtained a workshop manual for the Utranote3 which is a Clevo N240JU. This can be seen in the photo of the laptop back. The same manual covers the bigger N241JU which appears to be by its specs to be identical except a bigger screen and a backlit keyboard. I think this is PCS 15.6" Ultranote III.
Final Thoughts
PCS were fine to deal with except that there would be delay with the memory and I had to change this. Also the i7 processor was advertised but no available - I think that is sorted now. The delivery was exception with me being informed exactly where my parcel was by DPD.
I have been using the Ultranote for two weeks and I like it. In summary, it is lighter & faster than my old Q210, with a bigger & brighter matt screen and longer battery life. It seems to be about half the price of a comparable machine from John Lewis. The big advantage for me is the literally everything works with LinuxMint17.3 (based on Ubuntu 14.04) out of the box. I shall put a more detailed discussion of Linux and the Ulltranote3 on the Linux Forum in due course.
I am indebted to andwal696's review of the Ultranote3 (https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?48994-Ultranote-III-14-quot-Review) as a guide for this.
Thanks to PCS for a fine machine.
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