Lafite i

[Alir]

I purchased the Lafite I.

I was wondering what others thought of it and what their experience with it was?

My experience​

Mine has been terrible. I purchased it first and foremost as a Linux machine, as others had reported that it worked flawlessly with Linux. Though the touchpad driver issue was a known problem, I wasn't aware of just how bad it was. The pointer at times goes nuts when you touch it and starts pressing rapidly where the pointer is and in a corner of the screen (relative to the direction in which you were trying to move the cursor). This resulted in lost work too many times as my window would close! In the end, on Mint, I created a taskbar at the top so that when the cursor touches the top, the top taskbar comes down.
This works. But should never have been necessary, didn't bring back lost work and still doesn't completely resolve the issue as random presses still happen.

Broken Hardware​

The camera was also shipped broken. I RMAd it and they replaced the motherboard entirely in the process.
The camera was still broken somehow. It didn't work in Windows or Linux. Didn't really need it anyways but would have been nice to have, since it was sold to me with that in the pricetag. I gave up on them fixing it after they returned it since I needed it and didn't need the camera.
My experience with this laptop has resulted in me detesting small laptops and screens now...

Linux at fault​

The 8GB of RAM I found was far too low for Linux as my computer would often freeze resulting in lost work. Though I can't blame the laptop or PcSpecialist for that one. Windows never freezes even when running hundreds of tabs - it just caches to the RAM whenever is necessary. With Linux, I didn't create SWAP space. But on my desktop Linux install even when I created SWAP space, I still found the PC freezing. Not helpful Linux.

PCSpecialist review​

Though I do still like PcSpecialist and would consider them in future, in addition to recommending them to others. But I hate the Lafite lineup and can't stand small laptops anymore. I do still use the laptop but only because I need a linux laptop and don't have the money to afford a new one.

PCSpecialist's service has been pretty exemplary though. In the first few weeks/months they helped me out with installing Windows on an MBR partition table since I was hoping to encrypt it with Truecrypt, rest in peace. It required me opening up the chassis and removing the battery in the beginning. Frustrating to install - it didn't always let me install it and I had to try it again numerous times until it worked. Now it primarily runs Linux.

It was however disappointing that they didn't fix the camera. But I could live without it. I cover it with paper and tape most of the time anyways. Regardless of them not fixing the camera, I still found the customer service to be vastly superior to stores like PC World.

 

[steaky360]

When I first started reading the thread, I felt this would be simply a negative review, however in my opinion the picture you've painted seems to be well balanced, there were issues. Some are still ongoing but its good to see that you've still managed to note some of the positives you've experienced.

Thank you for sharing.

On the note of the non-functioning webcam if you are not using the laptop as much now-a-days maybe they can still fix it for you (depending if you're under warranty still I guess?)

FYI - I'm not sure if the 'my experience' paragraph has lost some text? The last two sentences seem to be missing something to me?

 

[Stephen M]

Do you know if the webcam is a driver/software issue. I had problems with a webcam and after trying a few things found that downloading a new Cheese webcam solved it and it has been fine since. I expect you will have tried stuff like that but worth a try if not.