New Laptop time! System76 Gazelle Pro..

I needed a new laptop and decided I wanted a system that was as guaranteed as possible to run out of the box with all hardware components working with zero configuration hassle.

I went with System76 and ordered their Gazelle Professional 15.6" laptop. Their website is simple, but intuitive, and configuration was a breeze. My requirements were simple:
 - It Just Works in Linux.
 - 16GB or more of RAM
 - Ordered with 2 drives
 - Core i7
 - 1080p
 - 15.6" or smaller
 - $1000, +\- 10%

Their RAM upgrade on their website was a bit pricey, so I opted for the minimum, a single 4GB DIMM and a matched pair of after market 2x8GB. Replacing the RAM was a snap, and I notice its a socketed and (for a laptop) easily replaceable CPU. I got 2x500GB Seagate 7200 RPM drives, with the nifty hybrid 4GB SSD on drive cache. Linux aggressively caches as much as it can in RAM, so the "on subsequent loads" for commonly used apps isn't as apparent, especially with the entire OS loaded on a RAID1. Hey, its a laptop, they are spindles, and I want redundancy over write speed. But reads are nice and quick.

I rebooted the OS a bunch of times, and by the sixth time the boot time had dropped from ~12 seconds down to ~7 seconds, so perhaps that was a good idea.

I also have a keyboard that doesn't have a Windows logo on the meta key!! Too bad its a sticker, and too bad its off center by a millimeter! But I don't look at it that often, but its still a bit annoying - just not annoying enough to send it back.

System76 themselves have been great - they open a support case with you that gives you the current information and status of your order - once the order has been processed, you then get a message when its being built, then a shipping number and S/N(s) of your product(s). Its a social-networking sort of support system, with avatars and such. It makes you feel like there is a real person handling your expensive new gear.

They ship with Ubuntu, but as I used Fedora for work and don't like the context switch of yum/apt and other stuff like that, I reinstalled and had zero problems with any devices. The laptop is very fast, and indeed, everything works Out Of The Box. HDMI with audio passthrough worked with zero configuration, other than having to enable the HDMI profile in KDE (a GUI only feat, nice!)

Blue tooth had a weird setting in the BIOS and was disabled, but once that was enabled it worked just fine. All the OSD animations for volume and brightness and such work great. Standby works as well, and all wireless devices seem to resume their sessions on wakeup.

Things I don't like:
 - limited accessories selection, lack of international power adapters, lack of 9 cell battery
 - off-center Ubuntu logo
 - The touchpad - Ok this is a a toss-up. It doesn't have any vertical physical presence indicators - its smooth and hard to know when you've reached the edge of the pad, but otherwise it works fine and I do like it visually.
 - Heat under the left palm - its not too awful, and I have a laptop chiller.
 - Lack of sensors (or lack of support in lmsensors) - haven't investigated too far, but I simply have CPU temperatures and no voltages/fans or anything else.
 - lack of choice for illuminated keyboard - I'd pay extra for this as well!
 - lack of choice for nvidia/ati discreet adaptors. I'm guessing this is either due to their suppliers lack of models, or the lack of good support for that switchable technology all the new chipsets use.

Hopefully the graphics situation will be remedied by the next time I purchase a laptop, I didn't want an Nvidia or ATI solution this time. An intel 4000 series graphics experience is enough for me. It played a 1080p movie beautifully and only showed some vertical slashing, and 99% of my time will be spent programming and office work, with movies and music sprinkled here and there.

But even these things negative aren't enough to stop me from really liking this laptop - its lightning fast, has a better display than even my last Macbook (early 2011), has no Windows Logo, has a support forums on the official Ubuntu Forums, is easily upgradeable and workable, and I'm supporting a company that doesn't seem to act like every other hardware vendor.