Chuwi Lapbook 12.3

[tlmiller]

You should try Arch via Anarchy on it...

[crosscourt]

Ive got got PCLinuxOS and MX17 on it and they run fine but Zorin OS and Netrunner have issues with the Compaq. Arch for me is a no go but I certainly recommend it to certain types of users.

[tlmiller]

I'm here in Jack in the Box having breakfast on this laptop. Really does perform quite well given it's quite humble specs. With now quite a bit of usage, I will say the keyboard has good feel, but could probably be a little less stiff. Some of the buttons actually are rather difficult to press due to how short a travel they are, and you have to be very direct in your typing. A lazy press of the button will result in it not registering. Easy enough (given my predeliction for mechanical keyboards) for me to adapt to, but some people would certainly dislike it. The touchpad is still underwhelming whiile being perfectly usable. I miss being able to do 3-finger tap when I use it for middle click. However, it's still one of my favorite touchpads for the actual texture. It's not perfectly smooth and therefore has fantastic tactile feel when using it. I'm hoping that this hardware gets popular enough to be supported as a touchpad. Obviously it works well enough as is, but would be nice to have 3-finger tap.

Found one annoyance with it, although it's not it's fault. OnlyOffice Editors newest version doesn't scale. So not only is it difficult to read, it also only uses part of the screen. Not the laptops fault, it's either OnlyOffice or KDE (I'm leaning towards OnlyOffice since the prior build DID scale properly). I may even open a ticket for it since I already have an account (biggest annoyance with most bug submissioins, you have to have an account).

[crosscourt]

Sounds like youre satisfied.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, I really like it. It's also somewhat surprising how decent of a boost going from 4 GB to 6 GB ram it gives. This is DEFINITELY a more responsive system than my Acer Aspire that has the same processor and same general spec of eMMC.

[tlmiller]

Now on Fedora on this machine. Still loving it. Did go ahead and put my 60 GB m.2 SSD in here (mostly so that i-nex will work, since it still doesn't support eMMC devices and crashes if that's all you have), and ordered a replacement. Found a 120 GB m.2 2242 SATA SSD for $45 shipped, so have that coming, and will swap that in to replace the 60 GB when it arrives. Regardless, the performance is more than adequate, and the LCD is just absolutely gorgeous on this thing.

When looking up to see if you could set fstrim to run only on select drives in the system, I discovered that apparently my eMMC does support trim. So enabled that on here, will monitor to see if it causes any issues (considering eMMC drives are controllerless, not sure how it supports trim, but lsblk --discard reports that it does).

[crosscourt]

It depends on the hardware but for most of my systems I didnt see a huge leap in performance going from 4gb to 8gb of ram but with my wifes system and my main system 8gb performance was noticeable.

[tlmiller]

I've definitely found that with a really good processor, I see a difference from 4-8 GB. With the lower end or older (pre Sandy Bridge) processors not so much. I've used my T450s with 4 GB ram for a little while (it has a 4 GB soldered to the board), and the difference when I put in the additional 4/8 GB was quite large. I had a HP 14-an013nr for a while (AMD E2-7110 quad core with a gorgeous IPS 1080P 14" lcd) and upgraded that to 8 GB, and while I could see SOME difference, it was minimal. It's somewhat surprising with this Chuwi, as it's a low end Celeron quad core, but going from otherwise mostly identical hardware in the Acer to this, with the only differences being the amount of ram, the size of the eMMC, and the wireless card, and while the feel isn't AMAZINGLY different, the Chuwi defintely does feel a bit more responsive with it's 6 GB ram over the Acer and it's 4 GB.

[crosscourt]

All of mine are Ivy Bridge except for my wife whos using a AMD based system. 16gb I see no benefits except when Im running high end games or apps.

8gb is pretty much a sweetspot for me with desktops and 4gb with laptops.

[tlmiller]

I will say if you start using VM's, 16 GB becomes a nice spot. Minus VM's, I'd agree right now 8 GB is still pretty much the sweet spot to me.