My daughter will go to college after the summer, and it was decided she needed a notebook. We settled with her getting my Acer Swift 314-51 which has suited me quite well. I ran Ubuntu on it, and everything worked quite well, except for the fingerprint reader. I recently installed windows 10 on it and was surprised how smooth it ran on the 256Gb M.2 SSD.
Now it is time for me to get something to work on while on the road. I have a nice desktop setup, so it does not have to be a powerstation. I like the Lenove Thinkpad series which have proven to be reliable, well documented and great Linux support and to upgrade (T series) they are also slightly expensive. I found some relatively recent used models at the cost of a new Acer Swift 314. So I looked again at the current Swift 314-56 series and ended up ordering one for under Euro 600,- with interesting specs:
Core i5-8265U
Nvidia GeForce MX250/2GB DDR5
14″IPS (1920×1080)
8Gb onboard / 1 x slot (upgradable to 12Gb)
Storage 1Tb hdd + 16Gb Optane
Bluetooth 5 / Wireless 802.11AC
HDMI/USB Type-C/SD/USB3/audio
Missing RJ45 Lan port -> will use my favorite Dlink USB-LAN dongle there, and my Lenovo USB3 Docking when working on longer term projects.
I plan to replace the Optane M.2 NVME module with a 512Gb M.2 NVME SSD and install Arch Linux and see how this works. Then maybe use agressive power management on the 1Tb hdd, maybe just mount it for regular backups and archive. How to upgrade Optane to SSD.
Notes on Arch – tinkering on the Swift 314-56G .
To be continued.