Willa Magland
Goodbye Galago Pro 5
Posted Aug 10, 2024
I'm heading to college, which means I needed to assess my laptop situation. When I'd gotten it, I had planned to use my System76 Galago Pro through college, but in the past few months I've started to run into some trouble.
As I write this, the machine is two years old. It's survived a study abroad, and many long days in my backpack. It's been solid, but I never really needed much to begin with; 16GB of Memory and a good processor is all. Maybe some would need a terebyte SSD, but I've gotten along fine with just the 500GB. I've only run Fedora on it, and it's been a flawless experience.
I'll admit it, I haven't been kind to this laptop. My backpack doesn't have any padding, and combine that with it being System76's cheapest offering (and therefore cheapest build), the bezels have become warped, dented, and bent in some places. The silvery coating on the outside has come off on the edges, revealing the black plastic. The back panel actually cracked at one point, and there are two light-spots on the display that are only visible when dark.
But those don't interfere much. The problem that actually pushed me to retiring the thing was a strange mouse problem it has. When under a bit of stress (many Firefox tabs or whatever) that causes it to heat up, the touchpad starts getting funky. It gets extremely sensitive, or doesn't pick up touch at all. It's strange, very frustrating, and unfortunately makes it practically unusable.
So, I ordered a Thinkpad L13 Gen3 on a really good clearance deal. Like, really good: 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, AMD Ryzen 7 PRO, all for ~$850. I bought a laptop bag, and I'm prepared to be very kind to it.
But, unfortunately, it had a mouse problem.
The middle-mouse button above the touchpad is extremely sensitive, to where it triggers when you brush it with your palm (which, on Linux, results in accidental clipboard pasting). So, I've sent it in to get repaired on warranty. Per a web search, I'm not the only person to have this problem. Fix your hardware, Lenovo!
Update (2024-10-07): Got it back about a month later, and it's been going strong ever since! I love this thing! Running Fedora 40
Current Status ☕
