Think Penguin’s “Penguin Air” Review.

• Style
• Performance
• Value

Your laptop might have an Nvidia graphics chipset, or an Atheros mini-pci wireless module.  These things are not really fully supported by the mainline Linux kernel, so your choice is to install non-free software to make it work, or take the half-baked approach and rely on the incomplete modules available in the kernel to get you buy.  Neither of these are completely OK.  Sometimes you have to make compromises, but one company is giving you a choice.

Think Penguin sells desktops, laptops and accessories that are completely compatible with Linux.  Not Ubuntu, not Fedora, just Linux.  There are other vendors that sell hardware that has no Windows license (System 76, ZaReason), and those options are great, but none of them come free of hardware that requires non-free drivers.

We are the only company that sells systems compatible
with Trisquel and a number of other free distributions. At least where the
hardware works out of the box. We explicitly make sure to support Trisquel
as it is a free software operating system. Unlike Ubuntu, LinuxMint, and
other distributions there are no proprietary drivers, firmware, or other
software included.

Look and Feel

Save for the stickers (I’ll get to that later), this laptop is striking.  If you ordered it from the Think Penguin website, you would be surprised at the beautiful machine you receive.  Unfortunately, the website simply does not do the unit justice and I was seriously expecting a beige unit akin to yesteryear.  The photos you see in this post will show you exactly what to expect from a Penguin Air.  Bright and solid white. Closed, it looks sort of like a Samsung Chromebook though there is no badging.  It is extremely thin and light for it’s size.  After spending some time with the unit, I have come to guess that the motherboard is very very tiny and sits on the upper-right hand of the keyboard.  That presents it’s own problems which I will get to shortly.

The bezel around the display is the most pleasing part of the unit, especially if you are using it in daylight.  It is paper-thin and seems to flush with the display.  If you are in a room with white walls, the bezel disappears and it becomes very easy to get lost in the screen because it creates a seamless buffer between you and the room you are working in.  This screen is not world-class, but the illusion created by the laptop’s frame is more than forgiving.  As far as illusion is concerned, the body slopes inward on the bottom, tricking your eyes into believing your laptop is only a couple of centimeters thick.  It is very convincing.

The body has a few other niceties as well.  For one, on the left-side of the frame lies a trap-door.  What was otherwise a smooth surface is now an HDMI port, USB port and head-phone jack.  On the right-side, the inverted slope created by the frame has hidden inlets for power, USB and SD all while giving the perception that the machine has no ports.

You’ll see in the gallery that the unit comes with a full compliment of stickers.  The stickers detract from the seeming omnipresence of the laptop and are the least attractive feature here.  I found myself compelled to rip them off every time I sat down to put the machine through its paces.  First, the “powered by GNU/Linux” sticker.  This badge is modelled after the Intel/Windows stickers that proliferated in the 90′s and has a cute little picture of Tux on it.  These stickers bother me somewhat.  They make sense when a system is on display at a Best Buy.  It’s important to get some visual clues about what you are getting.  I’ve ripped these little guys off of every laptop I’ve every purchased, but they did come in handy during the sale process.  When shopping for a Linux laptop, a little Nvidia sticker goes a long way…  If you buy a system from Think Penguin, you are likely to know that you have Linux installed as your operating system, or you plan on using it.  I think that those who order these stickers are in need of a little attention, but in this case I’m sure that Think Penguin means well.  Another thing, the Super key is covered with a picture of Tux, and not very carefully.  I don’t really like the Super Key, but let’s be honest.  Microsoft invented it and we have simply found a use for it.  This sticker is an eyesore to an otherwise angelic laptop and if I had my choice it would go too.  The Think Penguin badge on the lower display is hard to appreciate as well.  While Think Penguin offers buyers a unique value proposition, the logo is hopelessly uninspired.

Screen

As I mentioned earlier, the screen is very deceiving.  At 1280×800, you are likely not doing to many things at once, and for all intents and purposes I feel like it is just a little too low.  This is goes along with the duality of the laptop.  My unit came pre-installed with Trisquel Linux, which I had no prior experience, and Ubuntu 11.10.  Trisquel shipped with Gnome 2.x, which I love to revisit every now and again.  The default presentation of Trisquel was a great fit for this resolution and was very usable.  Ubuntu 11.10 on the other hand, was pretty much unusable.  You can see from the pictures in the gallery that the viewing angle is surprisingly wide!  While I yearned for higher resolution, the screen was always a pleasure to look at, and the lower pixel-density only added to my viewing comfort.

Keyboard

Here is where my first issues with the unit started to crop up.  First, let me preface this by saying that the unit I reviewed was a return.  There were no new units available.  I questioned Christopher Wald about some of these issues and got no kind of indication that these things were normal for these units.  The keyboard is comfortable to type on.  The chic-let keys are a reasonable distance apart and I was able to work virtually error-free, that is until the unit started to get hot…  The heat from the unit causes the plastic around the chic-let keys to arch in the center of the typing surface, making the keys in-between the home row hard to work with.  The plastic would rise high enough to become flush with the keys.  That said, it is impossible to accurately review the keyboard as I was unable to use it to its potential during my extended time with the unit.  The only thing that bothers me with many notebook keyboards are the arrow keys.  Many times they are surrounded by other keys and I simply do not have the ability to learn their location with muscle memory.  Call my stupid, but it just never really works out.  The keyboard doesn’t suffer from that.  The arrow keys are isolated and easy to get to with having to use my eyes.

Performance

With a 1.8Ghz Intel Atom and 1GB of RAM, there is not a lot to be expected here.  I’m told that the unit I have is from a batch that predates a recent upgrade to 2GB of RAM.  So, if you buy this unit, expect double the RAM.  Using Trisqeul Linux, 1GB of RAM does not seem restrictive.  In fact, I had a great time using the laptop with Trisquel, though some of that enjoyment was merely nostalgic.  I did not do any graphics editing with the machine or really try to make it explode, since that would not be fair.  This unit is not designed for the kind of person with those demands.  I was able to edit documents on the unit and browse the web with Abrowser (unbranded Firefox) using several tabs without issue.  Ubuntu 11.10 is another story entirely.  With 1GB of RAM, the system was unusable.  After running top right after boot, I saw that I was right along the 1GB threshold with nothing open.  After opening Firefox, I was swapping quite heavily.  I don’t have any machine that has 2GB of RAM so it is hard for me to gauge how much that would impact performance, but I would guess not much.  I think that 2GB would get you to the point where you could browse the web comfortably with a few tabs open, but this is all hypothetical.  Here are some things to consider, and they fall in line with the company’s value proposition.  This machine does not ship with non-free software, meaning that you would have to install Adobe’s Flash player if you wanted to access the full web.  Freedom is what this company is all about, and I can certainly appreciate it.  Browsing the web without Flash can increase your performance considerably.  Flash 11 takes exorbitant amounts of system resources to run, so if you chose to be completely free, you may be able to get along with 2GB of RAM just fine, but using Flash, you may reach the tipping point very soon after opening your browser.

Value

This takes a certain amount of perspective to explain, and I am not sure that I can step outside myself to explain all sides, but the value proposition here is clear.  For $449 you get your freedom and a unique form-factor/hardware design.  Or so it seems…  A single-core Atom with a low RAM configuration is typically saved for the small-screen.  13″ is a little bigger than you might expect.  You could consider it a best of both worlds.  Though, once I started thinking about it, I didn’t have to look far for something that I considered similar.  My CR-48.  The Google Chromebook reference hardware has a 12″ screen, 1280×800 screen resolution and 2GB of RAM.  Though these machines are very much alike, the performance of the two couldn’t be more different.  The Chromebook, running Chrome OS (Linux Kernel, Xorg, Chrome) is unusable when browsing only Google Plus.  It is a nightmare.  The Penguin Air, running a full operating system with extra kernel modules, a full GUI and the tools that come along with it, can browse a hefty site like Google Plus amicably.  But what does this have to do with value?  I also have an Asus 1201n netbook.  This little guy is a champ.  Nvidia ION graphics, dual-core Atom, 4GB of RAM (came with 2GB), and a 1366×768 display, it was purchased new at $499 over 2 years ago.  After comparing the 3, I did come to the conclusion that there was a big difference between 12″ and 13″ (that’s what she said), and you can reference that in the gallery.  So, what you need to ask yourself is whether there is value in having hardware that is %100 compatible with the mainline Linux kernel.  If you don’t care about that, then you will likely pass on this unit.  If you can appreciate the stance of the company and the unique offering that this is and you want a beautiful, bright white laptop that isn’t an Apple, this one might be for you.

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