Does anyone here use Starlabs computers? I’m thinking of buying one of their laptops and I’m interested in how well their products are supported in the long term. Specifically, firmware updates and spare parts & repairs.
Thanks
Generally if you want long support windows you go for big boring brands’ simplest business class laptops. Or Apple.
Small companies an make a commitment to support, but they often have neither the money, customer base or manpower to follow through when the going gets tough.
I have found that popularity is a better predictor of spare part availability than any commitment from a company of any size. When they stop selling parts, there’s always the second hand market. When that dries up there’s always third party parts.
Firmware updates are one of the places that dell, Lenovo and Apple shine. Because of their customers expectations they tend to release new updates and drivers as functionality expectations or security conditions change.
Big brands have the money to provide longer support, but not the inclination lol.
This is sometimes true, but big brands have the market penetration to make hardware support very easy through second hand and third party parts and to be enticing fruit for third party support (see opencore and the dosdude patchers for apple stuff).
Although, Apple also just decides to make updates unavailable for your device once it’s a few years old, so there’s that.
Windows on a Dell XPS laptop was a good experience, firmware (and Windows) updates always came instantly. With Linux I have to keep an eye out for BIOS updates from time to time but Dell does not shy away from releasing BIOS updates for an over 7 years old laptop. Probably because their newer laptops use the same BIOS, but still!
The Apple support window is pretty predictable. You get about seven years from device release to no os updates.
It used to be that they didn’t talk about it and it was kind of a “he who has eyes, let him see” situation.
Of course, we’re talking hardware here so that’s sort of neither here nor there.
The enterprise dell experience is indeed very good all around. I’d even include hp in the pile if I had any experience with em. Their scopes used to be decent.
They have done 4 year windows before, and we still cannot know for sure how long for example the macbook m1 will be supported, still.
That said, 4-7 years for a laptop of that price seems short, I also don’t understand why they have to bring mobile OS support windows to laptops in the first place.
When it comes to update support, it seems odd to me to recommend Apple’s computers when they literally have a mobile OS’ support window to the OS.
When was the last 4yr window on a computer? I think the ati 2011 15” mbp got dropped fast af but thats the last real short one I remember. I haven’t dealt extensively with the touchbar models though.
The m1 air looks to be another 2012 mbp 12”. It would surprise me if they cut it off at 7 years. Although that decision seems to have been driven by the enterprise install base and who knows if that’s still what it once was.
I think the reason why mobile os support windows are apples thing on computers is because they don’t have a separate business line. Iirc xps used to be dells enthusiast brand and now it’s part of the business line.
Thinking more about it, the core line of processors was a real stumble for intel because they were really good and lasted forever and manufacturers had to start pushing updates to fix realtek and qualcomm chip problems or get blamed for removed not working or being supported.
Also, this is kinda tangential because the op is asking about firmware support and hardware availability and firmware support is not as important on macs and they have incredible second hand hardware markets.
Yeah, I’m still getting updates on my 2017 Dell Latitude!
And mostly, Windows/Linux will update for eternity; it’s up to you if it works and it most likely will despite the wide abd varied hardware support.
I waited ages for their StarFighter laptop and needed to finally cancel, as my old laptop was dying.
But I’m pretty happy now with a Framework 16.
I guess Framework also provides quite long support, as re-using stuff is their thing, but I don’t really have looked into itI am using it daily… Its kinda hard to use tbh… except till you fixed it.
First, disable the Lid Opening in the BIOS. The keyboard case sucks for this task, making it constantly wake up when the lid is closed, as its easily missing the Magnet spot while transporting.
(Dont worry, it still can go to sleep when closing the lid when diabling the BIOS setting, but now you need to press the button for 2-3 seconds to wake up, thats one fix to make it usable)
The Keyboard will be pressed when you close the lid. Meaning that it will constantly wake up when you transport it as everything presses against the tablet, triggering some keys. So you need to create a systemd service that disables the keyboard close before suspend.target… yes, the keyboard wakeup will re-enable itself for some reason, so its better to have a service triggering it everytime you go to suspend.
Suspending is slow af, its a bug with the SD-Card reader, so you need to disable that too on boot. I just put it in the same systemd service.
Don’t buy the original Pen if you want to write. It has latency and sucks with the feeling. Buy a Penoval Pen or any other Pen. They will have USb-C charging and way less latency. The Tablet is using MPP I think as tech but I think some newer things also work.
Buy a good 12.9 inch Apple Paperlike or any other Matt screen protector. Havent tried this one yet but I will try it in a few days. (i accidentally bought an universal Matt Screen protector which was like 10% Matt from Brotec, while the same Brotec Matt protector for my tiny chromebook was like 100% Matt and felt like real paper. Matt is not always matt. I guess the Companies adjust their Levels to the use case of the device…)
Oh… btw. I used Arch Linux and a Forum talked about the issue, that all kernels are giving a kernel Panic at some point except linux-rt. This corrupted my system files after 2 Months of usage, when I awas using Godot… only the Linux-rt kernel was working perfectly they said in the forum. So don’t use Arch Linux. Use anything else. I couldn’t start X11 anymore and reinstalling all corrupt packages didn"t help. I started to use NixOs and kinda hate it, but I want to learn it for fun. It works but use smth like Kubuntu or Linux Mint. Idk.
Rotation doesn’t work yet on Linux… afaik. Maybe it does but I can’t manage to fix that.
After fullfilling all these Criteria, I am very very happy with this device. It was hard at the beginning and very stressfull, but now I start to love it somehow.
If someone wants me, to create a Repo with all my fixes and suggestions. Buy me a coffee and I do it. I don’t have much time as a student. But you could do it yourself with researching, so why should I waste my time.
Im doing daily handwritten notes and like to use it for developing too.
The battery lifetime is about 3-6 hours. Use X11 and tlp. Wayland and powerdevil will not do it.
Rotation works for me flawlessly on Fedora Silver blue.
Send me a PM and I’ll buy you a coffee ;)
You should probably check their Reddit, I’ve seen many people complaining about the shipping, longevity and customer support. I don’t know how much of it is substantiated but still, some research can’t hurt
Shipping is slow, but customer support is great actually
No one has fully open source bios, not even S76 last I checked
Is Coreboot not fully open source?
No. AFAIK the primary issue is that microcode is not open
