Everpix was great. This is how it died - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death-inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup <comment><USER2>
        [Everpix] lost the $50,000 first prize
        [at TechCrunch Disrupt] to Shaker, a
        bizarre kind of Second Life-meets-Facebook
        social network that raised $15 million and
        hasn't been heard from in a year.

A promising, arguably 'disruptive' company lost at a TechCrunch event to a startup backed by Michael Arrington? Color me shocked! Shocked, I say!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was doing photos at that one. I nearly lost my shit when I heard it won. Mike said there were 'very good reasons' but I never found out what they were.

<comment><USER4> it's a real shame Disrupt carries any weight. the awful hype is one thing, but the fact that it screws over genuinely promising companies due to its grotesquely corrupt nature is a real problem

<comment><USER5> It's a shame that TC carries any weight. Let's stop beating around that bush...

<comment><USER6> It's a shame that Arrington carries any weight, really thats where it all started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > __They spent too much time on the product and not enough time on growth and > distribution. The first pitch deck they put together for investors was > mediocre. They began marketing too late. They failed to effectively position > themselves against giants like Apple and Google, who offer fairly robust — > and mostly free — Everpix alternatives. __

People on HN crap all over MBAs, but these are the types of problems many of them have been trained to solve.

<comment><USER8> The anti-education bias of HN simply fascinates me.

<comment><USER9> It's strictly from a code monkey perspective. If you want to be a coder, you _really_ don't need to go to school. If you want to take it to the next level and learn the theory behind what you are doing, get a degree.

I dropped out, or semi-dropped out because I wanted to be a frontend/UI guy and learning shit like C++ and basic C/PERL/PHP <3 (seriously) for two years, while paying 10k/year, was super pointless.

I'm saving now for a proper degree, and the rent to go along with it. Probably going to do electrical or computer engineering, because that, you can't really learn online like you can HTML/CSS/JS.

<comment><USER10> A "proper degree" is ridiculously inefficient. If you've already established a feasible career path, there is little reason to learn these things by following the standard curricular programs available at most educational institutions. Find good online communities and resources, buy textbooks and other primary informational sources, and hire a good private tutor to help fill in the blanks or answer questions and you can get the same stuff down much better in _a fraction_ of the time it'd take with generalized mass schooling, i.e., universities.

University is an outdated model that's never really been applicable to the "real work" that needs to occur in an economy. Not sure why everyone decided it needed to become a general thing after WWII.

<comment><USER8> Only if you view a degree as skills training.

The idea that it is inefficient is what I find so interesting, because from my point of view it's entirely the opposite. For most people a degree will greatly improve their _ability_ to learn new things. It will expose them to a whole host of thoughts, ideas, and areas of exploration that they would otherwise never touch.

The thing is, I don't have a degree. I have a LOT of one (well two actually). I feel that it's ok, because the last 30 hours or so that I'm missing are basically all computer science. That's the stuff I've been able to learn.

Still I can't imagine not having the college education that I do have. I use what I learned in psychology almost every day (absolutely essential for anyone trying to run a company). I use the lessons learned in history and literature to guide my decision making. Philosophy has greatly influenced HOW I interact with others and informs the type of team that I want to have.

College made me a much better entrepreneur and it did it _only_ four years! Give me that experience every day over someone who skipped college.

Now, can you get all of that elsewhere? Of course. You can learn to program. That's easy. You can read every day. Of course. But unless you are a remarkable human being (and they do exist), you'll never achieve the breadth of knowledge that comes with a degree.

Hell I'm all for restructuring how we think about education. The answer isn't to eliminate it. Instead lets decouple the skills training aspect. Liberal arts degrees for everyone!

<comment><USER11> "Liberal arts degrees for everyone!" strikes me about the same as "Engineering degrees for everyone!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't help but wonder if that safety net feeling is part of what doomed Everpix. If they had believed they were incredibly lucky to land $1.8M and that they _had_ to build the whole business with that (rather than having a belief that more funding awaited whenever they needed it), would it have forced a different set of decisions to be made that would have driven revenue and growth, and ultimately success, instead?

<comment><USER13> From the sounds of it, what doomed them was pricing too low in a way that made it impossible to create higher tiers of service, and, perhaps most importantly, using AWS for everything. AWS bills monthly, so if in fact they were running a $35k/mo bill there, a _HUGE_ refactor was passed by. But then again, startups don't hire sysadmins anymore.

<comment><USER14> Do you think they were better off by having their own servers ? (Honest question we use AWS and Rackspace, and we feel the pain of Monthly bills as well).

<comment><USER15> This should be fairly easy to price out, right?

I suggest you start by simply comparing the cost of dedicated hosting-provided hardware. This is the middle ground between owning your own stuff and something like AWS.

Pricing out the cost of owning your own servers can be tricky since you need to account for a number of factors:

* Initial cost of hardware - don't forget to include things like network switches, remote console devices, etc. - you may also want to buy something like a remotely accessible power switch so you can forcibly reboot machines

* Rack space costs

* Bandwidth costs

* Sysadmin time to manage the _hardware_ (you already need a sysadmin to manage things like backups, logging, etc.)

* On-site remote hands if your rack host is not physically near your sysadmin

But regardless, I'm pretty sure that _anything_ ends up being cheaper than AWS once you get beyond a fairly small number of servers. The big advantages of AWS are integration with other services (storage, load balancing, etc.) and the ability to spin many machines up and down very quickly.

However, if you can tolerate waiting a day or so to provision new servers, dedicated hosting-provided hardware is almost certainly going to be quite a bit cheaper.

You could also compare this to something like Linode. Again, you lose the ability to provision new machines almost instantly, but they are pretty quick to bring up new machines (minutes, not hours or days). They also have a number of nice integrated services like backups.

Finally, you can also do some sort of hybrid setup where you have core stable services on dedicated machines but still spin up AWS instances to deal with bursty computation needs.

<comment><USER16> I did this math at Eye-Fi, a competitor of sorts to Everpix. What I learned, is the answer to whether to build or buy is the classic: "it depends". The driving factor? Data retention policy. The one move Amazon made during my analysis that had a huge shift in the calculus was to introduce Glacier.

My takeaway, the economics of a lifetime storage offering are very difficult to achieve. Glacier changes the rules by altering the SLA for data access to make the money work out.

<comment><USER17> Eye-Fi is awesome. <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perspective:

"Blogger was a success and quickly gained traction. But unlike their enterprise product, Blogger had no way of making money. Pyra Labs eventually had to lay off all of their staff as the money ran out. For a year, Ev worked on Blogger by himself in order to keep the site online. After a year of struggling to keep the site afloat, Blogger eventually started to make some money. Google would eventually make Blogger it's first acquisition."

[http://culttt.com/2013/09/11/founders-work- review/](http://culttt.com/2013/09/11/founders-work-review/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sad. It looks like their technology did a great job at solving a very real problem.

If any of the founders are here, can I ask a question: why did you chose to implement this as a cloud based service, when a little basic Math would suggest that it was a better match as a client-based tool with upgrades?

Take me for example. My internet is 20mb down, 1.5mb up. That's pretty good for Western countries. I currently have around 300gb of photos taken in the last 10 years. That'll take months to upload. But if you made it client based you could do conversion & classification locally. Then uploaded the best into a pinterest style gallery for your website (with social features).

Then offer backups, custom galleries etc as professional features ($5/month for low-res jpeg backups, $20/month for 500gb RAWs). Maybe you could have found a niche with semi-pro photographers who're fed up with flickr? Or families who want to share photos with relatives without the risk of Facebook/Google using them in adverts?

<comment><USER20> We built a unique image pipeline with excellent full-res image optimizations allowing to save close to 5X in bandwidth and storage costs. Incidentally, it also makes syncing entire life photo collections much faster, that's why the average Everpix user had more than 9,000 photos.

<comment><USER21> I know I'm probably in the minority, but if I was to pay anyone to store and manage my photos, I'd expect to be able to save the RAW files along. For all I care you can use high quality jpeg for daily use, but the raw needs to be accounted for as well, and storing them separately is tedious work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 35k/month in aws bills. 6k paying users. 10% upgrade rate.

That means their storage + servers per customer cost ~$.5/month. Storage per paying customer of about $5/month.

Ergo their $5/mo service has costs of $5/mo per paying user.

This isn't a failure to raise funds, it's a failure to achieve basic unit economics. And that's just cost of goods sold before you even think about acquiring new customers or paying staff.

</comment><comment><USER23> Everpix team: sorry to hear that the runway ended before you could take off. It is a great idea, but with such tough competition for user acquisition (esp free competition in the B2C space), it's easy to see how customer growth couldn't deliver the returns needed for a VC-backed startup. We considered this space heavily but decided we'd be no match against the giants throwing money at this space.

At Tourbuzz, we've approached the photography market from a commercial angle. We've bootstrapped a profitable niche in professional real estate photography and are now planning our expansion into other niches. I do believe that the feature set you were formulating is one that is in consumers' interest, it's just a matter of finding a way to monetize it successfully. The photography space is still huge and growing, and there is plenty of time to build large, successful companies in the space.

We'd love to talk to you about the future if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER24> Their focus wasn't on the product, it was on living/working in SF. They could have saved a year's worth of AWS payments alone by trimming the fat that comes with wanting to be in a "hip" location.

<comment><USER25> I know what you mean, SF is too expensive. But it's basically impossible to relocate a team of 7 who already have various different ties to a given area.

<comment><USER26> For product development, remote working is one solution. I work remote with my team all the time. Sometimes you need to see each other face to face, then meet up somewhere where it's affordable. Could make for a good team field trip even!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think Gruber (ironically) said it best:

"Everpix sponsored the DF RSS feed twice this year, which is how they first came to my attention. ... Really a shame to see them close."

There's the problem. They spent $16K on Daring Fireball sponsorship instead of doing basic research to discover where they should actually be targeting their marketing efforts.

Your best idea for acquiring more users is to sponsor one of the most expensive RSS feeds in the world? Sponsoring DF is typically what companies do when their accountant says "you need to get rid of some cash, stat."

If Everpix hadn't yet found a path to sustainability, doing something like sponsoring Daring Fireball as a tactic to acquire more users is a good indicator of some very poor business decisions.

<comment><USER28> I bet a lot of people here, myself included, learned about Everpix through DF.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of people here. Not enough to generate real revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My hunch is that Everpix's $35,000/mo AWS bill could have been significantly less if they went with their own dedicated servers.

When I ran my music start-up, really smart people would look at me funny when I'd tell them it is cheaper than AWS for us to get a couple of high-power dedicated servers with unmetered 100mbps bandwidth. We were pushing over 100tb per month and paying under $3,000/mo, _including_ the cost for our web and db servers.

<comment><USER30> i was pushing 100 T / month with one server 1Gbit unmetered at 250$ / mo , also music site.

<comment><USER29> What backbones? We had an option to get much cheaper pricing on Cogent. We decided to pay a bit extra for premium.

Also, most of our cost was for the hardware(not the bandwidth). We went with top-notch storage with RAID and a bunch of ram. In hindsight, we should have bought the hardware for one-time fee but didn't for cash flow reasons.

<comment><USER31> Wise move!

FWIW, 100TB (approx 300Mbps continuous) costs us approximately $450/mo with a good quality host (Quadranet) with a good blend of upstreams. A cheaper host (Ubiquity) charge us about half of that. It's worth paying the extra for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The transparency in this article is something we can learn from. It's sad to see a service like Everpix go as they were making money. But if you look at the other numbers, they just staffed up too quickly. Salaries, personnel and payrolling costs of together $3.7 million in two years is just way to much compared to the money they were making.

What I'm curious about is that the cost per user (storing photos) is what killed them, or a burn-rate simply to high for what they're doing.

But then again it's easy to look at this as an outsider and try to point out their flaws. I'm hoping to learn more about how they monitored specific business metrics to test their business model.

<comment><USER13> If they were paying $35K/mo to AWS for hosting and storage, they could have paid about that much for a _year_ of hosting on their own machines. There's a lot we don't know about this angle, but suffice it to say they were throwing money away on infrastructure.

<comment><USER26> Yes. We moved back to our own infrastructure as well. But AWS has a broad range of services. I can imagine storing photos on S3 makes sense for a startup like Everpix. Because, you don't need to worry scaling on storage level. Sometimes it makes sense to pay a premium, but it should really be tied to your growth metrics. If you see a month to month growth to which you can't keep up with updating and migrating your own infrastructure, then make the move to AWS or another big cloud vendor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Dammit. That sucks. I am (well, was) a paying member of Everpix and I loved it. It was very great. It surprises me that this is how I found out about the closing. They haven't sent out the notifications to members yet, it seems.

Guess I now have to look for another similarly seamless remote backup of my photo library. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER25> We're sending out emails in batches. We will also be in touch about refunds and downloads.

<comment><USER32> Just got it. Thanks for your part in creating a product I loved. Best luck in your future endeavors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow. What an interesting example of what's wrong with the venture capital model. A great product dies because the founders "spent too much time on the product".

I hope a 9th inning miracle saves the day. If not, thanks for the great product.

<comment><USER34> From the article:

 _" The reaction was positive for you as a team but weak in terms of whether a $B business could be built."_

Wow, fuck these guys. It seems like a lot of good ideas are getting left on the cutting-room floor because people are holding out for the next giant thing.

I hope the crowdfunding thing is enough to help unlock capital for things like this.

(j/k crowdfunded equity is going to be a shitshow)

EDIT:

The folks probably blew some money they didn't need to, but the quote I brought is specifically "Yeah, so, you guys are good but we don't see this being a billion dollar business".

A glorified photobucket doesn't _need_ to be a gigantic billion-dollar business. Most startups which solve simple problems and solve them well are very useful to consumers but aren't going to be massive juggernauts; that doesn't mean that they're bad investments.

Had the investor said, "Yeah, we don't see this becoming a $100M any time soon", maybe that'd make sense. But the additional order of magnitude (one billllllllllion dollars) strikes me as unreasonable.

This is a great example of why everyone thinks we're in a bubble folks.

<comment><USER35> Wait, explain? Why should VC's fund something they don't think will make enough money? That seems to be a sense of entitlement - clearly, paid users were not enough to support this product on its own (which by all accounts, is a shame).

<comment><USER36> I think his implication was that paid users would have been enough to support it in the long run if the goal of investment were a stable business with some amount of yearly profits rather than a VC jackpot valuation exit.

<comment><USER37> But isn't that more the role of traditional sources of capital (banks, &c.) than a SV VC?

<comment><USER36> To be honest, I've never heard of traditional sources of capital funding websites but I suppose that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

In any case, I agree that it doesn't match the VC models, but I'm not sure there is another model available to a web business that can probably get enough traction to survive, but not enough to offer massive returns.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say there are probably significant market segments not being served because they offer a modicum of stable profit but have large up front costs without a lot of growth opportunity.

<comment><USER37> I wonder if this is an opportunity -- the world is not solely composed of moon-shot local social enterprise websites, and worthy businesses are being shut out of the world of cheap money by the prevailing culture. Hmm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here's my perspective as an avid, sometimes published photographer...I never used Everpix but my perception is that it solved a very real problem but unfortunately, it is a problem that most people don't realize they have.

For starters, most people already use something like Facebook, in which they've selected the best or most interesting of their photos to share to the adoration of their social network. When these users wonder if they've done enough with their photo collection, they just have to look through FB and remember that yes, they did put up a few photos and people liked and commented them, end of further discussion.

Of course, these users may have thousands of other photos that they just never got to...but that might not matter for most people...they've already gotten some satisfaction from sharing.

Of course there are shutterbugs who do feel a yearning to go through their photos and see them all again...but are there enough to support a paid service? Hard to say, especially with the many other photo services out there.

From my perspective, I have a pro Flickr account where I have nearly 10,000 photos...which represents less than 5 percent of the photos I've taken in the last few years. However, a service like Everpix is not appealing enough to me...because the barrier to me is not that I can't easily access old photos, but that I've realized that editing and sorting photos is the long part of the work...and unless Everpix mitigates that part better than Lightroom and a bunch of external HDs, I don't think id be compelled to try it out.

And so for now, Flickr is good enough...I mostly use Flickr because it's an easy way for people to find me. I imagine 500px likewise finds its success less as a storage service and more of a place to shareable nod be seen. A lot of the testimonials I've seen of Everpix was its value to people and their own photos...which, while is a very valuable thing to serve, it is ultimately the sharing of these photos that makes people want to join a service in the first place

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish the author had dug into the budget more. Yes you need to grow your company.. but $1.2M in salaries? Half a million in "consulting fees"? To develop an early stage product?

This seems like a missed opportunity to explore startup finances. Not just growth strategy. I personally would love to know more.

</comment><comment><USER40> Can somebody explain the difference between salary, payroll, and personnel? As far as I can tell, this money goes to employees. However, with a sum of roughly $3.8M, this seems a bit high for 6 employees over 2 years ($270k+/employee/yr), so that can't be right..

<comment><USER41> Payroll = salary + benefits

Personnel costs = full-time employees + contractors (iOS development shops, etc.)

<comment><USER40> Wait, so are these 3 costs not summed? I didn't do all the math from funding to net income, so I might have missed something.

<comment><USER42> That infographic is very confusing and misleading. They lined the numbers up as if they should equal out to the net income at the bottom. They don't.

The 2.3 million funding doesn't count towards net income. I'm guessing that number is the subscription revenue - expenses, which it says in the footnote that not all expenses are shown. What everyone else said about Salary/Payroll/Personnel is correct, so I have no idea why it listed all three on the infographic.

I'm guessing the author of the article took those numbers from their financial report and didn't have the financial sense to understand what he was doing so he just threw them together in a way that made sense to him, but doesn't actually make sense in reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > They _hoped_ that at the very least, they would be able to refund their > customers' money and allow them to download their data.

I wish more web services gave the option of hooking into my own personal AWS S3 buckets or DropBox account (with append-only permissions). This would totally eliminate any concerns over data retention and possession. Double- bonus points for open formats. I want to (unambiguously) control the underlying data!

 __I don 't know if EverPix had this option or not... it's just a frustration for me that keeps me from using (most) web applications.

</comment><comment><USER44> Other People's Money. There's a reason they're all smiling in the final photo.

<comment><USER45> Frankly, thats what struck me the most- them smiling as if nothing happened.

<comment><USER46> I remember when my business went bust, the amount of stress I went through in those final weeks was so intense that the sense of relief I felt when it was finally over meant I was smiling during the post announcement beers. And that was my own money as well. Trying to avert bankruptcy is a horrendous experience..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's somehow ironic that a service provider whose name contains 'ever' and promised to store your photos for ever has to shutdown after only two years. As a user, I tend more and more to go with well established providers to avoid such situations. 40 days isn't much to migrate away from a service either. On the other hand, users have probably to be glad that the service wasn't shut down with immediate effect.

<comment><USER48> The thing is, more established companies aren't a guarantee either. I tend to hit the back button as soon as I see an internet company promise to do anything "forever."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Wow, I just signed up for Everpix two weeks ago. According to this article, they had already written the message announcing their end when they took my money.

<comment><USER17> On the upside, they've said they'll give it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> That was fascinating read. Kudos to the team for opening up their finances and talking about them openly. It brought some scary memories when I was in a similar situation a while ago and had trouble paying AWS bills even though they were much smaller than what you guys have to pay. Startups are indeed hard.

One thing that I've learnt is that market size matters the most in venture backed startups. And if your addressable market is not large enough then product or team are irrelevant.

Regardless, good luck to the team. I'm sure things will work out eventually for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER51> I have a photo watermark product and I see photo backup as a natural progression of our product line up. Stories like these are a wake up call. Few things that I would take away are -

\- They were charging too low IMO. The free tier gave away too much for free. If your product is of value then charge for it. People will pay. It does not matter that Apple and Google are giving it away for free.

\- They should have spent at least some part of the millions they raised on acquiring users.

\- It seems they blew almost all money on salaries and consulting. Even if the AWS bill was $35K a month, the money they had raised was enough to last them for two years and they also had paying customers.

At the end of the day it looks like a classic case of concentrating entirely on product and neglecting the revenue and user growth. You can afford to ignore revenue if you have the growth rate of Instagram or Twitter. But if you have neither revenue nor growth then it's difficult to keep going on VC money.

</comment><comment><USER52> Never heard of them before today, and I'd been looking for a good picture storage solution in the last year. Maybe that's part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER53> I just posted some more detailed thoughts here:

[http://innonate.tumblr.com/post/66113756052/everpix-blog- we-...](http://innonate.tumblr.com/post/66113756052/everpix-blog-we-gave-it- our-all)

In some way we felt like classmates with Everpix. We started in the same half of the same year. Most every thing they wrote about we believed in too. We didn't know the team, but from afar they seemed like stellar people with their hearts in the right place -- right where our hearts were too.

Awesome job team Everpix. Thanks for the inspiration and sharing the journey with us!

Nate CEO - Picturelife [https://picturelife.com/](https://picturelife.com/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Couldn't they have shut down just the 'freemium' part of the service and keep going? Then figure out growth later on.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm not surprised, AWS is expensive as hell.

<comment><USER56> While the article concentrated on the incomnig AWS cost, if you look at the infographic the expense of AWS is tiny compared to their overall expenses.

<comment><USER55> That didn't help them through

<comment><USER57> Tumblr has an AWS bill that dwarfs theirs, and did survive for 6 years without any income. It's mostly Everpix's failure to attract investments to blame here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I am confused about the $500k loan, surely this would need to be repaid before they can look at customer refunds?

<comment><USER59> I was wondering the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> _but everyone here is hung up on the concern over being able to build a >$100M revenue subscription business in photos in this age of free photo tools_

Dropbox is a billion dollar company doing exactly that. I'm willing to bet that photos/videos are what exceed quotas and create paid accounts.

</comment><comment><USER61> This article is well-written and The Verge's production quality is tremendous. Can we get more like this?

On Everpix - pretty shocked at the candor/level of disclosure in this article including from the founders and Index Ventures. VCs tend to keep mum about their misses so a bit refreshing to see.

<comment><USER17> For the past year and a bit, The Verge have been lightly dipping their toes into startup journalism. See Alexis Ohanian's "Small Empires" on there for an example.

I personally hope they give it a bigger shot, as it fits their cross-section of tech and culture that they're aiming for, and I've loved the writers since some of them were back on Engadget!

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So I am wondering: as a startup founder / cofounder are you obligated to return investors' money/funds if it comes to the point that you have to shutdown your startup? Or was the raising of the money done with the understanding that investors may never get it back ?

Obviously, the answer here depends on the exact agreement(s) between the investor(s) and the founders but I am curious about the typical case.

If indeed, as I suspect, you are not "in-debt" by the amount of money that you had raised, this makes the shut down a bit less painful and also gives you room to try and do another startup in the future (due to not been burdened with paying back huge sums of borrowed money).

<comment><USER63> Most often professional tech startup investments are either (a) purchases of stock in a company; or (b) a 'convertible' loan to the company (that's expected to turn into shares when a full stock-sale round happens).

In both cases, the money enters the company's accounts, not the founders' accounts, and is used over time for business purposes.

If the company fails there's little or no money left to pay anyone back. In an orderly liquidation, there might be a little left over, or picked up from an asset/tech fire-sale. Those amounts go first to pay back creditors, first among them anyone owed salaries, as much as possible. If any is left over, it's split proportionately among shareholders, usually first to 'preferred' shareholders (professional investors). But by this point the liquidated value is likely to be nothing, or pennies on the dollar.

Professional diversified investors understand this: sometimes the shares go to zero, and sometimes debts are uncollectable.

It's not common for the founders to offer personal guarantees of repayment. (In other kinds of going-concern small-business financing, like bank loans or equipment financing, where the founders/officers have the means, they may offer such guarantees to lenders... but not in highly risky tech startups.)

Now, there's a fair chance that the founders themselves depleted savings or ran up personal debts to feed the company – investing/loaning their own funds, working for little or no salary in the expectation of gains later. So it's often still a draining financial hit... but the professional investors aren't expecting a formal debt repayment.

Instead, if the investors think the failure came after a good honest try, and was a learning experience for founders who will succeed at other times and opportunities, they'll favorably consider investing in a future venture, or help place the team elsewhere. So it's never a total loss: everyone learns things to do, things to avoid, and how/when to work together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I find it hard to believe that no one wanted to buy this service. $35K per month in revenue.

<comment><USER49> Well, I think the article said it was $35k per month in AWS costs alone. If they had 6800 paying customers at the cheapest rate ($50 per year) they were making $333,200 per year -- $27,767 per month.

My #1 priority would have been getting the storage costs to be break-even, with plan to get well under in a year. I have to assume they tried and discovered they couldn't get their numbers low enough.

<comment><USER20> FWIW we designed Everpix's infrastructure and our unique image pipeline so it would break even and it did: revenue from subscriptions (around $40K / month) did cover both free and paid accounts (around $30K / month).

<comment><USER65> what stack did you use on the server ?

<comment><USER20> Mostly RDS / EC2 / Python with C/C++ extensions

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This is one of the first public numbers I have come across on salaries in SF startups: $ 1,168,710. This is for a team of (in the end) 7 people, in about 2 years (started with 3 people). Let's say an average of 5 people. That comes down to $ 117K/person/year. Is that average, or above or below? I know some startups in Europe, and in Europe half of that would be common.

</comment><comment><USER67> Call me optimist but I have a hunch that the level of engagement around the shutdown will attract investors to try and save the company.

</comment><comment><USER68> I was a potential customer that decided against Everpix.

1\. I couldn't install their desktop app without 'Run as Admin' (which is understandable but not documented as part of the process). When I did a minimal effort at reporting this (responding to my signup email), the email bounced.

2\. I asked for slideshow support and basically got a 'we don't do that here'

</comment><comment><USER69> 500k for consulting???????

<comment><USER70> Let me break this down a bit: USD 500k at USD 2k/man day = 250 man days

A US man year has ~235 man days, so that's just roughly 1 external FTE for a year. Not so much, actually.

<comment><USER71> What kind of FTE makes $2000 a day, what?

<comment><USER72> Consultants. Not freelancers, consultants. They have to charge that much so people know they're consultants rather than freelancers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> If you're a user who signed up because of the new tagline:

> Your photo mess, solved.

I'd be pissed right now. Not solved, the company's out of business. This is why I won't sign up for another web service that isn't open source again. I'll gladly pay for hosting, but core technology must be libre.

<comment><USER74> As a user, I get pissed off with acquihires, or pivots. Those can feel like a breech of trust.

This is different. It's pretty clear that the Everpix team worked hard to deliver the service they were selling, and in the end, failed.

I love(d) Everpix. It really did solve my photo mess, and their daily "flashbacks" were a welcome dose of nostalgia, delivered to my inbox every morning. There are other photo services that do similar things to Everpix, but none that can match their unique combination of pricing, ease of use and the brilliant flashbacks.

I'm sad that I lost a service I really really liked, but far from pissed off, at least at the company itself. They created an awesome service, and hopefully one that will soon be copied by a more financially stable successor.

<comment><USER73> But your photos are much more important than the life span of one company. So if you're truly trying to solve photos, it has to be as an open source project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Part of this is a lesson on using AWS early then looking for cheaper stuff later if your income doesn't rise above your AWS costs. There are considerably cheaper options for many of the categories it serves that would have drastically cut down their bills.

</comment><comment><USER76> You don't need just a great idea, you need to set a finance strategy that can follow this idea. A VC or others investors, does not mean that you will survive. Keep an eye open and do a balance forecast. It seems basic, but it is always forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER77> It's incredible to me that an amazing service like this, solving real problems would fail while stupid (let's be honest and call them what they really are) social media startups are prospering all over the place. It's quite sad.

</comment><comment><USER78> For my part, I didn't use Everpix because I actually want to edit my photos and just save the best ones. I keep less than 5% of the photos I take. Everpix tried to do the editing for me, but software will never win that game.

<comment><USER78> I should say though, it was a beautiful product and did its job extremely well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I cannot help but wonder if this is why my startup Pivotal ([http://pivotal.ws](http://pivotal.ws)) got a rejection letter from YC last night.

<comment><USER80> Are you aware of Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Tracker? [http://pivotallabs.com/](http://pivotallabs.com/)

<comment><USER79> I am, we know long term we will have to change the name and already have something lined up but we figured it best right now to keep the current name. Make a bunch of mistakes and then rebrand.

<comment><USER41> Publicly admitting a plan to "make a bunch of mistakes" under another giant company's trademarked brand may not be wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Everpix. They just needed someone on the team who was passionate about marketing. Whose gifts ran in that direction. I bet what they do next will be even better/hotter.

</comment><comment><USER82> This really saddens me. I hadn't heard of the service yet, but it looks and sounds awesome... it's a shame they couldn't make it work :(

</comment><comment><USER83> Everpix photos are private by default, it is waay more difficult to build private by default companies in general.

</comment><comment><USER84> andrewchen wrote a blogpost about this [http://andrewchen.co/2013/11/05/when- a-great-product-hits-th...](http://andrewchen.co/2013/11/05/when-a-great- product-hits-the-funding-crunch/)

</comment><comment><USER4> sad to hear this, great product. in a perverse way it was also nice to see an article & responses from the team that dodged the usual Valley bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER85> sadly, this is my first time hearing of this service...

</comment><comment><USER86> At least they didn't call themselves Foreverpix.</comment>


Google Chrome already No. 1 among free iOS apps - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57463546-93/google-chrome-already-no-1-among-free-ios-apps/ <comment><USER2> Just another data point: Opera Mini also hit #1 in every country when it was released.[1]

Is anyone still using it?

[1] [http://www.gadgetsdna.com/opera-mini-goes-rampant-tops- all-2...](http://www.gadgetsdna.com/opera-mini-goes-rampant-tops-all-22-app- store-chart/2217/)

<comment><USER3> The difference for me at least is that I have replaced the default Safari icon (in the dock bar) with Chrome.. something which I did not do with Opera. A friend of mine did too as I noticed today. So it definitely has better chances of sticking with at least the people I know.

(A little OT but right now the Chrome icon it looks ugly as hell. The black just doesn't seem to mix well with green and blue for some reason)

<comment><USER4> Yeah it's too bad the iOS guidelines don't allow for Chrome's traditional icon. This seems like the best compromise they could come up with to maintain their branding.

<comment><USER5> Something like this might have worked and fit inside the iOS frame: [http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/132/3/1/chrome_11_flu...](http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/132/3/1/chrome_11_flurry_icon_by_ibnadem-d3g5ucn.png)

<comment><USER6> That's really nice, if you did that congratulations!

<comment><USER5> Just Googled for "square chrome icon" and copied a link to the first relevant image I found, hah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the default browser on iPad very limiting. First of all you can only a have limited number of tabs open and if you open more tabs it closes the earliest opened tab. Another drawback is that you can't search from the address bar. In fact, the pop-up keyboard hides the space bar key. I have been spoiled by the Chrome omnibox.

<comment><USER8> > If you open more tabs it closes the earliest opened tab.

This is the case with Chrome for iOS too. At least on my original iPad, Chrome trash the first tab after I open the 4th tab (tested this with Reddit front page) where I can open up to the 9 tabs limit in Mobile Safari. I guess this is just the original iPad showing its age. Things seems to works better on iPhone 4, but my point is Chrome for iOS do trash tabs.

<comment><USER9> Really? I've never seen Chrome close a tab on the Galaxy Nexus. I've gotten it up into the low teens on several occasions...

<comment><USER8> This is more likely an issue with Chrome for iOS and the first iPad than Mobile Chrome as a whole though, as I don't get any trashing on my iPhone either. I closed all apps in the background and it seems to be able to handle a little bit more:

<http://cl.ly/2y0K0K2P0R0E1D1C3h0s>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Which is ironic, because it really is just a webkit view, not even running the latest js engine that native Safari has access to. In short, it's not very good, this Chrome.

<comment><USER11> Well, there's more to Chrome than its pure rendering and JS speed you know?

Predictive prefetching makes sure Chrome already has the page data before you finish typing. It can still beat Safari with tricks like this.

Chrome Sync syncs your profile (credentials, tabs, bookmarks, omnibox typing model, etc.) across all your devices.

The user interface for managing tabs is also very slick.

Auto-update is gimped by the app store approval process, but at least you know that the Chrome team takes security very seriously and will take the minimum possible time to patch security flaws.

Those are some things that I would want over Mobile Safari.

<comment><USER12> _"Predictive prefetching makes sure Chrome already has the page data before you finish typing."_

As a website owner, I really hate that 'feature', it really screws up the exit rate in my site stats (I don't run ads on my sites.)

<comment><USER13> I always assumed prefetching just grabbed html output... does it run javascript too?

<comment><USER14> Prefetching just grabs HTML.

Chrome also does prerendering in some cases, which runs JS, fetches stylesheets, etc. The user may or may not ever see the result, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully this will force Apple to maybe think about giving users a choice of setting default web browser as more and more people (like me) write to them complaining about it.

Just like they denied Sparrow of push notifications at first but as more and more users started pestering them about it, they finally had to give in.

<comment><USER5> Sparrow tried to position it like that, but that was not the real story: it was not Apple "blocking" them, it was that they did not want to put in the effort to setup a real push service, and instead wanted to run all the time on the device (using battery) to maintain an open connection. Which, of course, not having every app doing that is _exactly the problem_ that push notifications, as implemented by Apple, were designed to solve.

<comment><USER15> Actually they don't want to access your email, so they can't run a push notification service. And Apple Mail.app does the pulling thing, so allowing to change default Internet app or Mail app would not cause a problem : another app pulls, that's it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This won't be a win for customers until they can (1) set their preferred browser and (2) work out the security implications of letting apps use Nitro.

<comment><USER17> You could always do this as a temporary workaround: <http://blog.jonabrams.com/post/26099585134/open-in-chrome>

<comment><USER18> Doesn't that break https-urls?

I use

javascript:location.protocol='googlechrome'

<comment><USER17> Apparently not, using the protocol 'googlechromes' will open the page using https.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, let's see where it is in a week or a month, there are a lot of curiosity installs here...

<comment><USER2> Indeed. I downloaded it to try it out, and it is very interesting, but there's no way I'm going to even think about really using it until I have the option to set it as the default browser.

<comment><USER20> Why do you care if it's the default browser or not? Most of my browser interactions are by intent (that's me pushing the Chrome app icon to get on the internet) the other times when it defaults to Safari, I still get a decent experience - nothing breaks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> iCab is currently my main browser on the iPad. I've installed Chrome and like it so far, but I'm not sure if I'll stick with iCab or switch over yet..

I do wish that Apple would make Safari's javacript engine available to third party browsers OR allow them to provide their own javascript engine. I don't even care about the ability to open links from other apps with a third party; just give it a level playing field when it comes to speed.

<comment><USER22> It's a security thing. Making a dynamic language (or even a static language) perform well means that you have to generate machine code at runtime, because much of the information required for optimization is only available then. But, to run those instructions, you need a writable and executable page of memory. The problem is that having writable and executable pages means that a poorly written loop or string operation can also write code to memory and execute it. So Apple made the decision to W^X (write xor execute) app memory that's not their Safari app so that poorly-programmed apps don't leak user data or compromise the OS. It also conveniently prevents apps from running code that Apple didn't approve, which is probably what they really care about.

Anyway, Apple's business model seems to preclude neat software. Use Android or a laptop if you want a good Chrome experience.

<comment><USER23> Do not pretend this is anything but political. The only way to get a page that is both writable and executable is by specifically requesting one. So no, no loops becoming sentient any time soon.

<comment><USER22> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX>

<comment><USER24> What is your point? There are optimizations for dynamic languages which are typically implemented as self modifying code (e.g. polymorphic inline caching) and need writable and executable pages. Without this you could still create writable pages, compile the code and then mark the pages read only and executable. The performance penalty is negligible compared to not using a just in time compiler at all.

On the other hand, with address space layout randomization this is almost impossible to exploit. Furthermore, without ADSR and stack canaries you can use return oriented programming to circumvent the lack of writable & executable memory.

<comment><USER22> The comment I replied to is nearly incomprehensible ("loops becoming sentient"?), so I sent him over to Wikipedia to read about W^X.

I personally don't care what Apple does because I own no Apple products and never intend to. Yes, you're right that Apple could allow executable pages without much security loss. But remember, address space randomization and canaries are all compile-time options, and they don't trust their developers to enable those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Chrome is the best browser out there on laptops. Naturally a lot of people are interested in trying it out on the iPhone.

The app store ranking is determined by number of downloads in the last 5-6 days. Since it just launched, a spike in downloads and a subsequent rise in rankings is expected. Whether it stays on top in the coming weeks/months will determine how it compares to other apps.

<comment><USER26> >Chrome is the best browser out there on laptops.

Only if you have as much memory as a desktop. Chrome is _painful_ to use on anything with limited memory, even with very limited plugin use. (Roughly 20 megs per extension and 50 megs per tab).

I've had much better luck with Safari, even the Windows version. No lastpass for Safari Windows though :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully Chrome iOS gets to stick around for a little bit and soon get better Safari for iOS. A little competition is always good.

</comment><comment><USER28> Amazing stamp of approval of the Chrome brand! I didn't realize that people were so curious about another browser on iOS.

<comment><USER29> I don't think this is much of a stamp of approval as it is curiosity. I wouldn't read into this as signing-off from Safari but just to see what Chrome offers.

<comment><USER30> He/she said it's a stamp of approval of the Chrome brand - not the iOS app itself. As a brand, Chrome dwarfs Safari and hence the high curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does the Chrome browser use its own V8 JavaScript engine and WebKit? Or is it sitting on top of Apple's UIWebView?

<comment><USER32> It's still using Apple's UIWebView unfortunately. <https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was hoping Chrome would offer word wrapping when zoomed in like Android does, but it doesn't.

<comment><USER34> Chrome is using the UIWebView control (same as Safari, sans NitroJS), so I don't know if that's even possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why does Apple allow competing browsers in the App Store, but not competing mail clients? For me the iPhone's mail app has terrible IMAP support, but there aren't any other options.

<comment><USER36> Have you tried Sparrow? Phenomenal email app for iPhone and iPad soon as well.

<comment><USER35> Cool, thanks. Guess I haven't searched in a while. I know at one point there were no competing mail apps ... just folder/organizer type apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think they run it on reputation, not on the actual quality of the application. Users do not yet have enough experience to judge on the basis of its actual performance.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tried to use Google Docs and got this message: The browser you're using may not support all features of the desktop version of Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder what will happen if Google and a few other big hitters publicly encourage people to jailbreak their iOS devices in order to get the best experience (by avoiding Apple's lame restrictions).

Like suppose Larry Page goes up on stage at Google IO and saying "here's the next version of Chrome for iOS and btw, we suggest you jailbreak you iPhone to get the one with our awesome V8 engine".

I wonder if Apple can take any action against Google after that (other than kicking out current Google apps).

<comment><USER39> > if Google and a few other big hitters publicly encourage people to jailbreak > their iOS devices

Why would Google do that? They'd rather people use Android devices.

<comment><USER30> I think Google realizes that iOS has a higher stickiness than Android</comment></comment></comment>


Linux Laptop Recommendations - <AUTHOR> http://jc00ke.com/2014/09/02/linux-laptop-recommendations/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the Dell Developer XPS 13, fresh installed with Xubuntu 14.04 (XFCE is by far the best), with no problems. It's very competitive with the MacBook Air line, similar lightness but with good performance. The keyboard types really well, and doesn't have a lot of weird extra buttons like many PC laptops do. It's also devoid of the legacy oddities many PC laptops have (red nipples in the keyboard, VGA ports, etc).

I did have to make a slight tweak to the trackpad config, but I believe they have fixed that with a recent change. If not, google for synaptics AreaBottomEdge and that will give you what you need to tune it.

I previously had a MacBook, and decided to stop using Apple products after the Bitcoin app ban fiasco (and because I don't agree with many of their policies). Now that I'm comfortable with my Linux laptop, I like it a lot more than my old MacBook. It's been a great experience, and it also means my development environment is closer to my production one, so I'm happy with it.

Edit: Despite my reservations towards the legacy weirdness of the Thinkpad line, I've learned through observation that they are kindof the industry standard for Linux laptops right now, and people seem to like them. When I meet someone running a Linux laptop, it's usually a thinkpad.

<comment><USER2> > the legacy oddities many PC laptops have (red nipples in the keyboard

The TrackPoint is not a "legacy oddity," it's a far superior input method compared to a trackpad, if you take the time to learn how to use it.

<comment><USER3> > The TrackPoint is not a "legacy oddity," it's a far superior input method > compared to a trackpad, if you take the time to learn how to use it.

IMHO the proper way to use a pointing device is "sparingly", which suits the trackpoint _perfectly_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon for 2 years (I pre-ordered one and then upgraded it a year later). I have nothing but good things to say about it. I'm an avid user of the Trackpoint and only use the mousepad for scrolling so can't comment on the quality of the mousepad... Otherwise, the machine is perfect. Build quality is good, performance is fine and it's got a nice sized screen. Mini-DisplayPort. Excellent keyboard layout. Bog standard hardware, so everything is well supported by Linux.

I have a hard time imagining a more suitable laptop for Linux.

<comment><USER5> I got the Carbon X1 Touch myself, and absolutely love it. I only have two complaints:

(1) my battery only lasts for 2.5 hours in linux on a good day, while it lasts over 6 hours in windows, and

(2) I develop touch-based apps, and ubuntu doesn't broadcast touch events to its browser. The system itself can receive touch events (if you tap three fingers on a window, it triggers the move mode), but the browsers themselves only receive mouse events. The result is that I cannot use pinch-and-zoom on touch-enabled webapps.

<comment><USER6> I had similar problems with battery life. Take a look at TLP [1] - my battery life improved dramatically after installing it (mostly on default settings).

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXVnP0Y...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXVnP0YgIfAJ:www.kianryan.co.uk/2013/07/x1-carbon- ubuntu-13-04/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have shortscreens started to fall out of fashion _at all_ yet? I'm having a serious case of tech-inadequacy after I got my mom an X230 and my girlfriend decided she wanted one too. But looking at that X230 side-by-side with my identical-width T61, I can't bring myself to give up _2.5 inches_ of vertical screen real estate. (And the "14 inch" T440p is still a whole 1.5 inches shorter, in addition to the whole thing being much wider).

I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that _erases your installation when it loses power_ seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)

I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up at all, given that manufacturers have moved on to even more terrible ideas like soldering a paltry amount of RAM to the motherboard, and then removing one or even both sodimm slots. Maybe I just need a NUC strapped to a car battery.

<comment><USER8> > I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a > machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a > outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked > down computing is appreciated in the least)

It does not erase your installation when it loses power. If you switch into or out of developer mode, it'll wipe user data, but otherwise your data is safe.

As for "locked-down computing", as long as Google continues to mandate developer mode as part of their hardware requirements, that seems quite sufficient to me.

<comment><USER7> Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:

> _[Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my > Gentoo installation is erased. It 's some kind of security measure. After > full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo > again from scratch_

I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?

I wouldn't be worried about my data per se (backed up with unison, etc), just the hassle of reinstalling and ultimately wary of electing into that kind of user-hostile design.

"Developer mode" is equivalent to rooting your phone - something that most users won't do, and that some misguided developers will even think they should discriminate against (I believe some banking apps were recently mentioned here). Even if you go out of your way to do it and suffer the oddities, buying such a device sends an economic signal (to Google and developers) and social signal (to less-clued friends) that the official locked-down experience is desirable.

<comment><USER8> > Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:

>> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch

> I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as > well. Is it just a baseless rumor?

News to me; ugh. Quoting one of the Google posts on this: "The problem here is that the flags that remember whether or not you're in dev-mode have to be stored somewhere, and we chose to put them in the battery-backed CMOS. When they're lost, we have to assume we should be in normal mode, or it opens a security hole. The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode. We may be able to fix that in future Chromebooks, but changing the verified boot security features generally requires a change to the read-only BIOS, which isn't possible with an update."

That's really broken.

<comment><USER9> > The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow > to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode

Has this delay been quantified? I've used Linux-based systems with dynamic root of trust, with the TPM being queried at boot. There wasn't any noticeable delay in boot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I might be the odd one out. I have a macbook pro retina running ubuntu 14 using parallels. Could not happier.

Assuming budget isn't an issue, I find many linux laptops (including the 13inch Dell) to have bad UX. Relatively short battery life, low res screen, and may i say, terrible trackpad.

Apple trackpads are significantly better than all competitors.

On top of that, a lot of nice to have apps don't run on linux. Things like screenhero. And apps that do have a linux build often don't work as well. (Think skype, hipchat)

Running VM on macbooks is the best of both worlds, you get linux for development and OSX for everything else.

<comment><USER11> What is the best VM software for OSX? I tried using VirtualBox but it seems kind of slow and unreliable for daily use.

<comment><USER10> Go with parallels, without a doubt the best you can go with. Very fast and feels native.

The downside if you won't be able to use a windows manager like WMII. Because parallels provide bindings for unity that makes the whole experience smooth and they don't provide bindings for other windows managers

[https://www.parallels.com/](https://www.parallels.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm using a Samsung NP900x3c with a plain ubuntu 14.04 install and I have to say its the smoothest experience i've had with linux on a laptop so far. Everything works out of the box and the most technical thing you have to do is disable windows 8's securite/quick book options.

I would have really loved to use elementaryOS on it but without the 3.13 kernel the CPU and GPU refused to play nicely and the machine refused to sleep. These issues were fixed in the 3.13 kernel.

The main problem I have found with laptops and linux is still GPU. Im reluctant to use a laptop with anything but an intel GPU these days because the last experience I had with an AMD GPU was simply terrible. The AMD drivers refused to install on anything but a specific kernel and even when installed the laptop performed better when i told the AMD control panel to always use the intel chip over the AMD one.

Id like to be able to change my opinion, but AMD and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still some sort of absurd joke.

<comment><USER13> I posted separately on my experience with my laptop, but I would vehemently +1 the driver issues for AMD Radeon. My laptop has Radeon 7700 graphics, which in practice means I have had to wipe and reinstall Ubuntu four or five times in the past year after a system upgrade broke the graphics. Catalyst drivers work great, but they break completely upon some combination of upgrade (kernel? who knows). I realize this was naive reasoning, but I assumed that AMD's sponsorship of OpenSUSE would mean better support for Linux.

I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects.

I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM.

Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have one of the old Lenovo X1 Carbons from when they first came out. It's great, I had been considering a MacBook Air, but I liked the thin bezel on the X1, a little more screen resolution, and Linux-ability (was also a couple hundred cheaper at the time). I mainly use it for coding and web browsing and the slowest CPU with 4GB memory and 128GB SSD does fine for a dual boot setup with Win7 and Ubuntu. The overall look and feel, and the keyboard (pre-weird function row thing) are the highlights, but the screen is not the best, especially after using a MBP retina often. But it works and I'm happy with it. The changed keyboard would make me question a new model, and I'm not interested in a touch screen. Also, the touchpad is the best I've used on a non-Apple laptop, and is of comparable quality. It has a trackpoint, but I never use it.

<comment><USER15> I have a very old x201 that I love... except for that damned screen. The visual angle is so small that even sited directly in front of it, looking square on, the blacks around the edges look bad. Makes it hard to watch a dark movie.

The other thinkpads I've seen don't have screens this bad, but this one is a corker. Apart from that, I love the little thing.

<comment><USER16> You can upgrade the screens on the x200 and x201 to an AFFS (IPS) model quite easily.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like I have some thinking to do. I've had this laptop for 5-6 years, and apart from the bad screen, the only fault is that the speaker started failing about a year ago (so I've been using headphones). Spend some time and effort fixing and upgrading this thing (new battery, screen, hunt for speaker issue, perhaps ssd upgrade?) or just go for a new machine?

One of the big bonuses to the thinkpads is that very complete user manuals are available free online, including exploded disassembly diagrams. Perhaps I should do the upgrade just because it's possible :)

<comment><USER16> Well that descision is pretty up to you. It depends on your needs and how much you like the laptop.

I'll recount my recent story.

I started out with an x200, which I loved for the size and lack of trackpad (I only use the trackpoint, I use keybinds and tiling wms heavily), and ran that for a few months. I did the screen upgrade[0] and was extremly happy with the mod. Unfortunatley a mishap at a hackerspace involving a large cup of beer destroyed my poor motherboard. I had a descision to make: either buy a new laptop or repair this one. I went with the rebuild plan. I squeezed in an x201 motherboard into the chassis instead of going with the same C2D mobo. I bought a refurbed 120GB SSD and a new 4GB stick of RAM. On top of that I had to replace my keyboard so that came as I also bought a new 9-Cell battery.

In the end I ended up with a near new x201 with an x200 chassis, an IPS screen, SSD, full DIMM of RAM, and a kew keyboard with roughly 8-9 hours of battery life all for about $550 out of pocket. I've spent about 2 years with it like this and if I had to make the choice again I would absolutley do the repair; I love my laptop. But I'm also only a sysadmin and compiling code and major power isn't a conern for me. Portability and reliability is.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4hVYq9glKg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4hVYq9glKg) : This mod is just under $200 but you get an IPS equivalent screen that covers roughly 75-80% colour gamut. Way nicer to watch movies on.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the info. Do you recall the model number of the IPS panel you used?

Poking around on youtube a bit more, here is the x201 TN screen (same as mine) in a side-by-side with an IPS screen - it's quite a dramatic comparison: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzP3rFZXSgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzP3rFZXSgE)

<comment><USER16> Yeah, you can find these on ebay.

Brand is Hydis

HV121WX4-110 or HV121WX4-120

There's two screens you can choose from. The 120 is a matte finish just like the stock screen (a little finer/nicer than the stock finish) and the 110 is a glossy finish. Your preference.

The screen is a direct swap for the x200. For the x201 you need the CCFL/screen controller from an x200. The x201 has an LED backlight and it doesn't work with this screen. You need the CCFL controller from the x200. Easiest way to do this is to source a broken x200 with the lid intact and swap the screen into the lid, and then the lid onto the x201. Aside from that it's a direct swap.

<comment><USER15> Beaut, thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm wondering if Google will update their Chromebook Pixel, which was almost perfect.

<comment><USER18> I'm using a Chromebook Pixel running Arch right now. It works pretty well with KDE, and almost perfectly with GNOME, with the exception of— stupidly— Chromium, which has pretty minimal high-DPI support.

<comment><USER17> That's interesting as I also use Arch and I'm looking forward to getting a second hand one.

Have they solved the EFI glitch when power was lost?

What's the baseline power consumption (as reported by powertop)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Earlier this year, I raved about my System76, it blew my Macbook away. Then is died a horrible death - thankfully, it was a client's.

Now, I've gotten a custom build Sager from ReflexNotebook (reflexnotebook.ca). It screams, it's 13", it was fully supported out of the box by Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17, and more importantly, a full 3 year warranty.

Though, if you'd like to support the community, check out ZaReason. I'm done buying from everyone else. Linux support is (shockingly) finally at the point where usually, things just work.

<comment><USER20> I saw no notebooks with higher vertical res than 1080; that's a dealbreaker for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I picked up a £200 refurbed thinkpad x201 at the beginning of the year as a travel laptop that could get damaged and i wouldn't care.

Everything works perfectly, including integrated GPS and 3G modem. Here's the setup instructions captured in Ansible so i don't need to do it manually when wiping: [https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home- network/blob/master/role...](https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home- network/blob/master/roles/hardware/tasks/thinkpad.yml)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm running an Asus U38n, which has AMD chipset and graphics. I picked it because I liked the Asus design, AMD made it substantially cheaper than the Intel Asus Zenbook, and it allowed me to upgrade RAM and hard drive (unlike the unibody Zenbook). However, I've had repeated problems with Ubuntu updates breaking the Radeon graphics support, to the point where I've had to reinstall from scratch several times (and currently have 400MB of delayed upgrades to avoid going through that rigamarole again). 14.04 has greatly improved power management, moving from 2.5-3 hours in earlier kernels to well over 4 hours now, in part because my display brightness settings now work correctly.

Because of the problem with the Radeon graphics support, I wouldn't recommend using a laptop with AMD graphics. I previously had a Dell e1505 with Nvidia graphics that worked without trouble, and I've had no trouble with integrated Intel graphics support.

Also, I have a 1.5 year-old Sony Vaio from work. The weird BIOS Sony uses is completely borked for Linux, as I have not been able to so much as boot from a USB drive, much less dual boot. Actually, I may have gotten it to boot to a USB drive once using some dark voodoo magic, but you shouldn't have to sacrifice a chicken to Jobu just to boot into Linux, so I strongly recommend against even trying with the Sony laptops.

</comment><comment><USER22> This guy is a big fan of Samsung, despite the case cracking on his? Sounds like a range of laptops to avoid.

I have a Thinkpad T410, it has been very solid, I don't think there is one item that will physically wear out anytime soon, except for the power plug, which is larger than most brands, but has started to become loose. Oh for a magsafe power plug! Actually the little bumps on the trackpad are starting to wear off in the middle, but this doesn't seem to affect it's function.

<comment><USER7> > _except for the power plug ... has started to become loose_

Another great thing about Thinkpads is they're quite easy to fix.

I assume you mean the jack? That should be a separate piece, attached to the motherboard with a cable. If it's just wobbly, then it just needs to be tightened, possibly even without opening the laptop. If it's a poor connection, then you should be able to get a new one for <$5. On the T61, both of these things are dead easy, but check the T410 Hardware Maintenance Manual for the details.

(of course, now I'm thinking about the prospect of replacing this piece with a magsafe connector...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's a blog post I made about Linux on modern Ultrabooks, including the one I ended up with (Fujitsu Lifebook U904): [http://blog.printf.net/articles/2014/02/02/fujitsu- lifebook-...](http://blog.printf.net/articles/2014/02/02/fujitsu- lifebook-u904-review/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I would also add Macbook Air with Parallels/VMware/etc. running Linux. Price is in the $900 range for an entry level one, build quality is great, and battery life is amazing. Running Linux in a VM is nice because you get working power management, touchpad, etc. from the host OS without any screwing around.

<comment><USER25> I'm also running Linux (XUbuntu) as my development environment of a MacAir. It's been pretty sweet so far. The only thing it could use is more memory. A 32GB option would actually be nice in the MacAir but there might be hardware limitations for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't fathom why so many laptops feature half-height arrow keys. Do all important consumer segments use vim keybinds?

Plus, the images of the products are always at oblique angle that make seeing the keyboard unnecessarily difficult. Nobody gives two shits what a laptop looks like 85%-shut from the corner.

</comment><comment><USER27> These look pretty nice, especially the 1920x1080, despite the 14.1-inch form factor -- [https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1](https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1) \-- especially if you're weary[1] of configuring binary drivers for the 9001st time, and again whenever you install a new distribution. I've never actually met anyone who has a system76, though, and personally, I think that installing Debian on a MacBook is a big pain (REFind notwithstanding), though it is nice once you get it going.

Only problem is that system76 seems to be stuck in the early 2000s, making laptops which are simply bigger than anyone really wants these days. Pixel density on the small ones, at least, has come on par with many PCs, but still lags Apple.

</comment><comment><USER28> Would need more qualifiers; do you want a big screen, minimum size+weight, etc?

I just got a "new" Thinkpad T530. It's a two year old model, but the last of the Thinkpads with physical mouse buttons, essential for using the Trackpoint. Got it for $550 with three year warranty after rebates; the specs are comparable to a current model. It takes up to 16GB RAM and supports up to three dedicated storage devices. In general Thinkpads run Linux very well. This was mainly for the larger screen, I saved enough I can wait for a travel computer in early 2015 based on Broadwell.

<comment><USER29> Where'd you get a "new" one? I'm in the market for a new laptop, but I'm highly disappointed with the changes made to the current Thinkpad line.

<comment><USER28> You can find them from various closeout locations. They aren't usually such a great deal (value of unremoved features aside) but the 2392APU I got for an effective $550 is a very good deal.

[https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=t530&...](https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=t530&oq=t530&gs_l=products- cc.3..0l4.1121.1830.0.2037.4.3.0.220.127.116.119.487.1j1j1.3.0....0...1ac.1.52.products- cc..0.4.491.-UoNTx5imEc#spd=10962619076324271852)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you don't mind a slightly slower CPU and less RAM, the Thinkpad X60 is probably the only laptop that can run 100% free software:

[http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified- to-...](http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect- your-freedom)

This also means that you shouldn't have any issues with running Linux distros on it. I have one and it is more than enough for the things I'd use a laptop for - email, SSH, programming, light web browsing.

<comment> Anthony-G As I need a new laptop, I was excited to see this – even more when I followed the link and saw that you could buy one with 3GB RAM and an SSD hard drive. What killed it for me was the screen size: 12 inches is much too small for me. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I got a secondhand laptop, works great for the bulk of my work. HP 6910p, 2.4ghz core2duo, 4gb ram, $160. Pretty magnesium case and a ton of features and a trackpoint, easy sell for me, I'd have to spend ~$1500 that I consider much of an improvement.

Running Lubuntu 14.04 -- most of my work is Python related at the moment. I'm happy with this setup -- if I need more power I can always use the desktop which is a Core i5, $1500 to carry that around with me wasnt convincing

</comment><comment><USER32> Aw man, I guess I have to be the sweaty neckbeard...

The right notebook for Linux is a Linux notebook. Vendors of such machines are still boutique, but unlike in the past they actually exist. Just a few are Zareason, Thinkpenguin, and System76. I personally have an off brand Clevo 740 SU (same model as the System76 Galago) because I had confidence in the notebooks ability and got it OSless since I'd have to install Arch anyway.

But recommending all these Samsung and Llenovo _Windows_ machines is a disservice to everyone. It is a disservice to the Linux ecosystem because you cannot guarantee hardware support and using a non-Windows OS will void your warranty most of the time (at least if they catch you with it). It means that you get a bad impression of the experience due to any bugs or glitches you encounter, and rather than acknowledge you crossed into the land of dragons and took the risk many end up blaming the ecosystem that cannot provide hardware support realistically for any parts the vendors do not support in kernel themselves - especially those that are actively hostile to attempts to implement hardware support (video drivers - Android ones are really bad right now, but Nouveau had to wage a tangible uphill battle to get where it is today, but a lot of wifi cards, pci cards, etc can have no vendor support).

It also means you are paying your MS tax, and getting a Windows license you intend not to use. I'm not even going to argue the price aspect, because we know it really does not matter - if Linux were ever a threat (and really, it already is with Windows talking about version 9 possibly being free or ultra low cost with the looming threat of Android) they would just give away licenses, and that combined with bloatware contracts would provide the vendors more revene than just shipping Ubuntu (or whatever distro).

What I care about is the message. Every Linux Thinkpad fanboy is one bullet point in the Llenovo board meeting affirming the need not to ever ship a non- Windows notebook (except in countries like Germany that actually force them to). It sends the message "go ahead, bill me for a Windows license I'll never use, and make me fight the hardware to make it work, but I will _still buy your stuff_ because having a pleasant straightforward and painless Linux experience is not one of my priorities.

It also obscures how large the market segment is, because to these vendors every machine sold is a mark that Windows is still king. If they do not see retailors selling real Linux machines (including the Dell one) they have absoutely no reason to ever fathom selling Linux native machines themselves.

And that hurts _you_ , because that means there is less adoption, fewer options, and less pressure towards more widespread use of the platform. And for whatever your reason, you want to use Linux right now, and buying these Windows machines denies others from having the chance to even know it exists, and supports the continued monopoly Microsoft has on the personal computing industry (and Apple is not even on that radar).

So please, when you are looking for a new notebook with the intent to run a Linux distro on it, give some consideration to the vendors actually selling Linux machines, with support, as first class citizens. If you cannot find one that meets you needs so be it, but don't go out of your way to buy a Windows notebook and _hope_ it can run a Linux distro flawlessly.

<comment><USER33> One important factor for my choice in laptops is the physical attributes of the machine. IMO, Samsung and Apple, and to some extent Asus, have very well designed machines. Maybe I'm a little bit vain, but I'd like for my Linux laptop to look good too. That's one thing Apple always got right. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is rad, but I don't really like the way it looks. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.

ZaReason and System76 are awesome companies! I purchased a small notebook from ZaReason back in '08 but returned it because it was too underpowered. I would _happily_ buy a laptop from either ZaReason or System76 _if_ it was in the same vein of well designed hardware like the 3 companies I mentioned above.

I'm also very familiar with the Windows tax. A few years back I tried, very hard, to get HP to refund the Windows license on 2 desktops I bought for my dad. It was futile. Here are the blog posts from '09

HP Refund for Windows Tax: So far so good - [http://bit.ly/wy4zC](http://bit.ly/wy4zC) HP Refund for Windows Tax: No refund policy - [http://bit.ly/1a0FW1](http://bit.ly/1a0FW1)

Trust me, I hate seeing the little Windows 7 sticker and Windows super key on my laptop, but the hardware is good and I have no compatibility issues. Ideal? Nope. But good enough, and unfortunately that's what we Linux users have to contend with for now.

<comment><USER32> > unfortunately that's what we Linux users have to contend with for now.

And my point is that any sale of a Lenovo Thinkpad does zilch to solve it, and only reinforces their position of Windows-only. So if you do go and buy that ASUS / Samsung / Apple notebook, and put Linux on it, that means the next time you are looking for a notebook, you will have to do the _exact_ same thing because nobody is buying Linux machines to show the market there is any demand.

<comment><USER33> Well, if some company out there would kick it up a notch wrt design and not just compatibility, I'll buy it. Different strokes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thinkpad t440s has been great for me besides SATA link power management issues (which I had on my linux macbook air as well).

</comment><comment><USER35> The Acer C720 does a really good job of running Ubuntu natively and can be had for under $199 USD if you search around

</comment><comment><USER36> I have t42p, t43p, t60 and t61 running CentOS and Ubuntu.

#All of them has up time for more than 500 days. #T42p been on since 2007. #I am missing old IBM laptop, almost everything are serviceable.

I believe in "user-serviceable" of anything, Cars, Washing Machines and old IBM/Lenovo laptops.

<comment><USER37> I had to take my old T60 apart last summer to clean out all the fans and apply more heatsink compound. Runs smooth now, but had an annoying habit of crashing during heat waves before I did this.

<comment><USER36> I use compressed air to clean the fans every 6 months, also applied new Arctic Silver 5 cpu paste.

I have fans controlled not to run unless CPU or GPU over 52C.

Looking for a replacement like Thinkpad is extreme hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> By chance is there a detachable/convertible tablet that anyone would recommend that runs Ubuntu well?

There's a detachable Ekoore Python S3 tablet which triple boots to Ubuntu, Windows, and Android, but it doesn't appear to be available in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER39> Does anyone have any recommendations for a 10-11 inch netbook for ultra portable hacking? It's rather hard to find places that still sell them nowadays (lots of tablet-a-likes with a keyboard attached). Basically going to be a vim-box.

</comment><comment><USER40> Linux (various flavors) runs exceptionally well on my Lenovo Y580 with Nvidia GTX660M.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thinkpad. Period.

<comment> vhost- Seriously! I'm very surprised Thinkpads (outside of the x1) were not mentioned at all. This blows my mind!

<comment><USER42> Yep, for under 2K that w540 would be awesome. I had the previous version and it was probably my favorite laptop ever, ran linux like a champ.

<comment><USER41> I'm on a w530 and I want to be buried with it. Debian runs flawlessly with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> T440p, works great with Ubuntu 14.04. I've not figured out the driver for the fingerprint detector yet though. Not that I care much about that. The SSD makes it super fast to boot and autologin (~7 seconds)

<comment><USER44> I've got the t440s. Not sure the readers has the same specs, but this got it working on mine:

[http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_integrated_finge...](http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_integrated_fingerprint_reader_with_fprint)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I personally recommend Asus N550JV - IPS screen, good CPU and GPU, a lot of memory, very good build quality, not expensive, and runs Ubuntu as well as Mint (and probably other Debian-based distros)

</comment><comment><USER46> I've got a ThinkPad (albeit a T530) and it runs Linux flawlessly...

</comment><comment><USER47> What about that $130 refurb chromebook.

I think people have been putting ubuntu on it.

</comment><comment><USER48> For under $1000 one can get a year or two late Gigabyte on Newegg or wherevere with ram for dedicated graphics.

I'm not affiliated with them, I just own an U2442, and am extremely satisfied.</comment>