Ancestors

Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 16:24

This seems so close to the right scheme, but fails hilariously by confusing people with plus, pro, premium, and max which all effectively mean the same thing.

Soon after I started at System76, I pushed for simplifying our product lineup and naming scheme and it stuck for a bit, but wound up having a similar problem as this: too many models, which the sales and marketing people all want to say are “Pro” or whatever.

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24325799/dell-pro-max-premium-plus-ces-laptop-pc-rebrand-announcement

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Toot

Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 16:32

For reference, I pushed for the mainstream, Pro, and Workstation monikers at System76. The idea was that you would have:

• Mainstream: no moniker; great product; entry level

• Pro: for people who use their computer for work (or want the nicest option); best combination of power and form factor

• WS: beefiest option for the highest end; trades portability for raw power; for the ML, automotive, 3D animation, science-y stuff

You still see some remnants of this scheme, but it’s not as clear cut.

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Descendants

Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 16:37

Within each category you differentiate by size (which used to be entirely different products). It never really panned out the way I’d have liked with just one mainstream, Pro, and WS model w/different sizes. Part of that is due to working with a supplier that designed drastically different looks for e.g. a 14" and 17" model, but the biggest recurring barrier was a lack of focus with the product lineup. Sales people wanted to offer like 12 barely-differentiated models to hit all the price points.

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Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 16:45

Imagine shopping for a laptop and you have three choices:

• Galago $999

• Galago Pro $1299

• Galago WS $1799

The base Galago might use a bit more plastic, an entry level processor, and integrated graphics, but is super portable with great battery life; 14"

Galago Pro is all metal with a higher-end display, a bit more compute/graphics but about the same portability; 13" or 15"

Galago WS is a thicc boi with a desktop CPU and dedicated GPU that runs laps around other laptops; 15" or 17"

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Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 16:54

What ended up happening is that we kept the unique model names but still used the categories, which was better than before (they had an “UltraPro” laptop when I started! 😅). I think at best we narrowed down to something like:

• Gazelle 15" or 17"

• Galago Pro 14"

• Serval WS 15" or 17"

But at times we also had the Lemur (which is now Lemur Pro?), Pangolin, Bonobo WS, Darter, Oryx Pro, Adder WS… all of which I couldn’t even tell you why you would buy one over another in the same category.

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Written by Gianni on 2025-01-07 at 18:38

@cassidy Personally, I think it would be strange to have three things with the same model name look wildly different. Could simply drop the Galago?

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Written by Cassidy James Blaede on 2025-01-07 at 19:03

@gianni I mean you could go “Laptop” or “Notebook” I suppose, but remember they sell desktops and servers, too. The specific name is less important than the categories, though, for sure.

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