Title: NovaCustom NV41 laptop review
Author: Solène
Date: 03 January 2024
Tags: openbsd linux qubesos hardware
Description: In this blog post, I'm reviewing a NovaCustom NV41 laptop
with many operating systems
# Disclaimer
Hello! Today, I present you a quite special blog post, resulting from
a partnership with the PC Manufacturer NovaCustom. I offered them to
write an honest review for their product and also share my feedback as
a user, in exchange for a NV41 laptop. This is an exceptional
situation, I insist that it's not a sponsorship, I actually needed a
laptop for my freelance work, and it turns they agreed. In our
agreements, I added that I would return the laptop in the case I
wouldn't like it, I don't want to generate electronic wastes and
company's money for nothing.
I have no plans to turn my blog into an advertisement platform and do
this on a regular basis. Stars aligned well here, NovaCustom is making
the only modern laptop Qubes OS certified, and the CEO is a very open
source friendly person.
# Introduction
The real introduction now :-)
In this blog post, I'll share my experience using a NV41 laptop from
NovaCustom, I tried many operating systems on it for a while, run some
benchmarks, and ultimately used Qubes OS on it for a month and half for
my freelance work.
(HTM) NovaCustom official website
(HTM) NV41 Laptop store webpage
# The machine itself
(IMG) The laptop on a stand, running Ubuntu 23.10
This is a 14-inch laptop, the best form factor in my opinion for being
comfortable when used for a long time while being easy to carry.
It looks great with its metal look with blueish reflection and the
engraved logo "NV" on the cover (logo can be customized).
The frame feels solid and high-end, I'm not afraid to carry it or
manipulate it. Compared to my ThinkPad T470, that's a change, I always
fear to press its plastic frame too much when carrying with a single
hand.
The power button is on the right side, this is quite unusual, but it
looks great, there are LED around the power plug near the power button
that tells the state of the system (running, off, sleeping) and if the
battery is running low or charging.
It's running the open-source Firmware Dasharo coreboot, and optionally
the security oriented firmware Heads can be installed.
(HTM) Dasharo coreboot official website
(HTM) Heads open source firmware official website
## Packaging and unboxing
The machine came in a box containing a box containing the actual box
with the laptop inside, it was greatly packaged.
(IMG) Laptop still wrapped in the protections, all the boxes are in the background
The laptop screen had a removable sleeve that can be reused, I
appreciated this as it's smart because it's possible to put it back in
case you don't use the laptop for a long time or want to sell it later.
The box contained the laptop, the power supply and the power plug, the
full length of the power supply is 2 meters which is great, I hate
laptops chargers that only have 1 meter of cable.
(IMG) The laptop, power supply, power plug and other (manual, screen cleaner…)
## Hardware
The specifications of the hardware I received are the following:
* CPU: i7-1260P (4 Performance cores with hyper-threading, 8 Efficient
cores)
* Memory: 2x32 GB of 3200 MHz
* Storage: NVME Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB
* Wireless: blob-free Atheros QCNFA222 Wi-Fi a/b/g/n + bluetooth 4.0
* Screen: 14" 1080p (1920x1080), 98% sRGB 60 Hz, anti-glare treatment
* Weight: 1.4 kg
The default wireless card is an Intel AX-200/201 compatible with Wi-Fi
6 and Bluetooth 5.2, but I received the blob-free card which was
convenient for most operating systems as it doesn't need a firmware
(works out of the box on Guix for instance).
There are options to remove the webcam or add a slider to it, a screen
privacy filter or secure screws+tape for the packaging to be sure the
laptop hasn't been intercepted during transit.
You can also choose the keyboard layout from a large list, or even have
your own layout.
Kudos to NovaCustom for guaranteeing the sell of replacement parts for
at least 7 years after you buy them a laptop! They also provide a PDF
will full details about the internals.
### Hybrid CPU
This is my very first Hybrid CPU, it has 4 Performance cores capable of
hyperthreading, and 8 Efficient cores that should draw less power at
the expense of being slower.
I made a benchmark, only on Qubes OS, to compare the different cores to
a Ryzen 5 5600X and my T470 i5-7300U.
(HTM) Phoronix benchmark link
(HTM) Qubes OS forum: Hybrid CPU benchmarking performance when pinning to specific cores
If your operating system doesn't know (Linux does) how to make use of
E/P cores (like OpenBSD or FreeBSD), it will use them like if they were
similar, so no worry here. However, the performance and battery saving
aren't optimized because the system won't balance the load at the right
place.
TL;DR: the P cores compete with my desktop Ryzen 5 5600X! And the E
cores are faster than the i5-7300U! Linux and Xen (in Qubes OS) does a
great job at balancing the workload at the right place, so you don't
have to worry about pinning a specific task to a P or E core pool.
### Coil whine noise
I think this deserves an entry because it's a plague on many modern
computers. If you don't know about it, it's an electric noise that
happens under certain conditions. On my T470, it's when charging the
battery.
I've been able to get some coil whine noise, only if I forced the CPU
frequency to the maximum in the operating system, instead of letting
the computer scaling the frequency. This resulted in no performance
improvement and some coil whine noise.
In my daily "normal" use with Linux or Qubes OS, I never heard a coil
whine. But on OpenBSD for which the frequency management is still not
good with these modern CPUs (intel p-state support isn't great) there
is a constant noise. However, using obsdfreqd reduced the noise to
almost nothing, but still appeared a bit on CPU load.
There is a specific topic where coil whine on this laptop was
discussed, a fix was provided by NovaCustom using heat pads (sent for
free for their customers) placed at a specific place. I don't think
this should be required except if your operating system has a poor
support for frequency scaling.
(HTM) Qubes OS forum: NV41 coil whine topic
### Screen
The screen coloring is excellent, which is expected as it covers 98% of
sRGB palette, it's really bright, and I rarely turn the brightness more
than 50%. I didn't try to use it outdoor, but the brightness at full
level should allow reading the screen.
However, it has a noticeable ghosting which make it annoying for
playing video games (that's not really the purpose of this model
though), or if you are really sensitive to it. I'm used to a 144 Hz
display on my desktop and I became really sensitive to refresh rate.
However, I have to admit the ghosting isn't really annoying for
productivity work, development or browsing the web. Watching a video
is fine too.
One slightly annoying limitation is that it's not possible to open the
screen more than a 140° angle, this sounds reasonable, but I got used
to my T470 screen able to open at ~180°. This is not a real issue,
but if you have a weird setup in which you store your laptop vertically
against your desktop AND with the screen opened, you won't be able to
use the screen.
### Sound system
I've been surprised by the speakers, the audio quality is good up to
~80% of the max volume, but then the quality drops when you set it too
high.
I have no way to measure it, but the speakers appear to be quite loud
compared to my other laptops when set to 100%, I don't recommend doing
it though due to quality drop, but it can be handy sometimes.
The headphones port works fine, there are no noises, and it's able to
drive my DT 770 Pro 80 ohm.
I’ve been able to figure an equalizer setting improving the audio to
be pretty good (that's subjective). I’m absolutely not an audio
expert, but it sounded a lot better for pop, rock, metal or piano.
* 31 Hz: 0 db
* 63 Hz: 0 db
* 125 Hz: 0 db
* 250 Hz: 0 db
* 500 Hz: -4 db
* 1 kHz: -5 db
* 2 kHz: -8 db
* 4 kHz: -3 db
* 8 kHz: -3 db
* 16 kHz: +2 db
The idea is to lower the trebles instead of pushing the bass which
quickly saturate. Depending on what you listen to and your tastes, you
could try +1 or +2 db for the four first settings, but it may produce
saturated sounds.
### Cooling
I think the cooling system is one of the best part of the laptop, it's
always running at 10% of its speed and is inaudible.
(IMG) Laptop view from below
Under a huge load, the fan can be heard, but it's still less loud than
my idling silent desktop...
There is a special key combination (Fn+1) that triggers the turbo fan
mode, forcing them to run at 100%, it is recommended if the laptop is
used to run at full CPU 24/7 or for a very long period of time,
however, this is as loud as a 1U rack server! For a more comprehensive
comparison, let's say it is as annoying as a microwave device.
I was surprised that the laptop never burned my knees, although under
heavy load for 30 minutes it felt a bit too hot to keep it on my bare
skin without fabric between, that's a genuine lap-top laptop,
compatible with short skirts :D.
### Keyboard
The keyboard isn't bad, but not good either. Typing on it is pleasant,
but it's no match against my mechanical keyboards. The touch is harder
than on my Lenovo T470 laptop, I think it feels like most modern laptop
keyboards.
Check the layout for the keys like "home", "end", "page up/down", on
mine they are tiny keys near the arrows, this may not be to your taste.
The type is quite silent, and there are 5 levels of back-light, I don't
really like this feature, so I turned it off, but it's there if you
like it.
There are NO indicators for the status of caps lock or num lock
(neither for scroll lock, but do people really use it?), this can be
annoying for some users.
### Touchpad
The touchpad may be a no-go for many, there are no extra physical
buttons but you can physically click on the bottom area to make/hold a
click. It also features no trackpoint (the little joystick in the
middle of the keyboard).
However, it has a large surface and can make use of multitouch clicks.
While I was annoyed at first because I was used to ThinkPad's extra
physical buttons, over time I got used to multitouch click (click is
different depending on the number of fingers used), or the "split-area"
click, where a click in a bottom left does a left click, in the middle
it does a middle click, and in the bottom right it does a right click.
It reacts well to movements and clicks and does the job, it's not the
greatest touchpad I ever used, but it's good enough.
Unfortunately, it's not possible for NovaCustom to propose a variant
touchpad featuring extra physical buttons.
### Suspend and Resume
The suspend/resume feature works as expected on Linux and Qubes OS.
Closing the lid correctly triggers the suspend function, opening it
resumes the system.
### Webcam
Nothing special to say about it, it's like most laptop webcams, it has
a narrow angle and the image quality is good enough to show your face
during VoIP meetings.
### Battery life (short version)
I tested the battery using different operating systems (OpenBSD, Qubes
OS, Fedora, Ubuntu) and different methods, there are more details later
in the text, but long story short, you can expect the following:
* battery life when idling: 6h00
* battery life with normal usage: 3h00-5h00 for viewing videos,
browsing the web, playing emulated games, code development and some
compilation
* battery life in continuous heavy use: 2h00 (I accidentally played a
long video with no hardware-acceleration, it was using 500% CPU)
### I/O ports
On the I/O, the laptop is well-equipped. I appreciated seeing an
Ethernet port on a modern laptop.
On the left side:
* 1x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-c (supports external screen and charging)
* 1x USB
* anti-thief system
* Ethernet port
* Multi-card reader (a SD card plugged in doesn't go completely inside,
so it's not practical for a persistent extra storage)
(IMG) Left side of the laptop
On the right side:
* 1x USB-c (supports external screen)
* 1x headphone
* Charge port
* Power button and two discrete states LEDs
* 1x HDMI
* 1x USB
(IMG) Right side of the laptop
The rear of the laptop is fully used for the cooling system, and there
are nothing on the front (Hopefully! I hate connecting headphones on
the front side).
(IMG) Back of the laptop
(IMG) Front of the laptop
## Dasharo coreboot firmware
The laptop ships by Dasharo coreboot firmware (that's the correct name
for nowadays devices when we speak of the BIOS), it's an open-source
firmware that allows to manage your own secure boot keys, disable some
Intel features like "ME"
I guess their website will be a better place to understand what it's
doing compared to a proprietary firmware.
(HTM) Dasharo official website
## NovaCustom
NovaCustom is building laptops based on Clevo (a manufacturer doing
high-end laptop frames, but they rarely sell directly) while ensuring
compatibility with Linux systems, especially Qubes OS for this specific
model as it's certified (it guarantees the laptop and all its features
will work correctly).
They contribute to dasharo development for their own laptops.
They ship their product worldwide, and as I heard from some users, the
custom support is quite reactive.
(HTM) NovaCustom official website
# Operating system support
Now I shared about the hardware part, let's see how it behaves with
many operating systems!
## Linux distributions
I guess most users will use a Linux system on this laptop, so let's
start by testing some popular distributions:
### Fedora
(HTM) Fedora project official website
(IMG) Screenshot of Fedora 39 running GNOME
Fedora Linux support (tested with Fedora 39) was excellent, GNOME
worked fine. The Wi-Fi network worked immediately even during the
installer, Bluetooth was working as well with my few devices. Changing
the screen brightness from the GNOME panel was working. However, after
a Dasharo update, the keyboard slider in GNOME stopped working, it's a
known bug that also affects System76 laptops if I've read correctly,
this may be an issue with the Linux driver itself.
The touchpad was working on multitouch out of the box, suspending and
resuming the laptop never produced any issue.
Enabling Secure Boot worked out of the box with Fedora, which is quite
enjoyable.
### Ubuntu
(HTM) Ubuntu company official website
Ubuntu 23.10 support was excellent as well, it's absolutely identical
to the Fedora report above.
Note: if you use VLC from the Snap store, it won't have hardware
decoded acceleration and will use a lot of CPU (and draw battery, and
waste watts for nothing), I guess it's an Ubuntu issue here. VLC from
Flatpak worked fine, as always.
### Alpine Linux
(HTM) Alpine Linux project official website
Alpine Linux support (tested with Alpine 3.18.4) was excellent, I
installed GNOME and everything worked out of the box. The Atheros card
worked without firmware (this is expected for a blob free device), CPU
scheduling was correctly handled for Efficient/Performance cores as the
provided kernel is quite recent.
The touchpad default behavior was to click left/right/middle depending
on the number of fingers used to click, suspend and resume worked fine,
playing video games was also easy thanks to flatpak and Steam.
It's possible to enable Secure Boot by generating your own keys.
(HTM) Alpine Linux wiki: UEFI Secure Boot
### Guix
(HTM) Guix project official website
(IMG) Screenshot of Guix running GNOME
Guix support is mixed. I've been able to install it with no issue,
thanks to the blob-free atheros network interface, it worked without
having to use guix-nonfree repository (that contains firmware).
However, I was surprised to notice that the graphical acceleration
wasn't working, it seems that Intel Xe GPU aren't blob free. This only
mean you can't plan video games or that any kind of GPU related
encoding/decoding won't work, but this didn't prevent GNOME to work
fine.
Suspend and resume was OK, and the touchpad worked out-of-the-box in
multi-tap mode.
Secure Boot didn't work, and I have no idea how a Secure Boot setup
with your own keys would look like on Guix, but it's certainly
achievable with enough Grub-foo.
### Trisquel
(HTM) Trisquel GNU/Linux official project website
Trisquel is a 100% libre GNU/Linux distribution, this mean it doesn't
provide proprietary software or drivers, and no device firmware.
I've been able to install Trisquel and use it, the Wi-Fi was working
out of the box because of the blob-free Atheros card.
The main components of the system: CPU / Memory / Storage were
correctly detected, the default kernel isn't too old, and it was able
to make use of the Efficient/Performance core of the CPU.
When not using the laptop, I was able to suspend it to reduce the
battery usage, and then resume instantly the session when I needed,
this worked flawlessly.
The touchpad was working great using the "3 zones" mode in which you
tap on the touchpad in the left/center/right bottom of it to make a
left/middle/right click, this is actually as convenient as using 1, 2
or 3 fingers depending on the click you want to make, this is something
that could be configured though.
Sound was working out of the box, the audio jack is also working fine
when plugging in headphones.
There is one issue with the webcam, when trying to use it, X crashes
instantly. This may be an issue in Trisquel software stack because it
works fine on other OS.
A major issue right now is the lack of graphical hardware acceleration,
I'm not sure if it's due to the i7-1260P integrated GPU needing a
proprietary firmware or if the linux-libre kernel didn't catch up with
this GPU yet.
## Qubes OS
(HTM) Qubes OS project official website
(IMG) Qubes OS 4.2 desktop screenshot
Qubes OS support (tested with 4.1, 4.2-RC2 to RC5 and 4.2) is
excellent, this is exactly what I expected for a Qubes OS certified
laptop (the only modern and powerful certified laptop as of January
2024!).
(HTM) Qubes OS documentation: Hardware certification requirements
Qubes OS is my main OS as I use it for writing this blog, for work
(freelancer with different clients) and general use except gaming, so I
needed a reliable system that would be fast, with a pretty good battery
life.
So far, I never experienced issues except one related to the Atheros
Wi-Fi card (this is not the stock Wi-Fi device): 1 time out of 10 when
I suspend and resume, the card is missing, and I need to restart the
qube sys-net to have it again. I didn't try with the latest Dasharo
update though, it may be solved.
Watching 1080p videos x265 10 bits encoded is smooth and only draw ~40%
of a CPU, without any kind of GPU accelerated decoding.
The battery life when using the system to write emails, browse the
Internet and look at some videos was of 3 hours, if I only do stuff in
LibreOffice offline it lasts 5h30.
I'm able to have smooth videoconferences with the integrated webcam and
a USB headset, this kind of task may be the most CPU consuming popular
job that Qubes OS need, and it worked well.
The 64 GB are very appreciated, I "only" have 32 GB on my desktop
computer, but sometimes it lacks memory... 64 GB allows to not ever
think about memory anymore.
The touchpad is working fine, by default on the split-area behavior
(left/middle/right click depending on the touchpad area you click on).
There is a single USB controller that drives the webcam and card reader
+ the USB ports, including a USB-c docked that would be connected on
either the thunderbolt or USB-c ports. The thunderbolt device is on a
separate controller, but if you attach it to a qube (that is not
sys-usb), you lose all USB connectivity from a dock connected to it
(there is still the other plain USB-c port). The qube sys-usb isn't
even required to run if you don't use any USB devices (this saves many
headaches and annoying times).
Connecting a usb-c dock on the thunderbolt port allows to have USB
passthrough with sys-usb, an additional ethernet port and external
screen working with sound, it's also capable of charging the computer.
Whereas the simple usb-c port can only carry USB devices or the
integrated ethernet port of my dock, it should be able to support a
screen but I guess it's not working on Qubes OS. I didn't try adding
more than one screen on either ports, I guess it should work on the
thunderbolt port.
## BSD systems
I tried OpenBSD and FreeBSD with the laptop. I always have bad luck
with NetBSD, so I preferred to not try it, and DragonFly BSD support
should be pretty close to FreeBSD for which it didn't work well.
### OpenBSD
(HTM) OpenBSD project official website
(IMG) Screenshot of the OpenBSD 7.4 desktop using GNOME
I tried OpenBSD 7.4 and -current, everything went really well except
the Atheros WiFi card that isn't supported, but this was to be
expected. If you want the NV41 with OpenBSD, you need to take the
Intel AX-200/201 which is supported by the iwx driver.
(HTM) OpenBSD manual page: iwx(4)
Suspend and resume works fine, the touchpad is using the "3 zones"
behavior by default where you need to tap left/center/right bottom to
make a left/middle/right click. The webcam and sound card were working
fine too.
The GPU is fully supported, you can use it for 3D rendering: I've been
able to play a PSP game using PPSSPP emulator. OpenBSD doesn't support
hardware accelerated video encoding/decoding at all, so I didn't test
it.
(IMG) WipeOut Pulse emulated in the PSP emulator PPSSPP
### FreeBSD
(HTM) FreeBSD project official website
I installed FreeBSD 14.0 RC4 with ZFS on root and full disk encryption,
the process went fine, I had Wi-Fi at the installer step (thanks to the
blob free Atheros card).
However, once I booted into the system, I didn't succeed to get X to
run, the GPU isn't supported yet and using VESA display didn't work for
me. Suspend and resume didn't work either.
I gave another try with GhostBSD 23.10.1 in hope I did something wrong
on FreeBSD 14 RC4 like a misconfiguration as I never had any good
experience with FreeBSD on desktop with regard to the setup. But
GhostBSD failed to start X and was continuously displaying its logo on
screen, only booting in safe mode allowed me to figure what was wrong.
I was really surprised that the hardware is still "too new" for FreeBSD
while OpenBSD support is almost excellent.
## Other
Some less known operating systems were tested as well.
### Haiku
(HTM) Haiku project official website
(IMG) Photography of the laptop running Haiku (live USB)
I booted Haiku revision 57370 live USB, I was actually surprised to
have the desktop displayed, and the network interfaces recognized.
Unfortunately, the Atheros card was recognized, but I haven't been able
to connect to a scanned network.
The display was using the correct resolution, but it was using software
rendering.
The webcam and the touchpad didn't work, I had to connect my USB
trackball.
I didn't go as far as installing it.
### OpenIndiana
I tried the freshly released OpenIndiana Hipster 2023.10 liveUSB.
After letting the bootloader display and start the boot process, the
init process seemed stuck and was printing errors about CPU every
minute. I haven't been able to get past this step.
# Measurements
I had fun measuring a lot of things like power usage at the outlet,
battery duration with many workloads and gaming FPS (Frames per Second,
30 is okayish depending on people, 40 is acceptable, 60 is perfect as
it's the refresh rate of the screen).
## Power
I measured the power usage in watts using a watt-o-meter in different
situations:
* power supply connected, but not to the laptop: 0 watt (some power
supplies draw a few watts doing nothing... hello Nintendo Switch with
its 2.1 watts!)
* charging, sleeping: 30 watts
* charging, idling: 37 watts
* charging and heavy use: 79 watts
* connected to AC (not charging), sleeping: 1 watt
* connected to AC (not charging), idling, screen at full brightness: 17
watts
* connected to AC (not charging), downloading a file over Wi-Fi, screen
at full brightness: 22 watts
This is actually good in my opinion, to have a comparison point, a
standard 24-inch screen usually draw around 40 watts alone.
The power consumption of the laptop itself is within the range of other
laptop. I was happy to see it use no power when the AC is connected
but not to the computer, and on idling it's only 1 watt, I have another
laptop idling at 7 watts!
## Battery life
I measured the battery life using different methods and sometimes
multiple times to verify if it was reliable.
### Linux
One method was to play a 2160p x265 10 bits encoded video using VLC,
1h39 long, with full brightness and no network.
* With hardware accelerated decoding support: 33% of the battery was
used, so the battery life would theoretically be almost 6 hours (299
minutes) while playing a video at full brightness
* Without hardware acceleration: 90% of the battery was used (VLC was
using 480% of the CPU, but I didn't notice it as the fans were too
silent!), this would mean a battery life of 1h49 (110 minutes) using
the computer under heavy load
The other method was to play the video game "Risk of Rain Returns" with
a USB PS5 controller, and at full brightness, for a given duration
(measured at 20 25 minutes).
* Risk of Rain Returns: 15% of battery used in 20 minutes, this mean I
should have been able to play 2h13 (133 minutes) before having to
charge.
### OpenBSD
I played a PSP game for 25 minutes using PPSSPP in full screen at full
brightness.
* WipeOut Pulse: 14% of battery was used in 25 minutes, this mean I
could have played for almost 3 hours straight (178 minutes)
## Gaming performance
I did play a bit on the laptop on Linux using Steam on Flatpak. I
tested it on Fedora 39, Ubuntu 23.10 and Alpine Linux 3.18.3, results
were identical.
A big surprise while playing was that the fans remained almost silent,
they were spinning faster than usual of course, but that didn't require
me to increase the moderate volume I used in my gaming session.
* Baldur's Gate 3: Playable at stable 30 FPS with all settings to low
and FSR2.2 enabled in ultra performance mode
(IMG) Baldur's Gate 3 (2023)
* Counter Strike 2: Stable 60 FPS in 1600x900 with all settings set to
minimum
(IMG) Counter Strike 2
* Spin Rhythm XD: Stable at 60 FPS
* Rain world: Stable at 60 FPS
* HELLDIVERS: Stable at 60 FPS with native resolution and graphical
settings set to maximum
* Beam NG;Drive: Playable with a mix of low/normal settings at 30 FPS
* Resident Evil: Solid 45 FPS with the few settings set to maximum,
better lock the game at 30 FPS though
* Risk of Rain Returns: Stable 60 FPS
(IMG) Risk of Rain returns
* Risk of Rain 2: Stable 60 FPS using 1600x900 with almost all settings
to lowest
(IMG) Risk of Rain 2
* Endless Dungeon: with the lowest settings and resolution lowered to
1600x900, it was able to maintain stable 30 FPS, it was kinda playable
I didn't try using an external GPU on the thunderbolt port, but you can
expect way better performance as the games were never CPU bound.
# Conclusion
I'm glad I dared asking NovaCustom about this partnership about the
NV41, this is exactly the laptop I needed. It's reliable, no weird
features, it's almost full open source (at least for the software
stack?), very powerful, and I can buy replacement parts for at least 7
years if I break something. It's also SILENT, I despise laptop having
a high pitch fan noise.
I still have to play with Dasharo coreboot, I'm really new to this
open-source firmware world, so I have to learn before trying weird and
dangerous things (I would like to try Heads for its anti-evil maid
features, it should be possible to install it on Dasharo systems
"soon").
Writing this blog post was extremely hard, I had to stay mindful that
this must be an HONEST and NEUTRAL review: writing about a product you
are happy with leads to some excitement moments and one may forget to
share some little annoyance because it's "not _that_ bad", but I did my
best to stay neutral when writing. And this is the agreement I had with
NovaCustom.
Honesty is an important value to me. You, dear readers, certainly
trust me to some point, I don't want to lose your trust.