I think it's really impressive what Dell has put together here. As my old Thinkpad T430 is nearing it's fourth anniversary I have been looking for an upgrade for a while and compared different options with a focus on lightweight, powerful laptops with good Linux support. And so far the XPS 13 seems way more attractive than the new Lenovo Skylake laptops (e.g. the 460s), which have lower resolution displays (some models still start with a 1.366 x 768 (!) display, which is just ridiculous in 2016), less and slower RAM, smaller hard drives and -as far as I can tell from the specs- less battery life as compared to the XPS 13 but are actually 300 - 400 $ more expensive, even when choosing three year guarantee for the XPS. The only thing I don't like about the XPS is Dell's guarantee, which is "send in", meaning that I probably won't see my laptop for a few weeks if it has to be repaired, whereas Lenovo will send a service technician to me who will usually be able to repair the laptop immediately (I already had to make use of this service twice, once to exchange a noisy fan and once to replace a broken display bezel).
I guess I'll wait for Apple to reveal the new MB Pro line before making a decision, but it seems that for the first time in 10 years my next laptop will not be a Lenovo/IBM.
> And so far the XPS 13 seems way more attractive than the new Lenovo Skylake laptops (e.g. the 460s), which have lower resolution displays (some models still start with a 1.366 x 768 (!) display,
Laptop shopping is so frustrating because almost all of the manufacturers are clearly segmenting the market into two groups: shit and non-shit. In the shit group, you get painfully slow HDDs and painfully low res displays that would feel right at home on a laptop from a decade ago. In the non-shit group, you get SSDs, good displays, and prices that are two to three times higher even though the actual cost of the components hasn't gone up by nearly that much.
It's infuriating, not so much for myself (I end up wanting the high-end anyway), but when trying to give recommendations to friends and family on more limited budgets, because the entire lower end of the market is unnecessarily terrible. I just end up recommending Chromebooks because, hey, at least a lot of them have SSDs, and they're cheap. The screens typically suck, but when you're paying so little it doesn't feel like getting ripped off. Buying a mainstream $600 laptop feels like getting ripped off.
There definitely is that market segmentation. It's been there for as long as I can remember. The way I've gotten around it is spending $600 on an 18-month-old laptop which was in that ~1000-1200 bracket (i.e. more than good enough for the power-user to run 3 VMs at once + multi-monitor via a dock or just HDMI out at full 2600x1460 on a 27"). A W-series IBM of Ivybridge[1,2] at $550 is a steal. 32 gigs of RAM + SSDs being as cheap as they are and you'd be golden.
[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-W530-i7-3720QM-Quad-...
[2] These will command a premium, so you might have to wait 30 months rather than 18, just because of the value retention IBM holds in the W/T/X lines. The benefit is you get meticulous machines most of the time.
And you can install Linux on the Chromebooks to give them a fully usable operating system. Unfortunately there aren't that many large-SSD Chromebooks. The best you can really get is the 500GB spinning HDD Asus or something similar.
I really like that we are heading toward more affordable computing. I just wish we would also push for more freedom-respecting computers as well.
I have to admit, I expected laptops to cover that niche you described (not too expensive and not shitty), but it seems to me that tablets with keyboard-covers will rather do that.
Which tablet? I was thinking you were talking about the Surface Pro 4, but its bargain basement model, which is actually not great (only 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Core m3 processor), costs over $1,000 once you throw the keyboard cover in. So, going down-market, the Surface Pro 3 when similarly specced* is $730, which is still a bit high.
* I don't think it's actually similarly specced, it just has the same amount of RAM and SSD space, but I suspect that everything is lower performing, and the screen is smaller as well. Too lazy to look up benchmarks though.
Yeah, I didn't mean anything specific (plan figuring that out myself). But I see iPad Air as a good enough $400 solution comparing to shitty-screen laptops. Just need to find decent keyboard for <$100.
I'm pretty sure Dell sells 'premium support' as a paid add-on, and that it covers on-site hardware repairs. I've used this service myself, albeit many years ago, to have a laptop motherboard replaced.
If you add this option, then the two laptops you're comparing may be closer in terms of price and support. Then it's just about the other factors you mention.
They send a technician (with an enormous backpack full of dell parts) to your location within 24 hours. The tech will work on it on-site until repaired.
I do not believe there could be a less disruptive, quicker way to repair a laptop.
Not sure if they offer that same level of support to consumers, but if they do, know it blows AppleCare out of the water.
I used to buy System76 products, but never again. I bought a fairly expensive desktop system from them for a remote working situation. The motherboard experienced a failure in the first week, and their offer for support was that I pay for shipping it to them, wait for them to diagnose and repair and that I pay for it to be shipped back.
I had to argue just to get them to cover one way of shipping, and even then they required me to physically take the machine to a UPS drop off. I lived in a major urban area at the time and owned no car, and would have required an expensive taxi ride to drop it off at their requested location, and of course they weren't willing to reimburse me for that taxi ride.
I was furious and they simply offered no reasonable way for me to get it repaired. They lost a customer and I'll happily switch back to Dell.
I spilled noxious bong water in my keyboard, and the Dell technician who came to my house correctly diagnosed what the problem was, cheerfully replaced my keyboard, and helpfully offered to come back tomorrow with a replacement for a broken plastic part I hadn't even noticed.
Compare that to the way Apple refuses to "handle hazardous substances". [1]
I don't think you can order Dell laptops with the 24-hour repair warranty, but there's plenty of companies which sell them with said warranty - they buy hundreds(thousands more likely) of them as a businesses and then you can buy them directly as a customer, 24-hour repair warranty included. Every single one of my Dell laptops was purchased like that, I once had the Dell technician replacing the whole motherboard on my XPS 13 on my living room table.
I bought an XPS 15 just before Xmas and the sales rep was really trying to sell me on-site repair and it wasn't even that expensive (IIRC, ~$70 CAD upgrade), keep in mind this is Dell Canada so US might be different.
I got two years on-site for a XPS 13 (9343) dev edition for not many €s at all. One year is standard I think, I paid for an extra one. Screen got some wonky pixels in that time-frame but it wasn't until the power brick started acting up that I called Dell. They did make triply sure that a house call was necessary to make sure that the engineer wouldn't be wasting their time. Friendly guy showed up who used to work servicing mainframes and miniframes until that work dried up. Took the machine apart, swapped in a new screen, gave me a new power brick and went on his way.
They do. I bought my XPS 13 (9343) through the Microsoft Store because they had a rather significant discount and then called Dell to add on an extended next-business-day onsite warranty. Just like with the Lenovo, when I had a key get stuck on my keyboard (the space bar was double-spacing every time, by itself) a nice third-party tech showed up at my office and swapped it out.
The XPS13 appears to have a junk trackpad (no buttons, no middle button) and a messed up keyboard (I don't always use the arrows but when I do, those tiny ones suck.) And no trackpoint? Despite better other specs, poor basic human interaction devices are a showstopper. ThinkPads are the only ones I've seen with fairly good keyboards (even after Lenovo's "redesign").
Dell does have on call service, and in some countries it's better than Lenovo by far. I've had Dell send a guy into a village up a mountain in a 3rd world country, next day (!) whereas I couldn't even figure out how to make a claim with Lenovo in that country (and friends that work for the relevant company there confirm there is no inventory).
The touchpad works well with multi-tap and can handle single/double/tripple tab. Feel free to map that to the middle mouse if needed.
The keyboard is actually quite good once you get used to it. I used to need a keyboard replacement every 12-18 months on my lenovo (yes, you read that correctly). The Dell one has now survived 12 months, so I'd say the build quality is quite good, perhaps even better than the lenovo one (might also be due to design - nothing gets stuck under the keys, which helps a lot).
Dell has even send me replacement parts in the past to repair stuff on my own.
edit: I realize after posting this it might not be relevant since you may be discussing the trackpad as used with Ubuntu.
As of 1 month ago, when I bought and then returned an XPS 15 due to the trackpad, there was no option for middle clicking and no option for navigating forward/back.
There are also horrific sensitivity issues with the trackpad that is extremely well documented in user complaints online - the cursor doesn't start moving until your finger moves about a millimeter on the trackpad, resulting in it "jumping" when you are moving very small distances with high cursor speed.
These are all software issues - I installed Synaptics and it fixed these problems, but introduced others. I spent over 20 hours testing and researching and messing with the registry to have a trackpad that works the same as most any other laptop with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. I obviously didn't succeed, which is why I returned it.
To clarify, this is really a Windows 10 issue, and to some extent an Synaptics driver issue (even though it isn't officially supported by Dell).
Synaptics is terrible (at least from using them on ThinkPads for years). It loses settings, frequently. When using the trackpad, it uses several percent of CPU. That's idiotic.
For what it's worth, I had a bad time with the trackpad with a default 14.04 install. Switching to 14.10 fixed it, presumably due to the inclusion of newer drivers.
There may exist some non-crap trackpad with buttons but I have never used one. The buttonless trackpad on my current Dell precision is just as good as the one on my 2011 MBP.
I'd actively avoid a laptop if the trackpad had buttons now I think.
I haven't seen a non-crap touchpad that didn't have buttons, likely because my definition of crap is different than yours and includes massive surfaces that feel awful and get in the way of using the keyboard, and hoping the proper amount of fingers hit the touchpad within the correct window of time (and weren't too close together and counted as a single finger) to perform the click I meant to.
I don't think it's the fact that it's buttonless that make my new non-button pad non-crap, I think it's the fact that they aimed for the quality (and part cost) of the MBP trackpad that makes it also achieve that kind of quality feel.
I'm one of those strange people that finds mac touchpads maddeningly annoying. I used to carry a mouse with me when I had a macbook for work. So non-crap is the opposite direction from that for me. But hey, to each their own. That's why it's nice to have the choice of a wide range of machines, everyone gets what they want.
With proper palm rejection the trackpad should not interfere with the keyboard. From personal experience, Macbooks trackpads rarely register spurious touches while typing.
I've used a number of computers with apple-style the-whole-trackpad-is-the-button systems. The quality varies considerably, from completely unusable to my favorite way of controlling the cursor (better than a mouse, for casual purposes like web browsing). Mostly it's a problem with the software.
I currently use a Thinkpad T440p, which is of the generation of thinkpads universally reviled for their "shitty" trackpad and lack of discrete trackpoint buttons. I can't comment on the trackpoint since I have no interest in using it, but the trackpad is truly unusable on Windows.
It seems that most non-apple laptop manufacturers that have adopted this style of trackpad have done it for aesthetic purposes, to mimic Apple, and to give users more space to move their fingers over. Their trackpad designs are essentially what you would have if the surfaces of the physical trackpad buttons were also touch sensitive on a tradition trackpad design: the bottom-right corner of the trackpad is a right-click area. I hate to evangelize Apple for fear of being associated with people who evangelize Apple, but Apple understands interface design well enough to realize that that's a terrible way to design a trackpad.
The point of Apple's design is to unite tap-to-click mode of traditional trackpads with the button-activated mode. The tap-to-click mode has always been simpler because you don't have to keep your thumb on the button all the time. This gives your hands more freedom; you only have to maintain one point of contact with the trackpad, and you can pivot around that point however you want, rather than being anchored by a second point. This might help defend against RSI, and also makes it faster to transition between controlling the cursor and typing. But the problem with tap-to-click has always been sensitivity. Typing on a laptop with a tap-to-click trackpad is a horrible experience because your wrist accidentally contacts the trackpad and activates a click event, moving the carat or focusing on a different field and suddenly your keystrokes are being sent to the wrong place. Apple's trackpads solve the problem by changing tap-to-click to push-down-to-click. When they introduced this on their laptops it was fantastic, it was what a trackpad experience should have always been like.
As someone who's used Apple's "Magic Trackpad", which is huge, I can say there's almost no value in a larger trackpad surface, which is what other manufacturers are going for. I don't move my wrist when using the trackpad, my range of mobility is limited to the range of my knuckles. If I want to move the cursor a long distance, I'll move my finger quickly and take advantage of cursor accelleration. For moving short distances, it's intuitive that you wouldn't need any range of motion.
So the "soft buttons" that they put on "clickpads" are terrible. They have all the disadvantages of traditional trackpads in that they anchor your hand position, but there's no tactile indication of where the button is, so sometimes when you want to right click, you accidentally miss the button and left click. Worse, they make the entire rest of the trackpad surface a left click (like in Apple's design), so it's tempting to use it like an Apple clickpad, but if you do that, sometimes your finger will end up over the right click button and it will do the wrong thing.
If you have a shitty clickpad and you use linux, `synclient ClickPad=0` will fix it and make it work like and Apple clickpad. You can also set ClickPad=0 in your Xorg.conf to persist it.
Personally, I've always preferred tap to click over the whole trackpad being a button. I find it infuriating to use a mac with tap-to-click turned off (as it is by default) because the entire surface of the trackpad is not usable as a click button. If my finger is near the top when I want to click, I still have to lower my finger to the hinged area.
Not so with tap-to-click. The entire surface can click. And I've never had a serious problem with spurious clicks that other people report, for some reason I'm not really sure of.
I agree that softbutton areas (for click and scroll) on PC trackpads are terrible, though.
That's true, I forgot about that problem with apple's trackpads. I don't remember running into problems with it too often, but I can imagine that different hand positions and sizes could hit the top of the trackpad more often. The thinkpad clickpads don't have this issue.
Try out the newer Apple trackpads (introduced a year ago). They have no hinge and can be "clicked" anywhere. The haptic feedback really feels natural to me.
Interesting. I hear people like Apple's laptops, yet I despise the pad. Requires too much force to click (and how do you get middle/right without pressing down?). OTOH those machines run super hot and have poor keyboards and folks still like them. Perhaps some people aren't bothered by things like that?
On an apple laptop I use my middle and ring fingers for scrolling, my index or middle finger for pointing, and my thumb for clicking. I click with my thumb while holding the pad with my middle and ring finger for right-click. You gotta click near the bottom because they're hinged across the top.
The inadvertent movement rejection is so good you can just leave your four fingers on the pad without thinking about switching between them.
I own an XPS 13 (the 9333, the first 1920x1080 one).
I have very much enjoyed it. The trackpad, to me, has been excellent, and the keyboard a delight, even with the tiny arrows, which I use constantly since they work in coordination with Fn to be Home, End, and Page up and down. There is no physical middle button, but I switched to the XPS 13 from an MBP so I am used to this arrangement.
The only complaint I have is the small coil whine noticeable in quiet settings, which I believe they've fixed, the lack of anything like magsafe on the power cord, which is a patent issue, and the soldered-on ram, which is understandable given the form factor, but frustrating. I DO like that the mSATA storage is upgradable.
The XPS 13's trackpad does conform to the Microsoft Precision touchpad specification, and handles multitouch gestures quite smoothly in Windows. Any failings of the trackpad in Linux can't be blamed on the hardware.
> The XPS 13's trackpad does conform to the Microsoft... Any failings of the trackpad in Linux can't be blamed on the hardware.
err, pardon? The hardware is designed for another operating system and its failure in Linux can't be blamed on that hardware?!
I have a Dell Rugged Extreme 12, which is the XPS in wolves' clothing... it's fantastic. But in both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, either the trackpad and the touch sceen would randomly stopped working ... often under suspend.
But the trackpad works and has always worked perfectly in Ubuntu Linux. Ironic.
The main bottleneck for PC touchpads has always been the poor quality of the hardware (for example, using low-bandwidth PS2 connections). The Microsoft specification is a hardware specification (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn...). All the hardware provides is a stream of raw input data. It's up to the OS to process that data intelligently.
"Hardware specification" sounds like it's designing the shape and size of an ATX motherboard.
That set of documents appears to be largely focused on the HID protocol for data transfer between a Microsoft-certified touchpad and the driver, not a specification for the hardware design per se.
With that said, open, freely licensed, and non-patent-encumbered protocols are vitally important and it's awesome that Microsoft has stepped up and shown leadership.. if that's what that is. Microsoft has been doing more and more impressive things to work with the open-source community since Ballmer, and that'd be great if that's what it is.
I haven't seen a trackpad with buttons for 8 years (Apple, Dell, Asus... ditched them between 2008 and 2012). People have chosen a long time ago, and physical trackpad buttons are a curiosity nowadays.
All pro style laptops (HP Elitebook/Lenovo Thinkpad/Dell Precision) have trackpad buttons and extra buttons for the nipple controller too. I must say I love having proper buttons and have used such laptops exclusively. Although I do have a Macbook air without the buttons.
You're right that consumer laptops have done away with buttons nowadays.
Lenovo tried ditching them on the ?40 line (T440 X240 etc). It was a disaster. Not just because it was terrible, but lacking buttons just sucks. (Though I am referring to the TrackPoint buttons (on top), which work very nicely even with the trackpad.)
Maybe folks using things like Macbooks just don't notice issues like heat and poor ergonomics? Though that's not a very satisfying idea.
That might be true but even now I don't use the trackpad so it wasn't an important factor for me. With my Thinkpad I either use a mouse or the little red dot, which is a bit more fatiguing for the hands though.
Thanks for sharing your service experience, as I need my laptop for work everyday this is an important point for me.
Sorry dude, you're stuck in 2001. Physical trackpad buttons break, and break often -- which is why they're disappearing. MacBook trackpads are widely recognized as superior, and they are buttonless. The "clit" is also a history footnote at this point, it never got mainstream adoption. If you like Thinkpads that's fine, but don't try to pass your judgement as something universal because it's clearly coming from a very small minority.
Sometimes 90% of people like a technology, and when that technology crowds everything out it's really sad for the 10% that loved the alternatives.
I quite like button-less touch pads. But I also LOVE hardware keyboards on phones. The market decided my preferences aren't commercially viable, but I weep at the imprecision and slowness of touch screen phones, not to mention the general crappiness of terminal emulators without a physical keyboard.
When Logitech stopped making them I started stockpiling Logitech's Cordless Optical Trackman because it's the greatest trackball ever made. It will be a sad, sad day when the last one kicks the bucket, especially since working ones on ebay can be several hundred dollars.
I guess people really just have wildly different feelings. I think Apple's laptops are terrible. Hot, poor keyboard, hard trackpad - you've gotta really press down on the thing. Maybe I'm "using it wrong". (Excellent screens though.)
I think I've had trackpoint buttons fail once, sorta. On a used ThinkPad X201 I got for $300, and just this week, clicks seem intermittent. But it's been under heavy use in an elementary classroom so I'm not sure what kind of stress it's gone through. I've never had an issue with laptop buttos otherwise that I can recall, thinking back to the early 90s.
I don't think you're using it wrong, but the default for the trackpad is a hard click, as you say.
But you can set the trackpad (Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click > Tap to click) to accept a soft finger tap. And two finger tap is equivalent to a right click.
I think the MBP trackpad is the primary reason for me not moving to another laptop, even as I become less and less enamoured with OS X itself.
The Macbook, no-button trackpads also break constantly. Every Macbook I've owned over a few months has had a broken trackpad including Retinas and Airs. On my current Retina, it's broken twice and after the initial replacement during warranty, Apple does not give you any additional warranty on its parts or labor for repairs (beyond 30 days). The repair cost for a trackpad on a Retina or Air: $320 + tax. Ironically, the only trackpads I've worked with that haven't broken are ones with separate physical buttons like the old Macbook Pro ones and many crappy trackpads from companies like Acer that are unusable to begin with. I suspect this is why Apple went with a no moving parts design for their latest trackpads: they simply cannot build a proper trackpad with moving parts that won't break after a few months of even light use.
You realize it's a laptop, not a punching bag, right? Out of the hundreds of Apple laptops I or coworkers/friends have owned, I've only seen a few with broken trackpads, and all were five or more years old and most (all?) had something dropped on it.
Without your great insight, I never would have realized my laptop is a laptop and not a punching bag. Thanks for making everything so clear! I now understand why my punching bag doesn't compile.
Also, your anecdotal evidence is meaningless and doesn't disprove my experience despite your rude attempts to do so.
Apologies, didn't mean to be condescending explicitly. Was intending it to be a light hearted joke to then be backed up with my personal experience. Any time someone has repeatedly broken something which a vast majority of folks haven't broken implies the problem is them, not the product itself.
I really like my new puri.sm laptop (the librem 13") ... especially the fact that it doesn't require any non-free bits in the distribution (in my case, debian stretch). I know some folks have issues with the fact that there are non-free bits under the hood (bios, etc...) but if what you're looking for is a solid, compact laptop with modern internals (I'm looking at you, my beloved Thinkpad x200) that can run a "pure" OS sans non-free components it fits the bill.
I should also note there was a recent price drop for the 13" model. I also love the hardware wifi/bluetooth and camera/mic on/off switches.
Whoa that costs money! My original HP 17" Media Center PC had comparable specs for less! Sounds interesting but many of us gotta wait for price drops or used on eBay.
> Lenovo will send a service technician to me who will usually be able to repair the laptop immediately
What is this guarantee called and where is it available?
Here in Russia, I've had experience of giving away my ThinkPad to the service company for 2 months; they didn't call and the call center girl could not provide further information than "it's being worked on" (the law here requires service centers to complete repairs of such equipment in 3 months,). When I finally had enough and went to the service center for the explainations, or to retrieve my laptop back, and asked them what took them so long, they said they have "emailed IBM but they didn't answer back" (it was a while back and my ThinkPad was X60s, from IBM). It even was working, I just had some issues I wanted them to work through (e.g. the cooling system became noisier and hotter, apparently having been clogged with dust; etc.)
The Dell Latitude E7250 works pretty well, Debian Jessie is missing some drivers and things (eg for Wifi) but Linux Mint (ugh, I know...) works wonderfully well. I haven't tried Ubuntu but I would expect the same experience or better. I was worried about the trackpad being horrible, but I'm actually quite impressed. It's not an Apple trackpad but it's actually pretty decent. (The Disable-Trackpad-While-typing option is almost a requirement though)
Edit: I would emphasize though, if you're going to purchase with Dell, do it as a business (Just pretend you are a business, dont buy it through work). Dell consumer customer support is f#$&ing atrocious. I'm still fighting with them to rectify a problem from an order back in Nov 2015 that I never received. I can't overstate this enough, Dell consumer support is f$#&ing HORRIBLE.
Neither did I, I just filled in a company name at one point in the purchase process and that apparently flagged me as a business. This lead to further complications because their consumer support department couldn't even find the order as a result.
I've an XPS 13, and I like it a lot. I use i3 as my window manager which, due to being keyboard driven, is quite infuriating on this device. The trackpad is incredibly sensitive and the heel of my hand being within 2" or so will trigger a contact. I've attempted to lessen the sensitivity to no avail. Most of the time this isn't an issue because I'm using an external keyboard and mouse, but when I'm on the road it drives me nuts. Enough so that I now remote work on an mbp, and desk work on the XPS.
If you're looking for lightweight, high spec, go for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It's a gorgeous machine. Leaps and bounds better than MBPs. The XPS15 is about on par with the X1C
It's so obvious that I really don't need to be too technical. For the same price point, the X1C is thinner, lighter, has more ram, better cpu and a more dense display. There isn't a single objective measure where the X1C is worse than the MBP
We use MBPs and X1C as developer workstations in our company. Developers often complain about their Lenovo's, while MBP owners are generally happy. In my practice, MBP has better build quality, better battery life and better display. Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation (we're pair programming a lot and it's easy to compare).
> Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation
This may be true for your experience with X1Cs, but it's hardly true for Lenovos in general. My t450s rarely makes any fan noise under stress, and it's never become uncomfortably hot to the touch like my work MBP has. My work MBP also definitely gets very noisy if I'm pegging a core or three.
> Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation
This may be true for your experience with X1Cs, but it's hardly true for Lenovos in general. My t450s rarely makes any fan noise under stress, and it's never become uncomfortably hot to the touch like my work MBP has.
Better TouchPad, namely because of the amazing ThinkPad buttons. And better yet, a trackpoint (although only for those that are used to the input method)
It's not as clear cut as you make it seem. I've used both devices, and while the Thinkpad clearly is a high quality device, subjectively I didn't feel like it was all that different from my MBP.
Of course there is. X1C flexes like it was made out of rubber. I can hold the edges of the display and it's terrifying what how much you can twist them. The aluminum case of the MBP tolerates heat better, the X1C get really loud under load while the MBP is much quieter. Touchpad is just incomparable.
And of course, if you need OSX for work then only MBP provides that.
Did you mean XPS13? I think it would be on par performance- and weight-wise with X1C. XPS15 is _significantly_ bulkier, but in return you get the i7 6700HQ (quad core). I believe the MBPs use the HQ CPUs as well, so we are talking a slightly different class of laptops..
Maybe the 2016 version that just came out is better, I hope. Because last year's model has half of the stated battery life and the screen catches more reflections than a mirror. The touchscreen's responsiveness is very clunk, slow, and unnatural.
Yes I actually have a X1 Carbon as my work laptop and really like it, but again I have the feeling that you can get a better spec'd laptop with similar performance for less money these days.
Honest question: I am a bit concerned about 1080p resolution on a 13" screen. Isn't too small to read ? Or do most people just increase the rendering quality (à la retina) ?
I have a 14" 1080p screen. I put everything to 125% (like font sizes, etc.) It's okay. My eyes are very good at short distances so I don't mind things being small. But yes, Windows 7 does not have enough scaling options to make higher resolutions on smaller screens work. With Windows 10 it is no problem though. With Ubuntu it also shouldn't be a problem. Yes, you do increase rendering quality, but not by much. You can still see individual pixels. But any higher pixel density probably wouldn't be useful, considering the small visual benefits and the higher CPU and GPU and thus battery demands.
I have a QHD version. I have Firefox set to 125% (or 150%). I'm heavily relying on <ctrl> +/- to control the information density in terminals and browsers. That works really well.
Most UIs nowerdays adept to DPI, so no real problems there (idea/intellij just fixed their stuff to work better on HiDPI).
It's today just a matter of choice. I usually use a prescaling/font size etc. that does not pack too much information onto the screen but I enjoy that I can increase the density if needed!
The years of having "too many pixels" are thankfully well behind us (by several years). All modern OSes handle lots of pixels great, so having more pixels is always better, except maybe as far as battery life is concerned.
While thinkpad has removed BIOS whitelist...Ubuntu has introduced charger whitelist. The forums are replete with people having a conked out charger and the replacement charger causing the laptop to run slower.
But I agree with you - the current crop of thinkpad are unworthy. I'm planning to hold on to my t430s for another year.
The killer feature in the Thinkpad line for me is the military-grade sturdiness. Does Dell have the same kind of resistance to spills, drops, heat, etc.?
I thought the "Microsoft tax" was effectively negative these days, i.e that Microsoft wanted Dell to sell Windows machines so OEM licenses are very cheap, but more importantly that the crapware bundlers were also paying the manufacturers to have the trial of their particular AV software pre installed.
That's why I'm surprised the Ubuntu isn't more expensive than the Windows version even if a Windows license itself would add to the cost.
Dell tax on options, I'd wager. If you look at the cost on everything that isn't the base, laptop manufacturers generally add an extra 100% on the retail price of these parts. 200% if you're Apple.
Not sure why you got down voted, Apple's single most insidious, egregious rip off? Memory.
To upgrade your iMac from base 8GB, 4x4 to 32GB is SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.
Alternatively you can buy this aftermarket from Crucial, same timings, etc, for $139.98.
There is no earthly way that can possibly be justified - a four hundred and thirty per cent mark up on retail prices - even more when you consider the after market lets you keep the original 8GB, whereas your six hundred bucks at apple.com does not.
I was surprised to notice that the XPS 15 comes also with quad core CPUs and supports 32GB max memory. Interesting option for those looking for desktop level performance in reasonably sized package.
Anyone know how thermal management is on high-end laptop-version Skylakes? I have a three-year-old Dell Precision 15" with a quad core i7 (Sandy Bridge) at work. If I throw work at all the cores simultaneously, it takes about 60 seconds before it starts throttling the CPU to avoid thermal overload... Which makes it a bit useless IMO. Has this improved recently?
I have the 6700HQ in an XPS-15, it never seems to throttle - for example earlier today when I built firefox with -j8 it just pegged all cores and never let up.
I can be a tad noisy in this situation as you would expect, but from what I have seen - and reviews back me up - it doesn't throttle.
Same here. Even the fan noise is quite acceptable in comparison with my old HP pavilion. The XPS sounds like a light breeze, whereas the HP sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
My i7-6700HQ (Lenovo Ideapad Y700) has been behaving much better under high load than the old Sandy Bridge i7-2630QM (Samsung RC512) I had been using. Though it being a "gaming" design with extra vents and heat exchangers may be helping there.
By "right distro" do you mean "wait for the kernel to do all the right things"?
BIOS 1.1.9 gives ASPM and PC states up to 8. Linux 4.6 should give i915 PSR. Linux will do proper nvme power management once someone (me?) gets around to it.
Even Linux 4.4 is really quite good on this laptop.
PSR on skl is still disabled by default, because there's some corner cases we haven't fixed yet. In case you wonder: more recent platforms shut down more of the chip in PSR, and we haven't yet wired up the power management calls to wake it up again if we need it for those cases. Hopefully addressed in 4.7. Meanwhile you can enable it manually with i915.enable_psr=1 on the kernel cmdline and see whether it works in your case.
Any info on when this (or the XPS 15 with linux) will be available in the UK? I just had a look on Dell's website, and as expected it's still a shower of shit WRT finding what you want.
I bought one of the first or 2nd gen XPS 13s and loved it. However the experience of buying from Dell was awful and customer service was so intractable as to be useless too.
I've oft wondered if these would sell better without the Dell branding. Put a nondescript logo on the back (no word), remove all "Dell".
This really annoyed me years ago when I spent a small fortune on a beautiful TV that had "COMPANY" in white letters on the otherwise perfect dark bezel.
Why would the branding matter? Any halfway serious person knows that Dell makes decent (if slightly boring and enterprisy) stuff, and that it's about what you do with it that matters, anyway. The hipsters are going to see that it's not a Macbook from a mile away, Dell logo or not. If anything, I myself would be likely to assume that an unbranded laptop is something dodgy picked out of a supermarket clearance bin.
> a beautiful TV that had "COMPANY" in white letters on the otherwise perfect dark bezel
That distracts from watching the screen and so actually affects the primary operation of the TV. I'd argue that's a very different matter than the presence of a logo on a laptop lid that you can't even see when using the computer.
> I'd argue that's a very different matter than the presence of a logo on a laptop lid that you can't even see when using the computer.
I haven't used a Dell for a long time, and never a laptop, but the other commenters seem to be discussing a logo on the bezel itself, directly visible to the person using the computer.
It doesn't need to be on the same side as the screen, though. Neither my iPad nor my Nexus have any branding visible on the front of the device. The screen's border is perfectly black. Even the hardware button on the iPad is almost invisible.
Sure, the iPad has a big apple on the back, but I never see that when I'm using it as I can't see around corners.
This. You already know you're using a Dell machine. There is not point to advertise to the user. You might want to advertise to everyone else and put it on the back of the lid, which is fine, but I just want a clean bezel.
It's the same annoyance I have with all the stickers you used to get on any PC, not sure what that situation is like now.
Love it, thought I would not use it, but actually, when typing, if it's a pop up window, touch is quicker then trackpoint or pad to tap away, swiping windows to lock them to the sides is good, swipe to go forward and back in a browser, sure, it's not viable to hold your arm up and do anything intensive, but for single location taps, I like it!
There will be a non-touch option (a matte 1080p screen): "The i5 configuration will come with 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD and FHD NT. The timing of the i5 config is dependent on the depletion of the current inventory on hand." From the project lead's blog: http://bartongeorge.net/2016/03/10/xps-13-developer-edition-...
I have the previous gen xps 13 9350 in matte 1080p and it's great. I don't want higher res or touch. Plus lower power. I do wish I had 16GB in it, but that wasn't an option.
Its useless. Hopefully doesn't get in your way. I had it disabled for a while, until some update overwrite my settings. I perhaps didn't realize this for quite some time, and later just didn't care to re-edit the config.
Otherwise, it good laptop. I'm happy with my decision.
I have a 'Dell precision m3800' and it has a touchscreen. Never touched it. It came with ubuntu preinstalled, and the first thing I did was a full reinstall: these manufacturers tend to just have 1 partition for everything, while I prefer another scheme ( /home really needs to be a separate partition IMNSHO)
Does Dell offer a repository for all their drivers or some other way to get the same build that it comes with out of the box? Or all they really all open source and in Ubuntu's repository? I need a laptop with great Linux support but may prefer to have it pre-installed with Windows for gaming and install my own Linux partition.
XPS13 / QHD / Touch user here (last years model). I've used it rarely but it works without flaws. (Well, firefox can't really handle multitouch on X11, but that's a whole different story).
Only problem is that it's incompatible with kids.
"Hey, what's that? TAP"
I have a different 13" laptop with a touchscreen (also Dell, but not XPS), and while I don't use it a huge amount I do quite like being able to quickly tap at stuff now and then. Personally I wouldn't pay more than a very small amount to upgrade to a touchscreen, but I don't mind having it there, and I've not had any issues caused by it at all.
(Disclaimer: I used to work on marketing - Dell was my client, not my employer - for the brand I'm using, which is Alienware. Currently I have no connection to Dell/Alienware other than friends working there and trying to decide whether to keep using my Alienware 13 or to switch to an XPS 13...)
I use a Microsoft Surface, and don't use the touchscreen most of the time (type cover + USB mouse are almost always connected). It is nice to have though - some things (like zooming into a certain section of a webpage) are more convenient with the touch screen (I've actually caught myself about to reach out and touch my non-touch desktop monitor a couple of times...)
I am running Arch on the non-developer edition XPS 15 (late 2015 edition). Initially the touchpad was occasionally not recognised, then having a touchscreen is really useful :) Other than that, I got it because there was no HiDPi screen without touch. And HiDPi is definitely worth it.
As good or bad as you want it to be. Arch doesn't have any default gui or desktop environment, so it really depends on what window manager / desktop environment you run. Gnome3 and kde5 are both pretty good out of the box with hidpi, xfce is pretty simple to get working. Not sure past that as my experience with Hidpi support past testing was turning it off for the gtk and qt programs I use as I find 4k at 28" fine at native res/scale.
But in general, arch keeps packages as vanilla as possible, so there's no default/recommended configurations like there are with most distros.
I’m using Gnome and it works surprisingly well. All browsers and Gnome apps look great out of the box (apart from blurry icons occasionally). Qt or WxWidgets-based apps have clipped text and small checkboxes etc; they are usable but it is not pleasant. I use only two of those apps, and I rarely use anything more than a terminal, a browser and a music player, so 90% of the time everything looks great.
I didn’t have to configure anything; Gnome automatically set the scaling factor to 2 and everything worked out of the box, browsers too.
I use arch in a VM on my HiDPI XPS13 with and without a desktop environment. Support is simple, if it doesn't recognize the HiDPI automatically (I could understand from inside a VM but I would suspect it running on hardware), support is just one setting in the X11 config file. With distros that don't have HiDPI support, I set the internal VM resolution to half my screen size and then set the VM scale to 2.0 within VMware. Overall a good experience.
Bought a used first or second gen Developer Edition XPS13 last year, installed Mint 17.2 on it and have been very pleasantly surprised. Pretty much just as functional as my old MBP for half the price :)
Did sth similar here with a XPS15 (9530). Installed Ubuntu 15.10 on it, most of it works pretty smooth. A second screen is a bit of a hassle if you don't get a 3200x1800-one. Besides that I didn't really have issues. Touch also works fine ;)
Yeah, this certainly wasn't the case with the previous Developer Edition XPS13. You apparently got Intel with some versions of it and not with others and information about which version included what was pretty difficult to come by. Broadcom supplied a binary blob driver for their wireless but that's not ideal...
I've got a new XPS13 edition. There's a few downsides like I absolutely have to run the latest kernel - 4.5.0-rc7 - to not have iGPU issues and not all WMI keys being supported properly (running Fedora rawhide). But other than that, I get about a 7w/s power consumption without optimising anything. That makes for 9-10hrs of usage, even under Linux!
Oh, and repairing them seems to be dead cheap as well. My XPS13 took a little dive, replacing pretty much the whole ultrabook put me back 320 EUR.
Nitpick: 7w/s is not the correct unit for power consumption. Watt is already energy per second, i.e. power consumption. Watt per second is the unit for change in power consumption.
I've been extremely happy with XPS 15z as well. Not a single bluescreen/kernel panic since I got it 4 years ago, which is (in my opinion/experience) a sign the hardware is not only good, but also that all components properly work together which is just as important. Had similar experiences with the Dell workstation/server lines.
I wonder why they make the keyboard on XPS 15 so small, there is so much space on the left and right, that they could make those keys slightly bigger (but without the pointless numeric pad).
I have ordered a few midline desktops from dell for testing their Ubuntu setup. In the end I wiped and installed my own, and the eula that pops up on first boot was fucking ridiculous, I mean I know they like tonpush the boundaries for self protection, and I understand things like wanted to keep any issues in their jurisdiction and stuff like that, but clauses in the eula stated you waved all rights including constitutional ones (yes, the word constitutional was used in the actual eula,) agreed to forfeit any trial by jury or anybother legal procedure except private arbitration in Dells jurisdiction, and some other stuff that really bothered me to see as the first thing that popped up on first boot.
Lots of it is obviously totally unenforceable and wouldnt stand in court, but they put it in there anyway just because they can get away with it.
If you're not looking for an ultra book. I've got a 7510 Dell Precision Laptop base. i7-6820HQ supports upto 64gb of ram in the laptop, 2 ram slots above keyboard, 2 below. Supports 1 m.2 epci nvme, 1 sata3. I've Samsung 950 Pro NVME 512gb ssd, 1 2tb Samsung Evo 850. I don't believe the NVME works w/o AHCI booting. My experience with linux on this laptop was bar none one of the best. I did have to install ubuntu 15.10, but everything worked without a hitch. This laptop also worked with optimus graphics chip switching. Quadro 4gb DDR4 M2002 chip. Battery is really impressive. Monitor is 4k matted. It's probably the best laptop I've ever owned. Since I purchased it, it now comes with usb type-c w/ thunderbolt 40gbit support. So you can get a really nice fancy docking port for it. Also I've a 2014 macbook pro fully loaded and this is only 1lb heavier than that was. You can also get a xeon chip on this platform. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstatio...
History repeats: the Dell Inspiron that just crapped out on me (somewhat) after years of use was their first Linux model. It also had Ubuntu by default. Great laptop. Interesting enough, after all the updates, I'm having trouble finding something that works out of the box that's not Ubuntu. It's running Fedora fine right now but software management is totally different from my Debian-based experience. Might ditch it. ;)
The previous models didn't support DFS in wifi 5ghz making them unable to work in high density wifi environments. Actually what's worse is that they randomically lose connection on a DFS AP (when the channel gets into one of the DFS-reserved ones they can't access). So you basically have to force them on 2.4 or disable DFS on the APs.
This applied to both the Broadcom and Intel wifi. Any chance these models are better in this regard?
The only cards that support DFS are atheros ath10k (I've tried DFS frequencies with an openwrt AP).
Anyway, I've yet to see an ath10k mini-pcie cards that would fit into this machine. The wireless can be easily replaced (at least on last years machine), so hardware hints welcome.
It's nice to see Dell beginning to actually adopt Linux and Ubuntu. I always kind of figured part of the strategy of going private was to be able to move away from the status quo of being just another Windows vendor... By offering choice and eliminating lock-in, they can go after techie types and serious users who otherwise would have probably just bought a ThinkPad or MBP.
This is great, but Thinkpads have always had good Linux support. I have a friend who bought the previous XPS 13 Ubuntu edition and it had all kinds of problems which are only being worked out now, problems that aren't present on most Thinkpads.
I got the X1 Yoga one month after it came out, installed an alpha version of Ubuntu 16.04 on it and everything just works, including the touch screen.
I've had great luck with Dells for Linux support. Lubuntu on Latitudes has run flawlessly over the years.
It is unfortunate that Dell chose to use small arrow keys and at the same time overload the arrow keys with the 'Home-End-PgUp-PgDown'. Hard to believe this layout was chosen for their Latitude and Precision lines too.
Yeah, I have a Dell (a cheap plastic 13" of some kind) and don't mind the small arrow buttons. But I can't stand that they used them with fn for begin/end/page up/page down.
I've had the XPS 15 since December and that is my only complaint.
PgUp/Dn is not an issue, but having to hit two keys (Fn + Arrow) to Home / End is simply unacceptable when you're used to spam those while writing and refactoring code.
I did some tweaking to mirror my old setup that had Home / End above backspace and that I love, because you can have your left hand thumb on the arrows while your middle finger drives Home / End.
The rightmost 3 keys above backspace are PrtScr / Ins / Del, which I re-mapped to Del / Home / End, and put PrtScr / Ins on the Fn+Arrow instead.
I’ve been running Arch Linux on the non-developer edition XPS 15, and I’ve experienced very little problems. Occasionally the touchpad does not work, and sometimes headphone audio is silent. Other than that, everything works like a charm, even the Broadcom WiFi adapter.
If it makes you any happier, there is a Ubuntu logo on the metal flap on the bottom of the first XPS Developer Edition laptops (Project Sputnik). On the regular ones, there's a Microsoft/Windows logo instead.
I have a new (purchased Dec '15) XPS 15. And despite having dual booted about 10-15 different PCs and laptops (mostly Dell and HP) have thus far have had zero success getting Ubuntu on my new box. I suspect it has to do with two internal hard drives, but I've sort of given up at this point (I bricked the first box, and Dell sent me a new one) and relegate this otherwise very nice laptop to the accounting department to run Quickbooks and Office.
I've recently switched from Macbook Air 11", running Linux, to XPS 13. They are practically same size, XPS is a bit bulkier, its plastic attracts fingerpints like crazy unlike Mac's aluminium, and I absolutely hate it that Fn and Ctrl positions are swapped and there's absolutely no way to override that. But beside all this, it's a very nice machine technically and I'm quite happy with it.
Yeah, I'm wondering why Dell does that. I have M2800 and they give only HDMI, while most monitors require either Display Port or DVI (I'm ignoring VGA connector).
For all the people dealing with shitty dell customer support on the phone, try using their @dellcares twitter account. Had a broken acreen glass and later a faulty fan on my 2014 xps 13, and they sent around a technician each time, all via twitter. Much less painfull than hanging on the phone. Excellent customer support.
Just got the xps 15 (9550) yesterday which had windows on it. Installed ubuntu 16.04 beta and works very well. I had huge problems trying to install any lower version of ubuntu & variants.
I have no experience with preinstalled Linux, but similar to Android, I would be afraid of presinstalled crabware. Just remove the windows and make a clean install.
At the other end of the spectrum, the 5" Inspiron 3552 that comes with Ubuntu, which I'm typing this on, is quite the best 200 dollar laptop you can get.
You have missed a significant digit. For a moment there, I thought I have missed something and netbooks are back again (with screens as small as 5", this time).
You can ping Barton (the project Sputnik head) on twitter about pricing and availability bugs. He usually gets them sorted quickly and is happy about feedback. I've reported issues when the XPS13 launched. It works. They fix this stuff.
But keep in mind that the EU/Prague pricing might be different once launched there.
The RAM options on the current crop of ultraportables annoy me to no end - all soldered, and all basically require grabbing the top of the line i7 + massive SSD models to get 16GB of RAM. I just want that much RAM on a mid-tier CPU and a big-enough-but-not-overkill SSD config, but I can't find anyone who will sell it to me.
Does it really matter that much what distro it ships with? As long as the laptop ships with any distro preinstalled that hardware tend to be properly supported by the Linux kernel, allowing you to feel safe about installing any other (up-to-date) distro.
I've got an older dell laptop that came with Ubuntu 12, bought in 2013. I assume everything worked back then, but I needed Windows for school.
Some months ago, wanting to switch, tried Ubuntu 14 and Debian 8. Couldn't get the graphics driver to work on either. Proprietary drivers, other than the ones in the Ubuntu repos, required a mismatch of older/newer library/kernel versions which I couldn't figure out how to get in Ubuntu. The open source driver claimed my hd7670m worked, but in reality I was getting the hd4000 performance out of it.
Everything else worked, a bit noisier though. Either way, I would definitely not feel safe when buying another Linux laptop, proper research is still required.
Unity is default, not only supported desktop environment. I haven't tried all availalbe environments but getting rid of Unity for xfce is just `apt-get install xfce4`, and it's the same for more exotic options like xmonad.
I tried latest Ubuntu (after using many other distros over the years), and I'm perfectly fine with it. The GUI is simple and does all what I need, with useful default behaviour.
If anyone needs or have to install windows 7 on DELL brand laptops for any reason, I highly recommend you to wait until you confirm it can be done.
I have Dell XPS/Precision 11 and 13, the problem is the Windows 7 have difficulty to boot from UEFI, and you will stuck because AHCI is not supported by these DELL's BIOS.
I bought some XPS 13 with ubuntu installed. By the time I need windows 7 on the field, but I found out it is not possible because you will stuck at "AHCI not competable" BSoD no matter what ever you do.
I bet not everyone realized it is not possible(with my limited knowledge) to install Windows 7 on DELL laptops with UEFI bios.
I guess I'll wait for Apple to reveal the new MB Pro line before making a decision, but it seems that for the first time in 10 years my next laptop will not be a Lenovo/IBM.