
Dell launches Ultrabook for $999 - angel_007
http://www.dell.com/html/global/xps13/xps-13-ultrabook.html
======
eropple
So I clicked through this article, expecting something that totally misses the
point (like their Adamo a few years ago).

It doesn't match my immediate expectations. Which is good! The machine looks
solid. I don't know if I like it more than my Air, but it looks promising.

I keep clicking through. In a machine like this, two things really matter:
keyboard and display. As allwein says in another comment thread, they don't
show the keyboard head-on. Which is concerning, but I can live with a crappy
keyboard if the screen is great. So click click click, I keep on looking for
display information.

 _"A tough yet brilliant 13.3" screen in a compact form similar to an 11"
laptop."_ This sounds...well, I'm not sure what they're saying, but it sounds
interesting at least! So I go to check out the specs.

No specs, anywhere. After a bit I realize that clicking "Buy XPS 13" takes me
to the (god-awful, ugly) Dell page for the product line, where (if I pick
"Customize") I can get some specs. The prices get me a bit frowny, but they're
not _that_ crazy. So I look at the bottom-line one, which for my use case is
more or less equivalent to my 11" Air except in size.

At last, there it is...WTF? _"Silver Anodized Aluminum and 13.3" HD (720p)
Truelife WLED Display with 1.3MP HD Webcam"_.

There we go--there's the "attention to detail is for suckers" Dell I've come
to know and loathe. Apple puts a 1440x900 display in their 13" Airs. They put
a 1366x768 display in the 11" Airs. I mean, that's just sad--Dell is using a
worse panel in their 13" 'ultrabook' than Apple does in their 11" Air. Dell
has no excuse.

Somehow, the lessons of "don't make people use screens that suck" is lost
along the way to the rest of the laptop manufacturers out there. I am (not
very) deeply sorry, Dell, but packaging crap in a thinner, lighter box only
makes it thinner, lighter crap.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Most manufacturers seem to do that these days, hiding display resolution
somewhere obscure, while it represents one of the most important details that
I need to know.

Personally, I'd like an Ultrabook with the 13" 1080p screen from the Sony Z
series. (But not made by Sony, since I need something with decent quality, a
decent warranty, and a decent company.)

~~~
rhizome
_hiding display resolution somewhere obscure, while it represents one of the
most important details that I need to know._

This isn't a coincidence. Sales can profit from ignorance, whether natural or
engineered.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Depends on who you want to sell to. Newegg very effectively demonstrates the
value of showing specific technical details and making them easy to filter or
compare. Many vendor sites offer similar search mechanisms ("monitors larger
than this size and this much resolution, with these inputs").

~~~
rhizome
They want to sell to Dell customers.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Dell has one of the search mechanisms I just mentioned: on their laptop or
monitor pages, you can click a few links to filter the set of products based
on features you want. For monitors, they include resolution in those features;
unfortunately, for laptops they don't.

~~~
rhizome
Good thing we're talking about laptops, then. If we were including their
monitor product pages in this critique we'd really look silly.

------
delsarto
30 March 2005: X1 announced (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude>)

    
    
      1280 × 768 at 16.8 million colors
      1.140 kg with 58 Whr Li-Ion 6 cell
      w: 286 mm
      h: 25.0 mm		
      d: 196.8 mm
    

XPS13 ultrabook

    
    
      13.3" High Definition WLED, 300-nit (1366x768) 720p; 
      Weight: Starting at 2.99lbs (1.36kg)6
      47WHr battery; 6-Cell Li-Polymer (built-in)3
      Width: 12.4" (316mm)
      Height: 0.24-0.71" (6-18mm)
      Depth: 8.1" (205mm)
    
    

So in 7 years, we've added 86 pixels and gotten bigger and heaver. I'm not
sure if the X1 laptop was revolutionary, or laptops just haven't gotten that
much better. Certainly the X1 was the best investment I've ever made; with a
SSD upgrade it's still going strong!

~~~
PhrosTT
I'm waiting for the Asus UX31 to drop to about $700. Unless the new Pro/Airs
with 2000 by 1500ish rez are closer to $1000 than $2000.

They have a 1600x900 screen resolution. This is the most important spec for
me. Everytime I see 1366x768 I cringe to imagine what an Eclipse Debug
perspective would look like on that. Hey look "3 lines of code and 2 variables
are viewable at the same time!"

~~~
delsarto
Yeah, I was quite interested in them too. However, my worry is that initial
Linux support with all the new parts would be a PITA. When I got the X1 7
years ago, I was a student and patching kernels and poking around various
wiki-pages to get various things working was fun. Now I'm in the old and
boring "just want it to work" camp :)

------
allwein
The telling thing for me is that there is not a single image of the keyboard
head-on. The keyboard is a make or break feature on a laptop of this size. I
fear that not showing any images of the keyboard is indicative of a sub-par
experience.

~~~
barista
This problem has been solved many a ttimes before. It's not the first 13"
laptop anybody has designed. So thogh I'd love to see a keyboard pic, I'd
assume it's going to be inline with what's out there already.

Love these new ultrabooks btw. Apple kickstarted it as always and all the
platforms benefit.

~~~
spot
apple was a latecomer to the thin and light category. FYI.

~~~
rsynnott
It was one of the innovators in _affordable_ thin and light, though. While
there were very light and thin laptops prior to the Air, they were usually
either netbooks, or terribly expensive. Of course, so was the first-gen Air;
the second one was really the interesting one.

~~~
spot
nope, there were plenty of options like the Dell X1 (2.5lbs, 2005) and Sony
VAIO Z (3.3lbs, 2000). these were mainstream and affordable and functional.
the first air came in 2008.

~~~
rsynnott
What did the Vaio Z cost on release? My impression was that it, and all of
Sony's ultra-small laptops, were always terrifyingly expensive. The current
Vaio Z, certainly, starts at just under $2000.

------
phamilton
A 13" laptop a little bit bigger than the 11" Macbook Air, a little worse
screen resolution than the 11" Macbook Air, at about the same price point as
the 11" Macbook Air.

~~~
tdicola
And companies wonder why ultrabooks have been a flop...

------
herge
Why make it out of aluminium? Does it have better heat properties or lighter
weight than say some high quality plastics or steel, or any other metal?

~~~
jimrhoskins
Because at first glance it will pass for a macbook air.

I don't say that with any bitterness. I have and love my air, but as I find
myself using less and less of OS X, and really just living in iTerm and my
browser, the real appeal of the Air to me now is the hardware. If the
Ultrabook stands up to the Air in quality, I'm seriously considering the
Ultrabook + Ubuntu (double-u?) for my next notebook. Also assuming Ubuntu runs
well on it, which my guess is if it doesn't now, it will soon.

~~~
shinratdr
Why would you do that instead of just putting Ubuntu on the Air?

~~~
jimrhoskins
In the case that Dell (or someone else) had better hardware at a better price.
It doesn't look like that's the case with the Ultrabook just yet.

------
kaiwetzel
From a quick glance it looks ok but there are a few features (missing, I
think) which would make me (as a mac book air 11") envious:

\- 1080p screen

\- 1080p web cam, tilting

\- large choice of colors for the anodized aluminum lid (the carbon body is a
nice touch, assuming they can't find factory capacities to produce a full
aluminum body at the moment ?)

\- _matte_ cormin gorilla glass (no idea if that's physically and chemically
possible but cool it would be)

\- alternatively, a glossy screen which does not only look like but _is_ a
capacitative touch screen (I always end up trying to use touch on the macbook
air, oh my)

\- some other detail which really surprises people and makes you really want
to own one of those ...

\- linux driver support for all components

edit: \- an external blue ray player, thin and matching in style

Still I'm looking forward to hear from people how the build-quality turns out,
could be a nice affordable alternative for people looking for a windows
notebook!

------
ghost91
I want to see my code on the screen not myself!

Who needs these glossy screens?

~~~
jc4p
Matte displays show images more true-to-print too, I prefer my matte display
both for programming / being outside / editing photos. I really don't
understand why anyone would want a glossy display other than "it's easier to
clean"

------
wasd
All I want for Christmas is for a Linux optimized Ultra Book.

~~~
macmac
Yes, why does no manufacturer see that they could get a bunch of developers
onboard by creating such a product? Is the developer segment really that
uninteresting?

~~~
shinratdr
> Is the developer segment really that uninteresting?

Yes. It's also much, much more fragmented than you make it out to be. It's not
like all developers are waiting with bated breath for the perfect Linux
laptop. Many are perfectly happy with what they currently use.

A machine targeted towards developers wouldn't even appeal to the majority of
developers, which is already a niche market to begin with. It's quite obvious
why nobody does this.

------
zyang
To get to the spec, click "Buy Xps 13", "Customize and buy", go to "Review and
checkout" tab, scroll down - took me 5 minutes of clicking around to get to
it. wtf dell.

------
peteysd
Is this posted because the Ultrabook is interesting, or because the scroll-to-
animate functionality of the website is interesting? For me, it's the latter,
since I have long forsaken Dell.

Once the site loaded completely (which took a fair bit of time), I was able to
use scrolling to move forward/backward through the animation of the demo. This
is certainly an interesting UX, but after about 20 seconds of this I found it
cumbersome.

~~~
darkstar999
Cumbersome. Yes. Definitely an anti-pattern. I shouldn't have to work so hard
to see your stupid marketing campaign. It reminded me of this comic
<http://i.imgur.com/MgmdP.png>

------
fady
no matter how pretty they make their laptops, they still run crappy software,
IMO. i would buy this, wipe it out and load ubuntu, vs using windows. i find
the ubuntu experience on dell laptops to be pretty good.

i'm still rocking a e1405 with ubuntu 10.4

~~~
aswanson
Always a good option, although you have to be wary with respect to
wireless/wifi drivers. The ubuntu releases tend to trail new hardware for
wireless networking by several months for new windows laptops.

~~~
fady
good to know. i was curious how the support has been for the wireless/wifi
drivers in their newer machines...

------
kittxkat
No-deal for me; keyboard looks like a piece of plastic:
<http://www.engadget.com/photos/dell-xps-13-hands-on/#4704588>

------
nathanwdavis
What is really interesting is not the product itself, but the animation that
progresses as you scroll down the page. Very neat!

Basically instead of time controlling the sequence of frames, it is the scroll
position.

~~~
eropple
I found it inconsistent, unintuitive, and jarring.

Bad web designer. No cookie.

------
Zarathust
Anywhere I can find specs? I mean real specs, with black on white columns
containing numbers?

I hate flash so much mostly because it is impossible to get real data out of
it. I mean, you support wifi? you don't say!

------
sandis
Why use Flash for a site that's not even that.. flashy? Almost the exact same
site could've be done in HTML and Javascript, except potential customers could
view it on their iPads, for example.

------
blisper
Wiping windows off, and replacing the HD with a clean Ubuntu install would be
the first order of business. To me Keyboard, battery, and lack of fan noise
are important in an Ultrabook.

------
wyclif
It's only a matter of time until John Gruber is alerted to this, and writes a
Dell-bashing response.

------
Vitaly
I absolutely hate this new bread of "scroll to do some js/flash magic" kind of
interfaces.

