
Dell XPS 15.6" QHD+ (3200x1800) - bellwether
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/pd
======
bhauer
For the love of all that is good in the world, _please_ give us this kind of
pixel density in large form-factor desktop displays already. I tweet at Dell
periodically pleading this case, but it's always crickets.

Every time I see a high-DPI portable device, I long for my preferred
consumption and creation context (desktop) to get some needed love from
manufacturers.

(Yes, my wife has a Seiki 4K and I have several 30" 2560x1600 monitors, but I
want better. The 30" form-factor is from 2004! These displays are the
equivalent of a Motorola RAZR flip-phone.)

Edit: see my spur-of-the-moment review of the Seiki lower in this thread at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6631442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6631442)

~~~
lead99
I couldn't agree more.

1920x1080 is more than enough on mobile phones and I don't use tablets or
laptops so I don't care about them.

Where are the 23" (give or take a few inches is fine) 4k displays?

Thats what we really need, a high ppi screen for something I stare into for
hours a day.

------
Matsta
What I still don't get is how the 30" Cinema Display was released in 2004, and
almost 10 years later we still have pretty much the same same resolution
screens.

I know 4k is slowly hitting the market, but you think about 10 years ago in
the mobile world, we were using 84px monochrome screens on our Nokia 3315's.

And also why is the price difference between a laptop screen and a desktop
screen so massive? You can buy a 4k screen complete with a whole computer for
$1500, where a 4k desktop screen is going to cost you almost twice that.

~~~
nwh
By the same token, why the hell are $1000 projectors still 800x600?

~~~
daeken
They're not. At all. The Optoma HD-25LV goes for under $1200 and does 1080p
natively. I have its big brother, the HD-33 (1080p + 3d), and it's fantastic,
especially considering that it was only $1700. Projectors have gotten really
good and really cheap.

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thex86
If only Lenovo would take notice and see what is happening in the market. I
really want a better screen on my Thinkpad with a higher resolution.

~~~
martey
The upcoming generation of ThinkPads generally has better screens (either
higher resolutions or IPS instead of TN) than before. In particular, the W540
is supposed to have an IPS screen with a similar (2880x1620) resolution:

[http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1717](http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1717)

[http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/)

~~~
thex86
Awesome. Thanks!

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jervisfm
Does anyone have any experience using hi-res screens with linux? If so, what
are the issues, if any ? Is there a distro that has really good support for
these kinds of displays?

I know the laptop comes with Win 8.1 which supposedly has decent hi-res screen
support but if you wanted to wipe windows and put a Linux distro, which one
would be best?

~~~
JoshTriplett
GNOME 3.10 has great support for high-DPI displays. Non-toolkit fixed-size
apps will tend to look small, but any modern app will look great.

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storrgie
Will there be a manufacture that will make: QHD+ (non touch), Intel everything
(graphics, NIC), ultrabook body, I5-I7 with at-least 8GB of memory and hit the
price point of 1000USD?

~~~
aggronn
[https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/daru4](https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/daru4)

with the exception of the touch screen, which you can pretend isn't a
touchscreen.

~~~
tadfisher
What? 1920x1080 is nowhere near QHD+.

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nubela
Oh just give me one in 13" (Project Sputnik!) and I'm IN!

~~~
Pengwin
It seems the 13" has been discounted. (at least in australia)

Ive always been thinking of buying one in the back of my mind. Do dell support
linux well in the XPS line?

~~~
kcorbitt
xps 13 hasn't been discontinued; it was refreshed last month at the same time
as the XPS 15 shown here.

Barton George, the project lead, has confirmed that there will be a follow-on
Sputnik coming out sometime in the next month. This (long) thread has the
information, especially on the last few pages.
[http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-
applications/f/46...](http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-
applications/f/4613/t/19494844.aspx?pi22229=14)

~~~
Pengwin
Sorry I said discounted.

Thank you for the link. Sadly Australia never saw the edition which shipped
with Ubuntu, but I'm fine with that as long as i know the hardware supports
it.

------
ChuckMcM
I appreciate the DPI wars coming to laptops, next up is monitors. I'm friends
with the owner of a local computer store chain and he says he sells 100 "low
dpi" (aka 1080p) screens for every higher dpi screen. It doesn't make sense
for him to stock them at those rates, and the cost difference is quite high
because the 1080p screens are basically cheap TV glass rather than non-volume
computer glass. (same issue with getting a 1920 x 1200 screen).

I've ordered a couple of the Asus 4K screens from him to try out but man $3500
(4K) vs $350 (1920 x 1200) vs $150 (1920 x 1080). That doesn't sound like a
sustainable market to me.

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jhack
Meanwhile, I still can't buy a 2560x1440 monitor at less than 27". Rediculous.

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rsanheim
Yeah, but its a Dell laptop.

Do they still come covered in Windows stickers and with all sorts of bloatware
installed?

~~~
solox3
Do people similar to you in audience type really run the copy of Windows that
comes with their laptops?

Or, perhaps, does the ordinary folk/gamer care about bloatware on a laptop
_this_ fast, with i5/i7 and 16GB of RAM?

~~~
rayiner
My MacBook is littered with source code, and I run the copy of OS X that came
on the machine. Futzing with OSes is for kids and a product that requires you
to do so is a bad product.

~~~
dman
There is exactly one vendor with an OS worth using which builds hardware worth
using. The rest of us who are not so lucky to get an integrated offering have
to futz around and make do with what we have.

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general_failure
This looks like a good guy! Anyone know about linux support?

~~~
usernew1817
its an lintel processor with integrated graphics (for base model), shouldn't
be a problem

~~~
mixmastamyk
Has the secure-boot stuff been fully sorted yet?

~~~
JoshTriplett
UEFI "Secure Boot" is not an issue; you can always turn it off on any x86
system, by design requirement, and several current Linux distributions support
booting even with it turned on.

On the other hand, "fastboot" can be an issue: many current Windows systems
skip the BIOS screen and don't support USB boot, on the assumption that you'll
use the Windows option to shut down and boot into BIOS setup. That option
doesn't exist in the Windows setup UI those same systems boot up into when you
first get them, thus forcing prospective Linux users to disassemble the system
and disconnect the disk to trigger BIOS setup.

See
[http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/24869.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/24869.html)

------
pswenson
ever try windows with hi-dpi? I did about a year ago, surprisingly flakey. has
the situation improved?

~~~
AH4oFVbPT4f8
At what resolution does hi-dpi start?

~~~
dangrossman
Whatever you want to call it, I suppose. I don't think the Windows 8+ features
are resolution-dependent. There's a new slider in the display control panel
that lets you set the scaling factor. Windows 8.1's main change was adding a
checkbox that lets you set a different scaling factor for each screen, and you
can choose a custom scale, not just 1x/1.5x/2x.

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Pxtl
I'm really excited to ser Dell pursue this new direction instead of lowest-
common-denominator.

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curiousDog
Hope they got the touchpad right. None of the win8 laptops/ultrabooks so far
match macbooks.

~~~
jrsnyder
I have the previous generation aluminum XPS 15 and its trackpad is the best I
have used on any PC laptop so far.

The laptop is basically a Macbook Pro clone and the trackpad holds its own.
It's the solid build of a Macbook Pro minus the (unwanted) Mac experience. The
only place it really falls short is battery life.

The trick is to disable the gestures in the Synaptic driver and install
TwoFingerScroll. Once you do that, the trackpad feels just as smooth as a
Macbook.

------
MetaCosm
I really wish some of these high resolution laptops came with equivalent high
end video cards to drive that resolution ... shipping with a 750m rather than
the 780m seems nuts, it is 2 to 3 times slower and when you got 5.5+ million
pixels to drive...

~~~
DuskStar
The 780m is a huge power draw. It's basically a minorly downclocked GTX 680,
with all of the performance (and heat) that implies. It's estimated to draw
122W at maximum, for crying out loud! It probably won't be fitting in a .7"
laptop anytime soon.

Aside from that... This laptop isn't intended for gaming. Honestly, I'd think
that if Intel HD graphics can drive an rMBP display, then the 750m will
suffice for this. Though I would love to see QHD+ come to some of the gaming
laptop lines...

------
detay
Never an XPS, again. Ever. XPS is the short name of Dell misunderstanding
gaming laptop.

------
Gambit89
This is an otherwise good choice that I'd consider for my next laptop if it
wasn't for no dedicated Home/End and Page Up/Down buttons.

------
mixmastamyk
Would be nice if this became their Linux dev box, and they had an external
monitor to match.

------
RachelF
Nice. Finally some decent Windows notebook screens.

Being touch, I guess it is glossy and not matt?

------
mischanix
Dell XPS 15.6" QHD+ (Late 2013): 235 dpi

13" rMBP (Late 2012): 226 dpi

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I don’t see why you’re comparing it to last year’s 13" MacBook Pro.

The new 15" MacBook Pro has specs that are very much like this DELL laptop.
Same screen size, same resolution. Same SSD, RAM, and GPU. The MBP has a
slightly faster CPU, i7 2.3Ghz instead of DELL’s i7 2.2Ghz. The DELL is 10%
cheaper.

~~~
mischanix
The 15" is slightly less DPI. I was only comparing DPI because, to be honest,
every laptop I've ever used that wasn't a Thinkpad or a Macbook has left me
wondering whether I should just use pen and paper instead.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
> The 15" is slightly less DPI.

The DELL has a 15.6" screen, the MBP has a 15.4" screen. The screens both have
the same resolution and aspect ratio. That means the MBP’s screen has a
slightly higher DPI (221 versus 218).

~~~
seunosewa
They don't have the same aspect ratio. The Dell is 16:9 while the rMBP is
16:10. They don't have the same resolution either. The rMBP is 2880x1800 while
the Dell is 3200x1800.

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rdl
Why is the M6800 not more awesome? 17" 1080p, only.

------
codex
Yes but does it run OS X?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I’m pretty sure it runs Crysis. With a pitcher big enough, I bet it will
blend. Also, it has wireless and more space than a Nomad.

