
Dell XPS 13, one year later - ingve
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=4178
======
MrBingley
Coincidentally, I just got my new XPS 13 today. Took it out of the box, booted
it up, and was greeted by ... coil whine. Friggin coil whine. I knew this had
plagued previous models of the XPS 13, but I figured Dell would have gotten
their act together by now. Nope. It sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies. A
high pitched squealing sound comes out of the laptop anytime you launch a
program or do anything that even remotely uses the processor. I tried booting
into a USB to reinstall windows to see if that would help, and it got worse.
The whole laptop would start to buzz whenever I touched the trackpad, and I
starting hearing the most wonderful chirps and squeaks coming from underneath
keyboard. Wonderful. I paid $1600 for what I thought was a premium laptop.
Based on the OP's experience with Dell tech support, I don't even want to mess
with trying to have it fixed. Nope, this piece of crap is getting returned,
and I'm getting a Thinkpad.

~~~
m-j-fox
Hey buddy. I got one yesterday. Such an adventure. Coming from the MacBook
experience, I will say it's glitchy AF. But I still haven't linuxed it. Doubt
that will help.

I will say it's fast.

My complaint is the Thunderbolt 3. It is a lie. First you need an adapter
because of course you do and the only one at the store is Apple's. I have a
bunch of Macs and displays and peripherals and zero success talking to any of
them.

I don't know if I'll even complain. I have an Intel desktop mobo that after
several years learned to drive a display over Thunderbolt iff it's connected
on boot and that's all. So I'm not expecting much.

~~~
MrBingley
Yeah, this laptop was supposed to replace my old MacBook Air. I had that thing
for five years, and not once had a problem with it, even after dropping it and
damaging the shell. I wanted to get a linux-compatible laptop and switch to it
full time, but I'm having serious second thoughts. The build quality of Macs
is top-notch, and to use the old cliche, it "just works". Honestly. They're
ridiculously expensive, but hey, you get what you pay for.

~~~
WWLink
I agree. The Precision 5510 I have at work (basically an XPS 15) is definitely
not a MacBook Pro. I adore how you can still upgrade the ram, replace the hard
drive, and use standard m.2 SSDs, but the chassis is not that rigid, and the
screen might be better on paper, but I find it very annoying to use.

The trackpad is terrible!! You can't click it if you're holding the laptop
because the chassis flexes too much!

The keyboard is fantastic though! It's just like my MacBook Air's keyboard!
Just the right amount of travel and give. I'll give them props for that.

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tabletiptop
I work for a small software company, we pick our own laptops from the Dell
business account.

Anecdotally, every Latitude we've bought has been rock solid, and every XPS -
without exception - has had issues. Sound cards dead on arrival, random
bluescreening, dead SSDs, faulty HDMI ports, you name it. Sometimes they'll
send a new one, sometimes they'll send an engineer to replace the motherboard.

I can't recommend XPS based on my own experience. The quality control just
doesn't seem to be there. The specs are too good to be true for the price
anyway. If you need the specs, go Precision.

~~~
lafar6502
Yep, latitudes and precisions (except m3800) are quite ok and difficult to
beat on price vs specs. I only don’t like the myriad of options to choose
from, why not decide on some standard like screen resolution or keyboard
backlight?

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pcurve
I've been at same company for 13 years. I'm only on my 2nd computer, both
ThinkPad. (the expensive model that you can pick up by edge of its display and
swing it around even though it weighs 6 pounds)

Usually, our company forces us to upgrade laptop after 3 years, but when I
heard they were changing supplier to HP, I told them, over my dead body.
Eventually they stop harassing.

3 years go by, I get the same notice. This time, instead of HP, they had moved
onto Dell.

Horrified, I told them to go pound sand, and they eventually went away.

Another 2 years go by, and I must've ended up on our IT's most wanted list or
something. I relent, and turn my 8 year old machine in. Mind you, this laptop
went through daily grind, tens of thousands of docking and undocking,
enterprise software updates. (you know how brutal those are)

When IT guy saw my machine, he said, "Wow, I haven't seen this in years! Hey
guys, check this out!"

Luckily, by then, my company had switched back to Thinkpad.

That was almost 6 years ago, and I'm still rocking my W520.

~~~
jamesmishra
Why does the company force hardware upgrades?

Software upgrades are necessary for security, but it sounds like you saved the
company about $1000 - $2000 without incurring any negative effects.

~~~
pcurve
really beats me... i thought the whole point of paying premium for Thinkpad
was for lower support cost and longevity. I think they finally got the hint
when they switched over to Thinkpad, because I haven't received any notice
about machine upgrade in 6 years.

Unfortunately should my current machine craps out, they'll issue newer model
with that horrible keyboard.

~~~
apk-d
How do current Thinkpad machines compare to the classic "indestructible"
models from a decade ago? Pretty satisfied with my x230 but going to have to
start looking for an upgrade soon.

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npolet
Most of this is to do with the customer support, and not really about the
actual laptop. But... It is annoying when things go wrong and you have to deal
with poor customer service and you feel like you are constantly battling the
company.

I've had a little Dell XPS 13 Dev edition and I really really like it.
Everything works well, it's fast, it's got a good display and it stays out of
my way and allows me to fully focus on work. I've added gestures on the
trackpad to act similar to OSX as I got used to them on my Macbook. Nothing
really special to this laptop, but it's damn good and has been behaving
itself.

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ippa
I have had the Kaby Lake XPS 13" for about a year. Linux is nice in many ways
and it's a decent laptop. The small formfactor/screen might be the best thing
about it hardwarewise. Here's my rant:

\- I had to research and create a bashscript with these cmds to get better
defaults / fix stuff:

\-------

# Longer timeout for backlit keyboard

echo 5m > /sys/class/leds/dell::kbd_backlight/stop_timeout

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/dell::kbd_backlight/brightness

# This is to stop touchpad from beeing to sensitive while typing

syndaemon -t -k -i 1.0 -d

# Fix headphone hissing

amixer -c PCH cset 'name=Headphone Mic Boost Volume' 1

\---------

\- Wireless networking performs way worse then on my macbook pro 2015.

\- Bad palm rejection on the touchpad bites me all the time, even though I
tweaked it with above script.

\- Power supply stopped working after ~6 months. Dell sent me a new one
though.

\- Feels more sluggish then the older MacBook Pro 2015 even though the specs
are better.

\- Battery-life already feels ... bad.

\- When I close screen and opens it back up it's very slow to re-connect to
the WLAN. Again, my older MacBook Pro is so much faster.

\- Ubuntu have some bad defaults for how certain things work. For example,
when I connect to a bluetooth-speaker the default isn't that the volume-
buttons on the keyboard controls the bluetooths-speakers volume.

I really wanted to like this laptop, but I'll most likely go latest MacBook
Prop for my next. Even though I enjoy the power of pure linux.. and the
keyboardlayout better then on a Mac.

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anotheryou
FHD versions suck at inverted color schemes (white on black text). (The 4k
version can be patched)

When there as primarily black on the screen, the monitor dims the backlight
and brightens the screen. This saves backlight, but cut's of the peak
brightness (the white of your text). You can test if you are effected here:
[http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/](http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/)

There is no patch for the FHD version, the problem exists since 2015, so for
several generations of these things...
[https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2](https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2)

Also a lot of coil whine and without up to date drivers a lot of bluescreens.

Oh and the only big USB-C Dell Dock, it has no USB-C out, so it uses up all
your USB-C. Not very future proof.

~~~
mort96
I have an XPS 13 from 2015, the full HD variant, running Linux.

For the most part, it's a great machine, and I have no noticable coil while.
However, since I always code with a black terminal window and bright text, I'm
very affected by that dynamic backlight bullshit. I can't comfortably code if
there's a lot of sunlight in the room (not to mention being outside on a sunny
day). It's really quite annoying.

~~~
anotheryou
Me too and I moved from lenovo to dell for the brighter screen :'(

------
jgrowl
I will never buy another Dell after using a m3800 for a couple of years.
Suspend stopped working after a couple of weeks. I've had to replace the fans
twice. The trackpad stopped working correctly (but that was because the
battery started to bloat). The worst part was that the screen started to get
horizontal lines that would never go away. Sometimes bios text would get
burned into the display. It has been sitting as a paper weight on my desk for
months. I actually painfully switched back to an older 2011 macbook air.

------
PebblesHD
Unfortunately I experienced much the same sort of symptoms with my 15” XPS as
well, culminating in unbearable coil whine and a display that just never
worked properly, so it was returned and I promptly got myself a MacBook. Prior
to this, I ran thinkpads for years without issue, so next time I’m in the
market for a linux/windows box I think I’ll give them another go...

The support staff at dell just seemed so incredibly uninterested in helping me
after I bought my machine, and getting a refund organised was just painful.

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soyiuz
Reporting in with similar issues. My first gen XPS13 had a keyboard whining
issue, then the trackpad popped out of the case (and that is with light use).
The keyboard is not your usual chiclet affair---the key travel is
significantly shallower than any other machine I've owned. It often registered
a double press when typing normally (not just the space bar) and the keys are
light enough to depress when resting on the home row. The bezel-less screen
was glorious though...

I was happy to be back to my trusty ThinkPad.

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jaimex2
I have a Dell XPS 13 1960 - bought at start of this year, currently running
Kubuntu

It has been awesome, no complaints yet.

Space bar has no issues, No coil whine.

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xfer
I have had experience with a DELL PC(Alienware), where the wireless card had
poor reception. The problem very much lies with the incompetent tech support.
They had me replace the motherboard, the card, but the problem still
persisted. In the end, I gave up and used a USB wireless card.

~~~
rando444
Wait what? How is the problem tech support?

~~~
xfer
Because they have no clue what the problem is..

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chefkoch
Pro Support or standard warranty?

Sounds like basic support to me, with pro support a tech had been at your
place the nbd.

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fazilakhtar
Had a Dell Inspiron (1300 I believe), made a nice heater in the winters.

