
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition - Synroc
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097)

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MichaelGG
Why oh why does it have a buttonless clickpad? I've got a ThinkPad T440p and
it's terrible. I despise every minute of working on it and have to bring a
mouse around. Is this just copying Apple for looks?

I'm dying to buy a laptop that's as good as my X201 (and keeps 12" format,
though thickness doesn't matter much), but with modern specs. I'm probably
gonna break down and get an X250, which is limited to 8GB of RAM for no good
reason, but I've heard newer processors can handle IM's 16GB SODIMM, so that
particular problem might be solved. The X250 is the first gen ThinkPad after
Lenovo partially realized they had destroyed the ThinkPad line and started,
albeit slightly, listening to customers again.

Any other suggestions? I've tried using a macbook, and the screen is great,
but the keyboard, clickpad, and hot metal are very uncomfortable.

I'd spend hundreds on a conversion kit to drop new guts into an X201. (And to
mod it with mechanical switches... I'd spend a lot.) It seems you can't spend
as much on a ThinkPad these days. My X201 was over $2000 without WWAN, but the
X250 tops out around $1600.

~~~
avtar
I bought a used X230, upgraded to 16GB of RAM, added an SSD, and it's been an
awesome machine so far. But you're right, the X250 will offer a better
display. At least Lenovo seems to have eased up on the hardware blacklist
where this model and the T450 are concerned
[http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/31rnsv/t450_and_x2...](http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/31rnsv/t450_and_x250_no_longer_have_whitelists/)

Also, here's a link related to the 16GB SO-DIMM modules that you mentioned
[https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-
Laptops/16GB-...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB-
SO-DIMMs-work-in-X250/m-p/2035646)

~~~
FelixP
I have the same setup, as well as a 15" retina MBP. Each one is optimized for
different use cases, but it's amusing that a machine that ran me ~$400 is
better for a lot of things than my $2500+ top of the line Apple.

Biggest drawback of the X230 is the AWFUL trackpad and the low res screen.
Highly recommend getting the extended battery.

------
userbinator
It seems almost every manufacturer is trying to make their laptops look like
Macbooks, but what I'd really like to see is some Thinkpad clones.

~~~
Kurtz79
How exactly this resemble a Macbook in any way ?

It is not unibody, it is not aluminum, the screen is basically without bezel.

This is the first non-Apple ultrabook that is genuinely interesting to me,
design wise.

~~~
userbinator
From the link:

 _Machined aluminum construction means the XPS 13 is precision-cut from a
single block of aluminum for a sturdy, durable chassis._

The keyboard picture there...

[http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...](http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImages/xps-13-linux/images/laptop-
xps-13-love-pdp-dev-design-4.jpg)

...also looks very similar to that of the old plastic-bodied black Macbook:

[http://old.javconcepts.com/modules/blog/media/4/keyboard.jpg](http://old.javconcepts.com/modules/blog/media/4/keyboard.jpg)

~~~
Kurtz79
I stand corrected.

It still does not look anything like a (recent) Macbook, imho.

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_halgari
Sadly I can't get too interested in a machine like this. What I want in a work
machine is the following:

1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or
better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated
crap)

Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming
less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can
anyone point me to a non-Apple machine that does these things?

EDIT:

Thanks for the pointers! I'll look into the Dell and Lenovo machines mentioned
here. It's been a year or so since I've looked for machines comparable to my
older MBP, so it's cool to see some new options.

~~~
Someone1234
Only Apple's top end machines ship with a Nvidia card now and in my experience
those same machines have quite serious overheating problems.

Thinkpad's T series fits some of your bill but I doubt the screen is high
density enough.

PS - I must be the only person on earth who thinks the user experience with
1080p is better than super-high resolution. Currently most operating systems
(Windows, Linux, and OS X to a degree) suck at high DPI so your fonts and UI
elements shrink as the resolution increases.

~~~
skynetv2
i have had one since 2010, never had heat issues

~~~
Someone1234
Apple has "thinned" the MBP line several times since then. I had a 2014 Nvidia
model and it over-heated like crazy, in particular in Windows.

~~~
skynetv2
ok fair. my colleague has 2014 rmbp 15 with nvidia and he plays games on it
too, all in os x though. never had any issues with heating.

maybe its windows compatibility issue

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timtadh
I know some are disappointed by the lack of ram in the XPS 13. If you need a
beefer laptop there is another Dell "Project Sputnik" (aka Ubuntu) laptop the
Precision M3800. [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-
lapt...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-
laptop?c=us&l=en&s=biz)

It is more comparable to a Mac Book Pro and can be configured with 16 GB of
memory as well as the hi res display.

------
TYPE_FASTER
I've been using the previous gen XPS 13 and my 2009 MacBook Pro for the past
eight months. My experience with the XPS 13, and Dell in general, has been
disappointing.

If I had to make the decision again, I'd definitely get the M3800 instead of
the XPS 13.

1\. Google about trackpad configuration (palm detection, etc.) on the XPS 13
Dev Edition, it seems to be a combination of the hardware and Linux driver
support. Maybe it's fixed in this new rev, I'm not sure.

2\. There are known issues with audio popping and crackling when you plug the
XPS 13 Dev Edition into speakers.

3\. When you're sitting in a quiet environment, like a home office at night,
you can hear electrical noise coming from the laptop. It's a known issue,
maybe it's resolved in this new generation.

4\. One of our XPS 13s was DOA. It happens. It took _eight weeks_ to get a
replacement, starting from the first time I contacted support. Once I was
connected to somebody in USA on-shore support, they were very helpful, and
told me much of that turnaround time is based on their suppliers.

~~~
MichaelGG
Is the electrical noise a high pitched whine? Coil whine? Every Intel laptop
I've used has it. It's supposedly due to power saving going on and off. At
least on my ThinkPad, disabling power saving (ie running the CPU at full power
all the time) made it go away. I think I may have developed tinnitus from it.
It's unbelievably unprofessional.

'Course, disabling CPU power saving modes kill battery, but my T440p never got
much life to begin with (I get maybe 70 minutes max now, down from around 2
hours. But I'm running VMware for everything, so perhaps that hurts.)

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
My laptop (a Toshiba Satellite) has an annoying level of coil whine. If it's
from power saving, it's GPU power-saving state related, not CPU. It's not
noticeably affected by turning off CPU power saving modes, at the very least.

It's most noticeable when scrolling image-heavy webpages, or with pretty much
anything that ends up with framerates in audio frequencies. Older versions of
Dwarf Fortress on the menu screen, for instance.

------
Splendor
This looks like the perfect laptop for me at this moment. I just worry that a
ceiling of 8GB of RAM means it won't be the perfect laptop for me next year.
And I'd like my laptop to last me 2-3 years.

~~~
SuperKlaus
Second that, 8GB of RAM is a bit meager.

~~~
djhworld
Google Chrome takes up at least 2.5GB on my Mac, 8GB is a complete joke

~~~
ulfw
Time to get rid of Chrome then.

~~~
dijit
the alternative is firefox, and that's just as bad.

the issue isn't necessarily chrome, chromes only crime is correctly jailing
tabs.

the issue is in certain sites adding an absolute metric tonne of javascript
and javascript libraries.

my previous workplace had over 10MB of javascript on the home page alone, new
devs reduced it to 1.5MB or so, but that's _still insane_.

and a 1.5MB download isn't 1.5MB in memory, it's much more. we need to tone
down the "richness' of our sites.. your users aren't _only_ using _your_ site!

------
cdnsteve
It runs Ubuntu and costs about the same of a ChromeBook Pixel here a few weeks
back.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185526)).
Seems to be limited to 8 gigs ram, Pixel gives you 16 but has less HD space.
No USB Type-C either...

How does the keyboard compare to a MBP? Love that keyboard.

Do they also include free Ubuntu stickers to cover up the Windows logo on the
keyboard? :)

Would love to hear from real devs using this.

~~~
sandGorgon
get them from here - [http://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux-keyboard-
stickers](http://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux-keyboard-stickers)

~~~
cdnsteve
wow these exist, amazing!

~~~
sandGorgon
you should join us over at the Thinkpad gang... you know, with coreboot and
laptops that can actually go to the moon ;)

------
untog
My Macbook Pro isn't even a year old yet, so I won't be replacing it any time
soon. But hardware like this is finally competitive with Apple - I'd be taking
a close look if I was in the market.

The fact that OS X has gotten worse and worse with every version makes me
switching next time even more likely.

------
cookrn
This was posted yesterday as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332097)

------
josteink
To ask those complaining about 8gb not being enough... Please name one thing
that won't allow you to do which is crucial in your day to day workflow.

I'm not saying i don't believe you, I'm just genuinely curious.

Edit: Looking at this thread, I have to say there has to be a cause and effect
here somewhere. You have a million web-developers saying they need more than
8GB to use Chrome to surf web-pages and web-apps.

I'm pretty sure web-apps sucking that amount of resources was caused by giving
web-devs machines with 8GBs+ of RAM to begin with. Giving them more, wont fix
the problem. It will only make it worse.

As for a developer-anecdote: Almost all bugs post-shipping bugs I've
experienced and had to fix, more than 50% has only been reproducable on low-
resource constrained environments.

By super-specing your dev-environment, you _are_ shipping bugs you cannot
detect. You just don't know it.

~~~
PopsiclePete
Run an OS X VM in order to illicitly develop iOS apps. Run a Windows 8 VM to
work on legit Windows apps. Run both VM's at the same time.

Anything under 16 GB is unacceptable to me.

Developer edition? Nope, not really. I need Linux, Windows _and_ OS X. So my
only option remains, as ever, a macbook pro with 16GB RAM.

~~~
akfanta
Why would you need both of them running at the same time though? Also, unless
you are on Linux, you probably don't need both of these two VMs. Lastly, I
don't quite understand why any serious developer would want to run their dev
environment in a VM to begin with.

~~~
mootothemax
_Lastly, I don 't quite understand why any serious developer would want to run
their dev environment in a VM to begin with._

I'm really surprised to hear this; I spent enough years working on a local dev
environment to know the pain. Heck, I've seen the bugs that come from it as
well.

Now that Docker's around, and you can run a production-equivalent environment
on your local machine, I'd _never_ go back to the bad old days.

------
GrinningFool
8GB max RAM kind of rules it out for any heavy duty development.

~~~
flurdy
:( 8GB rules out me.Fitting inside that with constant swap file writes will
kill the SSD quickly.

16GB is fine for now but it wont be long beofer I need to look for 32GB.
Multiple VMs, Docker clusters with several memory heavy JVM apps (Scala), too
many browser tabs, etc. just don't play nice with 8GB anymore.

A nearly $2K laptop aimed at developers with 8GB is a bit of a joke to be
honest. Shame, as otherwise it seems like such a nice piece of kit.

~~~
draven
Honest question: why run all that stuff locally? It looks like you're looking
for a portable server.

I'm working on a Macbook Pro w/ 16Gb of ram but I'm not doing anything I
couldn't do on a machine with 8 or even 4 Gb of ram (replacing Intellij w/
Emacs, as I'm planning to do anyway.)

~~~
flurdy
True, a personal development server(s) may offload my needs but remote servers
don't work well when offline a lot, or intermittently offline on my long
commute by train. Not having the full stack locally is usually very
frustrating.

Whilst I also use clients and my own aws or gke servers etc, but that is more
for staging integration testing not during development.

Oh yes I forgot the memory hog of IntelliJ, especially with Scalaz, and if
multiple projects/windows openend at once... Currently using 9GB on my mbp,
used mostly by chrome, intellij and sqlserver in a vm and without any sbt,
tomcat or docker containers running.

Sure this memory hog is down to my chosen tech stack and tools, and how I
choose to use them. But I already use multiple vagrant dev boxes and will spin
up more and more docker containers for minute tasks so I can't see my memory
needs go down.

------
endlessvoid94
Devil's advocate time!

What's to keep Dell from heavily customizing and releasing / packaging a
version of Ubuntu in the same vein that apple customized, released, packaged
nextstep as OS X? The only thing I can think of would be "talent at the
company". And I know next to nothing about the internals of dell, let alone
what they've done since being repurchased and privatized.

Kind of a fun thought, even if it's a little far fetched.

~~~
SwellJoe
Dell is historically monumentally incompetent at software. Michael Dell's own
book discusses the epic failure of a large software project they embarked on
many years ago now.

That's not to say Dell has to remain incompetent at software...with a will to
do so, and enough money and competent management (which Dell does seem to
have), they could theoretically build a top-notch software engineering
organization.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Are you referring to "Direct from Dell"? (I haven't read, but want to add
whatever book you're talking about to my reading list).

~~~
SwellJoe
Yeah, that's the one. It's been at least a decade since I read it. I didn't
find it all that good, honestly. I wouldn't push it to the top of your reading
list, anyway. It might be more of a "skim it" title.

------
dijit
the lack of a native ethernet port rules it out for any operations work that
requires working on the datacenter floor.

actually this is a frustrating trend, native ethernet adapters are 0 cost to
CPU instructions, I know you can use thunderbolt (and I've not looked at the
spec in detail) but USB ethernet controllers use the CPU when plugged in- and
I'm not a large fan of that honestly.

what happened to the very small, fold out ethernet ports? like the one on the
old XPS 15 (or:
[http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201304/sam540U3C_edge2....](http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201304/sam540U3C_edge2.jpg))

Maybe I'm too much of a power user for a 13" but for me this feels like a step
back from netbooks from a functionality and mobility standpoint, and not far
enough a leap forward for performance to justify stepping "up" from a Thinkpad
X201. (which I have loaded with an SSD and 8G ram)

but, I agree that my use-case is significantly different from most peoples.
I'm still left recalling a time where manufacturers were reluctant to stop
shipping with 56k modems- but seem to have dropped Rj45 pretty quick.

~~~
mattbeckman
Unless you need to use a crossover cable, why not just add a wireless hub to
your DC LAN? We have one at our DC, but it's only ~3 cabs worth of equipment,
so YMMV.

~~~
dijit
PCI requirement (and good security in general): never run any radio equipment
inside your datacenter.

------
jraedisch
Having a lot of ram is nice, but every time I read that people need at least
8gb for development, I ask myself what it is that they are running. I am
running chrome, sublime, docker, hbase, redis, memcached, mongodb and probably
some more stuff and I hardly swap with 4gb, or maybe I just do not realize it
because of my ssd. Am I missing some ultra useful, memory annihilating dev
tool?

~~~
kbenson
I think the usual response is virtual hosts. On Mac, run windows or linux, on
Windows, run linux, etc.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
What do you use for that? What would be the best solution in 2015?

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daddykotex
That is the kinds of machine I was looking for when I bought my MBP. I was
asking for a few things :

16GB of RAM An SSD drive An FHD display

Unfortunately, most of the products available with these features were either
similarly priced as the MBP but with clumsy trackpads reputation.

------
meritt
I'm continually shocked at the lack of options when it comes to having 16GB of
memory in a <15" laptop. As far as I know, the only options are:

MBP Chromebook Pixel System76 Galago

Anything else that even exists?

~~~
shillx
Sager NP7339 13" and Sager NP2740 14" can both be configured with 16GB. I
believe Sager is a Clevo reseller like System76.

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l-vincent-l
The main problem for me is that you won't be able to use a docking station
with this laptop since the DL-3000 Series Chips aren't supported...

------
spot
does ubuntu really handle HiDPI? i have a 4K screen at home and it is a
disaster.

~~~
PopsiclePete
Ubuntu itself may handle it, but lots of applications look terrible. Chrome is
one of them, last time I checked. Firefox had certain scaling issues as well.

Sadly, Apple is still the only game in town when it comes to automatic and
correct resolution scaling.

~~~
spot
well the kernel has no trouble :)

i would consider the file explorer nautilus to be part of ubuntu and it's
broken too.

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techaddict009
How much is the battery backup of it?

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brettbl
soooo, they give you Ubunutu instead and call it the "developer" edition?

~~~
brettbl
they used to just give you ubuntu as an option in the business class computers
to save a couple bucks

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therebase
A dell notebook? Never again.

