
My review of Dell XPS 15 as a developer laptop - p8donald
https://peteris.rocks/blog/my-dell-xps-15-review/
======
davidiach
I would encourage people to consider buying business laptops. In my experience
many developers don't even consider business laptops and only buy consumer
devices.

Business laptops have the following advantages over consumer laptops: \-
they're much more reliable \- better support \- a lot fewer problems with
drivers and other incompatibilities \- they are designed for work, which means
you will have fewer problems with things like virtualization \- generally
speaking, the keyboard and the track-pad will be better

And the good thing is that some of the disadvantages of business laptops like
size and bulkiness have also disappeared. You can now find business ultra-
books that look good and work well.

~~~
jkot
I am not sure XPS is a business laptop. For enterprise there is Latitude line,
with more ports and higher price tag.

But I am not sure the price is worth it. XPS is very good.

[http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/84/campaigns/xps-vs-
latitude...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/84/campaigns/xps-vs-latitude-slg)

~~~
arthurfm
The Dell Latitude 13 (7370) is the business version of the XPS 13 [1] [2],
although for some strange reason Dell decided to swap the Core i5 and i7
processors in the XPS for Core M5 or M7 CPUs.

[1]
[http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/latitude-13-7370-laptop/pd](http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/latitude-13-7370-laptop/pd)

[2] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell-
latitude-13-w...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell-
latitude-13-windows-laptop-ces-2016)

~~~
tonysdg
If I had to guess, it's because they're betting that for business users buying
an ultrabook-style laptop, the battery life you gain with the M-series is more
advantageous than the extra processing power.

------
JazCE
I'm glad people are doing reviews of laptops from developer perspectives.

It amazes me that it's 2016 and none of the windows based laptop makes have
come out with anything that approaches the macbook pro. Microsoft seem closest
with their surface book line, but that seems beset by driver issues, and Razer
might have something with their Blade series, but that doesn't seem to be
available in the UK 3 or 4 years on from launch. ASUS also seem close but
again beset by a few odd build quality issues.

If I knew anything at all about this kind of thing i'd be tempted to do a
kickstarter to fund the development of a quality developer laptop that was
windows/*nix based that aped the macbook pro as much as possible.

~~~
temac
A kickstarter to compete against Apple on their MBP? Yep, can confirm you
don't know anything...

~~~
JazCE
up voting for constructive feedback.

------
s_kilk
>> but the problem is that this laptop can wake up randomly and if it's in
your bag it can overheat. And there is no way to tell if it's on.

Deal-breaker, right there. I had a hard enough time with a previous
dell/ubuntu combo pulling this trick and roasting itself alive in my bag, and
I've no desire to repeat.

~~~
Jonnax
It also happens on Windows 10 on my XPS 13. I've been blaming Microsoft for it
but I'm not too sure if Dell is involved now.

~~~
radicalbyte
My MacBook does this all the time when using Parallels. That, or it hard-
crashes.

~~~
johnchristopher
I had the same problem with my trusty eeepc running debian wheezy. It got
fixed at some point though since it hasn't happened in years.

------
systemtest
Laptops in this price range should not have coil whine, electric buzzing
sounds or screen flicker. I would've returned it immediately.

I have to use a very expensive HP Z-Book for work with a power adapter that
has a loud coil whine. I've fixed it by not using the power adapter and only
plugging it in when I'm away for lunch or on the toilet.

~~~
therealmarv
yes, this is absolutely not acceptable for a real work laptop in 2016.

------
JimmyAustin
My employer previously supplied me with a Lenovo 440s, with a low res
(1440x900) display, a dual core i5, and an inability to power the 4K monitor I
had at home above 30hz, that I throughly despised. When I moved over to a new
team I got given my current rMBP, which I enjoy considerably more.

I think that moving forwards an Apple laptop is going to be a hard requirement
before I work for an organisation. It's not that other companies don't make
_good_ laptops, it's that Apple doesn't make _bad_ laptops, so I know if the
company has a policy of buying them I'm guaranteed to get something good,
instead of the POS Lenovo that the IT department bought.

~~~
ylk
You could just require your employers to spend as much on a ThinkPad as they'd
spend on your Macbook and get a much better machine, imo. I'd work with a
ThinkPad for the keyboard alone.

------
Corrado
I think this is a perfect advertisement for a MacBook (Pro). When I buy a
computer (for business) I want it to just work and continue to work for years
and years. Not having to deal with things like coil whine and screen flicker
are extremely good reasons to purchase an Apple product. I've been a Mac user
for years and I didn't even know what coil whine was and had to look it up.
Sure, Apple products have their flaws, but they generally don't force you to
deal with electronic buzzing sounds coming from the graphics drivers and the
computer frying itself on the way to work.

Building a computer to play with and learn from is great. But when you have to
get work done, it pays to get the best. Spending time fooling around with
problems that shouldn't be there in the first place is a time & money waste.

~~~
vladimir-y
It's easy to explain why MacBooks work well and have a decent battery life.
Because Apple has a very limited and predefined line of machines and in that
situation it's not a problem to polish OS to work well with a limited line of
devices.

~~~
ajosh
For what it's worth, I got an MBP from work and it's power supply has an
annoying coil whine/hum. I've looked online and it is common enough I haven't
bothered to ask for a replacement. Quality issues like that exist among all
manufacturers. Likewise with the software side. OSX still has bugs and I still
waste time working around behaviors like in Windows or Linux.

There are definitely benefits to it but there are drawbacks too.

------
rplst8
I have a 9530 model of the XPS 15 from late 2013. It's the model immediately
previous to this one (I think). It also has the coil whine problem, but only
when the charger is plugged in and the battery is at 100%. It also developed a
small screen glitch after about a year - but I can't rule out damage by myself
or someone in my house as it was stepped on, but full weight wasn't put on it.

The touchpad/clickpad/whatever drivers have been a challenge since day one.
I've learned how to customize the Windows registry settings to make it mostly
cooperate with what I want and they were mostly fixed by the time Windows 10
was released.

I've actually thought the device itself has been a pretty good performer,
battery life is not awful but not great, and mechanically it's pretty durable.
The screen is pretty amazing (I have the first slightly less than 4k IGZO
panel which I run at 1920x1080).

My biggest complaint is the lack of dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys. But
this is a problem on pretty much every laptop made with chicklet style
keyboard and it is SO STUPID.

I was considering the new XPS 15 since mine is now three years old and I have
the screen glitch, but the fact that they haven't fixed the coil whine problem
shows me they just don't care. (That said I've read that not everyone reports
this problem.)

I've generally had good luck with the Dell Latitudes though screen quality can
be a big variable from model to model and year to year. I've also looked hard
at their Precision line from time to time.

I do nearly all my programming on a desktop with a real keyboard. My biggest
gripe using a laptop for programming is the lack of the home/end/pgup/pgdn
keys and numpad on most models.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I bought this laptop too and spent literally probably 12+ hours making the
track pad work how I wanted but never got it there. Wound up returning it.
Will be buying my first MacBook instead pretty soon.

------
imafish
I own the Dell XPS 15 FHD and have experienced same issues. However, mostly I
do not notice them. Have not experienced the random wakeups.

Another issue is the crappy broadcom wifi card that shipped with it. Wifi
connection would just randomly disappear and only return after multiple
retry/reboot combinations. Replaced it with an intel card and haven't had any
problems since.

I do like the laptop but do not believe these problems should exist on a
laptop with such a high pricetag.

~~~
douche
You'd think they could build a laptop wifi card that didn't totally suck, but
I've been through a half-dozen different laptops, work and personal, over the
years, and they are all terrible.

~~~
lukeholder
I had the same problem for years until I switched to MacBooks

~~~
hbogert
Which use broadcom exclusively. Wanted to try linux on my macbook once. All
was well, except that dreaded Broadcom Wifi. Apparently broadcom gives big
middle finger when it comes to truly open source drivers. C'mon broadcom..
it's 2016.

------
jventura
As stupid as it may sound, I really dislike laptops with 16:9 screens. That is
why, together with other small things such as build quality, that I cannot
seem to find anything better than Macbooks to fit my taste..

~~~
redacted
Take a look at the Surface Book.

It's the most impressive laptop I've ever used. Great 3:2 screen, excellent
build quality, a real touchscreen (i.e., multitouch, pen support with
pressure, etc), MacBook-tier trackpad. Convertible tablet mode is far more
useful than I anticipated and is nice for showing off. The new Linux subsystem
is still a bit buggy but is very impressive (I was able to compile and run
emacs with a GUI as if I was running Ubuntu natively, for example).

~~~
masklinn
Which model/options did you select? And the machine is coming on on a year
old, are there rumors of an update/2nd generation?

Also it's still limited to 16GB RAM on the upper end right?

~~~
redacted
I have the i5 256GB/8GB model with discrete Nvidia GPU in the base (very handy
for photography / light gaming). Haven't had issues with RAM although I rarely
need to run VMs, and I have a SD adapter in the base to expand the storage for
TV and films and so on.

The top model has an i7 and 512GB/16GB (same dGPU). It was about EUR1000 more
if I recall correctly, not worth it to me.

Not sure about hardware refresh. I've seen rumours around that they might hold
off for Intel's Kaby Lake parts which would mean 2017, but who knows.

------
imron
And this is why people are wrong when they say Apple Macbooks are overpriced
and you can get the equivalent or better laptop for a cheaper price.

Yes, you can get something with the exact same hardware specs for cheaper, but
when you also consider size, weight, battery life, high-quality trackpad and
other components, there are very few products that compare - and those that do
are at the same or higher price level.

------
forgotpwtomain
I tried an XPS15 and gave it up after 2 months.

1) Constant problems with Broadcom wireles. Supposedly they employ someone to
work on Linux drivers but I never heard back from them.

2) As has been mentioned HiDpi support in Linux is not good, I ended up using
1920x1080 anyways.

3) Defects. I did not have coil buzz, but accidentally shaking the laptop too
hard (e.g. in one's bag, or tapping the bottom) would cause screen/gpu to
glitch and require a hard restart.

4) Dual video support on Linux is also quite poor. In practice running
Bumblebee gave only marginal improvements.

Compared to a MacBook Pro: build quality is worse, it is heavier, battery is
worse, wifi problems as mentioned. I would stay away from any Dell products in
the future.

~~~
cletus
Nit: the XPS15 is lighter than the 15" Retina MBP.

------
sakopov
I've gone through 2 generations of XPS laptops. The build quality has just
never been there. The casing is flimsy. The battery life degrades
significantly after 6 months. The charger cord falls out of the charger port.
They also seem to overheat and are generally noisy. However, with all of this
being said I keep coming back to XPS because, until recently, they were the
best looking windows laptops which still perform quit well. I know Lenovos are
great but they look like bricks. My current XPS 15 is literally falling apart
after 3 years of use and I'm slowly bringing myself to buy a MBP.

~~~
blitzd
You may want to look into Alienware - they tend to have a way better build
quality than the Dell machines, and you can get better bang for your buck than
typical 'workstation' builds for laptops. I'm not sure how well their smaller
form factors are, as I've always gone big - but I've used various Dell and
Lenovo 'workstation' laptops and I will be sticking with Alienware for the
foreseeable future.

Edit: Also, my use case tends to be database development, data analysis, and
virtualization.

------
yawgmoth
One of the things I look for is build quality. I picked up an HP Spectre
x360[1]. It plays rough with other laptops. I had my plastic-cased Lenovo in
the same bag - it came out with battle wounds.

In general I have found that laptops are generally 'fast enough' for the dev
I'm doing and creature comforts such as battery life, keyboard, screen, and
case quality are far more important.

[1] [http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501--
1...](http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501--1#)!

------
rebeccaskinner
I bought a thin gaming laptop last year (in my case a razer blade, but there
are several similar laptops from other manufacturers available now) and
honestly it's one of the best development laptops I've had (compared to the
Thinkpads and MBPs I've had from work). Plenty of CPU and memory, and a nice
screen, and I find that the keyboards on gaming laptops are more comfortable
than a lot of other laptops these days).

~~~
Scea91
Agreed. For my use I don't need particularly light laptop, or long battery
life so I choose gaming laptops too. Simply, because they are packed with the
most powerful hardware.

This is my favorite right now: [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-G501VW-
FY081T-Notebook-Rev...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-G501VW-
FY081T-Notebook-Review.163403.0.html) Sadly, the last time I checked it didn't
sell in my country.

------
pavanky
If people here are interested in Linux and are not convinced about the Dell
XPS developer model, check out their precision models:

[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)

I am using a previous generation model (Precision M3800) and am quite happy
with it so far. I get ~4 hours of battery on Linux. This includes a lot of
browsing, watching a few videos. I also have the ability to get a higher
capacity battery (from 60Whr to 90Whr) in the future. It is also quite easy to
take apart and upgrade any internals you want.

------
conwaytwitty
I use mine with linux (Ubuntu Mate + xmonad) and so far I like it (as a
disclaimer, the company bought it, not me personally).

What I did so far:

    
    
      - updated all the firmware to the latest (thunderbolt has a separate firmware)
      - bumblebee automatically disables the nvidia gpu on startup (i don't need the extra power or power draw)
    

I run in 1080p on the 4k screen, which is kind of sad, but the hidpi support
just isn't there yet. Gnome3+ might have better support but can't replace the
WM for xmonad in those variants.

I used to have the first XPS13 model with linux support officially from dell
and this laptop is just as good and even better due to better hardware.
Slightly larger and heavier but not an issue for me.

Palm detection support is ass and might have to look into it more as it's
driving me crazy. There is also some firmware bug where the screen won't start
after sleep.

With proper hidpi support and remaining firmware fixes from dell this will be
a nice laptop even with linux.

~~~
levesque
That's my main issue with Linux, hardware support is always a couple of years
behind. Although at some point it catches up and probably surpasses Windows (I
can't stand using my touchpad with the official ASUS drivers), this limbo
period with less than stellar support is a PITA.

It sucks that you have to carry around the extra weight of an NVidia GPU
that's never used though.

------
kiwee
XPS15 is not a good choice for developer. I went with a Precision 7510, which
is more massive, but better in a lot of aspects.

------
bgamari
If you are considering the XPS 15, you might also look at the E7470. I have
been using one of these as my primary machine for several months now and have
been quite impressed. The high-DPI display is fantastic, it's built like a
tank, and I've had no compatibility issues whatsoever after a firmware
upgrade. Moreover, it runs at a reasonable temperature and I can get 7 hours
out of the battery if careful (`killall -STOP firefox` is a must,
unfortunately).

The only minor annoyance was the lack of driver support for the Alps touchpad
hardware. Thankfully, after poking and prodding enough people I was able to
get specifications and implement driver support. I do wish that Dell, et al
would be more proactive in pushing their vendors to merge driver support but
oh well.

All-in-all, I'm very pleased with the machine.

------
hbogert
I felt horrible when I bought a macbook air 4 years ago. "What have i done, I
sold out, I should've bought a lenovo and put linux on it -- which all the
hackers do as well."

FFWD to today, I have a quiet laptop. Doesn't flicker on white background when
dimmed 30%. Doesn't squeak anywhere. Doesn't wake up randomly. The keyboard is
fine. Is easy to open. Fans are not spinning when charging. No coil whine,
this shit still happens? Only thing in four years that broke was the battery.
Bought a new one for €40.

Thanks for sharing the experience though, seems like I still have to stick to
Apple for a while for my mobile computing. Unfortunately it comes with this
horrible window manager and dumbed down desktop. That said, the cons list of
the XPS15 is more than enough reason to cope with OSX.

~~~
vladimir-y
Have you tried to put Linux on your macbook?

~~~
hbogert
Well yes, and failed because of one thing. The irritating broadcom wifi. I
tried it on a Windows laptop as well recently. Not a great time with secure
boot with bios/UEFI which do not have support for different OSs as a usecase

------
CommanderData
I've considered buying a Yoga 710, its borderline Mac with a screen small but
big enough for my Web dev / GUI work. Marketed as a premium ultrabook - It had
all the necessary specs, very light, backlit keyboard, great screen, gpu and
battery life.

But it failed at future-proofing, no USB Type C connector. At the price range
£750-800 I would expect a premium laptop to have one. Seeing cheaper sub £500
laptops are equip with them.

I plug into Ethernet and need to expand at work, but this is where it stopped
for me.

I've had two past terrible experiences with Dell so I beg myself not to make
the same mistake when I see something irresistible or too good to be true.
Still searching for good dev machine. I may wait a while until Lenovo
announces their new line up for 7th Gen Intel but that could be nearer to
2017.

------
goombastic
Been in the market looking for a good replacement to my old thinkpad, but I
don't know if people have noticed, most laptops today cannot be upgraded for
RAM and in some cases even the HDD/SSD and batteries are soldered on to the
board. Add to it, keyboards seem to come down a few notches in terms of
quality.

So, earlier my laptops have typically been with me for nearly 6 years each,
these days, with the constant upgrades it feels like Iam buying a mobile phone
that is sealed shut and demands an upgrade every 2 years. I've now stopped
updating OSes as a result of the slowdowns I see everytime I upgrade the OS.

------
radicalbyte
For the love of everything that is good, if you buy this laptop, go for the 4k
screen. It's beautiful.

It's a big laptop, you'll use it on a desk, so the battery life is fine.

I use my XPS 9550 for work and carry around a MBP13 for email / reading /
surfing.

The biggest problem with the 9550 by far is the keyboard. The MBP keyboard is
amazing in comparison. However it is a laptop keyboard, I have yet to
encounter a good one (old Thinkpads come the closest). Just buy a decent
mechanical keyboard and plug it in.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
The Dell XPS laptops have a reputation for being good to use with Linux, but I
read somewhere else that Linux doesn't handle 4K very well yet. Apparently,
the UI elements look tiny because they don't scale. Any chance you've tried
it, and can comment?

~~~
ytjohn
I can confirm. Linux on HiDPI still has a lot of scaling issues that OSX and
Windows does not - OSX is far superior here when it comes to handling their
"retina" display.

On my 1440p 23" desktop, things seem to render just fine. On my 11" lenovo
helix and on my 15" macbook pro (while running linux), it's definitely
noticeable.

I mainly use either Gnome or MATE desktop on Ubuntu. MATE seems to handle
scaling the desktop elements better than straight Gnome. But it's still a bit
off.

The worst part is browsing the web. Firefox has relatively decent HiDPI
support these days, but Chrome on Linux is just terrible. A site like Facebook
on Chrome shows the newsfeed as this 3" wide centered column, and you have
massive white space on the left and right of it. But reboot into Windows and
they make that column much wider and easier to read. On imgur on chrome/linux,
I find most of the images are "too tall". If I'm watching an animated gif, I
find that one edge is vertically outside of my viewport.

Your only fixes is to change the scaling. As you do this, you start to lose
the advantages of the higher resolution:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911509/how-to-make-linuxs-
de...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911509/how-to-make-linuxs-desktop-look-
good-on-high-resolution-displays.html)

Ultimately, things are still usable, video playback is fantastic, but most of
the applications really need to improve their Ux on high resolution screens
under Linux.

------
meddlepal
Slightly off-topic:

Do people really notice coil whine that much? When I built my PC last year
with a 970 GTX every review I read mentioned the horrible coil whine. I don't
notice it at all. I also helped build my roommates computer with the same 970
GTX and I didn't notice the coil whine at all on that one either. It's
possible that both those cards were "lucky" but it seems like literally every
single 970 GTX review mentioned coil whine and I have yet to notice it.

~~~
rayiner
It'd be a deal breaker to me. It's one thing to have it on a desktop machine
that sits under your desk and probably has a fan going at all times. Very
different to have it in a laptop that you're using a few feet from your head
and where the fan doesn't run unless under load. I had a Dell with coil whine,
and if I was using it in the library or at home that was all I could hear.

~~~
nibnib
Is it possible to dope the coil with something to damp out the whining? I have
an old Lenovo that has this, and the noise seems to vary depending on what's
onscreen. It can be very annoying.

~~~
Gracana
Manufacturers often apply some goopy glue on top of inductors to damp out some
of the noise, like this:
[http://i.stack.imgur.com/144ui.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/144ui.png)

~~~
nibnib
Yeah, I've done this myself when building switching power supplies. I guess
there's no reason not to tray silicone or nail varnish on noise graphics
cards.

------
saint-loup
This laptop model have sometimes problems with sleep/wake but your mileage may
vary, widely. I had to return mine because it wouldn't wake from deep sleep on
battery, sometimes even after trying a hard reset. No problem with the second
unit I got.

I confirm there's sometimes a slight squeak when I press the left of the
spacebar but it's hardly a dealbreaker.

So overall I'm very happy with it: gorgeous 4k screen, reasonably powerful
dedicated GPU, firm keyboard with enough key travel.

------
rukenshia
I'm really happy with my Dell XPS 13 (9350). I'm running arch linux on it with
herbstluftwm as my window manager. There are some problems with waking up my
screen sometimes (I still haven't figured out why, though) sometimes but most
of the time everything works fine and I would definitely buy it again. I
replaced the broadcom wifi chip with a Intel one (I'd have to look up which
chip I ended up using). That was definitely worth it.

------
edtechdev
I got Dell XPS 13 a year and a half ago that had similar problems. Also a
problem with the audio jack - buzzing noise whenever you plugged in
headphones. I mainly use Ubuntu, but the problems were on Windows, too. I
returned it and got a Lenovo Yoga Thinkpad 14 which has been great, except I
broke the headphone jack on it somehow (not laptop's fault).

------
therealmarv
I know this Dell XPS laptops... their black surface on and around the keyboard
and mousepad will look very greasy over time. Maybe it's a problem on every
black surface laptop. On first sight macs don't look like this (although they
can be greasy too... but you don't see it immediately).

------
kyriakos
\- no home/end keys \- tiny arrow keys

These two points are enough for me to immediately dismiss a laptop. Especially
the home / end keys are vital when writing code (for me at least)

~~~
conwaytwitty
Dell actually has the fn modifier which works with the arrow keys to create
pgup/dn and home/end.

------
wepple
I really wanted this to be a shining review. I've been looking for a daily use
linux laptop and the XPS15 was at the top of my list. Sad.

~~~
therealmarv
have a look on Lenovo X260 and below. I've read in some articles that some
Kernel developers are using this kind of laptop series for their work. Best
battery life I've seen on a Linux laptop so far (over 8h, X220 experience).

~~~
wepple
awesome, I'm going to take a look at that, thanks.

------
lkiux
Sigh... another big hope of mine. I have a Carbon X1 (3rd gen), thankfully a
company laptop.

I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move
over the XPS line.

We got the HD display with touch screen. Although it's a decent display,
there's substantial glare. In fact, scrub the useless touch and get the matte,
which also boosts the brightness a little bit. Not to mention, the laptop is
so light that attempting to touch the display will just flip the laptop. This
is my first "not antiglade" display since the CRT era, and I regret it a lot.

After several months of usage, the display developed several uneven
backlighting issues (some spots are quite bright), and I noticed the black is
not as black anymore compared to an unused one (we have 24 of them with
several to spare). We moved from the HP EliteBook series (which also has their
issues), and while the contrast is much better than any elitebook I've used,
we never had uneven backlighting with HP.

The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how
important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the
awful placement of the Home/End keys. No squeaking and decent feedback. But
the small keys such as the arrow keys work very poorly. The rubber dome behind
them is so small that if you don't press the key with some little extra force
it will "pop" but not activate. In particular, this is especially bad for the
up arrow, which of the 24 laptops we have was horrifying. If you use bash,
remember the up arrow is "recall history". The problem is that the key is
slightly slated (for "ergonomics"), causing the dome to be pressed unevenly. I
fixed mine by some careful placement of scotch, but it's still not the same
accuracy of other keys.

The trackpad is awful for some reason. HP was much better here. No amount of
tweaking would allow me to perform fine movements.

Battery life is the same on both linux and windows (around 7 hours new for
random workload), so no complaints here. Power management works. But, the HP
EliteBook G4 we where using before has a super-easy replaceable battery, and
we changed _many_ over the years. The G4 is around 6 hours of battery runtime.
Not much difference honestly. Not to mention the G4 is very easily
serviceable.

On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The
"old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the image
especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the point
that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with intel, and
unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.

Overall, the display is still a bit better than whan HP offers, but the rest
is worse. The laptop is a bit thinner and lighter, but honestly there's not
much difference here. The appreciated the serviceability of the HP line as
components started to fail. Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not
much you can swap without replacing the entire laptop.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move
> over the XPS line.

I've had much worse luck (see my post elsewhere in this thread) when trying an
XPS, in the end I ended up getting a new Thinkpad (I don't think they are
great but they definitely seem to be more consistent).

> The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how
> important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the
> awful placement of the Home/End keys.

I found that the keyboards actually got worse from gen1 to gen3 (the plastic
feels cheaper, more flimsy) -- I'm really unclear why companies make
$1500-2000 laptops and than save $10-15 on the keyboards ( Apple is the only
company that doesn't seem to fuck up like this ). I will say I do greatly
prefer the thinkpad trackpad buttons to tapping and that's something that
always bothered me on a MBP as well.

> Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not much you can swap without
> replacing the entire laptop.

The T460S is better at this (you can swap the Ram / SSD) - on the minus side I
think the screen quality is slightly worse.

> On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The
> "old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the
> image especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the
> point that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with
> intel, and unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.

Which kernel are you running? I'm running 4.6.4 and I think it should be fixed
in 4.6.X.

~~~
lkiux
I'm also running 4.6.4 (arch). This particular issue was incredibly bad when
we got the first models (tearing at the mouse position) and progressively
improved, but it's still not fixed.

Note that the modesetting drivers also incur in several performance hits
compared to the regular xorg-video-intel. For instance, I can see libreoffice
dialogs REPAINT, while inkscape works at 1/4 of the refresh speed.

This is not lenovo specific though. Intel drivers typically lag 1-2 years
behind current models at the time you can consider them "bug free enough".
This was true for any laptop I've been using the last 10 years.

I cannot fathom how broken the skylake driver is right now.

------
kiwee
XPS15 is not a good choice for developer. I went with a Precision 7510, which
is more massive, but better in a lot of aspects.

