I regret buying a maxed out XPS 13 a year and a half ago.
My list of problems:
* Coil whine
* Noisy fans
* Heat issues
* USB-C port has a bad pin (only works in one orientation with pressure)
* Charging port inconsistently charges
* Bad cell in the battery, so it suddenly shuts off without warning when on battery
The charging issues started just around the 12 month mark, so I quickly sent to a repair center under warranty. They returned it with a note that said "mainboard replaced", but nothing had actually been replaced. Same bad pin on the USB-C port (everything I plug into it only works "upside down", and that port is part of the mainboard), same dust in the ports as when I mailed it, etc. By the time they shipped it back, the warranty had expired.
If you're going to buy one of these, I recommend buying an extended warranty. I do also recommend the touchscreen. I've heard the i5 versions have less problems, I would probably take the performance hit next time if it meant a more reliable and longer-lasting machine.
Dan, I apologize for your experience. If you ever run into something like this again, besides contacting support directly, you can ping @dellcarespro on twitter and, if its related to the developer edition or project Sputnik you can loop me in @barton808. thanks!
So you're on the team? Here's a perspective from a potential buyer. Apple having truly jumped the shark on their MB Pros, I've been mulling on and off about what to do when it's time to replace my current 13" MBP. An XPS 13 or 15 w/Ubuntu is definitely on my radar. But I am a bit scared off by reliability & quality reports. They're only anecdotal & biased samples of course, but there's not much else for a poor consumer to go on.
It might be worth your team's while addressing these perceptions in some way. I don't know what to suggest (your job not mine!) other than chiming in now and then in places like HN, but it might merit some thought on your part.
One thing that reduces consumer risk when buying Apple is their genuinely frictionless returns policy. It really is feasible to buy if you're unsure & just return within a couple of weeks, no questions asked. I haven't looked, but imagine Dell's terms are similar. If so, this might be worth highlighting.
There are 3 in my family, a 9350 and two 9360s. All work fine. I represent the majority of people who have no reason to write anything about their computers because there's nothing to say.
Accepted (apart from the unsubstantiated claim about representing the majority). To quote myself, these perceptions are only based on "anecdotal & biased samples".
The problem is that a lack of accurate & reliable information can be a great incubator of unsubstantiated perceptions. I'm just suggesting that if the Dell team believe the XPS's not to have reliability problems, it's in their interests to come up with tactics to manage perceptions where possible. It's in our interests really, as we all would want a wide range of good developer-friendly laptops available.
The only thing that bothered me was adaptive brightness (CABC) that was fixed in my case with an unofficial panel firmware at some risk to brick the device. Coil whine is perceptable only if I keep ear close to the keyboard. No other problems.
If there is someone from Dell here: please fix CABC! Unofficial patch proves that it can be done. It's especially important for linux devs who switch between dark terminal windows and browser: CABC increases backlight brightness if contents of screen are light, and decreases if it's dark. So, I switch from terminal to browser, brightness jump is already unpleasant as is, but then CABC kicks in, increases brightness and burns out eyes. Switch back to terminal -- too dark, difficult to see anything. How it's even supposed to work... Another unpleasant thing happens when CABC starts to adjust brighness back and forth while I edit code, it's highly annoing when it happens.
Edit: There were also a problems with Atheros WiFi, but new firmware from Atheros's github fixes them completely for me. Works stable since June 2017.
Adaptive brightness is a Windows setting you can change in the Power Options control panel. Click 'Change plan settings' next to your chosen power plan, click 'Change advanced settings', click 'Display', click 'Enable adaptive brightness' and change it to off.
I don't have windows installed, but it's highly unlikely that it'll help. This feature is baked into panel firmware, and while Dell releases firmware updates for some models, there is no official fix for 9360 FHD. For models with the fix there are two versions of firmware: with CABC support and without. Switching requires firmware reflash with a special vendor tool. So it's unlikely that there is a dynamic setting to switch it off.
Oh. The setting works in Windows on my XPS 13, but I have the 3200x1800 display. I disabled adaptive brightness the day I bought it, because it annoyed me for the same reasons.
> Restocking Fees: Unless the product is defective or the return is a direct result of a Dell error, Dell may charge a restocking fee of up to 15% of the purchase price paid, plus any applicable sales tax.
I bought a Dell XPS 9550 with terrible coil whine from the Microsoft Store about two years ago. Thinking I was just unlucky, I did an exchange (MS Store) to a different unit. This one had no coil whine, but would not wake up from sleep about half the time.
If you think Apple has fallen in terms of quality, you have no idea how low they would have to fall to match Dell's.
It just seems like consumers don't care that the MacBook design is hostile to connectivity (my biggest issue) or developers in general. They're used to it from Apple, and want the latest and greatest regardless. Apple is honing in on that market, like it or not.
I disagree with the last part of this sentence. I know a lot of developers, the vast majority of whom have preferred Apple laptops for years, and very few of whom develop in Objective-C and Swift.
I agree with a lot of other commenters that Apple are becoming more and more complacent and arrogant about the developer part of their customer base, which I think is larger than perhaps they realise.
I don't see how choice of programming platform & language has much to do with the need for real keyboards, function keys, ports, etc. Nor is it true that most developers using macbooks are only or even primarily 'Objective-C and Swift developers').
It is true, however that those developers I know who have a choice (ie. because they don't have a huge professional investment in Apple's platforms) are seeking alternatives to macbooks for their next replacement machines.
If you are going Dell I think the best bet is to try the Precision 5000 series (pretty equal to XPS 15) and 7000 series (heavier and bulkier but you can really spec these things out). I have an XPS 15 (9550) and I really cannot recommend them. Lots of problems.
At least the Precision line is the buisness line which means better support, preinstalled with Linux (so its tested well) and probably from what I have read better tested/built due to being a business line. I like supporting Dell on this venture b/c they are sticking thier neck out a little by even supporting/preinstalling Linux as a big name OEM provider.
The Lenovos are great too, but I wish they would officially support Linux and offer Linux preinstalled as an option so you don't have to pay for Windows.
Both the Precision 5510 and the M3800 I used to have, had issues with the battery swelling. The M3800 was a piece of junk - pretty much what I'd expect when a company that makes $300 laptops uses the same design team to make a $3000 laptop. The 5510 felt much better, but the screen has a bit of discoloration at some of the edges, and while the keyboard is great, the trackpad isn't that good. The speakers are hilariously bad.
The 5510 is a lot more rigid than the 3800 was, but it still isn't rigid enough. I could carry my personal 15" macbook pro all day with one hand while still being able to click the trackpad down. With that 5510, the chassis flexes too much for the trackpad to click when you hold it from one side. And don't get me started about the cheesy chargers Dell uses.
The 5510 was worlds better, I'll admit - and it does a decent enough job running Ubuntu! There's enough to like about the laptop, but not necessarily at the price they charge.
My work laptop is an M3800, though the newer one is the 5510. Pretty solid machines in my experience. We did after market upgrades to some very fast SSD (sorry don't remember which).
That said- I'm staying with the m3800 as long as I can. It's a few years old and my battery needs replacing, but otherwise is very capable. Some people have had docking issues on and off with the 5510 (occasional crashing, though I think it's a driver/software issue), but more importantly it has the awful "Nostril Cam" which is annoying for video meetings.
In general, fast, light, good battery (for perspective, mine lasts 2-3 hours now, vs 5-7 when I got it), useful ports. The keyboard is not the best (home/end/pgup/pgdn keys are fn+arrow instead of dedicated) but very usable. I hated the glossy screen at first, but touchscreen is surprisingly useful and I got past it. I just keep a microfiber cloth in my laptop bag now.
yeah "up the nose" cam is one of the more annoying features of these Dells :( Also the non-dedicated pgup/dwn/home/end is another annoyance - I guess I got use to it after a while
Thanks, I won't be actively looking for 6 months or so. I'm just keeping an eye on what's available. Precisions are prohibitively expensive here (Aus) -- starting at about AUD$6000! Thinkpads raise a nostalgic smile. My little x40 with dock was probably my favourite ever machine.
I'll say that I wanted to like Dell because they seemed to be focused on delivering quality Linux laptops. However, I will never buy a Dell again. The support is absolutely abysmal. I had a 5510 that I ended up selling for a significant loss about 6 months after buying it because Dell kept "fixing" what I had, sending me back the wrong machine, etc. Total waste of time and money. Buyer beware on quality and support - what's represented in forum after forum is true. Here was my post from a while ago:
I now own a Lenovo T470 and it's been without a hitch since receipt and running Linux. Hopefully the new XPS 13 isn't the 7th generation Fiero that many of us assume it will be.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Lenovo ThinkPad support absolutely blows, too. I had next biz day support and a battery in my T460s died. It took two weeks of calls and emails and tweeting to find out that the replacement battery was backordered. Weeks later, I got a replacement laptop, a P50 that I had to pay extra for. Fuck Lenovo support.
Would you follow up on the issue he had if he provided you with the order details and repair communication? There should be a good chance of there being a paper trail to follow and a mismatch between communication to customer and repair hardware actually used, no?
I can personally speak to the fact that Barton means what he says. When Sputnik first came out in Beta, I bought a developer edition that had some keyboard issues. I dropped a casual note on Twitter and Barton went out of his way to make sure the issue got resolved.
I keep contemplating a full transition to Ubuntu as my work machine, but there are still certain environment impacts (like connected devices and the need to run some Mac-only software on occasion) that has prevented it.
But if I could convince myself to take the dive and go Linux-only, I wouldn't hesitate to run with the XPS line.
Disclaimer: Absolutely none other than Barton is a great guy who helped a random stranger that once complained on Twitter.
Yeah, that's what I did with my M5; I got the 16GB (2x 8) version, and then took another 2x 8GB from my old laptop too.
The thing is, I'm having trouble finding a worthy replacement (this is years old now and is dying; the left hinge is on the way out, the keyboard doesn't work properly (and it's the second keyboard this laptop has had), and the power jack is ... temperamental, but that's another story).
This laptop can hold up to 4 SO-DIMMs (8GB each), 2x 2.5" HDDs, 2x M.2 2242/2280 SSDs, has 4 USB 3.0 ports (one of which is also an eSATAp port), 2 DisplayPorts, an HDMI port, a SIM card slot, SD card reader, gigabit wired Ethernet, 3 audio jacks (headphones/microphone/line-out), a Core i7-4720HQ and a 15.6" 1080p IPS matte display. It also has a GeForce GTX965M but I don't use that (it's always powered off).
I'm in the United Kingdom, and I'm having difficulty finding something that can even come close to that, without going back to Eurocom (which I may end up doing). The most important aspect to me is the large memory support (I can barely get by with 16GB for all the development work I do, so 32GB is really nice) and storage (both HDDs are in a RAID-1 for /home, and both SSDs are in a RAID-1 for / -- which was handy, because one of the SSDs failed a few months ago, and I didn't have to do anything). Avoiding the Microsoft Tax would also be a bonus.
To compare to the laptop this thread is about: I only see an option for 1 drive instead of 4 and it doesn't even go to 1TB, there's no wired Ethernet and no HDMI/DisplayPort connectivity.
The only reason I'm hesitant to go with Eurocom again is their long lead time & shipping charges (they're in North America), and their laptop keyboards don't seem to last...
Maybe look into a Clevo machine.
For example, the Clevo P775 has 2xM2 2x2.5" slots, similar connectors (missing sim card) and supports up to 64GB of RAM (4 slots). There are other options as well.
I bought a Precision 5520 with Ubuntu pre-installed one year ago and it is still one of the best laptops I've ever purchased. My previous three were Thinkpads with the latest being an x230. The quality of the X series has really been in decline and x230 was the last straw for me (keyboard warping).
I've always heard about coil whine but maybe I just can't hear it (I'm 43). As long as the Linux support remains strong I will keep buying the Precision line.
The reports of coil whine are really the only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger on an XPS 13. Played with one in an MS store, love the hardware, and I'm ready to go back to Linux.
I bought an XPS 15, also maxed out, years ago and regretted it also. I had all the power problems you mention, except the random shutoffs.
The machine was not really usable for professional work.
I now have a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th gen. It has no major issues and works reliably, even with Linux as the primary OS. Granted, it was more expensive, but well worth the purchase price.
Having experienced a lot of laptop over the years, higher end Thinkpad models are the most reliable. It's disappointing to hear even expensive XPS models are experiencing them same coil whine and battery issues my old Dell laptop had years ago.
Thinkpad also appears to use long lasting batteries that hold charge well. I've had 2 think pads, each 6+ years. They still hold battery for hours and hours.
The XPS 13 would've been my top choice if Dell were interested in taking my money, but they're only willing to sell me one with 16GB of RAM if it also has a pro-glare display. I bought an XPS 15, which came with major backlight bleed. After field circus scheduled an appointment to replace the display the next day and didn't show, I returned it.
I paid $500 less for my X1C5, bought during the Black Friday sale. It doesn't have a dGPU (that I didn't want anyhow); but does have a WQHD display, WWAN, and a 1 TB Samsung SSD instead of a 512 GB Toshiba. No issues with Linux or OpenBSD, and the keyboard is better than both the current XPS 15/Precision 5520 and my 2013 rMBP 13". (Let's not even think about how hard the current MBPs suck.)
I'm totally on the same boat! Failed XPS 15 9550 and migrated to ThinkPad X1 5th gen. Now perfectly happy with the latter.
The XPS had failed with ridiculous reason, I try to access the BIOS/UEFI with some key while boot up. After some tries, the machine never boot again. It founds that by pushing F8 in the wrong timing/combination while booting can cause the machine to brick forever. This is beyond the expectation of how any computer should work !
Counterpoint, I have an older 9343, FHD, Broadwell-gen XPS 13.
I bought it used, from the outlet, on a lark. This was the consumer version, not even dev.
The damn thing's been the laptop equivalent of a Kabar knife. Deleted the Windows install and tossed Ubuntu on there. Then drops, generally rough treatment, and it's still running happily. No coil whine at all.
The only complaints I have were that the SSD was the Samsung model with serious degradation issues (solved via replacement), and the mouse was finicky until some patched drivers made it upstream.
I feel like quality control issues are a fact of life nowadays. (Aside from LG, because seriously, #&@$ that company for the 5x bootloop handling)
It existed on my HSW XPS 13 developer edition, and this "non-developer edition" KBL XPS 13 I just purchased.
I can totally sympathize with problems like this that surface, but I have no sympathy for a company that seems to ignore this issue for several generations. My next development laptop will probably not be an XPS, and will probably not be a Dell.
I got a new XPS 13 9360 at work 3 months ago. I was afraid how bad the coil whine will be, since that was the most common complaint I found on the web about this laptop.
I can't hear any coil whine. Maybe my hearing isn't what it used to be or our office isn't that quiet, but the only thing I hear from this laptop is the fan when it's running at full speed (and that comes up very rarely in my experience so far).
I bought XPS 15 9550 two years ago, maxed out with specs, and totally regret paying extra for touch screen and the hi-def screen, what a waste of money.
the screen cannot be folded backward so touch screen cannot be used as tablet and thus wasting my money
hi-def screen is is useless on 15" display
other than that, my laptop is working fine with no HW issues
Re. touchscreen: The problem with them is how glossy they are. If I could get a touchscreen that doesn't reflect everything under the sun maybe I could work outside...
Mine from two years ago is still sitting broken (unable to charge). It went through so many warrenty repairs, it was completely unreliable it's entire life. Each repair just bought a few months before a different failure.
An extended warranty would not have helped in my case. That would have just extend the pain.
I'm writing this on a XPS 13 and my list of problems is similar.
- Coil whine
- noisy fans
- Computer doesn't shut down(or go to sleep) about 50% of the time. The screen turns off, but the fan stays on and the only way to wake it up again is to hold the power button down. Apparently it's a common issue with them and there's loads of threads about it on the internet with no solution anywhere.
I have only great stories about Dell Laptops with the bullet-proof extended warranties. But I have those stories because I've needed the extended warranty. Is the computer still worth it for $200+ more? Mine was.
The USB C XPS13 models don't support dual MHL monitors, something which older models apparently did (and why I figured it was a safe purchase). Intel is taking a surprisingly long time to implement the necessary Thunderbolt support. Not Dell's fault, but they could at least prod the folks in Santa Clara.
I don't need the touchscreen, but it's the only way to get 16GB of RAM in the US. Really, Dell, this is totally your doing. Same with that coil whine. I thought you had sorted that out after the Latitude I bought fifteen years ago.
I have Dell XPS 13 9350 (Full HD). The computer randomly wakes up from sleep and drains the battery. And sometimes it wakes up in airplane mode. I haven't been able to solve it no matter what. Updated all drivers including BIOS, tried all the solutions people suggested online, formatted Windows, changed wifi card. Problem still continues... Also the battery life is nowhere near what they advertised. Other than that I am satisfied but this issues are so annoying that I want to change it as soon as possible.
I've bought XPS 13 around the same time also maxed out everything and can relate to 90% of your issues. I've also had firmware updates that rendered the laptop completely inoperable (a technician needed to replaced the board).
Unfortunately the level of service also dropped significantly. When I bought XPS 12 6 years ago it was stellar making me a loyal customer but now... some things can be blamed on Intel (broken Thunderbolt, and the TB15 fiasco) but not all...
Thank you. I was really tempted to buy one since people on HN have been saying good things about it. I also had heat issues on a dell laptop years ago, sad to see it's still not fixed.
I have precision 5510, the main problem is random shutoffs, I suspect it caused by the overheating of ssd, my laptop hae 1T ssd, and several shutoffs occurs when I copying large number of files(e.g. more than 100GB), but I can't reproduce this when I perform the copy test.
I got an XPS 15 at about the same time. I've always had similar issues, especially with heat. Let me add 2 more:
* Upgrading from win 8.1 to win 10 causes frequent bluescreens unless speedstep is disabled, which leads to massive heat issues. There havn't been any driver updates since, so Dell seem to have no interest in fixing this.
* Random electric shocks where my arms touch the front of the unit while typing. Happens whether plugged in or not. Super annoying.
Overall I honestly can't recommend these. Reasonably good specs and sleek design but flaky construction and too many issues to be worth it. I'll probably get an HP next.
I mean, who uses touch screens for development? I can't really imagine a scenario where it would be helpful for me. Maybe when doing work in Illustrator and Photoshop, but I usually use a different machine for that anyhow, because of Adobe's lack of Linux support.
I don't want to pay for something I won't use.
I am otherwise actively looking for a laptop.
System76 does not have European keyboard layouts, otherwise I would go with them.
Windows touch devices are a device type we target.
Typically testing using Chrome on Windows using a touch screen gives you a reasonable frame of reference for how iOS and Android behave since all are WebKit-like (at least until fine tuning, when you're of course testing on real devices).
seems to me that a touch screen laptop is a real touch device with browsers emitting (afaik) the same real touch events. as such it would seem to be better for tuning behavior compared to a laptop without real touch events. (of course it's best to have actual devices around for testing.)
I have previous generation XPS 13 Developer Edition with hi-res touch screen. I chose the touch screen mainly because of the high resolution it provides however while using it I realized that touch screen can be quite useful sometimes. My best use case is reading long documents while commuting by train with the laptop in my lap. I find swiping with my thumb much more convenient than scrolling or pressing up/down keys. Not that it is a killer feature but still nice to have.
I can understand the OP's thinking, although I have Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro.
With my laptop in my lap, I typically have to be leaning back to comfortably use the keyboard. Sitting up or slightly leaning forward, it's more comfortable to grasp and scroll with the screen itself, maybe bent a little further back than typical usage. It's a more comfortable resting position.
Although sometimes I just flip my yoga into a tablet and that's just swell
Many times touch is more convenient than the trackpad especially when I am feeling lazy. I am reading this thread on a Y2P, lying on my side, laptop on the bed, one hand supporting my head and the other scrolling the page on the screen. Much easier than any other method.
when in tight vehicles (or even lying on a bed/couch), the spacebar is highly inconvenient (and often requires changing your grip of the laptop). I have used pg up and pg dn on laptop keyboards that put them in their proper place (top right by hinge). I agree with parent that touch screen is particularly nice for this (and I also never thought I'd appreciate it)
> harsh context break for me. There's no continuity like a book
more than a page turn?
I find the continual swiping distracting. And it's a much more complex motion (akin to a page turn) and must be done more frequently than paing. A tap of the space bar is about the simplest motion, and (except in cases of bad page design) gives a clean "start at top for next page" rather than trying to figure out where on the screen your next line is.
Touch screen is a big con for me. I've had an xps 13 for a brief time one year ago. It was the QHD model, I wanted the resolution. Well, the screen isn't bright enough and there is too much glare, almost like a mirror. It drains the battery faster, even if you disable the touch sensor. Although the colors were nice, white areas would look dirty, like there was some grayish pattern, probably the sensor grid. All this just drove my OCD crazy and I sold it.
Agreed, I had the 2015 model for personal use and bought the 2016 model for work: I got the QHD screen on the latter, and while I appreciate the screen quality, I really don't think it's worth it.
Beautiful machine. Whilst my primary is now a 6 core/32gb desktop, my laptop is the OG X1 Carbon from 2011. I was waiting for the initial release and might have been the first to order it in Australia. It is still looking great today (chassis looks as if it could be just a few weeks old, true I've looked after it but it's also just that solid/high quality panels), although the new is of course hugely improved.
Their i7 only had 4GB of memory, so I got the i5 version with 8. Unfortunately - or actually, fortunately - there was a bulge in the chassis that tech couldn't get out so ended up returning the unit, and by that time the i7/8/256 was just around the corner so arranged for that to be the replacement.
Unit still works today, and I'm very glad I got the i7 CPU now. Much snappier than the i5, even though battery life took a big hit. On top of that, battery is worn out. I am probably going to look for another replacement battery soon, and am keen on a 2018 upgrade, but anyway for short development stints including Docker it is great. Keyboard is top of the class, so is the track pointer (which I love).
The upcoming 2018 version (8th Gen Intels) is expected to have 4/8c which will be fantastic. Sadly only 16gb memory, but Docker has kind of shifted my requirements there vs Virtualbox. (Perhaps I'll wait for a version where Intel has sorted their Meltdown issue.)
I'll be honest, I'm still confused why the European 16GB non-touch xps13 configuration doesn't work for you...
Edit: ohhhh! You want non-touch but 4k. Now I see! But if it's paying for unwanted touch functionality vs a US keyboard layout (not to mention the vastly inferior design and size) then I know what I'm picking.
I just mention System76 because they have exactly what I want, but I have no way of being able to use it. I'm kind of bitter about it.
But yeah I'm getting sold more and more on the touch screen, honestly. I think gestures and such have the potential to be neat, and could optimize my workflow.
Being able to move and resize windowed stuff in i3, something I have bound to mouse keys at the moment, would be really neat with a touch screen. Makes the desktop seem tactile and real.
It is a pain to move them with key presses, so I usually move my hand to the mouse anyhow.
Gestures, like some tap or something to move a window out of the scratchpad, and back to tiling mode or whatever. Neat.
Though the keyboard combination I use now would probably be faster.
In addition, as Someone1234 pointed out, native touch events would be really nice to have when doing web dev. I for one constantly use the Chrome mobile emulator. Native would be better.
I'm glad the Dutch never widely adopted a different keyboard layout. Vowels with diacritics and the € are entered using a software method (dead keys, compose key, etc.) on a standard US keyboard layout.
I agree with you on System76 though. I am in the process of being a Galago Pro, but I really wish they'd open up or partner with a reliable distributor in the EU to lower shipping costs, provide localised keyboard layouts, and avoid having to pay VAT at the door.
It's sorta unfortunate that folks consider touch screens to be a useless luxury. I suspect if folks didn't, a lot of small X11 utilities would be easier to write.
I don't think anyone considers touch screens to be a "useless luxury"; the problem is that touch screens are also pro-glare, and that's actively harmful. I like 4k, and touch with a matte display would be unobjectionable, but any display that's not anti-glare is a big cup of nope.
> I don't think anyone considers touch screens to be a "useless luxury"
FWIW, I do. My current XPS 13 has a touchscreen which I would disable even if it didn't have so many downsides (battery, glare, etc). I'm pretty damn efficient with a keyboard and occasional mouse usage, and I don't really find a desktop touch screen to be at all desirable.
The 4K resolution is a huge bonus as well. Haven't been able to go back since going to 4K. It has the same vertical resolution as a 2K monitor on its side! Can't go back.
I'm extremely happy with my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4th gen. That's my second ThinkPad, absolutely perfect for development, great no-nonsense laptop, works flawlessly with Ubuntu. Highly recommend it.
I have used exclusively ThinkPads with Linux for about a decade, and tried switching to the XPS 13 for my last two computers. I think it's a shockingly well designed machine.... On paper. The bezel improvement is incredible, my battery life is insane, but there are just two many things broken with it for me to bother.
1) Both chargers failed after less than a year
2) Wi-Fi and suspend have been a consistent problem (even on the Developer edition that came with Linux! Did nobody at Dell try connecting to the internet or suspending? It's a fucking laptop!)
3) Their "premium support" was worse than useless (I ended up spelunking through dmesg and firmware files and fixing it myself)
4) constant coil whine
5) a TouchPad that loses its mind a few times a day....
I had all of these problems on BOTH machines. The design is so good that it's _almost_ worth it, but I'm pretty confident I will never buy a Dell product again. Back to the X1 carbon for me.
Touch screen is very helpful if you do not plug a mouse.
Not just for web/mobile apps.
For scrolling the console lines / codes, it gives you a better feeling than finding the correct Fn-key combination and location of the PageUp/Down keys.
The scrolling using a touch screen is definitively not comparable with the two-finger gestures on the touch pad.
Selecting a window / moving window around is also more comfortable with a touchscreen than using the keyboard or touchpad.
I agree, I bought a laptop a few years back and it came with a touchscreen display. The only time it was of any use was when the Linux touch-pad drivers started playing up.
The main reason for putting touch screens on laptops is that Windows 8 - 10 have an interface that is designed to be tablet friendly, at the expense of being desktop friendly. So it is easier to do an occasional touch gesture to do certain things. Also, things like kinetic scrolling is easier with touch. With a mouse, you have to click the button, move the mouse, then unclick while the mouse is sill moving. Much easier to just flick the screen with your finger.
But I thought XPS developer edition was supposed to be aimed at Linux users, specifically Ubuntu.
I use i3, which would (edit:) not benefit from the touch screen from the get-go.
Maybe I could configure it to react to touch events in a cool manner, like moving windowed stuff around with touch. Resizing with two fingers.
I have an older Dell laptop with a 4K touch screen running Fedora 27. The touch screen works very well with Gnome and Chrome. So Linux users can get the same benefit that Windows users get.
well, as a developer they're giving you additional hardware to develop against so there's that case. But I think from the business standpoint, it probably doesn't make sense to have specific configurations for DE when being at or close to 1:1 with their Windows counterparts is probably easier in production.
I do! While the kids were watching TV, I was sitting next to them coding a personal project. As I was scrolling through documentation on the web, sometimes it was just easier to use the touch screen than to use the trackpad. I remember thinking to myself, "Whoa, I didn't think I'd use the touchscreen on this laptop".
If I had my quiet space with an actual keyboard and a mouse, I would not use the touch screen. But I no longer have that luxury and I found myself appreciating the touchscreen on my laptop.
My XPS 13 9350 is undoubtedly the best computer I've ever owned. I don't seem to have this coil whine thing or I just don't notice it. The 8GB of RAM has served me well and I'd never want to sacrifice any of the battery life for increasing that - it's an ultrabook after all. I've always run Ubuntu and while I did have problems with WiFi and resuming when it first came out, they are both rock solid now. I have never tried to use the webcam, I don't even know if it works, so I'm happy with the design choice to minimise the top bezel. I personally see no reason to buy the new model but only because this one is so good.
In my experience virtually all LCD displays have it to some degree, you just don't notice it except with certain patterns (like that one) that interact with the scanout mechanism.
To be sure, what you're hearing from that website is not coil whine (inductor phenomena), but mechanical resonance caused by piezoelectric effect on solid state MLCCs[1] charging/discharging in your monitor during frame refresh.
In common parlance, I'm not sure there's a distinction between coil whine and capacitor whine. That is probably not something you can distinguish without taking apart the component in question.
If by common parlance you mean amongst not electronics engineers, then I can see where you're coming from. The miscommunication that I'm seeing is asymptotic to the common misuse of Baud as a universal measure of bitrate...or in programmer speak, char and uint8 as immutable equivalents. From a hardware design perspective, qualifying the whine with coil transforms the remark from generally descriptive to technically specific with distinct implications.
Disassembly may not be required to trace root cause with high probability depending on the type of hardware exhibiting the issue, e.g. on a laptop, manifests upon affixing power adapter (as some have described) or tracks display pattern (as parent link).
This is very interesting. I found my Surface Pro 4 had a very audible buzzing while my 12.9 inch iPad Pro didn't have any sound. It could be that the latter is better sealed so it muffles the sound effectively.
I have an XPS 15 9560 and I _love_ it. Never had coil whine or any of those problems. I did spend a bit of time re-pasting the CPU* when I noticed CPU throttling during gaming. That fixed it.
I put 32GB of ram and (now) Fedora 27 on it. I love everything about it. LOVE!
The comment I get the most is "that screen is incredible" from mac users.
What resolution screen? I love the screen on my precision 5520 (basically the same computer) but I'm having a hell of a time with DPI scaling with distros I've tried.
My first Dell as developer machine is XPS 15 9560 but it is in no way a developer machine:
- The thunderbolt dock wire out and laptop USB C are on opposite hands. I have to place my laptop on top of the dock like a giant book resting on a brick.
- Awful coil whine on the power adapter.
- Touchpad is annoying to use when clicking moves the finger resulting in wrong place click.
- Had to replace Killer wifi card with Intel's, Dell's support was top notch here.
- If you don't have nails, opening lid can be an unusual experience, especially when laptop is sitting on top of the dock.
Coming from Thinkpad W530 and miss it but our company switched from Lenovo to Dell
Yeah i've had issues with my XPS 15 9550 as well. I guess they have not been sorted in 9560 :( Once I customized everything (replace wifi card with an Intel based on, new battery under warranty, many many many BIOS fixes) it works well.
However, I would probably steer people to the Precision 5520 instead if you are going 15" and Dell. Comes with Linux and is business class which hopefully means less stupid QA issues and better tech support
I have a 13" 9360 and have similar concerns. I just replaced my Killer WiFi, but Bluetooth is still broken. I think I just haven't found the right driver yet. Did you get it working under 16.04? The touchpad is a mess, I mostly use an external mouse. I don't know why Apple seem to be the only ones who can get touchpads right.
But even with the above, I do like my XPS and would buy it again. The compact size and light weight are great, much lighter and more compact than my 15" Macbook Pro, which mostly sits on my desk in a dock.
The touchpad problems are well documented, e.g. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197683. If your XPS is still under warranty you can request touchpad replacement referring to the thread I linked to above. I'm just scheduling mine, hope it fixes the problem.
I bought the 9560 as my home dev machine. I still vastly prefer my MBP 2015, but this actually was the closest I've ever felt any sort of satisfaction for a non-MBP laptop.
Where's the fucking USB ports?!? I have literally used or observed zero USB C devices till now. I've seen newer phones but who plugs phones into computers anymore? The main issue is flash drives, external HDDs, mice, keyboards, LTE modems, Kindle, and so on. None of those are available in type C variants and I don't want to be inconvenienced by my new laptop. If I wanted to hurt myself I'd just buy from Apple!
I'm really happy about USB-C. Since I got a new Macbook I only carry a single power adapter when traveling, plus an adapter dongle for legacy devices (Headphones, Kindle, Shaver, ...).
Same for use in the office: a single cable connects you to power, an external display, Ethernet, etc.
It's true that most external devices are still USB-A, but that's not Dell's or Apple's problem. It's a chicken-and-egg situation and somebody needs to start.
USB-C is the superior connector: longer lasting, reversible, works for charging, alternate modes, etc.
> I'm really happy about USB-C. Since I got a new Macbook I only carry a single power adapter when traveling, plus an adapter dongle for legacy devices
I only carry a power adaptor when traveling. No dongle at all.
> Same for use in the office
I have a dock on my desk. I place my laptop on it and press a button. No dongles, no wires, instantly transforms my laptop into a desktop with two screens, Ethernet, keyboard and mouse.
> USB-C is the superior connector
Agreed. But keeping one or two legacy ports around for convenience is good. Specially when all common peripherals still use it.
Yes. I was ready to finally replace my MacBook Pro with the XPS. The main reason being the presence of one USB A port. That is now gone and I already start to reconsider the MacBook.
For anything where the other end is a standard connector you can get a C-to-whatever cable - C-to-micro for the Kindle and C-to-B for the LTE modem should work fine.
Expected the new XPS to have a developer flavor soon, but also expected it to be limited to 16GB still. Was not surprised since the Windows version has the same limit.
Went ahead and purchased a 32GB System76 Galaga Pro last week with the same i7-8550U available on the XPS. It's a slightly larger 13", but feels a lot closer to my 5th gen XPS 13 than the MacBook Pro the Galaga replaces. Comes with a retina-like matte IPS 3200x1800 screen that is a joy to use. No touch, for better or worse. Keyboard layout is actually superior to the XPS for development with dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons. Pop!OS is nice and worth a spin, plus it has XPS levels of support under Ubuntu 16.04 which is available pre-loaded. Camera is in a much more useful place than on the XPS. It's also cheaper at most configurations.
Downsides are a smaller battery (probably to make room for both an M.2 SSD and a 7mm 2.5" drive bay) and a touchpad that while multitouch and decent isn't as good as the XPS touchpad. Also, while the screen hinge feels more solid than the XPS's, it doesn't go back as far as I would expect. XPS uses better materials in spots, like soft touch carbon fiber in palm.
So far I'm extremely happy with the Galaga Pro and would recommend to anyone who wants a small powerful laptop like the XPS 13, but is turned off by its 16GB limitation.
I also recently bought a Galago Pro, primarily since it was the only reasonably priced laptop I could find with 32GB ram. I'd say overall I'm happy but it's a mixed bag.
Pros:
- Gorgeous screen, lightweight, Ubuntu 16 feels snappy.
- System76 customer service is amazing.
- Sub $2000 machine with 32GB RAM and i7. (Mine was $1850 after shipping & tax.)
- Lots of ports! The fold-out ethernet port is especially nice, for those rare times when you need one.
Cons:
- I dislike the keyboard layout quite a lot, but I'm hoping I get used to it. The right-hand column of home/end/etc gets hit quite a lot by accident when I'm trying to hit enter, tab, etc. Also, the center of my space bar has a dead spot unless pressed very hard.
- Battery life is bad. If you're just browsing, you get maybe 4 hours. Anything intensive will run the battery down in under an hour. I mostly use it at home so this isn't a big problem for me.
- As stated above, the touch pad feels unresponsive, esp. if you're used to a macbook pro. Not sure whether this is a hardware or software issue.
- They charge you $77 (after shipping & tax) for a second charger. (It also seems to be a nonstandard size, so good luck finding one from an OEM.)
You could go precision though. Which is what I did. Precision 5520 has an Ubuntu option and works flawlessly with Linux. 32-64g of DDR4 and 12h of battery with the 9cell upgrade
I should know. I’ve been using one for nearly a year.
What's the added weight of default 3 cell to 9 cell battery? Last I checked you could only upgrade to 6 cell.
Holding out for next generation of Intel (or, now, AMD) CPUs before picking up another Precision. Great, beastly powerful machines, have been running Fedora since 2010 on Precision line.
Intel needs to ship Cannon Lake before they'll have support for LPDDR4. That was expected to ship in 2016 but is now sometime in the first half of 2018.
If you want 32GB on current Intel mobile chips, you have to use DDR4 rather LPDDR3, thus requiring more power. Some laptops do this, but usually not the ultrabook-ish ones. Upcoming Intel chips will support LPDDR4, removing the problem.
And then RAM prices shot way up. That may have something to do with it. I'm holding off on a new home virtualization server build for now, hoping that RAM prices come back down.
Because laptops don't need server levels of RAM. What are you doing that needs that much RAM that couldn't better be done on a remote desktop/server than on a developer laptop?
Not 100% sure but mostly due to battery life, the more ram you have, the more power you use. 32 gigs probably shaves hour or so off the battery (don't know for sure) and that might be the reason.
Then a 13" ultrabook is probably not the right thing for you; search for "mobile workstation" on any of the major manufacturers sites and you'll find ones that can be configured up to 64GB of ram.
I'd think that the people who are buying a 32GB variant are probably the people who have their laptop plugged in when utilizing an excess amount of memory.
Being ultra-portable makes it less of a chore to lug a high spec machine between the places it get's plugged in at for heavy work, and still allows lighter use on the go.
A lot of these newer NVMe SSD's these days have such insane I/O that swaps are significantly faster. That said RAM is still preferable (especially when working with multiple VMs)
Very cool, but as an owner of the Cube Thinker/i35--which has the same exact 3000x2000 3:2 aspect ratio display as the Surface Book (but costs $500)--I can't imagine why any developer would put up with a 16:9 display.
Specially if you have "developer" in your product name, why can't they figure out that 16:9 is not the best aspect ratio for everyone?
I write code the whole day, not watch movies. That huge extra vertical space _does_ make a difference.
I learned to code in the era of 3:2 displays, and I don't miss them. I never code using the full width of my display. If your lines are that long you have issues. I also don't really need any more vertical space. On my 15" laptop and my 27" display I can see plenty of code at once. Having a few more lines on the top of bottom would not magically alleviate the need to scroll.
I'm all for people using the tools that suit them, but you seem to indicate that 3:2 is just flat out better and 16:9 has no advantages and it's just not the case. I like being able to do more things side by side.
It's personal preference like anything else. The reason 16:9 displays are now common is not because of movies. When they came on the scene most people said "Wow this is nice."
> The reason 16:9 displays are now common is not because of movies. When they came on the scene most people said "Wow this is nice."
What's so nice about them (besides of course for movies)? Most content consumed on computers is textual (websites?), so why would you have something wider than taller?
I just answered that in the comment you're replying to. Let me itemize it for you and add another one:
- I don't need more vertical space, it won't alleviate the need to scroll.
- I can put two nicely sized windows side by side and say, watch a scrolling log file while writing code or working in a terminal.
- My desk is wide, having wide monitors makes good use of the space available without needing as many monitors. If I had square monitors I would need 3 of them, instead I only need two 27" monitors to make good use of my desk space.
Again, my main point was not that I'm right and the other guy is wrong. My point is that it is personal preference and both are viable depending on what you prefer.
It's nice if you have a high resolution, large screen. But smaller screens with less resolution, 16:9 is not very usable.
Typically, a 16:9 screen doesn't have nearly as many vertical pixels as a 3:2 screen. Sure, a 27" screen fixes that (1440 pixels), but that just masks the problem.
IMHO 16:9 is best for coding. You can have multiple files side by side. Or a terminal next to your editor. When Debugging: Watching variables, call stack, ... next to your code.
I'm also in the 16:9 camp. Side-by-side is so much nicer than having to use a different workspace for something that won't fit next to the term editor is a pain. I've gotten rather good at (in vim) using tags and fuzzy searching, so the 'lost' vertical space doesn't really bother me much anymore.
Did you even look at the graphic I linked to? If so, there’s no need to “go look” at anything, since that graphic very clearly shows there’s not a major difference.
If you're doing primarily vertical tasks (coding, web pages, etc.), the taller aspect ratio can be really helpful.
That said, I've mostly made my peace with 16:9. Write shorter functions (that's good anyway) and throw bars over to the side instead of top and bottom.
Screen sizes are reported on the diagonal, but the makers are not constrained to maintain the same diagonal size with different apsect ratios. For instance, the pixel Chromebooks have 12.82" and 12.3" diagonal screens. I've never seen a 16:9 laptop with those sizes.
And specifically for an xps 13 device, where they trim excess bezels, etc., the keyboard width becomes the limiting factor.
The graphic you linked shows the different aspect ratios available to cameras from Panasonic's LX series. If there's "not a major a difference" then why is the LX series so highly regarded for this feature?
Just a bit more vertical space (a few? a dozen? more lines of code per screen) vs slightly wider screen (better for movies, and games maybe). It may be nitpicking, I actually grew used to 16:9 aspect ratios and don't really mind it.
i find 16:9 allows me to comfortably fit a text editor (with tree browser, minimap, and 100 columns of text) on the left and a terminal on the right. i need to shrink the text further than is comfortable for me if i want that layout on most 3:2 displays.
More vertical space = better for reading code. Still wide enough to split. I generally use 3 vertical splits (or sometimes more), so I'm personally not convinced, but that's the argument.
I love the display on my 9360. I use vim, and it allows me to comfortably have three windows open side by side, so I can view code from multiple files side by side easily. The high DPI allows me to use pretty small fonts without annoyance too.
That said, this is of course a very small computer, and I purchased it knowing I had an external monitor to use with it as well (same aspect ratio, for what it's worth). 13" is adequate but not ideal for me; I feel like this size machine is best paired with an external monitor back at your main desk, with the internal display used less frequently. If I did not have another monitor, I likely would have stepped up to the XPS 15 instead.
The aspect ratio rather reflects the width of the keyboard and the height of it plus the touchscreen beneath. It also makes a big difference on a plain where 13" 16:9 laptop is the largest thing you can fit on the table.
How do you like the Cube Thinker i35? I've been interested in those for a while, it's the only new laptop that's even remotely tempted me from my Lenovo X230T (which I love and highly recommend, particularly as a developer laptop.)
Yay Dell! So far I like this series. Coming from years of Macbook laziness and returning to my Linux desktop roots I just bought in to the Dell XPS 15 9560 on sale at Christmas. No regrets thus far, it's nice. However, I don't need 32GB RAM and as I am setting up Gentoo and ZFS root and am very busy (lost two days to flying this week already) I have not yet completed setup, so there may be some iceberg issues... https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560
I'm a happy XPS 13 9360 (i7-8550U, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) user and have mixed feelings about the latest XPS 13. Biggest reason why I opted for the XPS 13 is the size -- it is literally the smallest 13.3" laptop on the market.
My 2 cents based on the stuff I read online:
- The new one is even smaller and lighter, a big plus in my book.
- USB-C exclusively seems good and bad at the same time. Three USB ports on 9360 all charge my phone at different speeds (two USB-A, one USB-C): Android reports "charging slowly", "charging" and "charging rapidly" depending on the port, and I _love_ having the option of charging my phone slowly, as the battery loses less capacity over time that way (due to reduced stress and heat). I don't mind having USB-C dongles around, but it would be great if all peripherals moved to USB-C, therefore having a USB-A port would be convenient, despite USB-C being progressive and pushing the market to switch. I see it as a good intent on Dell's part.
- Dislike microSD port. SD cards are faster and cheaper compared to microSD and with the new laptop one physically can't fit an SD card in it. So one would have to use an SD -> USB adapter, which most likely has USB-A on the other end, plus a USB-A -> USB-C dongle. Ugh.
- 4K screen not really needed. Not a big difference on 13.3", uses more power and QHD+ on 9360 can use nice 2X integer scaling -- shady fractional not needed.
- Equivalent configuration of my 9360 costs more than 2000 USD, tax excluded. I paid ~1400 USD for mine with the tax included, a non-refurbished model.
I've been waiting for the 9370 announcement and today I bought a 9360 :)
The bigger battery is nice, USB-A is nice. The weight is the same. Don't care about placement or camera. And the slower RAM doesn't bother me.
I got the updated version with an 8th gen that has win10 pre-installed, since the 9360 with 8th gen is pnly with win10. That's OK, was planning on setting up dual boot anyway.
Honestly, as sad as it is to say this, it's hard to not agree with this sentiment right now. I may wait until the next line of CPUs at this point. Which is a travesty, because these laptops are great and I was finally going to retire my old laptop. But if I'm going to get a 30% hit because of a processor hotfix, it's pretty tough to commit to that.
This isn't to say anything bad about Dell Developer XPS, Sputnik, or Barton at all with their great work here. It is just indeed awful timing for a new release.
The hardware is lovely but the available configurations make me sad. For compiling the projects I work on, I need an i7 and 16 GB of memory. But this configuration only comes with the touchscreen, which is not only useless but destroys battery life, has a far inferior viewing angle, and adds an obscene amount to the cost. Amusingly, the config that I want is available, but not to me, because I'm not in Europe. I would buy this in a heartbeat otherwise.
Re: touch. I just bought an XPS15 with 16GB for 1900AUD. It has touch, which I don't use. The viewing angle is wonderful, basically 360 degrees with no degredation and in this respect is no different to my 2013 Macbook Pro. AFAIK from reading other people's setups (see external resources at https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560 ) you can disable touch to save power.
Re: cost. Macbook Pro in similar power range is like 3500AUD. So I'm not complaining.
Re: grunt. I also compile stuff sometimes (Gentoo user!) but generally don't need so much RAM. If you really need fast high power compilation consider a decent CI setup with on-demand cloud instances instead... means you don't need to pay over the top for occasionally used local grunt. Also works for others on the same project and enforces clean operations patterns (continuous deployment / effective build documentation).
Thanks for the advice, glad to hear dissent about the viewing angle (I've only seen the touchscreen in person once, and maybe the lighting was just bad in that instance). But the cost is still a sticking point, because for me this isn't competing with a Macbook Pro; it's competing with the older refurbished laptop from an arbitrary manufacturer that I got for $0 from a friend and that I currently use solely for Linux dev. I don't have a lot of income to dedicate to Linux development, so if I'm going to upgrade at all it has to be a compelling proposition from all angles (and it occurs to me that at this point I might as well wait until Ubuntu 18.04 LTS arrives anyway).
There is no reason to be poor with your knowledge. Do yourself a favour and invest in good hardware, it's a matter of ergonomics, focus, health and motivation not simply economics. Usually you can get a tax writeoff and it signals to clients you invest in your own tools and professional development as well.
My biggest problem is that with these screens Linux hiDPI support for fractional scaling is just bad. Sure, you can hack it. And unity, for it's failings, pretty much just works. But the rest of the space is horrendous.
8GB of RAM? Seriously? That's a non starter for me as a developer that works on multiple projects daily. At any given moment I'm running 3 or 4 backends, an equal or greater number of front ends, test suites, a vagrant VM... I can barely get by with 16.
I see that now under the search options. When I clicked into purchase the displayed models, it showed a static 8GB with no option to modify. My mistake.
> Why can't I get 16gb ram and have a 1080p screen?
I'm guessing there isn't much demand for lo res screens on high end laptops. I think that's probably especially true for machines that are mostly about working with text. Who wants to look at jagged type?
I've had so many problems with my XPS 13 that I bought in 2016 that I will never buy another one. Killer WiFi card was utter crap, laptop has issues going to sleep and waking up when closing the lid (sometimes it would hang on the the dell screen when trying to wake up and never recover), etc. Purely anecdotal, but a hard pass for me. Lenovo is my new laptop brand of choice.
I went the other direction. Bought a Thinkpad due to how amazing they were in the past. Found that the build quality had gone way down. Was pretty disappointed as this expensive piece of hardware developed cracks on the casing within the first year.
Switched to an XPS 15 and have been very happy. Love the build quality, specs are good enough. Battery life is much better even on Linux.
Which model? We are looking into buying quite a few, and Thinkpads are the first choice here. We never had problems in the past, but I've been hearing about problems in their mid-range models. I'd like to avoid those, at the very least.
Not OP, but I got the X1 Carbon, which was (at the time) their top-of-the-line Ultrabook and believed to be their most Linux-compatible laptop.
I had a number of issues with the Thinkpad that were all relatively minor in and of themselves, but overall, I ended up switching back to the XPS 13, and I plan on sticking with this line.
I'm on my third X1C. First-gen, 3rd then 5th generation. Never had an issue with Linux compatibility. The middle one had a malfunction with the voltage regulator, promptly fixed by Lenovo. Other than that, my opinion on the X1 Carbon is stellar. I'm wary of some of the newer models, but not of this one.
I have a kaby lake xps 13 and have never seen it fail to resume (and I suspend/resume very frequently). There is a really annoying bug between the dell bios and the intel pstate driver where it often gets stuck at a super low cpu frequency after resume though :(
The Killer wifi has been reliable for me, IMO atheros or intel is always a good choice for wifi on linux
Seconded. Build quality on the 9360 isn't great, trackpad and keyboard leave much to be desired for a high-end laptop. CPU seems to be throttled to deal with overheating, so performance just feels lacking.
Coil whine, stability and WiFi (terrible at first) have improved after some BIOS updates this year. Also my trackpad has stopped rattling, probably dirt got into the gap and plugged it.
Dell customer service experience was also poor when buying. Next laptop I'll be going back to Lenovo.
Lenovo's higher-end machines are still solid, but their midrange and low-end machines are really disappointing. Sucks that you've had this experience, but among the folks I work with, Dell's high-end machines have a rep for being really reliable in both Windows and Linux. My next machine's probably an Alienware 13, but the lighter XPS 13 is real tempting too.
No. I find Razer as a company to appeal to the "x-treme gamer" set in ways I wouldn't want to support, but I also think their branding is childish and would not walk into a meeting with a client with that huge gross logo on it. It would look bad.
I'd rather get a laptop with no branding at all, but the Alienware logo is at least really small. (And the keyboard on the Alienware 13 is good, my brother has one.)
Razers are nice-looking machines but last time I checked the biggest processor you could get for the most portable one was dual core, and the next model up (the 14 inch model) had pretty bad battery life.
I'm still looking for the perfect replacement for a MacBook Pro. Hopefully when the 2018 XPS 15 comes out...
For me, that's basically the Alienware 13. With the discrete GPU off it seems to get 4-5 hours (at least, according to my brother, who owns one) and that's good enough for me, while also having 32GB of RAM and a 7700HQ.
Generally, Thinkpads are recommended. I think, Red Hat employees all have Thinkpads or something along those lines, which is why they get lots of patches to make things go smoothly. No official support from Lenovo, though.
Woah I didn't know Canonical certifies Ubuntu on certain hardware. That's incredible, I love linux but I'm not a sysadmin and I've been burned before by hardware manufactures publishing windows-only driver binaries.
On most laptops you can swap the killer WiFi card for an Intel one using a screwdriver and 15 minutes. Drivers also "just work" on all three relevant desktop OS for the Intel chipset.
Your other advice on this page was to cover the logo on the lid with a sticker... [Here's my advice: pick a different laptop - there's quite a few good ones to choose from.]
If that's your only problem with the laptop, I don't understand why a (probably technically capable, on HN) person wouldn't just switch the WiFi card out.
My list of problems:
* Coil whine
* Noisy fans
* Heat issues
* USB-C port has a bad pin (only works in one orientation with pressure)
* Charging port inconsistently charges
* Bad cell in the battery, so it suddenly shuts off without warning when on battery
The charging issues started just around the 12 month mark, so I quickly sent to a repair center under warranty. They returned it with a note that said "mainboard replaced", but nothing had actually been replaced. Same bad pin on the USB-C port (everything I plug into it only works "upside down", and that port is part of the mainboard), same dust in the ports as when I mailed it, etc. By the time they shipped it back, the warranty had expired.
If you're going to buy one of these, I recommend buying an extended warranty. I do also recommend the touchscreen. I've heard the i5 versions have less problems, I would probably take the performance hit next time if it meant a more reliable and longer-lasting machine.