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At least go try out the latest Dell XPS and HP Spectre, possibly at a Microsoft Store if you can. To be fair, I probably should have got a Macbook as my last l

At least go try out the latest Dell XPS and HP Spectre, possibly at a Microsoft Store if you can. To be fair, I probably should have got a Macbook as my last laptop upgrade. The laptop before that was the Lenovo X1 Carbon - slow, memory constrained and expensive to repair. I've got a Dell XPS 9350 at the moment, and it was more expensive than the top end Macbook at the time (!). It's quite good, but I can't recommend it against the last gen MacBook - there's still a coil whine issue that Dell refuse to really fix (or can't), there's issues with Broadcom wifi cards, and then there's this fun issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3v6tvp/dell_xps_15_randomly_wakes_up_when_lid_closed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3v6tvp/dell_xps_15_ra... It gets ~6 hours of battery life in power saving mode, but closer to 4 if I'm doing dev work. It could be so good, but it's just not there yet. For $3000AUD I expect utter perfection.

rjzzleep 10y ago
Am i the only one that cares about 16GB ram? HP Spectre doesn't have 16gb ram. The xps only has it in offering with their QHD touch screen which has less battery than the FHD screen, which I guess is fine because apparently the FHD screen is crap. Macbooks have significantly better thermal zone than the dell alternatives(e.g. the 7370 is significantly slower than the macbook 12" even though it has the same specs + 16gb) and don't get me started on the touchpad. There's so many threads on reddit about who seemingly fixed the touchpad issue. Bash on windows by the way is nice, but it's no way near production usable.They use a custom file system that resides in your AppData. Until recent insider builds you could neither use inotify(which means most node apps would have some sort of issue) nor would it keep your Ubuntu when during an update. Now the system is somewhat usable, but I've spent so much time whitelisting different folders so that random windows tools don't eat up CPU and I/O that make this 2016 device feel like something from 2011 that I wonder what the hell microsoft is thinking. The recent windows insider build also fixed an issue with windows defender eating up all CPU. You can forget about the surfacebook if you want a decent terminal running on it. WsL isn't there yet and linux support is flakey. So yeah the only contender if you care about both battery AND performance AND a proper terminal right now is the dell xps. The thinkpad x260 is nice, but they don't have nvme, only supports sata express(and i'm not sure i wanna gamble on the intel dc 3500 drives to get me the performance).
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > Am i the only one that cares about 16GB ram? XCode and Visual Studio are pretty happy "just" with 8GB.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    16 is great, but 32 would be perfect if I wanted a few more VMs running.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      That is the thing, I don't run any VMs on my computers besides the iOS and Android emulators.
      - comex 10y ago
        I'd run VMs more often if I weren't in a constant disk space crunch, even with a 512GB SSD. VMs not only take up space for the OS, they have the annoying property that free space in the virtual disk still takes up space on the real disk once initially dirtied. Especially annoying since in theory, TRIM/discard should be exactly what's needed for the virtual OS to inform the VM software what parts of the virtual disk file it can throw away... yet as far as I can tell, VMware Fusion doesn't support this at all, and VirtualBox only with a hidden, possibly-broken flag. In fact, I've been looking into NixOS partly because in theory I should be able to wipe the entire system partition whenever I haven't used it for a while, then regenerate it from a handful of config files. Neat - but NixOS partly "compensates" for this by being rather disk hungry when it is in use. I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general. But these days at least, half the time I have more free RAM than free disk. My next laptop will have 1TB, even with Apple's ransom-level pricing for disk upgrades.
        grzm 10y ago
        "I'd run VMs more often if I weren't in a constant disk space crunch, even with a 512GB SSD "I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general."* You and me both. I generally "reclaim" space when I do a clean install during OS upgrades. Looking at mine, the three biggest chunks are music, videos, and email, most of which I could get away without if I were satisfied with relying on an internet connection. What do you find takes up the most space on your system?
asadkn 10y ago
Consider upgrading to Dell XPS 15 when it releases with Kaby Lake (expected December). The Dell XPS 13 went from 12 hours to 14 hours battery life in the Kaby Lake update.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Unfortunately I don't have that kind of cash. I also wonder how anyone was getting close to 12 hours with the 13.
- temac 10y ago
  The problem is also we don't know the quality we will get with a new model... I would be more than annoyed by a laptop that has coil whine, screen flicker, and sleep issues, especially an high end laptop with that kind of price tag...

rjzzleep 10y ago

Am i the only one that cares about 16GB ram? HP Spectre doesn't have 16gb ram. The xps only has it in offering with their QHD touch screen which has less battery than the FHD screen, which I guess is fine because apparently the FHD screen is crap. Macbooks have significantly better thermal zone than the dell alternatives(e.g. the 7370 is significantly slower than the macbook 12" even though it has the same specs + 16gb) and don't get me started on the touchpad. There's so many threads on reddit about who seemingly fixed the touchpad issue. Bash on windows by the way is nice, but it's no way near production usable.They use a custom file system that resides in your AppData. Until recent insider builds you could neither use inotify(which means most node apps would have some sort of issue) nor would it keep your Ubuntu when during an update. Now the system is somewhat usable, but I've spent so much time whitelisting different folders so that random windows tools don't eat up CPU and I/O that make this 2016 device feel like something from 2011 that I wonder what the hell microsoft is thinking. The recent windows insider build also fixed an issue with windows defender eating up all CPU. You can forget about the surfacebook if you want a decent terminal running on it. WsL isn't there yet and linux support is flakey. So yeah the only contender if you care about both battery AND performance AND a proper terminal right now is the dell xps. The thinkpad x260 is nice, but they don't have nvme, only supports sata express(and i'm not sure i wanna gamble on the intel dc 3500 drives to get me the performance).

pjmlp 10y ago
> Am i the only one that cares about 16GB ram? XCode and Visual Studio are pretty happy "just" with 8GB.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  16 is great, but 32 would be perfect if I wanted a few more VMs running.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    That is the thing, I don't run any VMs on my computers besides the iOS and Android emulators.
    - comex 10y ago
      I'd run VMs more often if I weren't in a constant disk space crunch, even with a 512GB SSD. VMs not only take up space for the OS, they have the annoying property that free space in the virtual disk still takes up space on the real disk once initially dirtied. Especially annoying since in theory, TRIM/discard should be exactly what's needed for the virtual OS to inform the VM software what parts of the virtual disk file it can throw away... yet as far as I can tell, VMware Fusion doesn't support this at all, and VirtualBox only with a hidden, possibly-broken flag. In fact, I've been looking into NixOS partly because in theory I should be able to wipe the entire system partition whenever I haven't used it for a while, then regenerate it from a handful of config files. Neat - but NixOS partly "compensates" for this by being rather disk hungry when it is in use. I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general. But these days at least, half the time I have more free RAM than free disk. My next laptop will have 1TB, even with Apple's ransom-level pricing for disk upgrades.
      - grzm 10y ago
        "I'd run VMs more often if I weren't in a constant disk space crunch, even with a 512GB SSD "I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general."* You and me both. I generally "reclaim" space when I do a clean install during OS upgrades. Looking at mine, the three biggest chunks are music, videos, and email, most of which I could get away without if I were satisfied with relying on an internet connection. What do you find takes up the most space on your system?

asadkn 10y ago

Consider upgrading to Dell XPS 15 when it releases with Kaby Lake (expected December). The Dell XPS 13 went from 12 hours to 14 hours battery life in the Kaby Lake update.

voltagex_ 10y ago
Unfortunately I don't have that kind of cash. I also wonder how anyone was getting close to 12 hours with the 13.
temac 10y ago
The problem is also we don't know the quality we will get with a new model... I would be more than annoyed by a laptop that has coil whine, screen flicker, and sleep issues, especially an high end laptop with that kind of price tag...