11 ms·

I've owned Thinkpads in the past and almost bought the T460 last month, then I discovered the Dell XPS / Precision line and fell in love. I picked up a manufac

by 2bluesc 10y ago

I've owned Thinkpads in the past and almost bought the T460 last month, then I discovered the Dell XPS / Precision line and fell in love. I picked up a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 on eBay and wound up swapping in a Dell Precision E3-1505M motherboard I stumbled across. The line has Intel quad core CPUs, minimal bezel (my 15" is almost the same size as the 14" System 76 Galago Ultra Pro it's replacing), reasonably slim for a quad core, 84Wh battery, 10+ hours of low power dev (baseline power is about 5.25W on my 8GB + 1080p + Xeon E3-1505M machine) in (Arch) Linux? YES. Oh yeah, and for nerd points the Dell Precision M5510 has the option for Intel Xeon and Ubuntu stock for people doing CPU intensive Linux work (in my case Linux embedded system builds that grind for tens of minutes to two hours). To add icing on the cake, you can easily get parts (batteries, motherboards, etc) on eBay if you ever need to fix it yourself which is a sharp contrast to the non-existent System76 Galago Ultra Pro I picked up a few years ago after I ditched my last Thinkpad. I keep looking at the Thinkpads, but they seem a generation behind.

karussell 10y ago
With discovered you mean you bought one? What about the noise and battery time under normal and high work load?
- meddlepal 10y ago
  I used to have a Dell Precision M4800 and honestly you don't buy them for battery life. They're desktop workstation replacements that you haul off to meetings occasionally. I got about 2-3 hours of battery time on that thing when running usual work-related workloads on it... (IDE, VM's etc.). I don't remember the noise, but I'm not very sensitive to noisy laptops so I may have never noticed. I miss that laptop. The build quality was through the roof and it was solid as a brick.
  - kayoone 10y ago
    The new Precisions are a lot less Desktop workstation replacements and more power efficient. I wonder if they still offer the same kind of performance though.
    - virtualwhys 10y ago
      > I wonder if they still offer the same kind of performance though Base clock speed is down a tick (2.7ghz vs. 2.8ghz) compared to previous generation Intel chips in the M4700/M4800 line vs. the new Precision 5510. Same 8M cpu cache; presumably newer intel chips are more efficient and make up for performance difference elsewhere (e.g. less heat = less cpu throttling during intensive tasks). Sitting on the fence here, waiting to see if Intel's next line of mobile CPUs bring significant performance improvements. Current setup (M4700, i7 extreme, 2 X SSD, 32GB) is awesome modulo the battery life, which is about 2 hours for minimal workloads.
- 2bluesc 10y ago
  > With discovered you mean you bought one? Yes, ordered a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 from eBay, apparently that's a popular thing to do. A day or two later I stumbled on a deal on the Precision 15 E3-1505M motherboard and took a gamble on swapping it. Worked out without any issues other then likely warranty complications if I ever go down that road. I can easily get 6+ hours on it doing vim + chromium + GCC builds. If I baby it, it can do 10 hours I assume, but it's to the point it doesn't matter unless you need to go a weekend without charging. My old System 76 ultra pro was lucky to get 2.5 hours doing the same things. Most of my components are selected for power. I've heard the 4k display with touch is brutal for battery life and selected 1080p instead. I have 8GB of RAM, started to swap in 32GB but the baseline power at idle went from 5.25W to around 7W. The bigger 84Wh battery is an obvious choice and I use the Intel GPU 99% of the time (sometimes the Quadro M1000M for the rare times I play games via bumblebee).
kogepathic 10y ago
> Xeon E3-1505M machine Except they don't ship with ECC memory. > 32GB, DDR4-2133MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS, Non-ECC [0] So what's the point of having a Xeon? The Core i7 options offered for the laptop support all the same processor features [1], except ECC memory [2], which Dell isn't even shipping. [0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio... [1] http://ark.intel.com/products/88970/Intel-Core-i7-6820HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88970/Intel-Core-i7-6820HQ-Pro... [2] http://ark.intel.com/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1505M-v5-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-... Edit: I think it's a legitimate gripe, Dell is selling a Xeon but there's zero benefit over buying an i7 equipped model. But thanks for all the downvotes!
- 2bluesc 10y ago
  It's just more frequency and cache for me, but for enterprise there are more management features.
  - kogepathic 10y ago
    Maybe in the firmware Dell is shipping, but the CPUs are identical in their feature set as per the ark links I supplied. The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The specifications don't even list support for ECC RAM! [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell_Precision_15_5000_Series_5510_Spec_Sheet.pdf http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheet...
    - 2bluesc 10y ago
      > The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The clock is faster, try the compare link[0]. And since I originally bought a XPS 15 with the i7-6700HQ then scored a deal on a Precision E3-1505M motherboard and frankensteined my laptop, I spent 30 seconds doing a benchmark[1]. The tl;dr is that for 6% faster clock, you actually get about 10% better performance, so the cache is contributing. Is it worth the Xeon mark-up? Probably not if I didn't come across a deal, but hey, this thing still costs way less then the local fruit farm alternative. [0] http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608 http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608 [1] https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510 https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510
chx 10y ago
How's the keyboard and the TrackPoint?
- 2bluesc 10y ago
  "just works". Touch surface is smooth, clicks require slightly more force then an old rMBP I had. Only real concern is that it might be too sensitive and clicks while my finger is hovering. This might be configurable, but haven't cared enough to try. As for keyboard, feels great to me, but I'm not that picky.
  - chx 10y ago
    That sounds like a trackpad.
sandGorgon 10y ago
+1 on this. And for people planning to buy an XPS, just wait for a month. new models of XPS are being announced at CES. https://mspoweruser.com/dells-new-convertible-xps-13-leaks-ahead-of-ces-2017/ https://mspoweruser.com/dells-new-convertible-xps-13-leaks-a... The convertible, bezel-less XPS convertible = macbook pro + ipad pro
- karussell 10y ago
  Actually convertible is a disadvantage for me. Why would I need this?
  - jhasse 10y ago
    You don't need to use it, so I wouldn't count it as a disadvantage (only the things that come with it, like increased weight).
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Reduced battery time (?), more stuff to fail and being dependent on software for hotswap functionality which may have some serious issues with non-Windows and even none NT10 based Windows operating system and the list can go on. We're not talking about a fingerprint reader here. Convertible laptops have to make very specific design choices/compromises which come with some disadvantages currently.
      - sandGorgon 10y ago
        this is FUD. reduced battery has nothing to do with a convertible form factor. You are talking about the display resolution perhaps - QHD displays are obviously more power hungry than FHD. But then again, most people want "Retina". Software has largely matured for hotswap. Fedora 25 with kernel 4.9 is brilliant on a convertible. Windows has had it for decades. We already use the cheaper yoga and Dell inspiron convertibles in my workplace. They are awesome. Dell and Lenovo have had many years of experience in building convertibles by now. We are talking of 500$ laptops here. The Dell 5368 hinges are well reviewed by now [1] [2] IMHO the design of Yoga 900 (with its "watchband" hinges are unparalleled). BTW, we are in non-Apple territory here. Replacing hinges is damn easy. You can buy a ton of them on ebay. [1] http://www.techarp.com/articles/dell-inspiron-13-5000-laptop-review/3/ http://www.techarp.com/articles/dell-inspiron-13-5000-laptop... [2] http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1404957/dell-inspiron-13-5000-5368-review http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1404957/dell-inspiron...
sorokod 10y ago
The Thinkpad p50/p70 also have the Xeon option and can be configured with ECC.
- eplanit 10y ago
  I just got through installing Ubuntu on my p70...love it so far. I've lost count of how many Thinkpad Linux Laptops I've gone through over the years, but not a single one ever failed or had compatibility issues with Linux: my 6 year-old w510 is my DHCP server has been up and running for 467 days running Ubuntu (it was powered off due to a power outage). There's a w540 and w520 sitting idle, and other T-series ones that are unusable only because the batteries are shot. Well-built and reliable.
dorfsmay 10y ago
A lot of people who buy Thikpads, myself included, are doing so mainly for the track point, which the XPS doesn't have.
- favadi 10y ago
  The XPS touchpad is comparable to Macbook one, you won't miss the track point.
  - dorfsmay 10y ago
    I was forced to use a Mac for one of my job ; didn't get converted to the touchpad!
- gnuvince 10y ago
  I prefer using a Trackpad, however the Thinkpads have a middle button, which I use all the time in Linux.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkuntz2 10y ago
    I think by default hitting the left and right mouse buttons in linux emulates a middle click. You can also configure three finger clicks as a middle click, which is my preference.

by 2bluesc 10y ago

karussell 10y ago

With discovered you mean you bought one? What about the noise and battery time under normal and high work load?

meddlepal 10y ago
I used to have a Dell Precision M4800 and honestly you don't buy them for battery life. They're desktop workstation replacements that you haul off to meetings occasionally. I got about 2-3 hours of battery time on that thing when running usual work-related workloads on it... (IDE, VM's etc.). I don't remember the noise, but I'm not very sensitive to noisy laptops so I may have never noticed. I miss that laptop. The build quality was through the roof and it was solid as a brick.
- kayoone 10y ago
  The new Precisions are a lot less Desktop workstation replacements and more power efficient. I wonder if they still offer the same kind of performance though.
  - virtualwhys 10y ago
    > I wonder if they still offer the same kind of performance though Base clock speed is down a tick (2.7ghz vs. 2.8ghz) compared to previous generation Intel chips in the M4700/M4800 line vs. the new Precision 5510. Same 8M cpu cache; presumably newer intel chips are more efficient and make up for performance difference elsewhere (e.g. less heat = less cpu throttling during intensive tasks). Sitting on the fence here, waiting to see if Intel's next line of mobile CPUs bring significant performance improvements. Current setup (M4700, i7 extreme, 2 X SSD, 32GB) is awesome modulo the battery life, which is about 2 hours for minimal workloads.
2bluesc 10y ago
> With discovered you mean you bought one? Yes, ordered a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 from eBay, apparently that's a popular thing to do. A day or two later I stumbled on a deal on the Precision 15 E3-1505M motherboard and took a gamble on swapping it. Worked out without any issues other then likely warranty complications if I ever go down that road. I can easily get 6+ hours on it doing vim + chromium + GCC builds. If I baby it, it can do 10 hours I assume, but it's to the point it doesn't matter unless you need to go a weekend without charging. My old System 76 ultra pro was lucky to get 2.5 hours doing the same things. Most of my components are selected for power. I've heard the 4k display with touch is brutal for battery life and selected 1080p instead. I have 8GB of RAM, started to swap in 32GB but the baseline power at idle went from 5.25W to around 7W. The bigger 84Wh battery is an obvious choice and I use the Intel GPU 99% of the time (sometimes the Quadro M1000M for the rare times I play games via bumblebee).

kogepathic 10y ago

> Xeon E3-1505M machine Except they don't ship with ECC memory. > 32GB, DDR4-2133MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS, Non-ECC [0] So what's the point of having a Xeon? The Core i7 options offered for the laptop support all the same processor features [1], except ECC memory [2], which Dell isn't even shipping. [0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio... [1] http://ark.intel.com/products/88970/Intel-Core-i7-6820HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/88970/Intel-Core-i7-6820HQ-Pro... [2] http://ark.intel.com/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1505M-v5-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/89608/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-... Edit: I think it's a legitimate gripe, Dell is selling a Xeon but there's zero benefit over buying an i7 equipped model. But thanks for all the downvotes!

2bluesc 10y ago
It's just more frequency and cache for me, but for enterprise there are more management features.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  Maybe in the firmware Dell is shipping, but the CPUs are identical in their feature set as per the ark links I supplied. The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The specifications don't even list support for ECC RAM! [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell_Precision_15_5000_Series_5510_Spec_Sheet.pdf http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheet...
  - 2bluesc 10y ago
    > The only difference in the processors is the Xeon supports ECC, while the Core i7 doesn't. But Dell isn't shipping the laptop with ECC anyway. The clock is faster, try the compare link[0]. And since I originally bought a XPS 15 with the i7-6700HQ then scored a deal on a Precision E3-1505M motherboard and frankensteined my laptop, I spent 30 seconds doing a benchmark[1]. The tl;dr is that for 6% faster clock, you actually get about 10% better performance, so the cache is contributing. Is it worth the Xeon mark-up? Probably not if I didn't come across a deal, but hey, this thing still costs way less then the local fruit farm alternative. [0] http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608 http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88970,89608 [1] https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510 https://github.com/kylemanna/dell-xps-9550-precision-5510

chx 10y ago

How's the keyboard and the TrackPoint?

2bluesc 10y ago
"just works". Touch surface is smooth, clicks require slightly more force then an old rMBP I had. Only real concern is that it might be too sensitive and clicks while my finger is hovering. This might be configurable, but haven't cared enough to try. As for keyboard, feels great to me, but I'm not that picky.
- chx 10y ago
  That sounds like a trackpad.

sandGorgon 10y ago

+1 on this. And for people planning to buy an XPS, just wait for a month. new models of XPS are being announced at CES. https://mspoweruser.com/dells-new-convertible-xps-13-leaks-ahead-of-ces-2017/ https://mspoweruser.com/dells-new-convertible-xps-13-leaks-a... The convertible, bezel-less XPS convertible = macbook pro + ipad pro

karussell 10y ago
Actually convertible is a disadvantage for me. Why would I need this?
- jhasse 10y ago
  You don't need to use it, so I wouldn't count it as a disadvantage (only the things that come with it, like increased weight).
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Reduced battery time (?), more stuff to fail and being dependent on software for hotswap functionality which may have some serious issues with non-Windows and even none NT10 based Windows operating system and the list can go on. We're not talking about a fingerprint reader here. Convertible laptops have to make very specific design choices/compromises which come with some disadvantages currently.
    - sandGorgon 10y ago
      this is FUD. reduced battery has nothing to do with a convertible form factor. You are talking about the display resolution perhaps - QHD displays are obviously more power hungry than FHD. But then again, most people want "Retina". Software has largely matured for hotswap. Fedora 25 with kernel 4.9 is brilliant on a convertible. Windows has had it for decades. We already use the cheaper yoga and Dell inspiron convertibles in my workplace. They are awesome. Dell and Lenovo have had many years of experience in building convertibles by now. We are talking of 500$ laptops here. The Dell 5368 hinges are well reviewed by now [1] [2] IMHO the design of Yoga 900 (with its "watchband" hinges are unparalleled). BTW, we are in non-Apple territory here. Replacing hinges is damn easy. You can buy a ton of them on ebay. [1] http://www.techarp.com/articles/dell-inspiron-13-5000-laptop-review/3/ http://www.techarp.com/articles/dell-inspiron-13-5000-laptop... [2] http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1404957/dell-inspiron-13-5000-5368-review http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1404957/dell-inspiron...

sorokod 10y ago

The Thinkpad p50/p70 also have the Xeon option and can be configured with ECC.

eplanit 10y ago
I just got through installing Ubuntu on my p70...love it so far. I've lost count of how many Thinkpad Linux Laptops I've gone through over the years, but not a single one ever failed or had compatibility issues with Linux: my 6 year-old w510 is my DHCP server has been up and running for 467 days running Ubuntu (it was powered off due to a power outage). There's a w540 and w520 sitting idle, and other T-series ones that are unusable only because the batteries are shot. Well-built and reliable.

dorfsmay 10y ago

A lot of people who buy Thikpads, myself included, are doing so mainly for the track point, which the XPS doesn't have.

favadi 10y ago
The XPS touchpad is comparable to Macbook one, you won't miss the track point.
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  I was forced to use a Mac for one of my job ; didn't get converted to the touchpad!
gnuvince 10y ago
I prefer using a Trackpad, however the Thinkpads have a middle button, which I use all the time in Linux.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  I think by default hitting the left and right mouse buttons in linux emulates a middle click. You can also configure three finger clicks as a middle click, which is my preference.