21 ms·

XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

244 points by warp 9y ago

sprt 9y ago
How's high DPI support on Ubuntu nowadays? My last experience (2 years ago?), everything was super small and when I tried changing the scaling it wasn't pixel-perfect. Literally had to return the laptop and get the 1366x768 version.
- bakedbean 9y ago
  it's actually not terrible if you are willing to use the unity desktop... but as I understand it canonical won't be supporting unity and is switching back to Gnome, which is... a bag of tweaks and scaling. I've been using Elementary (an Ubuntu Gnome fork) which delivers a slightly better out of the box ui.
- pyrophane 9y ago
  It was better before the switch to wayland/gnome in 17.10. In 17.04 they actually appeared to have fractional scaling working pretty seamlessly in Unity (not sure exactly what they did to accomplish that), but with the most recent version they are back to integer only. That being said, gnome is expected to have factional scaling support under wayland for 3.28, scheduled for, iirc, March.
foodstances 9y ago
Does it still have that awful coil whine?
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  Like many others, I was told by their Twitter people that coil whine on my 9560 was "not a known issue per se" and that I just needed to update my BIOS. I won't be buying a Dell next time.
  - switch007 9y ago
    They've also stated (I think it was a different model) that they deem it acceptable in normal/average (i.e. noisy) office environments with aircon etc. Therefore if you can hear it, the problem is that your environment isn't noisy enough to drown it out !
- eliaspro 9y ago
  Quoting Barton George: > We are definitely looking into the coil whine issue, this has senior management visibility, and pursuing several avenues for the current system as well as solutions going forward. Source: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/p/20014657/21005539#21005539 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...
  - foodstances 9y ago
    That is from June, this is the latest from December: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/p/19992655/21038056#21038056 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46... A motherboard change and a BIOS update (2.4.2) are supposed to lower the noise as much as they can, while still deeming it "working within specification". Users report the 2.4.2 update didn't help much or even made it worse.
    - josephmx 9y ago
      This update (without motherboard change) did help by making the fans run less often, which doesn't seem to be causing overheating issues or me
- ianai 9y ago
  And an awful touch pad?
- scorown 9y ago
  So glad I am not the only one with that issue on my 9560. I also found out that if I put CPU under stress, the whine goes away. So when I am using the adapter, I run HeavyLoad on 3 cores and that takes whine away, with enough computing power for happy compiling.
ythn 9y ago
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.
- eropple 9y ago
  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.
  - sohooo 9y ago
    Did you look into the Razer Blade series? https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops
    - eropple 9y ago
      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.)
      - ReverseCold 9y ago
        You could just put a sticker on it, company logo or something. There's only one place where the logo is visible anyway.
        9y ago
martin1975 9y ago
It sure would be nice if someone like dell could at least insert Coreboot, or preferably Libreboot on these babies. They probably have enough heft to make such a change (I hope :).
KerrickStaley 9y ago
Excited to see them shipping this with a quad core processor (and with 8 MB cache!). My previous-gen XPS 13 9360 has a dual core w/ 3 MB cache (I don't think quad core was offered?) and it has painfully poor performance.
herman5 9y ago
Still no support for 32gb of ram?
neuromancer2701 9y ago
Maybe next years we can get one of the Zen APUs.
dsr_ 9y ago
I'm guessing that nobody wants to buy new CPUs until a whole new architecture is available. Bad luck in the timing.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  I'm not sure we can call it bad luck, since Dell has a lot of control over the timing of their product releases.
  - kyledrake 9y ago
    I doubt the people working on this knew about the embargo. Most people didn't.
- kyledrake 9y ago
  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.
crimsonalucard 9y ago
Should I hold off on buying a computer until this spectre and meltdown issues are fixed?
- bhouston 9y ago
  That will take a year no?
  - jerf 9y ago
    A year would be a fairly aggressive timeline. Ultimately SPECTRE et al are just exemplars of a class of exploit that I'm not sure anybody has seriously thought about how to deal with systematically. I've done the "daydream off for five minutes and try to solve the problem" a couple of times and I generally get to "let's design a new CPU from the ground up, using an entirely new set of formalisms"[1] pretty quickly, which is, ah, let's say, not a one-year effort to get it into customer hands. Timing attacks suck. [1]: By this I mean that in general, our formal systems dump time as a consideration as quickly as they can. The systems designing the CPUs themselves don't, of course, because time is a big deal in making a modern CPU work at all, but otherwise, we dump it as a consideration as quickly as we can, for lots of reasons, like not overspecifying a system and overconstraining it, and because it's really, really hard to keep track of time, and generally doesn't bring value commensurate with that complexity. Having built our stack of software and formalisms without very much thought about tracking time precisely, we generally only once at the very end recapture some time information, when we care, via O() analysis, and generally via the use of a whole crapton of explicitly-approximated values, which for what we care about is almost always good enough.... until timing attacks. Timing attacks suck. I think we're just barely beginning to come to grips with how much they suck.
    - mort96 9y ago
      My day dream for fixing Spectre is as follows: Basically double the amount of L1 cache (where the second half doesn't need to be as fast as actual L1 cache), make only the first half usable as cache. When an instruction the CPU speculatively executes an instruction which would replace the content in its L1 cache, first copy the existing content to the second, usually unused, half, and _then_ replace the content of the first half with the new data. Then, if the CPU decides that the branch was correct, just do nothing; if the CPU decides that the branch was incorrect, just copy back the "backup" of the original cache. Copying the cache to and from the "backup" would obviously have to be done really quickly with dedicated hardware, and not be done by going through each byte and copying it, but that should be possible. Another solution I've thought of, which should probably be easier and/or cheaper: When speculatively executing an instruction, just don't write to cache at all. This would potentially make the speculatively executed instructions slower, but I can't imagine it would have a big effect. Of course, both of those solutions would just mitigate this specific attack. You're probably exactly correct that timing attacks are going to continue to be a big problem.
ascendantlogic 9y ago
Only 16 gigs of RAM? Why do companies still hold that limit in 2018? I was hoping for 32 gigs back in 2015.
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  last I have checked RAM was power hungry.
- espes 9y ago
  Intel chips don't support LPDDR4
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    the XPS 15 is available with 32gb
    - acdha 9y ago
      The XPS 15 doesn't appear to use low-power DDR4 memory - it's valid to trade battery life for performance but most users buy the former.
- desireco42 9y ago
  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.
  - joshmn 9y ago
    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.
    - gnopgnip 9y ago
      If that is the case there are a lot of options that are not ultra portable
gentooinstall 9y ago
No USB A ports?
irl_zebra 9y ago
Very happy with my 6th gen dev edition. Only issue is the basically unusable camera, but that looks like it's been partially mitigated.
davidw 9y ago
I've been using Dell's Linux computers for 10+ years, and I'm very happy with them. It's great to get a system that ships with Linux out of the box. I don't like having the camera in the lower left corner, but I don't use it much so it's not that big a deal.
FBISurveillance 9y ago
IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released. It's 2018 and all of us, including manufacturers, are locked with 16GB of RAM and those upgrades look like a joke. Within last month I noticed myötähäpeä when someone asks me for laptop advice. Hopefully this situation will make enough professionals pissed off so both them and manufacturers would look into RISC. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  I've been using an HP zBook for a while now with 32GB of RAM and it could be configured up to 64 GB of RAM. ECC is an option too on it.
- wmf 9y ago
  Note that 32GB is available if you move up to 15": https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precision-line-up-mobile-workstations-plus-a-new-all-in-one/ https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-ba...
- rcpt 9y ago
  There's a global RAM shortage now. 32G would likely put too much of a sticker shock on the price tag.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    When was the last time RAM prices were low? 2006 after the US DoJ got done suing everyone for price fixing? Maybe I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist but I wouldn't at all be surprised if DRAM manufacturers weren't colluding to limit supply to inflate prices rather than competing with one another on the open market. I think the same of Flash prices too.
    - rootbear 9y ago
      DDR3 RAM was dirt cheap just a few years ago. I maxed out several of my systems.
cevn 9y ago
Why can't I get 16gb ram and have a 1080p screen? Is the touchpad still terrible? Does it still have coil whine?
- criddell 9y ago
  > 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?
  - bpye 9y ago
    The fact that it's available in Europe but not NA is a bit odd.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Weirdly, you can in Europe.
- Tepix 9y ago
  The (slight) coil whine on my XPS 13 9350-4891 stopped completely after the first BIOS update.
- csdreamer7 9y ago
  I got a 1080p screen and 16 gb ram Lemur from System76.com.... back in 2016.
IdontRememberIt 9y ago
Why is it said to be for developpers and have a 16/9 screen?! Is Apple the only one to understand dev needs (screen needs at least)?
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Surface laptop has 3:2 screen AFAIK.
- strmpnk 9y ago
  I think these wide ratios became popular, not because of video but because of ability to ship less screen and still claim to have a certain diagonal size. Saying 13" at 16:9 is much less area than a 3:4 screen at the same diagonal measurement.
- drb91 9y ago
  Not everyone dislikes 16:9. I find 3:2 to be much more awkward at displaying buffers side by side. It also makes testing screen sizes more of a pain. Maybe not frame it as an obvious negative to “dev needs”, whatever those are?
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Economies of scale, more or less. 16:9 panels seem to be cheaper these days (particularly noticeable if you look at desktop monitors; 16:10 models carry a premium), because most panels are 16:9. 16:9 monitors are also more marketing-friendly, because the standard measure of monitor size is the diagonal. A 13" 16:10 monitor has a fair bit more area than a 16:9 one, but both are advertised as 13".
- IdontRememberIt 9y ago
  What I do not get is that 1) Apple has the same panel suppliers but offers the 16/10, 2) even the premium pc laptops targeting the pro segment (X1 carbon, etc) use a "mainstream" 16/9 instead of a pro 16/10. This is a real mystery for me...
danharaj 9y ago
Still has a nosecam
- dsego 9y ago
  You mean chincam?
saycheese 9y ago
Why does the XPS keep putting the camera at the base the screen instead the top of where it is on most laptops?
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  To have a smaller bezel at the top because most of their target audience doesn't use the webcam anyway.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Business folks have to put tape over the camera half of the time anyway so Dell puts only minimal effort into it.
- geodel 9y ago
  No space available there due to infinite display.
- IMcD23 9y ago
  And that's how we'd get the Dell XPS 13 with Notch™.
dingo_bat 9y ago
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!
- jandrese 9y ago
  It's a dongle maker conspiracy.
- andor 9y ago
  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.
  - BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
    > USB-C is the superior connector: longer lasting, reversible, works for charging, alternate modes, etc. ...2.4GHz radio interference leading to wifi dropout on many devices when USBC peripherals are plugged in... Ok, it's not the connector's fault, but still. USB 3 has not been a problem-free advancement.
    - bluedino 9y ago
      >> 2.4GHz radio interference leading to wifi dropout on many devices 2013+ Macbook Pros had that problem simply using external monitors in some cases
  - dsego 9y ago
    My macbook's usb-c charger constantly loses connection, a slight tug and it falls out.
contingencies 9y ago
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 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560
scorown 9y ago
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
- rootbear 9y ago
  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.
  - tedcrilly 9y ago
    The touchpad problems are well documented, e.g. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197683 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.
- bproven 9y ago
  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
nkkollaw 9y ago
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.
- abiox 9y ago
  ratio != resolution != pixel density it's not the ratio that gives you "extra space".
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  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.
- saycheese 9y ago
  Not seeing a major difference between 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratio displays, what am I missing? http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-lx100/z-lx100-aspects-vs-gx7.png http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-lx100/z-lx10...
  - sempron64 9y ago
    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.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Huge difference. If you're in a country where they sell the Surface Book, go take a look and you'll immediately notice that there is a _lot_ more vertical space.
maxxxxx 9y ago
How is the trackpad on these? I still haven't seen a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad comes even close to the Macbook.
- rootbear 9y ago
  It's a mess. Palm rejection is terrible. I use a wireless mouse with my XPS 13.
  - marsRoverDev 9y ago
    On Ubuntu? I dual boot with windows and while your statement is 100% factual with Ubuntu, it seems to be better handled on windows. This appears to be a software issue; admittedly one which I think that they should be dealing with as a matter of urgency. At least disable the thing while typing, Dell.
    - rootbear 9y ago
      Yes, on Ubuntu. I should have clarified that. And yes, when typing, the touchpad should be disabled.
    - bluedino 9y ago
      Disable while typing seems like a no brained but drives me nuts on my Dell 7xxx
- qlm 9y ago
  I can't speak for this new generation my work laptop is 6th generation XPS 13 running Ubuntu and the trackpad is absolutely terrible. Without an external mouse using the laptop is infuriating. There are random clicks while typing. Clicking small targets can be difficult because sometimes the cursor will decide to move 50px further than you expect Attempting to move the cursor diagonally result in erratic stepping where the cursor moves horizontally, then vertically, then horizontally, etc. Sometimes the cursor randomly jumps half way across the screen. Clicks often register as drags. And so on. I'm not alone, everyone in office has either switched to a Macbook or disabled the trackpad entirely.
mikeokner 9y ago
Congrats to the team! I love that this project has been so successful. My M5510 DE has been my daily driver for almost two years now.
pjmlp 9y ago
> As of today, the new XPS 13 developer edition is available online in Europe in the following countries: > UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland (French and German), Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark Yet another company that doesn't want my money.
- bpye 9y ago
  > Beyond the thirteen countries above, there is a much longer list of countries where the 9370 is available offline. (I’ll be posting this list in the next few days.)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Yes I saw that, but I don't expect it to be any different from earlier models, meaning I still won't see it on sale.
kingosticks 9y ago
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.
- paulmd 9y ago
  Coil whine can easily be tested with this website (probably not a good link if you have epilepsy or Chiari malformations) https://thume.ca/screentunes/ https://thume.ca/screentunes/ 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.
  - kingosticks 9y ago
    I'm not sure why I would actively seek it out - ignorance is bliss.
  - strmpnk 9y ago
    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.
  - metaphor 9y ago
    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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Microphony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Microphony
neslinesli93 9y ago
Did they solve the not-so-well-known problem of Content Adaptive Brightness Controll (CABC) not being disableable for FHD models? People do not speak very much about this, but for me it's actually a game changer. I was so close to buy one of those new xps 13" during holiday sales, but when I read that they do not simply allow you to disable the CABC option on FHD models (whereas you can on QHD models by updating the BIOS), I completely changed my mind on Dell models - actually, CABC was just part of the reason, the others being coil whine, quality control issues, no sane ports...
- kasperlewau 9y ago
  There appears to be an official Dell tool to disable CABC on the FHD now. I'm happy about that. Going to give it a run in the morning. https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2#issuecomment-356363099 https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2#issuecomme... http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=312K3 http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdet...
cryptoz 9y ago
I ordered a Dell XPS 13 Developer edition in 2013. I picked Ubuntu Linux and the email confirmation said Ubuntu on it. Wait a week, it arrives, it runs Windows. Ugh. I was so confident that we had moved past it being this hard to buy a linux laptop, in 2013, but I guess not. All of my friends made fun of me for trying to buy a linux laptop. I ended up failing as hard as possible, being out thousands of dollars while I waited for the refund. Eventually I gave in and got Mac from the store, which I'm still using today. I desperately wish I could have got an XPS 13, but they took my money and gave me the wrong product. It's too risky to try it again.
- platinumrad 9y ago
  I assume the process will have improved since 2013.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but if they sent you an Ubuntu-compatible laptop and just forgot to install Ubuntu on it, can't you do that yourself? It's not the installation by the vendor that makes the Ubuntu support novel, it's the hardware selection and official support, right?
  - cryptoz 9y ago
    This voids the warranty of the machine. You also do not get their professional support this way, which was the primary reason I was attempting to purchase the computer in the first place.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > This voids the warranty of the machine. That shouldn't be the case: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4457/t/19585015 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/44... > You also do not get their professional support this way Why not? How do they know you got one with Windows if your invoice says Linux?
torgard 9y ago
Max 8gb for regular display... 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.
- modin 9y ago
  > I mean, who uses touch screens for development? Co-workers are less likely to touch it and leave marks, that's the only upside I see. > I am otherwise actively looking for a laptop. I got a X1 Carbon a few days ago. I'm pretty content so far.
  - sundvor 9y ago
    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.)
    - 9y ago
baseethrowaway 9y ago
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.
- augustl 9y ago
  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.
randyrand 9y ago
Why do they only offer 1080p and 4k? Something in the middle makes much better sense.
- bluedino 9y ago
  They used to offer 3200x1800 which was nice. 2x @ 135ppi iirc
potatocannon 9y ago
But did they fix the key repeat issues ?
- favadi 9y ago
  Still have this problem on my Dell Precision 5510. Latest BIOS update somewhat made it happen alot less often though.
TeamMCS 9y ago
My newly found issue with Dell and the XPS 13 9360 series is their insane costs. Dell you see wont give you an indication of cost, instead you must send the laptop back at a cost of £40. Stupidly I thought they'd be fair, but no they came back with a quote for £626. They had no interest in offering a discount - so I told them to send it back and get shoved. £40 was the cost of my laziness. Now I'll just DIY for significantly less. Worth baring in mind if you're not confident repairing the machine yourself.
- 1123581321 9y ago
  It's hard to evaluate this without context. What was wrong? What were independent repair shops offering?
  - TeamMCS 9y ago
    The LCD panel had cracked, digitizer was fine. Long story short, the quickest, easiest fix is to replace the entire display + chassis. In Singapore I was quoted $500sgd but I wasn't sure how long I was hanging around for so I didn't want to risk it.
jsgo 9y ago
I'm confused in the color options. I went with the top spec one, Silver is only option. I go back to New XPS 13 (non-developer) and go top spec again. Silver and Rose Gold available. What happened to black/carbon fiber? Is it just for lower configurations? I'm glad they added Silver (options and all), but I like black better. Especially with the camera (I'm guessing) below the logo.
olegkikin 9y ago
I looked at the i7/16GB/512GB/UHD version, it's over $2K. Why not get a Surface Book instead for $1600? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163GNS5S/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163GNS5S/ Or Gigabyte Aero? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY2YYKB/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY2YYKB/
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  I know for my part, I wanted a Gigabyte Aero earlier in the year, but went with something else. The reason was the Gigabyte Aero wasn't available. I guess it had sold out fairly quickly.
- cmonfeat 9y ago
  I can't speak for the Gigabyte, but the Surface lacks Linux comparability, which is the main selling point of the XPS Developer edition.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
40acres 9y ago
Last year I was in the market for a new laptop for the first time since 2011. I really wanted an XPS 13 because it was Linux first and cheaper than a MBP. Generally what put me off was various issues relating to coil whine and general "lack of craftmanship" expressed by reviewers. The dell xps subreddit was a nightmare to read. In the end I got a MBP and have no regrets, OS X is easy to use and Apple has always gotten the physical aspects of the MBP right. I'll consider XPS again in the future (~2-3 years) but doubt they'll be able to get to the craftmanship level of Apple.
kibwen 9y ago
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.
- contingencies 9y ago
  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 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).
  - kibwen 9y ago
    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).
    - 9y ago
stuaxo 9y ago
I was kind of hoping for a Ryzen version...
bakedbean 9y ago
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.
- megy 9y ago
  Um, what? You can have 16gb.
  - bakedbean 9y ago
    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.
AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
Anyone know what WiFi cards they're using this time? The original ones used Broadcom, which sucked on Linux. The DE versions briefly switched to Intel cards, which were great, and have built-in support in the Linux kernel. Then they switched to some off-brand wifi cards called Killer for the later lines.
- abrowne 9y ago
  The announcements I read said Killer and Intel. Not sure who gets which. Killer is Qualcomm FWIW.
claar 9y ago
Comments on this thread say that less memory helps battery life. Are there motherboards that would allow the OS to power-save memory modules at times, and power them back up at others (perhaps user-configured)? If not, I wonder why..
- megy 9y ago
  Having more of the same type of memory would not make a lot of difference. Using different types or ram (such as you have to do to get 32gb) which is not low power will make a difference.
KirinDave 9y ago
I've never had anything but bad experiences with these sputnik machines. They're underpowered, the one I had required custom drivers that were always awful to get into any distribution but Ubuntu, and I've never been a fan of the keyboard. But people seem to love them. I don't really get it.
- superquest 9y ago
  +1 on the keyboard. Keyboards are so harsh ... so little travel.
megy 9y ago
Selling a laptop with 4gb in this day and age is a joke, right? Especially a developer edition? Why bother. Even the Apple Macbook (not pro) come with at least 8gb.
- pyrophane 9y ago
  I raised an eyebrow at that as well. I guess it was to squeak in under the $1k mark but it seems like an odd decision for a machine being targeted at developers
dangrossman 9y ago
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.
- barton808 9y ago
  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!
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    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?
    - sturgill 9y ago
      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.
gattr 9y ago
I settled on the 13.3" form factor 6 years ago, but the lack of all dedicated PgUp, PgDown, Home, End, Ins, Del keys puts me off (I'm very used to copy/paste with Ctrl/Shift-Ins and whole line selection). Well, I'm sticking with the small ProBooks and Lenovos for now.
- oliwarner 9y ago
  Keyboards are variable beasts, even at 13.3". My ThinkPad 13 has all those buttons.
52804375092485 9y ago
I'm optimistic about this product line but I don't think it's there yet. I have a 13" 9360 and while the price was good, it does feel under-powered, specifically the 8G maximum memory configuration with the non-touchscreen. Mine does have the "coil whine" thing, although it doesn't really bother me since I'm usually wearing headphones when I use it. But overall, the build quality is just pathetic compared to my Macbook, and this is supposed to be a competitor. The touchpad is way worse, the carbon fiber thing is cheesy, the awkwardly fat bezel at the bottom of the display is silly, the fact that you need a $100 dock to connect to external monitors is ridiculous, the webcam is weirdly placed in the bottom left of the display, there are just a bunch of strange/bad design choices. That was all the bad things - otherwise it's better than any non-Macbook I've used. It's lightweight, small, gets the "little notebook you can take anywhere" niche fairly well. I hope they listen to feedback and iterate, but I can't say I'd eagerly recommend it.
- mythmon_ 9y ago
  > The fact that you need a $100 dock to connect to external monitors is ridiculous I think you're overselling this a bit. I've got a USB-C dongle that with USB-A, HDMI, Network, and VGA, and a USB-C to DisplayPort cable that is entirely passive. I don't remember how much I paid for them, but it was much less than $100 combined.
julesallen 9y ago
I can't tell you how much I would love a Linux laptop, so much has been solved around power consumption and battery life, wifi stability, and so on. The one show stopper continues to be spotty HiDPI support for essential apps like The GIMP — the menu and fonts stubbornly stayed at 1x resolution and the icons were teeny. Ugh. Had a 9360 for a short time before reluctantly returning it. So for me it's a Samsung Pro Chromebook as a daily driver and a 2015 Macbook Pro for development and graphics work. How are things six months forward? Any better to completely working vs. 'closer and it'll be done soon'?
- zerocrates 9y ago
  On GIMP you'd probably be waiting for them to port to GTK3 for it to work well... and I wouldn't hold your breath. The party line there is still that they may just target GTK4 instead, given the likely timescale. I do believe the unstable 2.9 series introduced an easy way to increase icon sizes, though, so that should be in 2.10 at... some point. Could always go for the mere "full HD" screen where such things aren't as necessary.
- jcelerier 9y ago
  > The one show stopper continues to be spotty HiDPI support for essential apps like The GIMP — the menu and fonts stubbornly stayed at 1x resolution and the icons were teeny. just put Xft.dpi: 144 (or more) in your .Xresources. (at least for menus & fonts) Here's how it looks for me at 192: https://imgur.com/9KKhpZq.png https://imgur.com/9KKhpZq.png
  - bluedino 9y ago
    Toolbars and brushes don't scale?
toddkazakov 9y ago
I regret buying the 9560. Changed the screen under warranty 4 times and it either had a pink tint (twice), uneven backlight or backlight bleed. In the end I was just tired and decided to keep it as it is. My girlfriend got a MBP recently. This is when I realized how spending $2100 on XPS was not very smart.
blitmap 9y ago
I really wanted an XPS 13 with a 3840x2160 screen. Now that it's available I've been turned off by the meager performance gains for casual gaming on an integrated Intel GPU. And then there's Meltdown/Spectre. AMD isn't safe either but I'm looking at the new HP Envy x360 15" with Ryzen inside. Someday, maybe - RISC-V and less disappointments.
devnill 9y ago
Why do the euro models feature completely different (and arguably better) configurations? I have one of these from a couple generations back and absolutely love it. My only regret is getting the high end model with the touch screen and high-res screen. I've heard 1080p has better battery life and I've spent more time I'm proud to admit dealing with the hell of configuring apps to not look like garbage on a high-res screen.
jlgaddis 9y ago
The RAM is soldered on and you can't get more than 16 GB of it? This sounds like a MBP, I guess I'll pass. I've a 5+ year old ThinkPad that has had 32 GB in it since the day I got it.
- touristtam 9y ago
  Can't replace the HDD either in those. And forget about a proper docking station a la TP.
pkilgore 9y ago
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.
- jhasse 9y ago
  With 4K using 2x integer scaling should be fine, shouldn't it?
edelsohn 9y ago
I regret buying my XPS 13. The battery dangerously expanded, warped the keyboard, and Dell refuses to fix it.
- hortonew 9y ago
  I had the same issue with the XPS 15 9550, but they replaced it out of warranty.
  - edelsohn 9y ago
    The XPS 15 had a "known issue". Dell refuses to admit an issue with the XPS 13, so it refuses to replace the battery out of warranty, despite the safety concern.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
maxk42 9y ago
Love my XPS 13 but hate Ubuntu. I've never tried replacing it with Fedora or something different because of all the custom firmware. Has anyone had any experience with this? Was it a pain?
RRRA 9y ago
The link on the page bounce me back to the generic dell page? Are they blocking by country? Anyone has a link to the 16GB version 9370 dev ed.?
RRRA 9y ago
The XPS13 9350 is nice, I had no issue except that I swapped the Wi-Fi card for an Intel as it was badly supported when I first got it (Self installed Ubuntu before any Dell Linux support). I fried the headphone port because the office wasn't grounded and had a shock, but everything else works well after 2+ years.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
Add an nVidia GTX 1050, 32GB RAM and you would have had me at XPS.
paultopia 9y ago
Interesting competitive profile. I'd guess the most direct comparison for people who want a really small machine running a non-windows OS would be the i5/8/256/non-touch/$1175 xps13 vs the m3/8/256/$1300 macbook. That's not bad at all---I'd consider trading a half pound or so in weight and some display resolution for a faster processor, bigger screen, and a hundred bucks, so long as battery life and reliability hold.
PopsiclePete 9y ago
I'm really worried about the Killer (seriously?) WiFi card in this one. I have the 9350 with the Intel card, and although it's perhaps not as super-fast when playing Call Of Medal Of Honor 17 online....well, this is a developer machine, dammit. I want reliability, not an extra 0.00001 packet per second or whatever they're claiming. They might as well overclock the video card, because that's what gamers want. Seriously, Dell, what the triple fuck? What was wrong with Intel cards that ....worked?
tbrock 9y ago
Dell is doing a great thing here by leading the charge on Linux laptops but I’m so glad others realize what utter pieces of shit their laptops are quality wise. Just because dell finally made a laptop that looks decent and wasn’t built to be 15lbs doesn’t mean the quality has improved here. Their desktops are fine. I’ve also never dealt with a worse company with regards to repairs and service. Do yourself a favor and buy an X1 Carbon, the 5th gen rocks and the 6th is coming soon.
martyvis 9y ago
Spammy popup for mobile at this site
balladeer 9y ago
I notice a design trend with these slim notebooks. First time I noticed it was in a Asus and then in XPS - the edges of base of the laptop are shown very thin. But that slimness is just for the visual effect and if you look at the thickness of the base from the cross section you will realise it's actually as thick all across as at is the hinge and the edges were chiseled out 1 inch (or so) towards the middle on all three sides (except from the hinge) just to make the laptop appear thinner than it actually is. XPS is a great laptop, I have briefly used it at work, but this tactic (marketing design tactic?), at least to me, feels sometime like deceiving. Kinda off-putting. I have also used Thinkpad Carbon in the past and if I remember correctly it was as slim as it looked.
darren0 9y ago
I've seen quite a few developers buy and use these with mixed results. One key thing I've seen that people have really struggled with is multiple external monitors. For that to work you usually need some USB C dock which is a nightmare. Personally I've had much better results with Lenovo T and X series because they typically have more conservative hardware that is better supported by upstream Linux. Also their dock is not USB C.
a3n 9y ago
With Meltdown and Spectre, and CERT's statement that only replacement of CPU will solve those, it's hard to think about buying any computer for the next little while.
WhyNotHugo 9y ago
I'm surprised that only the touchscreen editions are UHD. I'd have guessed developers would prefer UHD, but no touch. Am I really missing something? Do people really prefer touch (or, FHD)?.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  The other horrible part of the touch screen is that it is super glossy. To get 4k I had to buy a touch screen and put a matte film on it.
mleonhard 9y ago
Did DELL finally put some resources into their Linux software team? I bought a 2015 XPS 13 Developer edition and had a very bad experience with the software. The setup program crashed. And the drivers were bad: wifi slow, suspend/resume sometimes crashed, touchpad would register clicks while I typed, video playback randomly stopped working. I spent about 8 hours researching and finally got it usable. The remaining issues went away gradually over 6 months. After that experience, I believe that DELL doesn't care enough about making a great product to hire good software people, or is incapable of selecting good software people, or doesn't allocate enough money to hire enough software people. Another problem is that all of the CPUs are 15W TDP. That means they have 1/3 the CPU power of a desktop. They are unsuitable for running heavy VM-based integration tests, video editing, and other things I want to do with my primary computer.
tracker1 9y ago
SSD maxes out at 512GB, Ram at 16GB... no go.
biehl 9y ago
Awesome! Any timeline for the XPS15 (or precision)?
wazoox 9y ago
I have the 1st gen XPS 13 developer and I'm happy with it. The build quality isn't as good as Apple, particularly the touchpad is notably inferior, and the right speaker died a long time ago. From time to time, I need to open it to remove dirt from the fan, and that's about it. 5 years later, works perfectly. A coworker recently got the 6th generation model. No problem. Slightly better build. Excellent battery life and performance. These are definitely reliable workhorses.
merpnderp 9y ago
Anyone know if the ram is replaceable or if it is soldered to the board? EDIT: Talked to support and they said the ram is soldered to the board.
abiox 9y ago
i really wish there was a 15".
tajen 9y ago
I’m kind of blocked from buying an Ubuntu laptop because I want to do video editing for Youtube too. iMovie is free on the Mac, is there even a $300 software on Ubuntu that would be suitable?
dontbuyanxps 9y ago
I bought an XPS 13 with Ubuntu preinstalled. Had trouble with a loud fan as well as the headphone jack not functioning correctly when using any headphones with a headset. Spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting with tech support and was ultimately told, otr, that the computers are shoddily manufactured and I'd be better off with a Latitude. Switched, still not thrilled about the battery but it works well otherwise!
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  the support is clueless, loud fan and headphone jack can be fixed.

244 points by warp 9y ago

sprt 9y ago

How's high DPI support on Ubuntu nowadays? My last experience (2 years ago?), everything was super small and when I tried changing the scaling it wasn't pixel-perfect. Literally had to return the laptop and get the 1366x768 version.

bakedbean 9y ago
it's actually not terrible if you are willing to use the unity desktop... but as I understand it canonical won't be supporting unity and is switching back to Gnome, which is... a bag of tweaks and scaling. I've been using Elementary (an Ubuntu Gnome fork) which delivers a slightly better out of the box ui.
pyrophane 9y ago
It was better before the switch to wayland/gnome in 17.10. In 17.04 they actually appeared to have fractional scaling working pretty seamlessly in Unity (not sure exactly what they did to accomplish that), but with the most recent version they are back to integer only. That being said, gnome is expected to have factional scaling support under wayland for 3.28, scheduled for, iirc, March.

foodstances 9y ago

Does it still have that awful coil whine?

SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
Like many others, I was told by their Twitter people that coil whine on my 9560 was "not a known issue per se" and that I just needed to update my BIOS. I won't be buying a Dell next time.
- switch007 9y ago
  They've also stated (I think it was a different model) that they deem it acceptable in normal/average (i.e. noisy) office environments with aircon etc. Therefore if you can hear it, the problem is that your environment isn't noisy enough to drown it out !
eliaspro 9y ago
Quoting Barton George: > We are definitely looking into the coil whine issue, this has senior management visibility, and pursuing several avenues for the current system as well as solutions going forward. Source: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/p/20014657/21005539#21005539 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...
- foodstances 9y ago
  That is from June, this is the latest from December: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/p/19992655/21038056#21038056 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46... A motherboard change and a BIOS update (2.4.2) are supposed to lower the noise as much as they can, while still deeming it "working within specification". Users report the 2.4.2 update didn't help much or even made it worse.
  - josephmx 9y ago
    This update (without motherboard change) did help by making the fans run less often, which doesn't seem to be causing overheating issues or me
ianai 9y ago
And an awful touch pad?
scorown 9y ago
So glad I am not the only one with that issue on my 9560. I also found out that if I put CPU under stress, the whine goes away. So when I am using the adapter, I run HeavyLoad on 3 cores and that takes whine away, with enough computing power for happy compiling.

ythn 9y ago

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.

eropple 9y ago
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.
- sohooo 9y ago
  Did you look into the Razer Blade series? https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops
  - eropple 9y ago
    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.)
    - ReverseCold 9y ago
      You could just put a sticker on it, company logo or something. There's only one place where the logo is visible anyway.
      - 9y ago

martin1975 9y ago

It sure would be nice if someone like dell could at least insert Coreboot, or preferably Libreboot on these babies. They probably have enough heft to make such a change (I hope :).

KerrickStaley 9y ago

Excited to see them shipping this with a quad core processor (and with 8 MB cache!). My previous-gen XPS 13 9360 has a dual core w/ 3 MB cache (I don't think quad core was offered?) and it has painfully poor performance.

herman5 9y ago

Still no support for 32gb of ram?

neuromancer2701 9y ago

Maybe next years we can get one of the Zen APUs.

dsr_ 9y ago

I'm guessing that nobody wants to buy new CPUs until a whole new architecture is available. Bad luck in the timing.

DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
I'm not sure we can call it bad luck, since Dell has a lot of control over the timing of their product releases.
- kyledrake 9y ago
  I doubt the people working on this knew about the embargo. Most people didn't.
kyledrake 9y ago
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.

crimsonalucard 9y ago

Should I hold off on buying a computer until this spectre and meltdown issues are fixed?

bhouston 9y ago
That will take a year no?
- jerf 9y ago
  A year would be a fairly aggressive timeline. Ultimately SPECTRE et al are just exemplars of a class of exploit that I'm not sure anybody has seriously thought about how to deal with systematically. I've done the "daydream off for five minutes and try to solve the problem" a couple of times and I generally get to "let's design a new CPU from the ground up, using an entirely new set of formalisms"[1] pretty quickly, which is, ah, let's say, not a one-year effort to get it into customer hands. Timing attacks suck. [1]: By this I mean that in general, our formal systems dump time as a consideration as quickly as they can. The systems designing the CPUs themselves don't, of course, because time is a big deal in making a modern CPU work at all, but otherwise, we dump it as a consideration as quickly as we can, for lots of reasons, like not overspecifying a system and overconstraining it, and because it's really, really hard to keep track of time, and generally doesn't bring value commensurate with that complexity. Having built our stack of software and formalisms without very much thought about tracking time precisely, we generally only once at the very end recapture some time information, when we care, via O() analysis, and generally via the use of a whole crapton of explicitly-approximated values, which for what we care about is almost always good enough.... until timing attacks. Timing attacks suck. I think we're just barely beginning to come to grips with how much they suck.
  - mort96 9y ago
    My day dream for fixing Spectre is as follows: Basically double the amount of L1 cache (where the second half doesn't need to be as fast as actual L1 cache), make only the first half usable as cache. When an instruction the CPU speculatively executes an instruction which would replace the content in its L1 cache, first copy the existing content to the second, usually unused, half, and _then_ replace the content of the first half with the new data. Then, if the CPU decides that the branch was correct, just do nothing; if the CPU decides that the branch was incorrect, just copy back the "backup" of the original cache. Copying the cache to and from the "backup" would obviously have to be done really quickly with dedicated hardware, and not be done by going through each byte and copying it, but that should be possible. Another solution I've thought of, which should probably be easier and/or cheaper: When speculatively executing an instruction, just don't write to cache at all. This would potentially make the speculatively executed instructions slower, but I can't imagine it would have a big effect. Of course, both of those solutions would just mitigate this specific attack. You're probably exactly correct that timing attacks are going to continue to be a big problem.

ascendantlogic 9y ago

Only 16 gigs of RAM? Why do companies still hold that limit in 2018? I was hoping for 32 gigs back in 2015.

flatfilefan 9y ago
last I have checked RAM was power hungry.
espes 9y ago
Intel chips don't support LPDDR4
- bdcravens 9y ago
  the XPS 15 is available with 32gb
  - acdha 9y ago
    The XPS 15 doesn't appear to use low-power DDR4 memory - it's valid to trade battery life for performance but most users buy the former.
desireco42 9y ago
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.
- joshmn 9y ago
  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.
  - gnopgnip 9y ago
    If that is the case there are a lot of options that are not ultra portable

gentooinstall 9y ago

No USB A ports?

irl_zebra 9y ago

Very happy with my 6th gen dev edition. Only issue is the basically unusable camera, but that looks like it's been partially mitigated.

davidw 9y ago

I've been using Dell's Linux computers for 10+ years, and I'm very happy with them. It's great to get a system that ships with Linux out of the box. I don't like having the camera in the lower left corner, but I don't use it much so it's not that big a deal.

FBISurveillance 9y ago

IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released. It's 2018 and all of us, including manufacturers, are locked with 16GB of RAM and those upgrades look like a joke. Within last month I noticed myötähäpeä when someone asks me for laptop advice. Hopefully this situation will make enough professionals pissed off so both them and manufacturers would look into RISC. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

aidenn0 9y ago
I've been using an HP zBook for a while now with 32GB of RAM and it could be configured up to 64 GB of RAM. ECC is an option too on it.
wmf 9y ago
Note that 32GB is available if you move up to 15": https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-based-precision-line-up-mobile-workstations-plus-a-new-all-in-one/ https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-ba...
rcpt 9y ago
There's a global RAM shortage now. 32G would likely put too much of a sticker shock on the price tag.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  When was the last time RAM prices were low? 2006 after the US DoJ got done suing everyone for price fixing? Maybe I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist but I wouldn't at all be surprised if DRAM manufacturers weren't colluding to limit supply to inflate prices rather than competing with one another on the open market. I think the same of Flash prices too.
  - rootbear 9y ago
    DDR3 RAM was dirt cheap just a few years ago. I maxed out several of my systems.

cevn 9y ago

Why can't I get 16gb ram and have a 1080p screen? Is the touchpad still terrible? Does it still have coil whine?

criddell 9y ago
> 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?
- bpye 9y ago
  The fact that it's available in Europe but not NA is a bit odd.
rsynnott 9y ago
Weirdly, you can in Europe.
Tepix 9y ago
The (slight) coil whine on my XPS 13 9350-4891 stopped completely after the first BIOS update.
csdreamer7 9y ago
I got a 1080p screen and 16 gb ram Lemur from System76.com.... back in 2016.

IdontRememberIt 9y ago

Why is it said to be for developpers and have a 16/9 screen?! Is Apple the only one to understand dev needs (screen needs at least)?

dingo_bat 9y ago
Surface laptop has 3:2 screen AFAIK.
strmpnk 9y ago
I think these wide ratios became popular, not because of video but because of ability to ship less screen and still claim to have a certain diagonal size. Saying 13" at 16:9 is much less area than a 3:4 screen at the same diagonal measurement.
drb91 9y ago
Not everyone dislikes 16:9. I find 3:2 to be much more awkward at displaying buffers side by side. It also makes testing screen sizes more of a pain. Maybe not frame it as an obvious negative to “dev needs”, whatever those are?
rsynnott 9y ago
Economies of scale, more or less. 16:9 panels seem to be cheaper these days (particularly noticeable if you look at desktop monitors; 16:10 models carry a premium), because most panels are 16:9. 16:9 monitors are also more marketing-friendly, because the standard measure of monitor size is the diagonal. A 13" 16:10 monitor has a fair bit more area than a 16:9 one, but both are advertised as 13".
IdontRememberIt 9y ago
What I do not get is that 1) Apple has the same panel suppliers but offers the 16/10, 2) even the premium pc laptops targeting the pro segment (X1 carbon, etc) use a "mainstream" 16/9 instead of a pro 16/10. This is a real mystery for me...

danharaj 9y ago

Still has a nosecam

dsego 9y ago
You mean chincam?

saycheese 9y ago

Why does the XPS keep putting the camera at the base the screen instead the top of where it is on most laptops?

JohnTHaller 9y ago
To have a smaller bezel at the top because most of their target audience doesn't use the webcam anyway.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Business folks have to put tape over the camera half of the time anyway so Dell puts only minimal effort into it.
geodel 9y ago
No space available there due to infinite display.
IMcD23 9y ago
And that's how we'd get the Dell XPS 13 with Notch™.

dingo_bat 9y ago

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!

jandrese 9y ago
It's a dongle maker conspiracy.
andor 9y ago
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.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
  > USB-C is the superior connector: longer lasting, reversible, works for charging, alternate modes, etc. ...2.4GHz radio interference leading to wifi dropout on many devices when USBC peripherals are plugged in... Ok, it's not the connector's fault, but still. USB 3 has not been a problem-free advancement.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    >> 2.4GHz radio interference leading to wifi dropout on many devices 2013+ Macbook Pros had that problem simply using external monitors in some cases
- dsego 9y ago
  My macbook's usb-c charger constantly loses connection, a slight tug and it falls out.

contingencies 9y ago

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 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560

scorown 9y ago

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

rootbear 9y ago
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.
- tedcrilly 9y ago
  The touchpad problems are well documented, e.g. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197683 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.
bproven 9y ago
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

nkkollaw 9y ago

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.

abiox 9y ago
ratio != resolution != pixel density it's not the ratio that gives you "extra space".
flatfilefan 9y ago
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.
saycheese 9y ago
Not seeing a major difference between 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratio displays, what am I missing? http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-lx100/z-lx100-aspects-vs-gx7.png http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-lx100/z-lx10...
- sempron64 9y ago
  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.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Huge difference. If you're in a country where they sell the Surface Book, go take a look and you'll immediately notice that there is a _lot_ more vertical space.

maxxxxx 9y ago

How is the trackpad on these? I still haven't seen a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad comes even close to the Macbook.

rootbear 9y ago
It's a mess. Palm rejection is terrible. I use a wireless mouse with my XPS 13.
- marsRoverDev 9y ago
  On Ubuntu? I dual boot with windows and while your statement is 100% factual with Ubuntu, it seems to be better handled on windows. This appears to be a software issue; admittedly one which I think that they should be dealing with as a matter of urgency. At least disable the thing while typing, Dell.
  - rootbear 9y ago
    Yes, on Ubuntu. I should have clarified that. And yes, when typing, the touchpad should be disabled.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    Disable while typing seems like a no brained but drives me nuts on my Dell 7xxx
qlm 9y ago
I can't speak for this new generation my work laptop is 6th generation XPS 13 running Ubuntu and the trackpad is absolutely terrible. Without an external mouse using the laptop is infuriating. There are random clicks while typing. Clicking small targets can be difficult because sometimes the cursor will decide to move 50px further than you expect Attempting to move the cursor diagonally result in erratic stepping where the cursor moves horizontally, then vertically, then horizontally, etc. Sometimes the cursor randomly jumps half way across the screen. Clicks often register as drags. And so on. I'm not alone, everyone in office has either switched to a Macbook or disabled the trackpad entirely.

mikeokner 9y ago

Congrats to the team! I love that this project has been so successful. My M5510 DE has been my daily driver for almost two years now.

pjmlp 9y ago

> As of today, the new XPS 13 developer edition is available online in Europe in the following countries: > UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland (French and German), Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark Yet another company that doesn't want my money.

bpye 9y ago
> Beyond the thirteen countries above, there is a much longer list of countries where the 9370 is available offline. (I’ll be posting this list in the next few days.)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Yes I saw that, but I don't expect it to be any different from earlier models, meaning I still won't see it on sale.

kingosticks 9y ago

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.

paulmd 9y ago
Coil whine can easily be tested with this website (probably not a good link if you have epilepsy or Chiari malformations) https://thume.ca/screentunes/ https://thume.ca/screentunes/ 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.
- kingosticks 9y ago
  I'm not sure why I would actively seek it out - ignorance is bliss.
- strmpnk 9y ago
  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.
- metaphor 9y ago
  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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Microphony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Microphony

neslinesli93 9y ago

Did they solve the not-so-well-known problem of Content Adaptive Brightness Controll (CABC) not being disableable for FHD models? People do not speak very much about this, but for me it's actually a game changer. I was so close to buy one of those new xps 13" during holiday sales, but when I read that they do not simply allow you to disable the CABC option on FHD models (whereas you can on QHD models by updating the BIOS), I completely changed my mind on Dell models - actually, CABC was just part of the reason, the others being coil whine, quality control issues, no sane ports...

kasperlewau 9y ago
There appears to be an official Dell tool to disable CABC on the FHD now. I'm happy about that. Going to give it a run in the morning. https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2#issuecomment-356363099 https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2#issuecomme... http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=312K3 http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdet...

cryptoz 9y ago

I ordered a Dell XPS 13 Developer edition in 2013. I picked Ubuntu Linux and the email confirmation said Ubuntu on it. Wait a week, it arrives, it runs Windows. Ugh. I was so confident that we had moved past it being this hard to buy a linux laptop, in 2013, but I guess not. All of my friends made fun of me for trying to buy a linux laptop. I ended up failing as hard as possible, being out thousands of dollars while I waited for the refund. Eventually I gave in and got Mac from the store, which I'm still using today. I desperately wish I could have got an XPS 13, but they took my money and gave me the wrong product. It's too risky to try it again.

platinumrad 9y ago
I assume the process will have improved since 2013.
mancerayder 9y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but if they sent you an Ubuntu-compatible laptop and just forgot to install Ubuntu on it, can't you do that yourself? It's not the installation by the vendor that makes the Ubuntu support novel, it's the hardware selection and official support, right?
- cryptoz 9y ago
  This voids the warranty of the machine. You also do not get their professional support this way, which was the primary reason I was attempting to purchase the computer in the first place.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > This voids the warranty of the machine. That shouldn't be the case: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4457/t/19585015 http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/44... > You also do not get their professional support this way Why not? How do they know you got one with Windows if your invoice says Linux?

torgard 9y ago

Max 8gb for regular display... 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.

modin 9y ago
> I mean, who uses touch screens for development? Co-workers are less likely to touch it and leave marks, that's the only upside I see. > I am otherwise actively looking for a laptop. I got a X1 Carbon a few days ago. I'm pretty content so far.
- sundvor 9y ago
  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.)
  - 9y ago

baseethrowaway 9y ago

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.

augustl 9y ago
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.

randyrand 9y ago

Why do they only offer 1080p and 4k? Something in the middle makes much better sense.

bluedino 9y ago
They used to offer 3200x1800 which was nice. 2x @ 135ppi iirc

potatocannon 9y ago

But did they fix the key repeat issues ?

favadi 9y ago
Still have this problem on my Dell Precision 5510. Latest BIOS update somewhat made it happen alot less often though.

TeamMCS 9y ago

My newly found issue with Dell and the XPS 13 9360 series is their insane costs. Dell you see wont give you an indication of cost, instead you must send the laptop back at a cost of £40. Stupidly I thought they'd be fair, but no they came back with a quote for £626. They had no interest in offering a discount - so I told them to send it back and get shoved. £40 was the cost of my laziness. Now I'll just DIY for significantly less. Worth baring in mind if you're not confident repairing the machine yourself.

1123581321 9y ago
It's hard to evaluate this without context. What was wrong? What were independent repair shops offering?
- TeamMCS 9y ago
  The LCD panel had cracked, digitizer was fine. Long story short, the quickest, easiest fix is to replace the entire display + chassis. In Singapore I was quoted $500sgd but I wasn't sure how long I was hanging around for so I didn't want to risk it.

jsgo 9y ago

I'm confused in the color options. I went with the top spec one, Silver is only option. I go back to New XPS 13 (non-developer) and go top spec again. Silver and Rose Gold available. What happened to black/carbon fiber? Is it just for lower configurations? I'm glad they added Silver (options and all), but I like black better. Especially with the camera (I'm guessing) below the logo.

olegkikin 9y ago

I looked at the i7/16GB/512GB/UHD version, it's over $2K. Why not get a Surface Book instead for $1600? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163GNS5S/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163GNS5S/ Or Gigabyte Aero? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY2YYKB/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY2YYKB/

jasonlotito 9y ago
I know for my part, I wanted a Gigabyte Aero earlier in the year, but went with something else. The reason was the Gigabyte Aero wasn't available. I guess it had sold out fairly quickly.
cmonfeat 9y ago
I can't speak for the Gigabyte, but the Surface lacks Linux comparability, which is the main selling point of the XPS Developer edition.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

40acres 9y ago

Last year I was in the market for a new laptop for the first time since 2011. I really wanted an XPS 13 because it was Linux first and cheaper than a MBP. Generally what put me off was various issues relating to coil whine and general "lack of craftmanship" expressed by reviewers. The dell xps subreddit was a nightmare to read. In the end I got a MBP and have no regrets, OS X is easy to use and Apple has always gotten the physical aspects of the MBP right. I'll consider XPS again in the future (~2-3 years) but doubt they'll be able to get to the craftmanship level of Apple.

kibwen 9y ago

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.

contingencies 9y ago
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 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).
- kibwen 9y ago
  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).
  - 9y ago

stuaxo 9y ago

I was kind of hoping for a Ryzen version...

bakedbean 9y ago

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.

megy 9y ago
Um, what? You can have 16gb.
- bakedbean 9y ago
  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.

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago

Anyone know what WiFi cards they're using this time? The original ones used Broadcom, which sucked on Linux. The DE versions briefly switched to Intel cards, which were great, and have built-in support in the Linux kernel. Then they switched to some off-brand wifi cards called Killer for the later lines.

abrowne 9y ago
The announcements I read said Killer and Intel. Not sure who gets which. Killer is Qualcomm FWIW.

claar 9y ago

Comments on this thread say that less memory helps battery life. Are there motherboards that would allow the OS to power-save memory modules at times, and power them back up at others (perhaps user-configured)? If not, I wonder why..

megy 9y ago
Having more of the same type of memory would not make a lot of difference. Using different types or ram (such as you have to do to get 32gb) which is not low power will make a difference.

KirinDave 9y ago

I've never had anything but bad experiences with these sputnik machines. They're underpowered, the one I had required custom drivers that were always awful to get into any distribution but Ubuntu, and I've never been a fan of the keyboard. But people seem to love them. I don't really get it.

superquest 9y ago
+1 on the keyboard. Keyboards are so harsh ... so little travel.

megy 9y ago

Selling a laptop with 4gb in this day and age is a joke, right? Especially a developer edition? Why bother. Even the Apple Macbook (not pro) come with at least 8gb.

pyrophane 9y ago
I raised an eyebrow at that as well. I guess it was to squeak in under the $1k mark but it seems like an odd decision for a machine being targeted at developers

dangrossman 9y ago

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.

barton808 9y ago
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!
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  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?
  - sturgill 9y ago
    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.

gattr 9y ago

I settled on the 13.3" form factor 6 years ago, but the lack of all dedicated PgUp, PgDown, Home, End, Ins, Del keys puts me off (I'm very used to copy/paste with Ctrl/Shift-Ins and whole line selection). Well, I'm sticking with the small ProBooks and Lenovos for now.

oliwarner 9y ago
Keyboards are variable beasts, even at 13.3". My ThinkPad 13 has all those buttons.

52804375092485 9y ago

I'm optimistic about this product line but I don't think it's there yet. I have a 13" 9360 and while the price was good, it does feel under-powered, specifically the 8G maximum memory configuration with the non-touchscreen. Mine does have the "coil whine" thing, although it doesn't really bother me since I'm usually wearing headphones when I use it. But overall, the build quality is just pathetic compared to my Macbook, and this is supposed to be a competitor. The touchpad is way worse, the carbon fiber thing is cheesy, the awkwardly fat bezel at the bottom of the display is silly, the fact that you need a $100 dock to connect to external monitors is ridiculous, the webcam is weirdly placed in the bottom left of the display, there are just a bunch of strange/bad design choices. That was all the bad things - otherwise it's better than any non-Macbook I've used. It's lightweight, small, gets the "little notebook you can take anywhere" niche fairly well. I hope they listen to feedback and iterate, but I can't say I'd eagerly recommend it.

mythmon_ 9y ago
> The fact that you need a $100 dock to connect to external monitors is ridiculous I think you're overselling this a bit. I've got a USB-C dongle that with USB-A, HDMI, Network, and VGA, and a USB-C to DisplayPort cable that is entirely passive. I don't remember how much I paid for them, but it was much less than $100 combined.

julesallen 9y ago

I can't tell you how much I would love a Linux laptop, so much has been solved around power consumption and battery life, wifi stability, and so on. The one show stopper continues to be spotty HiDPI support for essential apps like The GIMP — the menu and fonts stubbornly stayed at 1x resolution and the icons were teeny. Ugh. Had a 9360 for a short time before reluctantly returning it. So for me it's a Samsung Pro Chromebook as a daily driver and a 2015 Macbook Pro for development and graphics work. How are things six months forward? Any better to completely working vs. 'closer and it'll be done soon'?

zerocrates 9y ago
On GIMP you'd probably be waiting for them to port to GTK3 for it to work well... and I wouldn't hold your breath. The party line there is still that they may just target GTK4 instead, given the likely timescale. I do believe the unstable 2.9 series introduced an easy way to increase icon sizes, though, so that should be in 2.10 at... some point. Could always go for the mere "full HD" screen where such things aren't as necessary.
jcelerier 9y ago
> The one show stopper continues to be spotty HiDPI support for essential apps like The GIMP — the menu and fonts stubbornly stayed at 1x resolution and the icons were teeny. just put Xft.dpi: 144 (or more) in your .Xresources. (at least for menus & fonts) Here's how it looks for me at 192: https://imgur.com/9KKhpZq.png https://imgur.com/9KKhpZq.png
- bluedino 9y ago
  Toolbars and brushes don't scale?

toddkazakov 9y ago

I regret buying the 9560. Changed the screen under warranty 4 times and it either had a pink tint (twice), uneven backlight or backlight bleed. In the end I was just tired and decided to keep it as it is. My girlfriend got a MBP recently. This is when I realized how spending $2100 on XPS was not very smart.

blitmap 9y ago

I really wanted an XPS 13 with a 3840x2160 screen. Now that it's available I've been turned off by the meager performance gains for casual gaming on an integrated Intel GPU. And then there's Meltdown/Spectre. AMD isn't safe either but I'm looking at the new HP Envy x360 15" with Ryzen inside. Someday, maybe - RISC-V and less disappointments.

devnill 9y ago

Why do the euro models feature completely different (and arguably better) configurations? I have one of these from a couple generations back and absolutely love it. My only regret is getting the high end model with the touch screen and high-res screen. I've heard 1080p has better battery life and I've spent more time I'm proud to admit dealing with the hell of configuring apps to not look like garbage on a high-res screen.

jlgaddis 9y ago

The RAM is soldered on and you can't get more than 16 GB of it? This sounds like a MBP, I guess I'll pass. I've a 5+ year old ThinkPad that has had 32 GB in it since the day I got it.

touristtam 9y ago
Can't replace the HDD either in those. And forget about a proper docking station a la TP.

pkilgore 9y ago

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.

jhasse 9y ago
With 4K using 2x integer scaling should be fine, shouldn't it?

edelsohn 9y ago

I regret buying my XPS 13. The battery dangerously expanded, warped the keyboard, and Dell refuses to fix it.

hortonew 9y ago
I had the same issue with the XPS 15 9550, but they replaced it out of warranty.
- edelsohn 9y ago
  The XPS 15 had a "known issue". Dell refuses to admit an issue with the XPS 13, so it refuses to replace the battery out of warranty, despite the safety concern.

deleted 9y ago

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maxk42 9y ago

Love my XPS 13 but hate Ubuntu. I've never tried replacing it with Fedora or something different because of all the custom firmware. Has anyone had any experience with this? Was it a pain?

RRRA 9y ago

The link on the page bounce me back to the generic dell page? Are they blocking by country? Anyone has a link to the 16GB version 9370 dev ed.?

RRRA 9y ago

The XPS13 9350 is nice, I had no issue except that I swapped the Wi-Fi card for an Intel as it was badly supported when I first got it (Self installed Ubuntu before any Dell Linux support). I fried the headphone port because the office wasn't grounded and had a shock, but everything else works well after 2+ years.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

Add an nVidia GTX 1050, 32GB RAM and you would have had me at XPS.

paultopia 9y ago

Interesting competitive profile. I'd guess the most direct comparison for people who want a really small machine running a non-windows OS would be the i5/8/256/non-touch/$1175 xps13 vs the m3/8/256/$1300 macbook. That's not bad at all---I'd consider trading a half pound or so in weight and some display resolution for a faster processor, bigger screen, and a hundred bucks, so long as battery life and reliability hold.

PopsiclePete 9y ago

I'm really worried about the Killer (seriously?) WiFi card in this one. I have the 9350 with the Intel card, and although it's perhaps not as super-fast when playing Call Of Medal Of Honor 17 online....well, this is a developer machine, dammit. I want reliability, not an extra 0.00001 packet per second or whatever they're claiming. They might as well overclock the video card, because that's what gamers want. Seriously, Dell, what the triple fuck? What was wrong with Intel cards that ....worked?

tbrock 9y ago

Dell is doing a great thing here by leading the charge on Linux laptops but I’m so glad others realize what utter pieces of shit their laptops are quality wise. Just because dell finally made a laptop that looks decent and wasn’t built to be 15lbs doesn’t mean the quality has improved here. Their desktops are fine. I’ve also never dealt with a worse company with regards to repairs and service. Do yourself a favor and buy an X1 Carbon, the 5th gen rocks and the 6th is coming soon.

martyvis 9y ago

Spammy popup for mobile at this site

balladeer 9y ago

I notice a design trend with these slim notebooks. First time I noticed it was in a Asus and then in XPS - the edges of base of the laptop are shown very thin. But that slimness is just for the visual effect and if you look at the thickness of the base from the cross section you will realise it's actually as thick all across as at is the hinge and the edges were chiseled out 1 inch (or so) towards the middle on all three sides (except from the hinge) just to make the laptop appear thinner than it actually is. XPS is a great laptop, I have briefly used it at work, but this tactic (marketing design tactic?), at least to me, feels sometime like deceiving. Kinda off-putting. I have also used Thinkpad Carbon in the past and if I remember correctly it was as slim as it looked.

darren0 9y ago

I've seen quite a few developers buy and use these with mixed results. One key thing I've seen that people have really struggled with is multiple external monitors. For that to work you usually need some USB C dock which is a nightmare. Personally I've had much better results with Lenovo T and X series because they typically have more conservative hardware that is better supported by upstream Linux. Also their dock is not USB C.

a3n 9y ago

With Meltdown and Spectre, and CERT's statement that only replacement of CPU will solve those, it's hard to think about buying any computer for the next little while.

WhyNotHugo 9y ago

I'm surprised that only the touchscreen editions are UHD. I'd have guessed developers would prefer UHD, but no touch. Am I really missing something? Do people really prefer touch (or, FHD)?.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
The other horrible part of the touch screen is that it is super glossy. To get 4k I had to buy a touch screen and put a matte film on it.

mleonhard 9y ago

Did DELL finally put some resources into their Linux software team? I bought a 2015 XPS 13 Developer edition and had a very bad experience with the software. The setup program crashed. And the drivers were bad: wifi slow, suspend/resume sometimes crashed, touchpad would register clicks while I typed, video playback randomly stopped working. I spent about 8 hours researching and finally got it usable. The remaining issues went away gradually over 6 months. After that experience, I believe that DELL doesn't care enough about making a great product to hire good software people, or is incapable of selecting good software people, or doesn't allocate enough money to hire enough software people. Another problem is that all of the CPUs are 15W TDP. That means they have 1/3 the CPU power of a desktop. They are unsuitable for running heavy VM-based integration tests, video editing, and other things I want to do with my primary computer.

tracker1 9y ago

SSD maxes out at 512GB, Ram at 16GB... no go.

biehl 9y ago

Awesome! Any timeline for the XPS15 (or precision)?

wazoox 9y ago

I have the 1st gen XPS 13 developer and I'm happy with it. The build quality isn't as good as Apple, particularly the touchpad is notably inferior, and the right speaker died a long time ago. From time to time, I need to open it to remove dirt from the fan, and that's about it. 5 years later, works perfectly. A coworker recently got the 6th generation model. No problem. Slightly better build. Excellent battery life and performance. These are definitely reliable workhorses.

merpnderp 9y ago

Anyone know if the ram is replaceable or if it is soldered to the board? EDIT: Talked to support and they said the ram is soldered to the board.

abiox 9y ago

i really wish there was a 15".

tajen 9y ago

I’m kind of blocked from buying an Ubuntu laptop because I want to do video editing for Youtube too. iMovie is free on the Mac, is there even a $300 software on Ubuntu that would be suitable?

dontbuyanxps 9y ago

I bought an XPS 13 with Ubuntu preinstalled. Had trouble with a loud fan as well as the headphone jack not functioning correctly when using any headphones with a headset. Spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting with tech support and was ultimately told, otr, that the computers are shoddily manufactured and I'd be better off with a Latitude. Switched, still not thrilled about the battery but it works well otherwise!

flatfilefan 9y ago
the support is clueless, loud fan and headphone jack can be fixed.