6 ms·

And have even crappier hardware (thinkpads with screen resolution and disk sizes of last decade, not much cheaper, anyone?) with Win 10 preinstalled...

adambyrtek 9y ago
Dell XPS 13 has build quality comparable if not better than MacBooks, comes with Linux preinstalled, and has an optional high resolution QHD+ screen. http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-13-9360-laptop http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-...
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  This is what I use, and as far as I can tell it's better than a MacBook in just about every way.
  - hennsen 9y ago
    It’s a matter of taste i guess. Unless you tell more about what you like in the one and what not in the other it’s hard to get a value from your experience report.
- glogla 9y ago
  I tried that for half a year, and it has some issues: - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen - Coil whine - Shitty battery life - Shitty touchpad So as whatever is Apple doing is annoying faddy bullshit, it's still the better option, especially considering the XPS 13 cost as much or more than MBP.
  - hennsen 9y ago
    I wonder why people downvote others who just report their experiences, and not even have the balls to write a word about it... i share your opinion that it seems so that we can only chose between things that suck least and have no generally great option
    - hennsen 9y ago
      I wonder why people downvote posts who wonder why people downvote posts in which others state personal experiences...
      - amdavidson 9y ago
        "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [0] 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        jtbayly 9y ago
        I think people feel like they need to do something to try to stop a “bad behavior.” My guess is that it’s more effective to simply upvote a comment that is getting downvoted “unjustly” in your opinion. At least that’s what I’ve started doing. Even when it isn’t a comment I would normally upvote.
        hennsen 9y ago
        It‘s easier to change bad behavior if someone clearly states what that is. My use of „crappy“ in the very first comment? Did that hurt someones feelings because they love their non-Mac system? That i state i think most other hardware is bad? I dont know, unless I’m told...
        hennsen 9y ago
        Then there should be a recommendation too that people should write a comment what they don’t like instead of just voting to help people understand what they did wrong. Like this it feels like downvoting is simply abused to push down opinions some don’t like.
  - misja111 9y ago
    I don't understand why this was downvoted. This has been consistently my experience whenever I tried switching to a non-Mac notebook. On paper the specifications look great, but in practice the hardware configuration is better tested for Macs and everything just works smoother.
    - hennsen 9y ago
      Some people here use downvotes obviously to unfavor opinions they don’t like or that you have a bad experience with their loved products... downvoting should be bound to write a reason, as it’s encouraged in Stackoverflow...
  - tokenizerrr 9y ago
    I'm using my XPS13 for like a year now. > - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen Honestly haven't noticed a single thing. > - Coil whine None of that. > - Shitty battery life What's shitty? It lasts 5 hours of me working with VMs. I don't think expecting more is reasonable. It's much less laggy than my collegue's MBP, which leads me to assume that Mac just throttles the CPU down to achieve longer battery life? I don't want that. > - Shitty touchpad Not at all. It works nicely. Much better than most touchpads I've used. And as an added bonus, it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it. Nor does it sound like it's about to take off. And it was like 1.5K EUR vs 3K EUR for a macbook pro.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      > it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it The latest generation of Macs definitely run cool, fwiw. I've never once noticed the heat
    - hennsen 9y ago
      Thanks for the details! :) No idea why people flag that post. Flagging should be used to mark stuff that’s really useless nonsense or against community standards by attacking people personally... not to downvote opinions people don’t like. But the HN thoughtpolice seems to think different.
    - lloeki 9y ago
      >> Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen > Honestly haven't noticed a single thing. I've got a coworker sitting right next to me with a HiDPI main + non-HiDPI secondary screen. X or Wayland, it's a thousand cuts of hell: set native resolution and render scaling to 200% and you get some (most) apps at 200% on the non-HiDPI screen. Drag an app from HiDPI to non-HiDPI and notice how the overflow is wrongly scaled. There's no way to render at 200% on a non-native resolution then downsample to native, you have to set a non-native resolution, upsampled by the GPU/panel, which results in a useless blurry mess. > it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it. Nor does it sound like it's about to take off. Early '13 and mid '14 13" rMBP here, VMs don't lag, slightly warm, but in no way "burning hot". Early '13 is dead silent thanks to dual fan design, mid '14 slightly less so, and only when I peg all cores for long enough.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Same here. Mine has an idiotically loud coil whine and sometimes fails to go to sleep(the screen switches off but the computers stays on, resulting in a scorching hot laptop when you pull it out of your bag). The touchpad is horrendous, frequently jumping the cursor when you click on it. I've had the motherboard replaced 3(!!!!) times now, and all of those issues are still present, and from what I heard they are not exclusive to just one generation of the XPS - it's almost like Dell engineers can't make a small laptop without coil whine.
- hennsen 9y ago
  Tried Dell once and didn’t like it. Dont remember exactly why. Plus the service to return the unsatisfying product was complicated. Last time i checked there was still something missing in the xps linux system so it wasn’t an option and i decided to leave Linux as main OS after 20 years. MacOS is not better in general, mainly it just has different annoyances e.g. less open and configurable - but therefore not changing things i got used to so fast as Ubuntu and the various graphical desktop suites (yes the superspecial tabbed window managers are more stable, but i dont like them) which seem to try new stuff i don’t need and like with every release. I‘m based in Germany by the way, so my choice of products here might be different...
- gargravarr 9y ago
  We use these XPSes and the current MBPs here. I do not recommend the QHD screens on a 13", if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable, and I think only MacOS handles HiDPI elegantly. Ubuntu needs a lot of tweaks to be usable. I also agree that the trackpads are very poor, and that's still one of Apple's main strengths. Although quite why the trackpad needs to be quite so enormous on the current models is a mystery to me, so many people catch it when typing.
  - adambyrtek 9y ago
    I actually prefer QHD screen since it looks great with 2x scaling (and I don't really care about text mode which is only useful for recovery). I have no problems with HiDPI or touchpad after upgrading from the ancient 16.04 LTS that comes preinstalled. I hope that the next edition would come with 18.04 LTS which should offer a much better user experience out of the box.
    - gargravarr 9y ago
      I've tried the alpha on a Acer Surface-esque tablet with a HiDPI screen and agree 18.04 is much, much better out of the box - scaling was set sensibly and usably on first boot. Very much looking forward to the release.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    > if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable setfont sun12x22 [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts
    - gargravarr 9y ago
      Thanks, I'll try this. Could have used it yesterday when I had to recover an XPS via the TTY...
    - gargravarr 9y ago
      I just tried this on an Ubuntu machine and sun12x22 doesn't exist. After some poking around and reading the linked wiki page, I found that Lat2-VGA32x16 (case-sensitive) produced a readable display. Given that running `setfont` on its own errors with `Cannot find default font`, I wonder if the default Ubuntu install neglects some things.
- apetrovic 9y ago
  I can't say anything about Linux on XPS 13 because I didn't tried it, but for build quality... that's questionable. In my small company we have horrible failure rate with XPS 13 (seven of eight had some problems, from failing fans and SSDs to 'it just died on me'). Macs are much better in that regard. And the price between these two is comparable.

adambyrtek 9y ago

Dell XPS 13 has build quality comparable if not better than MacBooks, comes with Linux preinstalled, and has an optional high resolution QHD+ screen. http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-13-9360-laptop http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-...

tokenizerrr 9y ago
This is what I use, and as far as I can tell it's better than a MacBook in just about every way.
- hennsen 9y ago
  It’s a matter of taste i guess. Unless you tell more about what you like in the one and what not in the other it’s hard to get a value from your experience report.
glogla 9y ago
I tried that for half a year, and it has some issues: - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen - Coil whine - Shitty battery life - Shitty touchpad So as whatever is Apple doing is annoying faddy bullshit, it's still the better option, especially considering the XPS 13 cost as much or more than MBP.
- hennsen 9y ago
  I wonder why people downvote others who just report their experiences, and not even have the balls to write a word about it... i share your opinion that it seems so that we can only chose between things that suck least and have no generally great option
  - hennsen 9y ago
    I wonder why people downvote posts who wonder why people downvote posts in which others state personal experiences...
    - amdavidson 9y ago
      "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [0] 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - jtbayly 9y ago
        I think people feel like they need to do something to try to stop a “bad behavior.” My guess is that it’s more effective to simply upvote a comment that is getting downvoted “unjustly” in your opinion. At least that’s what I’ve started doing. Even when it isn’t a comment I would normally upvote.
        hennsen 9y ago
        It‘s easier to change bad behavior if someone clearly states what that is. My use of „crappy“ in the very first comment? Did that hurt someones feelings because they love their non-Mac system? That i state i think most other hardware is bad? I dont know, unless I’m told...
      - hennsen 9y ago
        Then there should be a recommendation too that people should write a comment what they don’t like instead of just voting to help people understand what they did wrong. Like this it feels like downvoting is simply abused to push down opinions some don’t like.
- misja111 9y ago
  I don't understand why this was downvoted. This has been consistently my experience whenever I tried switching to a non-Mac notebook. On paper the specifications look great, but in practice the hardware configuration is better tested for Macs and everything just works smoother.
  - hennsen 9y ago
    Some people here use downvotes obviously to unfavor opinions they don’t like or that you have a bad experience with their loved products... downvoting should be bound to write a reason, as it’s encouraged in Stackoverflow...
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  I'm using my XPS13 for like a year now. > - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen Honestly haven't noticed a single thing. > - Coil whine None of that. > - Shitty battery life What's shitty? It lasts 5 hours of me working with VMs. I don't think expecting more is reasonable. It's much less laggy than my collegue's MBP, which leads me to assume that Mac just throttles the CPU down to achieve longer battery life? I don't want that. > - Shitty touchpad Not at all. It works nicely. Much better than most touchpads I've used. And as an added bonus, it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it. Nor does it sound like it's about to take off. And it was like 1.5K EUR vs 3K EUR for a macbook pro.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    > it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it The latest generation of Macs definitely run cool, fwiw. I've never once noticed the heat
  - hennsen 9y ago
    Thanks for the details! :) No idea why people flag that post. Flagging should be used to mark stuff that’s really useless nonsense or against community standards by attacking people personally... not to downvote opinions people don’t like. But the HN thoughtpolice seems to think different.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    >> Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen > Honestly haven't noticed a single thing. I've got a coworker sitting right next to me with a HiDPI main + non-HiDPI secondary screen. X or Wayland, it's a thousand cuts of hell: set native resolution and render scaling to 200% and you get some (most) apps at 200% on the non-HiDPI screen. Drag an app from HiDPI to non-HiDPI and notice how the overflow is wrongly scaled. There's no way to render at 200% on a non-native resolution then downsample to native, you have to set a non-native resolution, upsampled by the GPU/panel, which results in a useless blurry mess. > it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it. Nor does it sound like it's about to take off. Early '13 and mid '14 13" rMBP here, VMs don't lag, slightly warm, but in no way "burning hot". Early '13 is dead silent thanks to dual fan design, mid '14 slightly less so, and only when I peg all cores for long enough.
- gambiting 9y ago
  Same here. Mine has an idiotically loud coil whine and sometimes fails to go to sleep(the screen switches off but the computers stays on, resulting in a scorching hot laptop when you pull it out of your bag). The touchpad is horrendous, frequently jumping the cursor when you click on it. I've had the motherboard replaced 3(!!!!) times now, and all of those issues are still present, and from what I heard they are not exclusive to just one generation of the XPS - it's almost like Dell engineers can't make a small laptop without coil whine.
hennsen 9y ago
Tried Dell once and didn’t like it. Dont remember exactly why. Plus the service to return the unsatisfying product was complicated. Last time i checked there was still something missing in the xps linux system so it wasn’t an option and i decided to leave Linux as main OS after 20 years. MacOS is not better in general, mainly it just has different annoyances e.g. less open and configurable - but therefore not changing things i got used to so fast as Ubuntu and the various graphical desktop suites (yes the superspecial tabbed window managers are more stable, but i dont like them) which seem to try new stuff i don’t need and like with every release. I‘m based in Germany by the way, so my choice of products here might be different...
gargravarr 9y ago
We use these XPSes and the current MBPs here. I do not recommend the QHD screens on a 13", if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable, and I think only MacOS handles HiDPI elegantly. Ubuntu needs a lot of tweaks to be usable. I also agree that the trackpads are very poor, and that's still one of Apple's main strengths. Although quite why the trackpad needs to be quite so enormous on the current models is a mystery to me, so many people catch it when typing.
- adambyrtek 9y ago
  I actually prefer QHD screen since it looks great with 2x scaling (and I don't really care about text mode which is only useful for recovery). I have no problems with HiDPI or touchpad after upgrading from the ancient 16.04 LTS that comes preinstalled. I hope that the next edition would come with 18.04 LTS which should offer a much better user experience out of the box.
  - gargravarr 9y ago
    I've tried the alpha on a Acer Surface-esque tablet with a HiDPI screen and agree 18.04 is much, much better out of the box - scaling was set sensibly and usably on first boot. Very much looking forward to the release.
- lloeki 9y ago
  > if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable setfont sun12x22 [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts
  - gargravarr 9y ago
    Thanks, I'll try this. Could have used it yesterday when I had to recover an XPS via the TTY...
  - gargravarr 9y ago
    I just tried this on an Ubuntu machine and sun12x22 doesn't exist. After some poking around and reading the linked wiki page, I found that Lat2-VGA32x16 (case-sensitive) produced a readable display. Given that running `setfont` on its own errors with `Cannot find default font`, I wonder if the default Ubuntu install neglects some things.
apetrovic 9y ago
I can't say anything about Linux on XPS 13 because I didn't tried it, but for build quality... that's questionable. In my small company we have horrible failure rate with XPS 13 (seven of eight had some problems, from failing fans and SSDs to 'it just died on me'). Macs are much better in that regard. And the price between these two is comparable.