11 ms·

As a reminder: don't buy Dell, they have a history of ignoring issues and refusing to fix. The US needs to adopt EU-style consumer laws.

kenmacd 5y ago
I expected this before they shipped models running Linux, but thought I was safe now. I've learned my lesson.
aborsy 5y ago
Once you achieve those, you have no companies to begin with. See EU.
pseudosavant 5y ago
This x1000. A co-worker of mine just switched to Mac because of a horrible experience with a $4000 Dell XPS with a discrete GPU that had chronic overheating issues that seemed to be a design defect. Dell would replace it with a refurb and they all had the issue. Forums online showed other people all had the same experience. Dell just ignored it. Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT.
- tomrod 5y ago
  I'm facing a similar issue on a Dell XPS 15, purchased in 2020. That, plus structural defects cause case flexing when picked up, resulting in the touchpad being inoperable and (more recently) freezing the system entirely. This is even when the pick up is very gentle -- the case flexes under its own weight. If I type too hard or rest my hands too heavy on the system it can also occasionally cause the issue. The issue started two days out of warranty.
  - alias_neo 5y ago
    Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow. Last week I was sitting in a meeting and tilted my screen up a little on the XPS 15 so I could see past some glare from lights and the hinge snapped. It has the smallest little piece of metal at the point it snapped, about 3-4mm wide and 1-2mm thick, it was no wonder it snapped, so work had to give me a new XPS 15. The hinge itself is plastic-welded to the chassis so it can't just he replaced without the whole chassis being replaced. I was planning for my next laptop to be a Framework anyway but my (£1600) XPS 13 is only ~2 years old so I am a little way from wanting to buy a new laptop just yet. This sort of behaviour from DELL is confirming that going Framework is probably the right choice. EDIT: Also don't get me started on the i9 / 4K XPS 15 a friend of mine bought that seems to want to kill itself any time it's switched on, and has never worked correctly since day dot.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      >>Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow. I've had XPS laptops all the way back in 2010, then 2013 and then 2016 - they all rocked on a table, it's like Dell's factory is crooked and they are physically incapable of making an even laptop.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        It's a big shame. They have so many little details right but really wooshed on overall quality it appears.
        alias_neo 5y ago
        Definitely. I've been through my fair share of laptop brands over the years. Leaving Apple out of the equation, the XPS is still the best built, thinnest (though not lightest) laptop I've had that's got the grunt to get my work done. The XPS 13 is disappointing because of the soldered WiFi meaning I can't swap out that crap Killer WiFi for Intel.
      - serf 5y ago
        my XPS 15 7590 is dead flat. I have encountered ones that rock, but it's because the owners would slide them across tables and wear the rear 'table-leg' bumper unevenly. I tend to pick the laptop up and re-place it when I need to move it rather than slide, and i've had good luck. Now, I agree that kind of thing shouldn't have to be thought about as a wear item -- but it seems to be one.
        alias_neo 5y ago
        I assure you I do no such thing, and two for two my XPS laptops "rock" on the table. Neither laptop has any wear whatsoever on the rubber feet from sliding them on a desk, or on anything else for that matter. I'm a software engineer, not a savage. From my rudimentary testing, the front right corner is a little bent upward compared to the rest of the laptop. If I touch that corner with one finger it rocks, on both models and on any level surface. Both of my machines are older than your 7590 but they both did it since new. I got a 2020 model this week when the hinge broke on my XPS 15 but I'm yet to test if it suffers the same issue.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  > Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT. Unfortunately Dell is cheap, make (or at least used to) fairly robust computers for their price with spare parts that can easily be found. Mac is much more expensive and good luck sourcing parts from other brands. Lenovo went downhill when they were sold off.
  - tomp 5y ago
    What do you mean? High-end XPS laptops were about the same price as equivalent Intel Macs - judging just by features (RAM, etc), of course MacBooks have much superior build quality. I’d reckon equivalent M1 Macs are much cheaper.
    - tryptophan 5y ago
      If you value your time >20$/hr macs are cheaper because you don't need to waste 20 hours fixing stuff.
      - noasaservice 5y ago
        And if you're OK with the "Apple" way of doing things. The moment you deviate, all bets are off.
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    >> Mac is much more expensive I think that was a valid argument before Apple Silicon.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  To be fair though, it is physically impossible to run a discrete GPU on any reasonable workload without overheating in a chassis like the XPS. You simply cannot dissipate 100-ish watts on a continuous basis in that form factor. I guess it's a philosophical question whether Dell should stop selling these kinds of machines, or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money. I have a semi-portable Dell Precision M6500 from 2011. It still runs and does what it should, but it weighs 4 kg and is 3.5 centimeters thick. Both those numbers are twice that of an XPS 15, and it still throttles down the quad-core i7 after about 120 seconds at full load IIRC.
  - phonebanshee 5y ago
    I have one of those too out in the garage. It runs a hobby CNC router, so it's basically bathed in very fine sawdust often. I'm astonished every time it actually boots up.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    > or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money. This comes off as victim blaming. As a consumer, I would expect the hardware I buy to be able to dissipate its own heat. If it can't, that's a design flaw that Dell needs to either fix or stop selling the product.
    - MichaelBurge 5y ago
      Some people prefer to buy a GPU and underclock it. Maybe you need fast GPU memory more than GPU compute cores for some algorithm. I do that with one of my GPU servers, because the alternative is switching to liquid cooling and that's more work than I want to put in right now.
    - throw10920 5y ago
      The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time, but in this case, I think it's completely accurate - as a consumer buying a product from a large company (as opposed to a shady man in a trenchcoat in an alley), you absolutely have the right to expect and demand that your purchase works as advertised, and the responsibility is on the seller to ensure that their marketing matches reality. Actually, I'm pretty sure that false advertising is illegal in most countries, including the relevant one here (the US).
- washadjeffmad 5y ago
  The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it. Also, the 2017-2019 Intel MacBook Pros are poorly suited to "professional" workloads, throttling under load or if, get this, the "wrong" (Intel) TB controller is used. There are reproducible TB bugs that are abandoned, and I still believe T2/BridgeOS was Apple's response to Intel's poor security design; they were forced to design adversarially against components they couldn't trust.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    > The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it. Intel website shows their most recent Vega M release is 1/27/22. If Dell isn't keeping their drivers up to date, that's their problem, but the Vega M drivers are out there, Dell probably just isn't putting out releases. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19269/radeon-rx-vega-m-graphics-driver-for-windows-10-64-bit-for-nuc8i7hnk-nuc8i7hvk.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19269/radeo... anyway, more broadly, this is, unfortunately, just AMD's driver support model. For the longest time they would not even put out iGPU driver updates for their own processors, instead offloading this responsibility to the laptop vendors themselves (who, of course, did not give a shit). i.e. exactly what's happening with your dell. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Better-late-than-never-Radeon-Software-updates-will-now-include-support-for-AMD-Ryzen-Mobile-APUs.391991.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Better-late-than-never-Radeon-... And I don't know what people really expect here - Intel is dependent on AMD for drivers, they absolutely cannot write and support a whole new driver stack for an AMD product, if AMD sandbags (like they did previously to OEMs) then Intel is pretty much stuck. AMD got shamed into supporting their own products, finally, but they're absolutely not going to give Intel an inch more than they are contractually obligated to. It's in their financial interest to make your experience as shitty as they can. Of course, it was probably a mistake for Intel to attempt to collaborate with their largest competitor, and they definitely should have made sure the contract was airtight. But there's really no good reason for these not to be supported by mainstream Adrenalin drivers.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Remember when Dell was only in the black on their balance sheet because of Intel payola [1]? Is Corporate IT the real reason Dell continues to exist, or is it Intel? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells-shame-intel-payola-propped-up-companys-earnings-sec-says/60447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells...
bayofpigs 5y ago
Dell was the first pc retailer to earn my personal ban after showing their shady business practices followed quickly by Newegg a few months later. Life has been better ever since.
- freeopinion 5y ago
  Somebody else might say the same thing about HP and Amazon. But it isn't much help to anybody else. If you steer somebody away from the frying pan and into the fire, what good was your help? What have you used since then that made life better?
bedast 5y ago
I started a new job recently. Previous job had me on a Dell Latitude that had such poor thermal handling that the fan was constantly at full blast even under light use, and had throttling issues. Previous Dell laptops through them had various other faults (RAM was replaced twice in one machine, went through probably 6 or 7 docks, etc). After nearly a decade of various Dell laptops at that job, the new one offered the choice of a Dell or a Macbook. Not a fan of macOS, but I don't dislike it enough to avoid getting another garbage computer causing me endless headaches.
jseliger 5y ago
That seems like it might go too far—their XPS 13 Linux laptops have gotten good notices—but I did marvel at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952. Sleep/wake doesn't work properly on large numbers of laptops in 2021 and 2022?
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  Could never get sleep to work properly on 2 Dells in the last 2 years. Switched to hibernate on lid close and that seems to work.
- Lio 5y ago
  I have a XPS 13 9370. I've never had a problem with sleep wake... except that the Wifi doesn't always wake up from sleep. It's soldered in so can't be replaced. This is a laptop I bought with Linux support out of the box but I've given up expecting Dell to fix it. It's easier just to kill off and restart the wifi connection when it stalls. Given that I'm not sure I'd buy another Linux Developer Edition laptop from Dell.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Dell XPS was my worst linux laptop experience. I'll never understand why it gets such high accolades.
  - jethro_tell 5y ago
    I've had a bad XPS experience, but I also have really good latitude 72xx and 74xx experiences. I think that XPS build is just the wrong machine for Linux and like someone else said the wrong form factor for poor power performance management.
  - zerocrates 5y ago
    I've had good experiences with the XPS 13's last two or so generations with Linux... I want to say with the 10 and 11-series Intel chips? I have an older, thicker XPS 13 that only ever ran Windows which never really gave any issues either, apart from its goofy side-bottom-chin webcam placement. But I also had several coworkers with the same newer 11-series XPS machines who got a series of lemons... Dell replaced the motherboards, but still.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
My Inspiron 5505 trackpad stopped working and Dell sent me a replacement. That didn't fix it and they determined it needed a motherboard. The replacement motherboard had some serious issues or didn't work at all (I can't remember, that was last year). They sent me a refurb 5515 in its place, and now it has locked up several times and has some weird ghosting/artifact stuff going on with the display. Unfortunately, I don't know of any good PC alternative to Dell. I just ordered a Macbook.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  For Linux, I recommend System76. They stand behind their product.
  - technofiend 5y ago
    frame.work also gets mentioned here from time-to-time as they support Linux [1], however reviews of the product itself are mixed, so this is not an endorsement, just an observation. I would read hn history and frame.work forum history before buying one for my use. [1] "...Framework Laptop is working without issue in Ubuntu 21.04.3+ (NOT 20.04.3) and Fedora 35" https://community.frame.work/t/official-linux-and-framework-support-please-read/12435 https://community.frame.work/t/official-linux-and-framework-...
  - tmccrary55 5y ago
    Their product is clevo rebadges.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      If they support it, who cares how it's made?
- yial 5y ago
  I don’t know your use case, but I have been very happy with MSI.
ratsmack 5y ago
I have a Dell EMC T40 that was working fine until a BIOS update caused an ACPI issue where one core would sit and spin on an inturrupt eating 60% of the CPU. The discussion on lkml is that it is a BIOS issue and they can do nothing. It's been two years now with two additional BIOS upgrades and it's still not fixed. Because of this, my newest laptop is a Lenovo... no more Dell computers for me, sorry Dell, not sorry.
- duffyjp 5y ago
  My homelab runs on two T20's. 24/7/365 without issue and they sip ~ 25 watts from the wall with Xeon E3 L-series chips. They are pretty old though and just barely fast enough. Last year I ordered a Precision 3630 to test out as an upgrade. I was so disappointed by the engineering and build quality I requested a return the day it arrived.
  - ratsmack 5y ago
    I had a T30 that ran 24/7 for about 10 years but started having machine checks, but I was too lazy to see if it was fixable, so I just bought the T40 to replace it. The T30 was a solid machine and I never had a problem with it. I can start to hear some fan bearing failure now in the T40, which means they're not using ball bearing fans and that really pisses me off.
drcongo 5y ago
This was the received wisdom last time I had to use a Windows PC, and that was 20 years ago. I'm amazed they're still going.
ehPReth 5y ago
What do you think of Lenovo or HP?
- 76SlashDolphin 5y ago
  I've had 2 reasonably modern HP laptops and they've both been very solid. Currently typing this on a latest-gen HP Envy 14 (Core i5-11300H, Intel Xe, 16GB RAM, 400nit 1200p touchscreen) running Fedora 35 and am pretty impressed with it considering I got it for £550 refurb. Fedora works nearly perfectly out of the box. Performance is great, battery life is great (8+ hours in VSCode + Chromium browser with tlp), the display is bright, the touchscreen works well with GNOME and the built-in hardware camera shutter is a nice touch and, unlike my previous XPS 15, the sleep actually works fine by default and its temperatures are very good even in the "low noise" profile. No issues with WiFi/connectivity either since it's an Intel chip and those have good Linux support. The speakers are mediocre though compared to the work Mac I used to have and are mostly in line with other Windows laptops sadly. I thought they'd sound great since there are these vents behind the keyboard that look like speaker grills but they're actually for cooling. One of the downsides is that it has coil whine when charging off the USB-C port which doesn't bother me much as I almost exclusively use it on battery or with headphones. The fan curve is also really weird where it's silent 80% of the time but it sometimes turns on and off for 15 seconds at a time which is a bit jarring. I think there's some way to tune this though but I wish the fan were a bit quieter or that there were a way to just have it cool passively. I've also not managed to get the fingerprint reader working, mostly for a lack of trying, as it seems like there's a fork of libfprint that specifically adds support for it (Elan 04f3). I also have an HP Chromebook 14 with an Intel Celeron N4000 and 4GB of RAM which I got as a cheap laptop to bring on trips for remotely accessing my desktop and it's only real pain point is the performance - Android and Linux apps work, sound is on par with the other laptop, display is decent, no fan and no coil whine so it's very nice to use in a quiet environment and fantastic battery. I was actually surprised when I found out it can drive 2 1440p displays off a single USB-C port which is something my flatmate's M1 Macbook Air can't do. So yeah, I can say that the consumer line HP laptops are pretty good this gen, just be careful with the displays since a lot of their laptops still use sucky 250 nit screens and also be careful with Nvidia GPUs. In my experience those never work well and you're better off getting a desktop/console/streaming service for gaming or renting a cloud GPU for compute.
tarsinge 5y ago
I remember clearly that for years XPS were recommended here as good alternative to MacBooks, I am not in that market but I feel for people being burned by these bad advices.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I have an XPS running PopOS and it's fine. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones? I don't really push my laptops though as my job doesn't require it. Everythings seems fine for the two years I've owned it. Survivor bias?
- llampx 5y ago
  Yup, I bought a Thinkpad after even 5 minutes perusing through both the Thinkpad subreddit and the Dell one revealed that Dells are plagued with issues and it is really just dumb luck if you get a problem-free unit, and their support is not helpful.
- tomxor 5y ago
  I've used an XPS 9370 with Debian stable for 3-4 years now. Compatibility has been good and performance more than enough for me, but my dev work doesn't require super high performance, IMO this is the wrong form factor for that anyway. I'm a minimal linux, i3wm type user so ... that's how low my requirements are for a decent desktop experience. My main gripes: For first few months wifi driver was unstable and would randomly cause kernel panics, sometimes once per day, sometimes once per week. (yes I tried manually installing newer versions and using different kernel versions)... eventually it stabilised and I haven't had any issue since - Even though this was not unique to this machine, it was annoying considering it was supposed to be built for Linux. The battery capacity diminished faster than anything I've ever owned... currently at 20% of original capacity. There was a very sharp drop last year from 80% to 60%, then another sharp drop from 60% to 40% which I'm guessing is the controller writing off cells. (Manually calibrating it by draining never gets it above 30%)... Speculating this is possibly from heat damage (sometimes I will play a game which will get it a bit hot) or just crap battery quality - expecting to find some spicy pockets when I get around to replacing it. Other than that it's been a solid Linux machine and very comfortable lightweight form factor to use. I still don't have performance issues personally, so will replace the battery soon and see how much longer I can keep using it.
bradlys 5y ago
> The US needs to adopt EU-style consumer laws. I'm sure this will happen around the same time a wealth tax is implemented, universal healthcare is adopted, the US stops invading countries, and we stop subsidizing suburbs. (i.e. never)
- soperj 5y ago
  You forgot the metric system.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    And while we are at it, drop this MM/DD date formatting nonsense!
    - seizethegdgap 5y ago
      ISO 8601 master race, checking in on 2022-02-14!
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        YYYY-MM-DD is the true path. It is known.
        apurtbapurt 5y ago
        This is the way, that is naively sortable.
  - sgjohnson 5y ago
    Where it matters, the US already uses the metric system. Virtually all products are dual labeled, with good chunk being in metric sizes. The military uses metric exclusively, and so does most of the science community. But to force the people to go fully metric would take a genereration.
    - 5y ago
martin_a 5y ago
Their USB C docks are _always_ delivered to users with a piece of clear film tape wrapped tightly around the USB plug. The tape is added by our IT department, because otherwise they'll have to replace the dock after two weeks because the plug just dismantles. Great build quality...
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  In my experience clear heat shrink tubing lasts a lot longer than tape.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    Probably out of stock in the IT department. :-D
muh_gradle 5y ago
For that matter, don't buy HP as well. As a long time Apple hater, I finally changed to Macbook pros with Apple Silicon. The hardware quality from Apple is still consistently good.
- enriquto 5y ago
  But what OS do you run on it? Is linux well-supported (regarding throttling, sleeping, etc)? I can't stand the macOS gui.
YaBomm 5y ago
Ecstatify 5y ago
100% this. Have a dell XPS, laptop has been on a flat desk since the day I got it. Screen randomly starts getting distorted and is unusable now, had to buy an external display. The repair costs would be at least half the cost of what I paid for the laptop. They’re supposed to be a premium laptop but after 2 years it’s essentially a desktop. Windows hardware in general is junk. Saving for a MacBook at the moment.

kenmacd 5y ago

I expected this before they shipped models running Linux, but thought I was safe now. I've learned my lesson.

aborsy 5y ago

Once you achieve those, you have no companies to begin with. See EU.

pseudosavant 5y ago

This x1000. A co-worker of mine just switched to Mac because of a horrible experience with a $4000 Dell XPS with a discrete GPU that had chronic overheating issues that seemed to be a design defect. Dell would replace it with a refurb and they all had the issue. Forums online showed other people all had the same experience. Dell just ignored it. Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT.

tomrod 5y ago
I'm facing a similar issue on a Dell XPS 15, purchased in 2020. That, plus structural defects cause case flexing when picked up, resulting in the touchpad being inoperable and (more recently) freezing the system entirely. This is even when the pick up is very gentle -- the case flexes under its own weight. If I type too hard or rest my hands too heavy on the system it can also occasionally cause the issue. The issue started two days out of warranty.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow. Last week I was sitting in a meeting and tilted my screen up a little on the XPS 15 so I could see past some glare from lights and the hinge snapped. It has the smallest little piece of metal at the point it snapped, about 3-4mm wide and 1-2mm thick, it was no wonder it snapped, so work had to give me a new XPS 15. The hinge itself is plastic-welded to the chassis so it can't just he replaced without the whole chassis being replaced. I was planning for my next laptop to be a Framework anyway but my (£1600) XPS 13 is only ~2 years old so I am a little way from wanting to buy a new laptop just yet. This sort of behaviour from DELL is confirming that going Framework is probably the right choice. EDIT: Also don't get me started on the i9 / 4K XPS 15 a friend of mine bought that seems to want to kill itself any time it's switched on, and has never worked correctly since day dot.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow. I've had XPS laptops all the way back in 2010, then 2013 and then 2016 - they all rocked on a table, it's like Dell's factory is crooked and they are physically incapable of making an even laptop.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      It's a big shame. They have so many little details right but really wooshed on overall quality it appears.
      - alias_neo 5y ago
        Definitely. I've been through my fair share of laptop brands over the years. Leaving Apple out of the equation, the XPS is still the best built, thinnest (though not lightest) laptop I've had that's got the grunt to get my work done. The XPS 13 is disappointing because of the soldered WiFi meaning I can't swap out that crap Killer WiFi for Intel.
    - serf 5y ago
      my XPS 15 7590 is dead flat. I have encountered ones that rock, but it's because the owners would slide them across tables and wear the rear 'table-leg' bumper unevenly. I tend to pick the laptop up and re-place it when I need to move it rather than slide, and i've had good luck. Now, I agree that kind of thing shouldn't have to be thought about as a wear item -- but it seems to be one.
      - alias_neo 5y ago
        I assure you I do no such thing, and two for two my XPS laptops "rock" on the table. Neither laptop has any wear whatsoever on the rubber feet from sliding them on a desk, or on anything else for that matter. I'm a software engineer, not a savage. From my rudimentary testing, the front right corner is a little bent upward compared to the rest of the laptop. If I touch that corner with one finger it rocks, on both models and on any level surface. Both of my machines are older than your 7590 but they both did it since new. I got a 2020 model this week when the hinge broke on my XPS 15 but I'm yet to test if it suffers the same issue.
throw_m239339 5y ago
> Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT. Unfortunately Dell is cheap, make (or at least used to) fairly robust computers for their price with spare parts that can easily be found. Mac is much more expensive and good luck sourcing parts from other brands. Lenovo went downhill when they were sold off.
- tomp 5y ago
  What do you mean? High-end XPS laptops were about the same price as equivalent Intel Macs - judging just by features (RAM, etc), of course MacBooks have much superior build quality. I’d reckon equivalent M1 Macs are much cheaper.
  - tryptophan 5y ago
    If you value your time >20$/hr macs are cheaper because you don't need to waste 20 hours fixing stuff.
    - noasaservice 5y ago
      And if you're OK with the "Apple" way of doing things. The moment you deviate, all bets are off.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  >> Mac is much more expensive I think that was a valid argument before Apple Silicon.
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
To be fair though, it is physically impossible to run a discrete GPU on any reasonable workload without overheating in a chassis like the XPS. You simply cannot dissipate 100-ish watts on a continuous basis in that form factor. I guess it's a philosophical question whether Dell should stop selling these kinds of machines, or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money. I have a semi-portable Dell Precision M6500 from 2011. It still runs and does what it should, but it weighs 4 kg and is 3.5 centimeters thick. Both those numbers are twice that of an XPS 15, and it still throttles down the quad-core i7 after about 120 seconds at full load IIRC.
- phonebanshee 5y ago
  I have one of those too out in the garage. It runs a hobby CNC router, so it's basically bathed in very fine sawdust often. I'm astonished every time it actually boots up.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  > or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money. This comes off as victim blaming. As a consumer, I would expect the hardware I buy to be able to dissipate its own heat. If it can't, that's a design flaw that Dell needs to either fix or stop selling the product.
  - MichaelBurge 5y ago
    Some people prefer to buy a GPU and underclock it. Maybe you need fast GPU memory more than GPU compute cores for some algorithm. I do that with one of my GPU servers, because the alternative is switching to liquid cooling and that's more work than I want to put in right now.
  - throw10920 5y ago
    The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time, but in this case, I think it's completely accurate - as a consumer buying a product from a large company (as opposed to a shady man in a trenchcoat in an alley), you absolutely have the right to expect and demand that your purchase works as advertised, and the responsibility is on the seller to ensure that their marketing matches reality. Actually, I'm pretty sure that false advertising is illegal in most countries, including the relevant one here (the US).
washadjeffmad 5y ago
The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it. Also, the 2017-2019 Intel MacBook Pros are poorly suited to "professional" workloads, throttling under load or if, get this, the "wrong" (Intel) TB controller is used. There are reproducible TB bugs that are abandoned, and I still believe T2/BridgeOS was Apple's response to Intel's poor security design; they were forced to design adversarially against components they couldn't trust.
- paulmd 5y ago
  > The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it. Intel website shows their most recent Vega M release is 1/27/22. If Dell isn't keeping their drivers up to date, that's their problem, but the Vega M drivers are out there, Dell probably just isn't putting out releases. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19269/radeon-rx-vega-m-graphics-driver-for-windows-10-64-bit-for-nuc8i7hnk-nuc8i7hvk.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19269/radeo... anyway, more broadly, this is, unfortunately, just AMD's driver support model. For the longest time they would not even put out iGPU driver updates for their own processors, instead offloading this responsibility to the laptop vendors themselves (who, of course, did not give a shit). i.e. exactly what's happening with your dell. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Better-late-than-never-Radeon-Software-updates-will-now-include-support-for-AMD-Ryzen-Mobile-APUs.391991.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Better-late-than-never-Radeon-... And I don't know what people really expect here - Intel is dependent on AMD for drivers, they absolutely cannot write and support a whole new driver stack for an AMD product, if AMD sandbags (like they did previously to OEMs) then Intel is pretty much stuck. AMD got shamed into supporting their own products, finally, but they're absolutely not going to give Intel an inch more than they are contractually obligated to. It's in their financial interest to make your experience as shitty as they can. Of course, it was probably a mistake for Intel to attempt to collaborate with their largest competitor, and they definitely should have made sure the contract was airtight. But there's really no good reason for these not to be supported by mainstream Adrenalin drivers.
r00fus 5y ago
Remember when Dell was only in the black on their balance sheet because of Intel payola [1]? Is Corporate IT the real reason Dell continues to exist, or is it Intel? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells-shame-intel-payola-propped-up-companys-earnings-sec-says/60447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells...

bayofpigs 5y ago

Dell was the first pc retailer to earn my personal ban after showing their shady business practices followed quickly by Newegg a few months later. Life has been better ever since.

freeopinion 5y ago
Somebody else might say the same thing about HP and Amazon. But it isn't much help to anybody else. If you steer somebody away from the frying pan and into the fire, what good was your help? What have you used since then that made life better?

bedast 5y ago

I started a new job recently. Previous job had me on a Dell Latitude that had such poor thermal handling that the fan was constantly at full blast even under light use, and had throttling issues. Previous Dell laptops through them had various other faults (RAM was replaced twice in one machine, went through probably 6 or 7 docks, etc). After nearly a decade of various Dell laptops at that job, the new one offered the choice of a Dell or a Macbook. Not a fan of macOS, but I don't dislike it enough to avoid getting another garbage computer causing me endless headaches.

jseliger 5y ago

That seems like it might go too far—their XPS 13 Linux laptops have gotten good notices—but I did marvel at this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952. Sleep/wake doesn't work properly on large numbers of laptops in 2021 and 2022?

artificialLimbs 5y ago
Could never get sleep to work properly on 2 Dells in the last 2 years. Switched to hibernate on lid close and that seems to work.
Lio 5y ago
I have a XPS 13 9370. I've never had a problem with sleep wake... except that the Wifi doesn't always wake up from sleep. It's soldered in so can't be replaced. This is a laptop I bought with Linux support out of the box but I've given up expecting Dell to fix it. It's easier just to kill off and restart the wifi connection when it stalls. Given that I'm not sure I'd buy another Linux Developer Edition laptop from Dell.
zdragnar 5y ago
Dell XPS was my worst linux laptop experience. I'll never understand why it gets such high accolades.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  I've had a bad XPS experience, but I also have really good latitude 72xx and 74xx experiences. I think that XPS build is just the wrong machine for Linux and like someone else said the wrong form factor for poor power performance management.
- zerocrates 5y ago
  I've had good experiences with the XPS 13's last two or so generations with Linux... I want to say with the 10 and 11-series Intel chips? I have an older, thicker XPS 13 that only ever ran Windows which never really gave any issues either, apart from its goofy side-bottom-chin webcam placement. But I also had several coworkers with the same newer 11-series XPS machines who got a series of lemons... Dell replaced the motherboards, but still.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

My Inspiron 5505 trackpad stopped working and Dell sent me a replacement. That didn't fix it and they determined it needed a motherboard. The replacement motherboard had some serious issues or didn't work at all (I can't remember, that was last year). They sent me a refurb 5515 in its place, and now it has locked up several times and has some weird ghosting/artifact stuff going on with the display. Unfortunately, I don't know of any good PC alternative to Dell. I just ordered a Macbook.

voakbasda 5y ago
For Linux, I recommend System76. They stand behind their product.
- technofiend 5y ago
  frame.work also gets mentioned here from time-to-time as they support Linux [1], however reviews of the product itself are mixed, so this is not an endorsement, just an observation. I would read hn history and frame.work forum history before buying one for my use. [1] "...Framework Laptop is working without issue in Ubuntu 21.04.3+ (NOT 20.04.3) and Fedora 35" https://community.frame.work/t/official-linux-and-framework-support-please-read/12435 https://community.frame.work/t/official-linux-and-framework-...
- tmccrary55 5y ago
  Their product is clevo rebadges.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    If they support it, who cares how it's made?
yial 5y ago
I don’t know your use case, but I have been very happy with MSI.

ratsmack 5y ago

I have a Dell EMC T40 that was working fine until a BIOS update caused an ACPI issue where one core would sit and spin on an inturrupt eating 60% of the CPU. The discussion on lkml is that it is a BIOS issue and they can do nothing. It's been two years now with two additional BIOS upgrades and it's still not fixed. Because of this, my newest laptop is a Lenovo... no more Dell computers for me, sorry Dell, not sorry.

duffyjp 5y ago
My homelab runs on two T20's. 24/7/365 without issue and they sip ~ 25 watts from the wall with Xeon E3 L-series chips. They are pretty old though and just barely fast enough. Last year I ordered a Precision 3630 to test out as an upgrade. I was so disappointed by the engineering and build quality I requested a return the day it arrived.
- ratsmack 5y ago
  I had a T30 that ran 24/7 for about 10 years but started having machine checks, but I was too lazy to see if it was fixable, so I just bought the T40 to replace it. The T30 was a solid machine and I never had a problem with it. I can start to hear some fan bearing failure now in the T40, which means they're not using ball bearing fans and that really pisses me off.

drcongo 5y ago

This was the received wisdom last time I had to use a Windows PC, and that was 20 years ago. I'm amazed they're still going.

ehPReth 5y ago

What do you think of Lenovo or HP?

76SlashDolphin 5y ago
I've had 2 reasonably modern HP laptops and they've both been very solid. Currently typing this on a latest-gen HP Envy 14 (Core i5-11300H, Intel Xe, 16GB RAM, 400nit 1200p touchscreen) running Fedora 35 and am pretty impressed with it considering I got it for £550 refurb. Fedora works nearly perfectly out of the box. Performance is great, battery life is great (8+ hours in VSCode + Chromium browser with tlp), the display is bright, the touchscreen works well with GNOME and the built-in hardware camera shutter is a nice touch and, unlike my previous XPS 15, the sleep actually works fine by default and its temperatures are very good even in the "low noise" profile. No issues with WiFi/connectivity either since it's an Intel chip and those have good Linux support. The speakers are mediocre though compared to the work Mac I used to have and are mostly in line with other Windows laptops sadly. I thought they'd sound great since there are these vents behind the keyboard that look like speaker grills but they're actually for cooling. One of the downsides is that it has coil whine when charging off the USB-C port which doesn't bother me much as I almost exclusively use it on battery or with headphones. The fan curve is also really weird where it's silent 80% of the time but it sometimes turns on and off for 15 seconds at a time which is a bit jarring. I think there's some way to tune this though but I wish the fan were a bit quieter or that there were a way to just have it cool passively. I've also not managed to get the fingerprint reader working, mostly for a lack of trying, as it seems like there's a fork of libfprint that specifically adds support for it (Elan 04f3). I also have an HP Chromebook 14 with an Intel Celeron N4000 and 4GB of RAM which I got as a cheap laptop to bring on trips for remotely accessing my desktop and it's only real pain point is the performance - Android and Linux apps work, sound is on par with the other laptop, display is decent, no fan and no coil whine so it's very nice to use in a quiet environment and fantastic battery. I was actually surprised when I found out it can drive 2 1440p displays off a single USB-C port which is something my flatmate's M1 Macbook Air can't do. So yeah, I can say that the consumer line HP laptops are pretty good this gen, just be careful with the displays since a lot of their laptops still use sucky 250 nit screens and also be careful with Nvidia GPUs. In my experience those never work well and you're better off getting a desktop/console/streaming service for gaming or renting a cloud GPU for compute.

tarsinge 5y ago

I remember clearly that for years XPS were recommended here as good alternative to MacBooks, I am not in that market but I feel for people being burned by these bad advices.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I have an XPS running PopOS and it's fine. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones? I don't really push my laptops though as my job doesn't require it. Everythings seems fine for the two years I've owned it. Survivor bias?
llampx 5y ago
Yup, I bought a Thinkpad after even 5 minutes perusing through both the Thinkpad subreddit and the Dell one revealed that Dells are plagued with issues and it is really just dumb luck if you get a problem-free unit, and their support is not helpful.
tomxor 5y ago
I've used an XPS 9370 with Debian stable for 3-4 years now. Compatibility has been good and performance more than enough for me, but my dev work doesn't require super high performance, IMO this is the wrong form factor for that anyway. I'm a minimal linux, i3wm type user so ... that's how low my requirements are for a decent desktop experience. My main gripes: For first few months wifi driver was unstable and would randomly cause kernel panics, sometimes once per day, sometimes once per week. (yes I tried manually installing newer versions and using different kernel versions)... eventually it stabilised and I haven't had any issue since - Even though this was not unique to this machine, it was annoying considering it was supposed to be built for Linux. The battery capacity diminished faster than anything I've ever owned... currently at 20% of original capacity. There was a very sharp drop last year from 80% to 60%, then another sharp drop from 60% to 40% which I'm guessing is the controller writing off cells. (Manually calibrating it by draining never gets it above 30%)... Speculating this is possibly from heat damage (sometimes I will play a game which will get it a bit hot) or just crap battery quality - expecting to find some spicy pockets when I get around to replacing it. Other than that it's been a solid Linux machine and very comfortable lightweight form factor to use. I still don't have performance issues personally, so will replace the battery soon and see how much longer I can keep using it.

bradlys 5y ago

> The US needs to adopt EU-style consumer laws. I'm sure this will happen around the same time a wealth tax is implemented, universal healthcare is adopted, the US stops invading countries, and we stop subsidizing suburbs. (i.e. never)

soperj 5y ago
You forgot the metric system.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  And while we are at it, drop this MM/DD date formatting nonsense!
  - seizethegdgap 5y ago
    ISO 8601 master race, checking in on 2022-02-14!
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      YYYY-MM-DD is the true path. It is known.
      - apurtbapurt 5y ago
        This is the way, that is naively sortable.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  Where it matters, the US already uses the metric system. Virtually all products are dual labeled, with good chunk being in metric sizes. The military uses metric exclusively, and so does most of the science community. But to force the people to go fully metric would take a genereration.
  - 5y ago

martin_a 5y ago

Their USB C docks are _always_ delivered to users with a piece of clear film tape wrapped tightly around the USB plug. The tape is added by our IT department, because otherwise they'll have to replace the dock after two weeks because the plug just dismantles. Great build quality...

JaimeThompson 5y ago
In my experience clear heat shrink tubing lasts a lot longer than tape.
- martin_a 5y ago
  Probably out of stock in the IT department. :-D

muh_gradle 5y ago

For that matter, don't buy HP as well. As a long time Apple hater, I finally changed to Macbook pros with Apple Silicon. The hardware quality from Apple is still consistently good.

enriquto 5y ago
But what OS do you run on it? Is linux well-supported (regarding throttling, sleeping, etc)? I can't stand the macOS gui.

YaBomm 5y ago

Ecstatify 5y ago

100% this. Have a dell XPS, laptop has been on a flat desk since the day I got it. Screen randomly starts getting distorted and is unusable now, had to buy an external display. The repair costs would be at least half the cost of what I paid for the laptop. They’re supposed to be a premium laptop but after 2 years it’s essentially a desktop. Windows hardware in general is junk. Saving for a MacBook at the moment.