6 ms·

Dell's XPS 13 Developer's Edition: My Missed Opportunity

34 points by autotravis 13y ago

henryw 13y ago
The author could just replace the hard drive with a SSD and add more RAM. Probably will run $200 to $300 depending on the size of the SSD. I did that with a 17" MBP, and it's still doing fine after 3 years. http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-replace-your-macbook-pros-hard-drive-with-an-ssd http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-replace-your-macbook-pros-h...
- josteink 13y ago
  Still. If his intent is running Linux on it, there's no point paying the 25-50% Apple tax just to get a PC you wont be running OSX on.
- rozap 13y ago
  If you say you have to dump money into a brand new, already expensive computer right after you buy it, then that supports the argument the author is making. You shouldn't have to do that, and there are plenty of alternatives where that isn't necessary. The hardware in macbooks is not on par with the competition. The reason you buy it is for the OS. But even that has gone down hill recently...
- bluedino 13y ago
  Apple's inflated prices for 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM is 'only' $300. You can do better from NewEgg but when you have time ordering parts and installing them and warranty issues it works out.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - chadcf 13y ago
    I've never had warranty issues. I had to send in my macbook pro with a 3rd party ssd and 3rd party ram for repairs, and they fixed it no problems. Even better, they swapped out my budget brand ram for OEM.
chadcf 13y ago
I'm not sure why you'd want to trade, the biggest killer would be the 8 GB non upgradable ram. Ouch. You can upgrade the macbook pro to 16GB and throw in a SSD and your complaints will be gone. And yes, this will cost a bit more than the dell but you'll get a bigger screen out of it at least. My machine is upgraded to 16GB and a 500GB SSD and it's worth every penny. If you are ok with a 250GB SSD you can do it even cheaper (last year, I paid about $80 for the 16GB of ram and $500 for the 500GB SSD, 250GB SSD is significantly cheaper)
- gfosco 13y ago
  I have the 15" Retina MBP with 16GB RAM and an upgraded CPU... It's incredible and I love working on it. Ordering a machine with 4GB RAM now is asking for trouble, no matter the OS.
  - wazoox 13y ago
    All my linux desktops do perfectly fine with 2 GB. Mac OS X is a slow memory hog, face it. That's one of the reasons I've bought the XPS 13 to replace my old macbook: with similar hardware my linux machines feel just much, much faster than my mac.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  I have the exact same setup. While the rMBP is tempting, I think I could keep this for a while, as I don't know that I could get much better performance with anything else.
hapless 13y ago
It is worth mentioning that Lenovo has a very significant "Certified for Linux" program. Virtually every laptop model has at least one "Certified" SKU. http://lenovo.com/think/linux http://lenovo.com/think/linux This is the major reason I ended up with a PC instead of an MBA -- I was just going to install linux on it anyway.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  Note that it is Ubuntu etc certifying the laptops. You can't buy the laptops with the certified version of Linux on them, and for the model I own (T430s) the only version they list (11.10) is end of lifed in ~3 weeks. However Linux is likely to just work on Lenovo Thinkpads, although binary drivers may be problem if you pick an Nvidia GPU. I'm also a member of the Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution (grrr) and bezel size, they are delightful machines. It is trivial to change/update much of the hardware - they don't solder memory down, nor SSD drives. And Linux works perfectly - the only thing it doesn't support is the fingerprint reader which ironically is made by a company Apple bought not too long ago.
  - fakeer 13y ago
    Even 5 years back when on a Dell laptop which came with Vista the Dell support guys worked hard to fix my problems even though the ladies on phone used to warn me "sir, we don't support Linux on that laptop". I am on MBA now, don't know how to they treat Linux on a computer they will with Windows. >>Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution The only option I had other than MBA and was ruled out for this very reason!
  - acabal 13y ago
    Just as a heads up to those thinking of buying an X1 Carbon, the RAM is soldered in on that model, and the SSD is a non-standard size making it difficult/impossible to upgrade.
    - cjh_ 13y ago
      very good point, you literally get what you pay for (and are stuck with it). I am really liking my x1 carbon and it performs very well with linux. I do wish I had stretched for the 8gb of ram but the 4gb has never been an issue (despite me sometimes running windows in a VM), however my general toolset is quite light (mostly command line based) so YMMV.
gambiting 13y ago
Yeah I don't understand Apple - why still put old and slow 500GB 5400rpm drives in brand new 15" Pros? Go to an Apple Store and try running anything on the 15" Pro and on an 11" Air - I guarantee that Air will load it faster. I've got the 2012 13" Air and it's a perfect tool for a developer, very quick, completely silent and very portable. I am pretty sure that guy would be very happy with his Mac,but he really needs to change that HDD for an SSD.
- fakeer 13y ago
  >>Yeah I don't understand Apple - why still put old and slow 500GB 5400rpm drives I can think of one reason - people who buy Apple products buy it anyway. >>2012 13" Air and it's a perfect tool for a developer Having been a user for last 6 months(after switched from Dell+Ubuntu) I can't agree more.
  - reinhardt 13y ago
    I've neved worked on a 13'' laptop but I doubt I'd feel comfortable using it as my main machine, at least without an external big screen. That's the main reason I'm leaning more towards a T530 (or even Dell E6530) instead of an XPS.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  For casual users, that's probably not as big a deal as you'd think. Besides, those folks definitely aren't comparing it to machines with Ubuntu. I prefer the 5400 RPM machines, as I'm replacing machines, not buying new ones, and my old upgrades (SSD and RAM) always come with me (put "new" hard drive in old machine and eBay it)
  - LordIllidan 13y ago
    They are Macbook Pros - intended for Professionals. They are extremely pricey laptops - but the hardware can stand to be improved a lot.
    - 13y ago
OrsenPike 13y ago
Any word on if the SSD it user changeable? I know the RAM is not which is a shame.
niggler 13y ago
I'm terribly confused here. "continue to run Ubuntu in a VM on the MacBook with its relaxed HDD" Did he try with bootcamp on Ubuntu 12.04 (the LTS version)? I just tested on two macbook pros (mid 2011, early 2013) and both seem fine.
- ams6110 13y ago
  The one time I tried bootcamp (to run Windows 7) I ended up being unable to boot anything at all. Had to reinstall from DVD.
- natermer 13y ago
  Apple hardware sucks at running Linux. If you are a kernel hacker and the idea of fixing compatibility bugs sounds like a regular afternoon then Apple hardware isn't so bad.
doktrin 13y ago
The specs on that MBP are bizarre. Why would anyone order a new machine with a 5400rpm drive and 4gb of ram? That was a bad purchasing decision. I think the article would have been more helpful with some kind of first hand account about using the device. I'm super curious about it, but am still leaning towards a think pad x series. The keyboard alone is almost too attractive to pass up, and they appear to be quite Linux compatible. Edit : correction, MBP not MBA. Typo.
- drwl 13y ago
  This must have been an older MBA. All the recent MBA ship with SSDs.
  - pavanky 13y ago
    The article mentions that it is a macbook pro. Not an MBA.
- pavanky 13y ago
  May be he had to order within a budget and the macbooks are shit if you are within a budget.
- bluedino 13y ago
  That's the base config of almost every laptop out there. At least Lenovo has almost all the T-series coming with a 7200RPM drive now.
  - doktrin 13y ago
    I suppose I should have clarified that the specs are bizarre for a developer's laptop. The cost associated with the upgrades are relatively minor, considering the life of the machine, and devs are typically customers that know how to spec out machines.
    - autotravis 13y ago
      When they were ordering it, all I knew was it would be MBP 15-inch. I didn't know they would go to the low end on the HDD and RAM. I was a little hands-off to be polite with coming into a new job.
mehrzad 13y ago
I personally find Mountain Lion more bloated than either Ubuntu or Windows.
- bluedino 13y ago
  If I boot up my Mac and Linux workstation with our environment setup and open up my day-to-day apps, the Mac is about 1GB ahead in RAM use. But after you start using them for a few hours they even out. Firefox, Chrome, terminal windows, some Ruby sessions MySQL Workbench, FileZilla, a couple LibreOffice documents...
nnutter 13y ago
The author is promoting a machine he has never used and is comparing a non-SSD machine to an SSD machine. This would have been semi-interesting if it was discussing the XPS 13 DE under actual use.
- autotravis 13y ago
  Where do you live? May I bring you some tea and massage your feet while I rewrite my post to please you? I linked to an exhaustive review of the XPS, if you read my entire post: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xp...
bluedino 13y ago
Why didn't this guy just buy a 13" MBA in the first place?
general_failure 13y ago
Mbp 2012 15" is actually dual purpose. I own one. Apart from computing, it doubles up as a room heater.
tinco 13y ago
TL;DR: he compares a computer without an SSD to a computer with an SSD, the computer without an SSD is slower. Why do stories like this get upvotes?
- autotravis 13y ago
  Real TL;DR: I compared a computer without an SSD, but with an Intel Core i7 clocked at 2 GHZ (quad-core, 8 threads) with a unix-like OS often cited as comparable to Linux to a 7 year old Core2Duo (2 threads) machine with 7 year old RAM and an SSD running Ubuntu (an OS not known as efficient). The older machine with the slower CPU was faster. It wasn't about the comparison, actually. It was about my surprise at how slow such an impressively spec'd machine can be -- and my regret that I didn't get the XPS 13.
  - tinco 13y ago
    Even a 10 year old machine with an SSD would be faster than a machine with a 5400rpm disk. Other things just don't matter when comparing operating system performance.

34 points by autotravis 13y ago

The author could just replace the hard drive with a SSD and add more RAM. Probably will run $200 to $300 depending on the size of the SSD. I did that with a 17" MBP, and it's still doing fine after 3 years. http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-replace-your-macbook-pros-hard-drive-with-an-ssd http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-replace-your-macbook-pros-h...

josteink 13y ago
Still. If his intent is running Linux on it, there's no point paying the 25-50% Apple tax just to get a PC you wont be running OSX on.
rozap 13y ago
If you say you have to dump money into a brand new, already expensive computer right after you buy it, then that supports the argument the author is making. You shouldn't have to do that, and there are plenty of alternatives where that isn't necessary. The hardware in macbooks is not on par with the competition. The reason you buy it is for the OS. But even that has gone down hill recently...
bluedino 13y ago
Apple's inflated prices for 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM is 'only' $300. You can do better from NewEgg but when you have time ordering parts and installing them and warranty issues it works out.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chadcf 13y ago
  I've never had warranty issues. I had to send in my macbook pro with a 3rd party ssd and 3rd party ram for repairs, and they fixed it no problems. Even better, they swapped out my budget brand ram for OEM.

chadcf 13y ago

I'm not sure why you'd want to trade, the biggest killer would be the 8 GB non upgradable ram. Ouch. You can upgrade the macbook pro to 16GB and throw in a SSD and your complaints will be gone. And yes, this will cost a bit more than the dell but you'll get a bigger screen out of it at least. My machine is upgraded to 16GB and a 500GB SSD and it's worth every penny. If you are ok with a 250GB SSD you can do it even cheaper (last year, I paid about $80 for the 16GB of ram and $500 for the 500GB SSD, 250GB SSD is significantly cheaper)

gfosco 13y ago
I have the 15" Retina MBP with 16GB RAM and an upgraded CPU... It's incredible and I love working on it. Ordering a machine with 4GB RAM now is asking for trouble, no matter the OS.
- wazoox 13y ago
  All my linux desktops do perfectly fine with 2 GB. Mac OS X is a slow memory hog, face it. That's one of the reasons I've bought the XPS 13 to replace my old macbook: with similar hardware my linux machines feel just much, much faster than my mac.
bdcravens 13y ago
I have the exact same setup. While the rMBP is tempting, I think I could keep this for a while, as I don't know that I could get much better performance with anything else.

hapless 13y ago

It is worth mentioning that Lenovo has a very significant "Certified for Linux" program. Virtually every laptop model has at least one "Certified" SKU. http://lenovo.com/think/linux http://lenovo.com/think/linux This is the major reason I ended up with a PC instead of an MBA -- I was just going to install linux on it anyway.

rogerbinns 13y ago
Note that it is Ubuntu etc certifying the laptops. You can't buy the laptops with the certified version of Linux on them, and for the model I own (T430s) the only version they list (11.10) is end of lifed in ~3 weeks. However Linux is likely to just work on Lenovo Thinkpads, although binary drivers may be problem if you pick an Nvidia GPU. I'm also a member of the Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution (grrr) and bezel size, they are delightful machines. It is trivial to change/update much of the hardware - they don't solder memory down, nor SSD drives. And Linux works perfectly - the only thing it doesn't support is the fingerprint reader which ironically is made by a company Apple bought not too long ago.
- fakeer 13y ago
  Even 5 years back when on a Dell laptop which came with Vista the Dell support guys worked hard to fix my problems even though the ladies on phone used to warn me "sir, we don't support Linux on that laptop". I am on MBA now, don't know how to they treat Linux on a computer they will with Windows. >>Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution The only option I had other than MBA and was ruled out for this very reason!
- acabal 13y ago
  Just as a heads up to those thinking of buying an X1 Carbon, the RAM is soldered in on that model, and the SSD is a non-standard size making it difficult/impossible to upgrade.
  - cjh_ 13y ago
    very good point, you literally get what you pay for (and are stuck with it). I am really liking my x1 carbon and it performs very well with linux. I do wish I had stretched for the 8gb of ram but the 4gb has never been an issue (despite me sometimes running windows in a VM), however my general toolset is quite light (mostly command line based) so YMMV.

gambiting 13y ago

Yeah I don't understand Apple - why still put old and slow 500GB 5400rpm drives in brand new 15" Pros? Go to an Apple Store and try running anything on the 15" Pro and on an 11" Air - I guarantee that Air will load it faster. I've got the 2012 13" Air and it's a perfect tool for a developer, very quick, completely silent and very portable. I am pretty sure that guy would be very happy with his Mac,but he really needs to change that HDD for an SSD.

fakeer 13y ago
>>Yeah I don't understand Apple - why still put old and slow 500GB 5400rpm drives I can think of one reason - people who buy Apple products buy it anyway. >>2012 13" Air and it's a perfect tool for a developer Having been a user for last 6 months(after switched from Dell+Ubuntu) I can't agree more.
- reinhardt 13y ago
  I've neved worked on a 13'' laptop but I doubt I'd feel comfortable using it as my main machine, at least without an external big screen. That's the main reason I'm leaning more towards a T530 (or even Dell E6530) instead of an XPS.
bdcravens 13y ago
For casual users, that's probably not as big a deal as you'd think. Besides, those folks definitely aren't comparing it to machines with Ubuntu. I prefer the 5400 RPM machines, as I'm replacing machines, not buying new ones, and my old upgrades (SSD and RAM) always come with me (put "new" hard drive in old machine and eBay it)
- LordIllidan 13y ago
  They are Macbook Pros - intended for Professionals. They are extremely pricey laptops - but the hardware can stand to be improved a lot.
  - 13y ago

OrsenPike 13y ago

Any word on if the SSD it user changeable? I know the RAM is not which is a shame.

niggler 13y ago

I'm terribly confused here. "continue to run Ubuntu in a VM on the MacBook with its relaxed HDD" Did he try with bootcamp on Ubuntu 12.04 (the LTS version)? I just tested on two macbook pros (mid 2011, early 2013) and both seem fine.

ams6110 13y ago
The one time I tried bootcamp (to run Windows 7) I ended up being unable to boot anything at all. Had to reinstall from DVD.
natermer 13y ago
Apple hardware sucks at running Linux. If you are a kernel hacker and the idea of fixing compatibility bugs sounds like a regular afternoon then Apple hardware isn't so bad.

doktrin 13y ago

The specs on that MBP are bizarre. Why would anyone order a new machine with a 5400rpm drive and 4gb of ram? That was a bad purchasing decision. I think the article would have been more helpful with some kind of first hand account about using the device. I'm super curious about it, but am still leaning towards a think pad x series. The keyboard alone is almost too attractive to pass up, and they appear to be quite Linux compatible. Edit : correction, MBP not MBA. Typo.

drwl 13y ago
This must have been an older MBA. All the recent MBA ship with SSDs.
- pavanky 13y ago
  The article mentions that it is a macbook pro. Not an MBA.
pavanky 13y ago
May be he had to order within a budget and the macbooks are shit if you are within a budget.
bluedino 13y ago
That's the base config of almost every laptop out there. At least Lenovo has almost all the T-series coming with a 7200RPM drive now.
- doktrin 13y ago
  I suppose I should have clarified that the specs are bizarre for a developer's laptop. The cost associated with the upgrades are relatively minor, considering the life of the machine, and devs are typically customers that know how to spec out machines.
  - autotravis 13y ago
    When they were ordering it, all I knew was it would be MBP 15-inch. I didn't know they would go to the low end on the HDD and RAM. I was a little hands-off to be polite with coming into a new job.

mehrzad 13y ago

I personally find Mountain Lion more bloated than either Ubuntu or Windows.

bluedino 13y ago
If I boot up my Mac and Linux workstation with our environment setup and open up my day-to-day apps, the Mac is about 1GB ahead in RAM use. But after you start using them for a few hours they even out. Firefox, Chrome, terminal windows, some Ruby sessions MySQL Workbench, FileZilla, a couple LibreOffice documents...

nnutter 13y ago

The author is promoting a machine he has never used and is comparing a non-SSD machine to an SSD machine. This would have been semi-interesting if it was discussing the XPS 13 DE under actual use.

autotravis 13y ago
Where do you live? May I bring you some tea and massage your feet while I rewrite my post to please you? I linked to an exhaustive review of the XPS, if you read my entire post: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xp...

bluedino 13y ago

Why didn't this guy just buy a 13" MBA in the first place?

general_failure 13y ago

Mbp 2012 15" is actually dual purpose. I own one. Apart from computing, it doubles up as a room heater.

tinco 13y ago

TL;DR: he compares a computer without an SSD to a computer with an SSD, the computer without an SSD is slower. Why do stories like this get upvotes?

autotravis 13y ago
Real TL;DR: I compared a computer without an SSD, but with an Intel Core i7 clocked at 2 GHZ (quad-core, 8 threads) with a unix-like OS often cited as comparable to Linux to a 7 year old Core2Duo (2 threads) machine with 7 year old RAM and an SSD running Ubuntu (an OS not known as efficient). The older machine with the slower CPU was faster. It wasn't about the comparison, actually. It was about my surprise at how slow such an impressively spec'd machine can be -- and my regret that I didn't get the XPS 13.
- tinco 13y ago
  Even a 10 year old machine with an SSD would be faster than a machine with a 5400rpm disk. Other things just don't matter when comparing operating system performance.