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For $500 I can get a real ultrabook. Like Dell XPS 11 2560 x 1440 display 4GB RAM 128GB SSD http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/665236/Dell-XPS-11-XPS18-

For $500 I can get a real ultrabook. Like Dell XPS 11 2560 x 1440 display 4GB RAM 128GB SSD http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/665236/Dell-XPS-11-XPS18-9091CFB-2/ http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/665236/Dell-XPS-11-XPS...

dman 12y ago
Not a very fair comparision since at this point that laptop is EOL'ed and its original price is 1199.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Oddly, I ventured out to find the current price of the XPS 11 and Dell doesn't even publish it. You have to call for pricing (oh how Dell has changed). The XPS 12 starts at 149 so I'm assuming the 11 is a bit lower? http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-11-9p33/pd?p=xps-11-9p33&view=pdetails&isredir=true http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-11-9p33/pd?p=xps-11-9p33&view=p...
  - dman 12y ago
    XPS 11 is end of lifed and discontinued from what I understand.
- imaginenore 12y ago
  EOL or not, many of its specs are better. Some are worse, I admit.
falcolas 12y ago
With a shorter battery life, more than twice as heavy, and cumbersome to use in the "tablet" mode. The deep discount on the $1200 ultrabook also seems unusual, like they're having a fire sale just to get it out of stock.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  Considering the reviews I found[1], I suspect "fire sale" is exactly what this is. [1] http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/xps/11/ http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/xps/11/
zghst 12y ago
LOL at using Windows on a high DPI screen. Windows 8 improved a lot, but using any Desktop apps (Photoshop, IE, Chrome, etc.) is horrible, everything is super tiny. They haven't really given much though to scaling yet, even in Windows 10 scaling is still being figured out.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  This is so patently false I'm not sure if you aren't just trolling. I use windows 8 on a 150 DPI screen (28" 4k) on my work desktop and a 220 DPI screen on my laptop (rMBP). Both have no problems, and most commercial apps already support it (chrome, IE no problem, I've heard phtoshop is ok as well).
  - zghst 12y ago
    I have rMBP too and no I'm not trolling, you must not be using it at the full resolution. If you use Windows at the full resolution for the device, everything gets extremely small, so you have to increase the font/title bar size, even then you have to turn on zoom on IE and Chrome and the UI elements on all Desktop apps is incredibly tiny. Playing games is incredibly annoying because of how tiny everything is. Most Desktop apps do not support scaling in Windows the way one think it would. If you are fine with using one Metro app (or two with one pinned) at a time, then it's perfect. Even in Windows 10, the new update has issues with scaling. It now caps out correctly (1920 x 1200), but it is blurry as hell.
    - izacus 12y ago
      That's just wrong... what you're saying makes me think you're not having the scaling factor (equivalent of OS X scaling) enabled in display settings.
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    The post you are responding to is a bit hyperbolic, but "HiDPI" scaling on Windows is still pretty hit or miss with lots of major apps. (Chrome isn't one of them, despite its mention in these posts -- since Chrome 37 it has done proper DPI scaling on Windows, and that release has been out for quite a while now). Photoshop (since it was also mentioned) has very limited support for real scaling (beyond the OS's default of render as if on a low-dpi screen and then bitmap scale the UI up, which looks horrible, especially when combined with an app you are using to do precise bitmap editing) -- the only meaningful option it gives you is to scale everything in the UI up 200%, which is better than nothing (and what I have to do on my 3840x2160 Toshiba laptop to get a usable UI), but not a really flexible solution and even this is considered an "expirmental feature" in the very latest version. Adobe Lightroom, on the other hand, has effortless scaling and just works great on screens at any DPI. The point being there is plenty of support in the OS for apps that effectively scale, it is just that there are a lot of Win32 legacy apps out there which would require a near rewrite of the UI layer to scale well, it is by no means something the OS handles for you automatically (beyond the clumsy bitmap scaling default) if your code targets the older UI APIs, and there are (still) plenty of gotchas you do actually run into when running Windows apps on high DPI screens, though things are certainly improving in this regard.

dman 12y ago

Not a very fair comparision since at this point that laptop is EOL'ed and its original price is 1199.

josefresco 12y ago
Oddly, I ventured out to find the current price of the XPS 11 and Dell doesn't even publish it. You have to call for pricing (oh how Dell has changed). The XPS 12 starts at 149 so I'm assuming the 11 is a bit lower? http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-11-9p33/pd?p=xps-11-9p33&view=pdetails&isredir=true http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-11-9p33/pd?p=xps-11-9p33&view=p...
- dman 12y ago
  XPS 11 is end of lifed and discontinued from what I understand.
imaginenore 12y ago
EOL or not, many of its specs are better. Some are worse, I admit.

falcolas 12y ago

With a shorter battery life, more than twice as heavy, and cumbersome to use in the "tablet" mode. The deep discount on the $1200 ultrabook also seems unusual, like they're having a fire sale just to get it out of stock.

vonmoltke 12y ago
Considering the reviews I found[1], I suspect "fire sale" is exactly what this is. [1] http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/xps/11/ http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/xps/11/

zghst 12y ago

LOL at using Windows on a high DPI screen. Windows 8 improved a lot, but using any Desktop apps (Photoshop, IE, Chrome, etc.) is horrible, everything is super tiny. They haven't really given much though to scaling yet, even in Windows 10 scaling is still being figured out.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
This is so patently false I'm not sure if you aren't just trolling. I use windows 8 on a 150 DPI screen (28" 4k) on my work desktop and a 220 DPI screen on my laptop (rMBP). Both have no problems, and most commercial apps already support it (chrome, IE no problem, I've heard phtoshop is ok as well).
- zghst 12y ago
  I have rMBP too and no I'm not trolling, you must not be using it at the full resolution. If you use Windows at the full resolution for the device, everything gets extremely small, so you have to increase the font/title bar size, even then you have to turn on zoom on IE and Chrome and the UI elements on all Desktop apps is incredibly tiny. Playing games is incredibly annoying because of how tiny everything is. Most Desktop apps do not support scaling in Windows the way one think it would. If you are fine with using one Metro app (or two with one pinned) at a time, then it's perfect. Even in Windows 10, the new update has issues with scaling. It now caps out correctly (1920 x 1200), but it is blurry as hell.
  - izacus 12y ago
    That's just wrong... what you're saying makes me think you're not having the scaling factor (equivalent of OS X scaling) enabled in display settings.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  The post you are responding to is a bit hyperbolic, but "HiDPI" scaling on Windows is still pretty hit or miss with lots of major apps. (Chrome isn't one of them, despite its mention in these posts -- since Chrome 37 it has done proper DPI scaling on Windows, and that release has been out for quite a while now). Photoshop (since it was also mentioned) has very limited support for real scaling (beyond the OS's default of render as if on a low-dpi screen and then bitmap scale the UI up, which looks horrible, especially when combined with an app you are using to do precise bitmap editing) -- the only meaningful option it gives you is to scale everything in the UI up 200%, which is better than nothing (and what I have to do on my 3840x2160 Toshiba laptop to get a usable UI), but not a really flexible solution and even this is considered an "expirmental feature" in the very latest version. Adobe Lightroom, on the other hand, has effortless scaling and just works great on screens at any DPI. The point being there is plenty of support in the OS for apps that effectively scale, it is just that there are a lot of Win32 legacy apps out there which would require a near rewrite of the UI layer to scale well, it is by no means something the OS handles for you automatically (beyond the clumsy bitmap scaling default) if your code targets the older UI APIs, and there are (still) plenty of gotchas you do actually run into when running Windows apps on high DPI screens, though things are certainly improving in this regard.