Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New XPS 15 Laptop

dell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 339 posts

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#151

Post by creshal »

bronz wrote: post #139

i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple exclusively. my personal fantasy is a laptop that isnt shy about being thick, affording it a huge battery, tons of ports, OLED screen and solid state trackpad like the macbook. with very reliable linux drivers for all the hardware. a very utilitarian machine.

These laptops have been around, and successful, for years. They've just been snuffed by hipsters because they weren't Apple.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#152

Post by alkonaut »

pmontra wrote: post #94
wolfgke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most important flaw for me: Seems to have no ethernet port.

Yes, I would be using a dongle all the time, which is unbearable. So long for the XPS.

The slimmer dell laptops have been lacking the RJ45 port for a while now. I have a precision m3300 (very happy with that) which doesn't have one. Had to get a cheap adapter for USB but that one feels more like a plug that sits at the end of the network cable than a dongle.

The thing I think with those of us that do have their computers connected to cable network a lot ("all the time") is that it's usually in the same place (our desk) so it's not that big a problem to adapt the end of the network cable there.

In fact I'd prefer to use a usb-c brick with all connections (video, keyboard, mouse, lan) over the current one where I insert the network cable into one usb, then the monitor into the hdmi, and the monitor usb which has the mouse/keyboard in it's hub into a second usb. Of all the "docking flaws" with my current laptop I find the lack of RJ45 to be the least annoying actually.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#154

Post by m_mueller »

falcolas wrote: post #81
m_mueller wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not P but just ab example: Sublime Text won't even show menus in unity without some extension hackery. Who thought this titlebar would be a good idea? People with an 11 inch laptop? Is that the target audience now?

For better and worse, it apes the OSX interface, which includes menus in the title bar of the entire window.

sorry, that's simply wrong. OSX has menus fixed in the menu bar, not in the window titles, these are separate. And so far I find menus at the top still offer the best UX - no need to target the pointer vertically, the menu always anchored where you find it, a root representation of running apps other than their windows. Unity does almost everything the other way round - hidden menus, revealed wherever the top of your window is if you happen to figure out the right key combo or gesture. Discoverability? Who needs that, people can't operate something more complex than an iPhone app anyways...

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#155

Post by StevePerkins »

creshal wrote: post #151
bronz wrote: post #139

i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple exclusively. my personal fantasy is a laptop that isnt shy about being thick, affording it a huge battery, tons of ports, OLED screen and solid state trackpad like the macbook. with very reliable linux drivers for all the hardware. a very utilitarian machine.

These laptops have been around, and successful, for years. They've just been snuffed by hipsters because they weren't Apple.

Feel free to provide some recommended examples instead of just being snarky.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#156

Post by rcatajar »

IanCal wrote: post #20

I wonder if this will have the coil whine issues the 13 has (had? I've got the last gen).

I have a precision 5510 (pro version of the XPS15) Skylake gen and it doesn't have the annoying coil whine of my previous XPS13 (Haswell gen)

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#157

Post by creshal »

farresito wrote: post #104

The only reason why I regret buying a Thinkpad is that I see good machines like the XPS, but I'm not willing to buy them because I have been spoiled by Thinkpad's keyboards.

Rumours have it that next year's line-up will return to having slim bezels like the current XPS series has (and Thinkpads had a decade ago…).

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#158

Post by andlarry »

Folks considering this should also check out the HP ZBook Studio G3.

It has Quadro M1000M 4GB graphics, 32 GB of ECC RAM, quad core, Linux certified by HP, 4k screen, can handle two external 4k monitors and drive the panel at about 4.5 pounds.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#159

Post by sliken »

hajile wrote: post #117
StavrosK wrote: post #51

Speaking of laptops, what would you recommend to someone running Ubuntu? My 2013 MacBook Air is feeling it, with its non-upgradable 4 GB RAM. A discrete graphics card so I could play DotA2 once in a while would be nice, even if it's at medium graphics quality.

I'm kinda in the same boat. I want a laptop with Iris Pro 580/p580 and NO dedicated GPU. The 580 has a bit over a TFLOP of compute (plenty for games like DoTA) and more importantly, the drivers don't suck on Linux. The issue is that any laptop that ships with that processor also ships with a crappy dedicated GPU. When I have a 45w processor, I want to pay a few hundred extra for a 55w Nvidia M2000m that has 10% more…

Speaking of which, seems like the 580/P580 never really delivered on the promised performance compared to the much lower power Iris 540/550 (used in the macbook pro).

The next gen looks promising though. Intel's already mentioned the kaby lake + iris for the NUC in Feb/March. I'm hoping that intel tunes the performance, power use, and price so it makes it into more devices. Iris graphics on laptops is pretty rare so far.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#160

Post by bronz »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #145
bronz wrote: post #139

i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple exclusively. my personal fantasy is a laptop that isnt shy about being thick, affording it a huge battery, tons of ports, OLED screen and solid state trackpad like the macbook. with very reliable linux drivers for all the hardware. a very utilitarian machine.

Speaking of battery, I picked up an XPS 13 recently and am very happy with it. The battery seems to last forever, the 2016 model increases the battery size from 56(?) to 60w. The only reason I didn't go with the XPS 15 was that the battery life is supposed to be terrible, and it appears that even this newly announced model only has a 56w battery, which is surprising.

out of all the laptops that are around right now, the xps series seems to be the closest to my fantasy -- this is due largely to their developer models which come with linux and linux supported hardware. when you say w do you mean Wh? ive heard murmurs of the legal limit for battery capacity in a laptop being 100Wh so that is very disappointing that the new xps would not even approach that anemic cap.

i was in a mall the other day and happened across a windows store. i was very pleased to see they had a range of xps laptops on display. i found them to be very attractive and well made. IIRC some of them had a power button on the side of the laptop instead of the top of the keyboard. my current laptop has a power button like this and i cannot fucking stand it. i press it by accident at least twice a day. any sane person would realize what a terrible idea that is -- it totally baffles me why they do this. its very sad to see such an obvious flaw on these otherwise great laptops.

Post reply on HN