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New XPS 15 Laptop

dell.com

261–270 of 339 posts

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#262
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sniff, that's a Maxwell chip not Pascal. But it came out early 2016 so perhaps early 2017 we will see a G4 with Kaby Lake and Pascal quad core. Would be nice.

> Sniff, that's a Maxwell chip not Pascal. Is there a substantial difference? This is a development laptop so I only cared about it being able to push enough pixels. Perhaps there's a difference for gamers?

Buying a quadro card for gaming is like buying a truck for racing.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#263
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.

This is a logical consequence of slower hardware replacement cycles: now that a reasonably fast system can be expected to still be very much acceptable five years down the line (I am writing this on an early 2011 machine that would not be much cheaper to match today), a much larger fraction of the market is willing to pay for qualities that are not represented in benchmarks.

The fastest silicon in the cheapest casing that would do the job was a reasonable strategy back when even the best hardware became obsolete within three years, but now this is much less dominant. People who are not willing to spend on build quality are likely to just stick to what they have.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#264

It's a decent laptop; however, having the camera at the bottom of the screen is a bit annoying :/ - ppl will be looking into your nose :)

This is the biggest design flaw with this laptop. It is a very unflattering angle and makes the video essentially useless. It's the one reason I can't recommend it to people (or I recommend it with a caveat, if they use the camera often).

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#265
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)

Very useful to know, thanks. I'm somewhat torn about whether to keep or replace mine, apart from the whine it's a lovely little machine.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#266
post #119

I have "old" one 9550 i7, 4K, 32GB - as a device for this money I wouldn't expect that I will have: - unaligned Jack socket, so that only one channel plays - Flickering backlight, where only one rescue is to downgrade BIOS: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/... - random freezes: Whole computer hangs, there is no error in Windows log, it's not related to nVidia card, it's not related to load.

I'm currently running the 9550 with ubuntu 16.04 and can confirm #2 on your list. It's pretty annoying. Bumping the brightness up helps a lot, but when on battery and/or late at night that's a terrible compromise.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#267
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the gamer bling thing is so funny. why does nobody in the laptop business understand that people are buying those laptops despite the bling, not because of it? every ad that i see for a gaming laptop emphasizes the competitive advantages that these laptops offer, letting "gamers" "dominate" and so on. how could they be so disconnected that they don't realize that what everyone wants is to enjoy their crispy, high def…

Razer figured it out.

Razers new 17" is incredible. I'd never buy a 17" laptop but what they crammed into it is genius.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#268
post #119

I have "old" one 9550 i7, 4K, 32GB - as a device for this money I wouldn't expect that I will have: - unaligned Jack socket, so that only one channel plays - Flickering backlight, where only one rescue is to downgrade BIOS: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/... - random freezes: Whole computer hangs, there is no error in Windows log, it's not related to nVidia card, it's not related to load.

Precision 5510 user here. Basically the "business version" of the same laptop. We bought a batch of them. All were plagued with BSODs that would not write any logs or do any memory dumps. We eventually got the systems stable by putting them in UEFI mode with Secure Boot on (this is not how they came from the factory). Some were picky about NVME drivers, the Samsung drives that came in a lot of them were slightly different from the retail 960s, and the drivers were hidden on some forum post...

We worked with Dell for months, and after we gave them our findings, they released about 5 BIOS updates week after week. The BIOS updates didn't really fix anything though... $3200 we were paying for these things. Very disappointed.

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#269
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most important tid-bid for me: 7th Gen Intel® Quad Core™ processors optional 4GB GeForce® GTX 1050 Supports up to 32GB of memory Killer™ Wireless: The Killer 1535 Wireless-AC

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

I use a USB3 dongle that has 3 USB ports and an ethernet port. It works great. I've used it all over the place, OSX, Mint, etc. $27 Anker, https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Unibody-Aluminum-Gigabit-Ethern...

Re: New XPS 15 Laptop

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, when work asked what laptop I wanted a while back, I was embarrassed to send them a list of these "gamer" laptops, because they were the most powerful and adequate for what I need. Hate the bling and gamer tag.

And it's not just on laptops/desktops. I use a gamer keyboard (because of the 22 macro keys it has) and a gamer mouse (I like the ergonomics and tracking) for work. And of course, they have the obligatory fugly LED lighting and garish stylings.

If macros and ergonomics is your thing, and you don't mind a high cost, I recommend the kinesis advantage. No bling, all function and hardware-programmable, which is very nice to remap keys independent of the OS.
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