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Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

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Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#121

Post by leesalminen »

rixrax wrote: post #95
blunte wrote: post #49

My experience with my 1-month-old maxed out 9560: - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP - palm-sensitive trackpad - failure that politely states that I need to reboot (if I try to use fingerprint reader to login too quickly after opening the laptop) - unplanned reboots due to updates - laggy and choppy video on a single external 4k monitor (compared to no apparent lag when the old rMBP drives 2x 4k monitors…

>> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP >> - palm-sensitive trackpad This! I sound like a broken record, but what is wrong with the PC manufacturers not getting the trackpad right/close(r) to how (well) Apple MBP trackpads operate? Yes, they may have been improving, but going back from MBP to PC laptop is simply infuriating as a result of lack of accuracy of their trackpads. And to back up my subjective as…

Couldn't agree more. Whenever a friend picks up a new non-Apple machine that's the first thing I try out. It's almost always bad enough for me stop there.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#122

Post by mwambua »

post_break wrote: post #73
cm2187 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lattitude E74xx series is pretty good, I upgraded the RAM and disk on every model I owned. And they still come with win7 drivers. But the latest generation (E7480) has dropped the full Ethernet port with the same sort of foldable port that Sony used on its z-series and they break too easily. You should try a E7470 which has a full Ethernet port while still being an ultra book. Also they haven't tried to be creati…

I'm rocking a thinkpad x230 and I will probably continue to do so until they stop making decent batteries for it. I will weep when I can no longer use it.

I use an x230 as my primary as well... but I can't seem to suppress my desire for a FHD screen. Do you know if any of the newer X-series are worth the money?

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#123

Post by chimeracoder »

vetinari wrote: post #116
chimeracoder wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OSX will happily use 3840x2160. Are you sure your limitation is not somewhere else? Yes, it will use it, but it looks terrible. Even the native system UI isn't designed for it, let alone Cocoa-based third-party applications or third-party applications that don't use Cocoa.

Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.

> Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice?

I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back.

> Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa?

I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. The situation gets even worse when you're talking about applications designed for X11[0], which I could forgive, but on the other hand, those applications scale just fine on Linux.

By contrast, all of this works out-of-the-box in (for example) Unity. I don't have to deal with dialog boxes that are out of proportion with the system bar, or text that's impossible to read unless I squint on some applications but perfectly readable on others.

[0] We could get into a debate about whether XQuartz really counts as "cocoa" or not, but I'd rather not.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#124

Post by [deleted] »

neverminder wrote: post #13

XPS is great, having said that I'm waiting for one with USB Type-C charging only and as far as I'm concerned it's time and all sockets should be USB Type-C. I have my Chromebook Pixel for 2 years now and I got used to plugging in a charger from either side.

[deleted]

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#125

Post by mabbo »

wslh wrote: post #68
mabbo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred I just spent 30 minutes this morning dealing with this exact issue on my laptop that I've docked into two nice external monitors. To fix it, open the display settings and set one of the external monitors to the primary display. Then log out, and log back in. I have no idea why this works, but if it hadn…

It doesn't work with Microsoft Office, it is a known issue that Microsoft Office doesn't support that setting. With Google Chrome it will work because all the work is done by the browser. Look also at this future update: https://www.google.com.ar/amp/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/artic...

It fixed Outlook for me.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#126

Post by pmontra »

velobro wrote: post #85
masklinn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/r/dell lists serious issues with the Killer NIC, coil whine, thermal limitations (when playing), speakers are bad ("average android 4.0 device sounds"), Win10 scaling make 4K display still not great (especially with external low-density displays), backlit keyboard disabling itself, some people get absolutely dreadful battery life.

I really don't know why anyone would order a laptop from Dell, or any other OEM for that matter. Dell and their like, obviously, aren't at the for-front of laptop design. They are still using plastic and calling Carbon fiber a "premium" laptop material (it isn't). They are using second rate network adapters. They are using second rate SSDs which have terrible write speeds. Windows trackpads arent any better than they…

If one doesn't want Mac OS the usual vendors are HP, Dell, Lenovo, maybe Toshiba, in the order suggested by a repairman to a colleague of mine.

I've always been lucky with touchpads on high end HPs. I've been using Ubuntu since 2009, maybe it's a Windows problem.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#127

Post by m52go »

I really wanted to love this machine but couldn't find one that wasn't a lemon.

Went through 3 of them. A well-specced model with 4k screen, 16GB memory, and 512GB SSD.

First had a bad screen, second had sticky keys, and third had faulty video card.

Third time I took it back, I was still willing to get it repaired but the support staff wouldn't do it. They told me they've had so many XPS 15s returned for service that they just recommended getting a totally different machine...

But it was a brilliant machine when it worked.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#128

Post by vetinari »

chimeracoder wrote: post #123
vetinari wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.

> Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice? I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults…

> I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back.

I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable.

OSX defaults to "best" resolution for the given display. In case of this monitor, it is 3840x2160, but - it will tell you is 1920x1080 and use it in HiDPI mode. Like this: http://imgur.com/a/infej

Once you change resolution, it will remember, what you changed it to on that specific display, and will use it next time you connect to it.

> I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI.

In my experience, they scale perfectly. The ones that are non-HiDPI aware, are scaled by the system to the proper size (and thus are pixelated).

XQuartz is another matter. It should be taken behind the barn and shot long time ago. Running X11 apps is better done using a linux vm.

However, what I don't understand, why you have wrong scale. XQuartz is a not DPI-aware app, thus it is scaled by the system.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#129

Post by Spoom »

luxcem wrote: post #111
wslh wrote: post #5

If you want to buy one you should extend your analysis beyond the hardware specs because the software and operating systems are not ready yet. I can give the example of the latest XPS 13 2-1 where Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred. Look for example at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-apps-appear-... high DPI is a whole issu…

XPS 13 on linux (ubuntu) here, the support is very good. The HiDPI screen need some configuration but most apps will run out of the box, some need to set a parameter for pixel density. Most issues can be solve by looking in the ArchWiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI ). USB-C (even a dock with power, usb, sound, hdmi, display port, ethernet will run fine), WiFi, Graphic Card, touchpad, sound, event the…

Agreed, I also bought an XPS 9360 and comparing it to Linux on my Macbook Pro, the difference is night and day. Everything is incredibly well supported on the XPS.
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