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XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

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Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#51

Post by Sylos »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #38
ythn wrote: post #3

I've had so many problems with my XPS 13 that I bought in 2016 that I will never buy another one. Killer WiFi card was utter crap, laptop has issues going to sleep and waking up when closing the lid (sometimes it would hang on the the dell screen when trying to wake up and never recover), etc. Purely anecdotal, but a hard pass for me. Lenovo is my new laptop brand of choice.

Which lenovo product would you recommend for a linux laptop?

Generally, Thinkpads are recommended. I think, Red Hat employees all have Thinkpads or something along those lines, which is why they get lots of patches to make things go smoothly. No official support from Lenovo, though.

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#52

Post by dingo_bat »

Where's the fucking USB ports?!? I have literally used or observed zero USB C devices till now. I've seen newer phones but who plugs phones into computers anymore? The main issue is flash drives, external HDDs, mice, keyboards, LTE modems, Kindle, and so on. None of those are available in type C variants and I don't want to be inconvenienced by my new laptop. If I wanted to hurt myself I'd just buy from Apple!

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#53

Post by sohooo »

eropple wrote: post #13
ythn wrote: post #3

I've had so many problems with my XPS 13 that I bought in 2016 that I will never buy another one. Killer WiFi card was utter crap, laptop has issues going to sleep and waking up when closing the lid (sometimes it would hang on the the dell screen when trying to wake up and never recover), etc. Purely anecdotal, but a hard pass for me. Lenovo is my new laptop brand of choice.

Lenovo's higher-end machines are still solid, but their midrange and low-end machines are really disappointing. Sucks that you've had this experience, but among the folks I work with, Dell's high-end machines have a rep for being really reliable in both Windows and Linux. My next machine's probably an Alienware 13, but the lighter XPS 13 is real tempting too.

Did you look into the Razer Blade series? https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#54

Post by cptskippy »

FBISurveillance wrote: post #27

IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released. It's 2018 and all of us, including manufacturers, are locked with 16GB of RAM and those upgrades look like a joke. Within last month I noticed myötähäpeä when someone asks me for laptop advice. Hopefull…

Most vendors are looking to prolong battery life and increasing RAM will do the exact opposite.

Most software is still 32 bit and can't take advantage of the added memory. Even apps that can still don't really need that much. Workloads requiring gobs are RAM are niche and 8GBs works well for most people.

My personal server with 16GB of RAM runs at around 48% utilization hosting 16 sites, multiple databases, a transcoding media server, and a transcoding DVR. My work issued laptop with 8GB of RAM is running under 75% utilization. My development VM with 6GB of RAM is only running at 75% utilization.

Apart from video editing or data analysis, what sort of workloads would a user be running on a laptop that demand every ounce of RAM you can give them?

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#55

Post by contingencies »

Yay Dell! So far I like this series. Coming from years of Macbook laziness and returning to my Linux desktop roots I just bought in to the Dell XPS 15 9560 on sale at Christmas. No regrets thus far, it's nice. However, I don't need 32GB RAM and as I am setting up Gentoo and ZFS root and am very busy (lost two days to flying this week already) I have not yet completed setup, so there may be some iceberg issues... https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#56

Post by scorown »

My first Dell as developer machine is XPS 15 9560 but it is in no way a developer machine: - The thunderbolt dock wire out and laptop USB C are on opposite hands. I have to place my laptop on top of the dock like a giant book resting on a brick.

- Awful coil whine on the power adapter.

- Touchpad is annoying to use when clicking moves the finger resulting in wrong place click.

- Had to replace Killer wifi card with Intel's, Dell's support was top notch here.

- If you don't have nails, opening lid can be an unusual experience, especially when laptop is sitting on top of the dock.

Coming from Thinkpad W530 and miss it but our company switched from Lenovo to Dell

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#57

Post by chimeracoder »

FBISurveillance wrote: post #27

IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released. It's 2018 and all of us, including manufacturers, are locked with 16GB of RAM and those upgrades look like a joke. Within last month I noticed myötähäpeä when someone asks me for laptop advice. Hopefull…

> IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released.

What are you doing on an Ultrabook that actually needs 32GB of RAM? Even on my work laptop (Macbook Pro, 16GB), I pretty much never have issues that would be addressed by having 32GB of RAM.

(Note: Just because toph/htop/etc. show >16GB of data in memory, that doesn't necessarily mean your workload would be noticeably impacted if you were limited to 16GB of RAM.)

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#58

Post by eropple »

sohooo wrote: post #53
eropple wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo's higher-end machines are still solid, but their midrange and low-end machines are really disappointing. Sucks that you've had this experience, but among the folks I work with, Dell's high-end machines have a rep for being really reliable in both Windows and Linux. My next machine's probably an Alienware 13, but the lighter XPS 13 is real tempting too.

Did you look into the Razer Blade series? https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-laptops

No. I find Razer as a company to appeal to the "x-treme gamer" set in ways I wouldn't want to support, but I also think their branding is childish and would not walk into a meeting with a client with that huge gross logo on it. It would look bad.

I'd rather get a laptop with no branding at all, but the Alienware logo is at least really small. (And the keyboard on the Alienware 13 is good, my brother has one.)

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#59

Post by chimeracoder »

sergiosgc wrote: post #21
gtaylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went the other direction. Bought a Thinkpad due to how amazing they were in the past. Found that the build quality had gone way down. Was pretty disappointed as this expensive piece of hardware developed cracks on the casing within the first year. Switched to an XPS 15 and have been very happy. Love the build quality, specs are good enough. Battery life is much better even on Linux. YMMV!

Which model? We are looking into buying quite a few, and Thinkpads are the first choice here. We never had problems in the past, but I've been hearing about problems in their mid-range models. I'd like to avoid those, at the very least.

Not OP, but I got the X1 Carbon, which was (at the time) their top-of-the-line Ultrabook and believed to be their most Linux-compatible laptop.

I had a number of issues with the Thinkpad that were all relatively minor in and of themselves, but overall, I ended up switching back to the XPS 13, and I plan on sticking with this line.

Re: XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

#60

Post by emilsedgh »

FBISurveillance wrote: post #27

IMO, it does not make sense to buy any of those new models: whether it's Dell, HP, or else--before we see models with 32Gb of RAM. It's been told here over and over since 2016 when first Touchbar MacBook got released. It's 2018 and all of us, including manufacturers, are locked with 16GB of RAM and those upgrades look like a joke. Within last month I noticed myötähäpeä when someone asks me for laptop advice. Hopefull…

Do people actually need 32G ram though or is it just being obsessed with higher specs?

I have an X1 Carbon with 16G. I rarely use 4G memory with a full KDE (+ KMail with hundreds of thousands of emails stored locally), a few atom based apps (Slack, Spotify) and a browser that is always open.

My browser usually has only a few tabs open and I understand that people have browsers with hundreds of windows and full fledged IDE's (I tend to prefer editors).

But 16G, I wouldn't know how to use that much memory. Even with an IDE and possibly a Windows VM.

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