Which linux laptops would you recommend for an under 1000 Euro price point?
Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
11–20 of 396 posts
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#12Bought a Dell XPS 13 and then returned it because of the horrible coil whine.
Make sure to install the Dell power management tools. Could be Placebo but I've noticed the whine significantly less with them installed.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#13I'm pretty disappointed with the compromises I have to make to use a Mac these days. I'm planning on getting one of the new XPS 15s with an i-9 - so excited!
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#14I was going to get the XPS 13 today and I ended up with an HP Spectre x360 13" (newer one--i7-8550U, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD that'll probably eventually be replaced with a 2TB when the price comes down). Installing Fedora on it right now. I'm in on a chunkier trackpad click, and the HP has that over the rather light Dell click that's common across every Dell I tried. Also, I preferred the keyboard on the Spectre x360 and the overall look-and-feel of it, plus the pen (for when I am using Windows) feels a little nicer. I wish I could've found the newer ceramic white Spectre, which I was in on, but it was a two-week wait and the black-and-copper looks very sharp too.
Ultrabooks seem to have basically converged. Everybody's running more or less the same hardware. This has been good for Linux; hopefully my install goes as well.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#15A good review of the hardware, but it seems like a lifelong Mac user would have something to say about switching to Windows 10, as well.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#16The article mentioned various problems with 4K display. In addition to those it is just too reflective. I ended up with getting a filter for it. It helped, but still even in the office I have to avoid certain angles not to see overhead lamp reflections. The fact that the display opening angle is rather limited has not helped either.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new BIOS updates addressed the whine issues I had. Might have been worth checking out before just taking it back :) EDIT : To be clear, my issues were resolved after an update back in Dec 2017: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDet... "Optimize CPU loading to Improve EE noise" is specifically one of the issues that BIOS update addresses.
Wow, I'm impressed that a BIOS update can fix a coil whine. Got any background info on how they did it? Or did they just disable some core hardware feature for it?
I have no idea on the implementation, but it seems that they resolved it with 'CPU loading' optimizations: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDet...
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#18You don't use the trackpad on a lenovo. You don't have to!
Srsly while i do own now a macbook pro at work and really like the touchpad, i'm a touch quicker with the red knob in combination with AwesomeWM as a window manager.
Main advantage: my hands rests on the device and don't have to move below.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#19I run Ubuntu (actually Elementary now) on my XPS 13. Works pretty well. Track pad is not as good as my MacBook was. It also has the graphics card click which is super annoying.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
#20Which linux laptops would you recommend for an under 1000 Euro price point?
Go for whatever's cheap and replace it regularly. There's nothing that can be made in small quantities, run off a lithium battery for hundreds of charge cycles, and be durable in a backpack, at that price point.