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Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

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Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#41

Post by askafriend »

TheHalfDeafChef wrote: post #40
atebyagrue wrote: post #20

I got one in 2020 at the start of covid for coding. Ultimately, I just sold it and ended up replacing it with a 13" MacBook Air a couple months ago. The main reasons were: the case flexes when you pick it up by the corner causing annoying errant mouse clicks, the 4k screen did not have the battery life as advertised (a lower resolution screen would have remedied this, but I had no clue going in), several times it thr…

Notwithstanding the other issues mentioned, but the MacBook Air is not exactly user repairable. IIRC, it is a SOC. So any part that breaks the entire thing needs to be replaced. I got a MacBook Pro 2018 and though it works it still makes wary.

I've not had a single hardware issue in the more than decade I've been using MacBooks.

I've literally never wanted to replace anything in a laptop myself in the multiple decades I've been using laptops.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#42

Post by askafriend »

approxim8ion wrote: post #29
atebyagrue wrote: post #20

I got one in 2020 at the start of covid for coding. Ultimately, I just sold it and ended up replacing it with a 13" MacBook Air a couple months ago. The main reasons were: the case flexes when you pick it up by the corner causing annoying errant mouse clicks, the 4k screen did not have the battery life as advertised (a lower resolution screen would have remedied this, but I had no clue going in), several times it thr…

Good point- I don't think anyone should go for a 4k screen on a laptop. 1080 is already pretty good for laptop screens, 1440 is probably the sweet spot. Aside from the battery savings which are immense, there's not much fractional scaling fiddling needed.

1080 is unusable on laptops for me. HiDpi displays are a must to render text as sharply as possible.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#43

Post by approxim8ion »

askafriend wrote: post #42
approxim8ion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point- I don't think anyone should go for a 4k screen on a laptop. 1080 is already pretty good for laptop screens, 1440 is probably the sweet spot. Aside from the battery savings which are immense, there's not much fractional scaling fiddling needed.

1080 is unusable on laptops for me. HiDpi displays are a must to render text as sharply as possible.

I'm still on 1366x768, haha. I guess it's a matter of being exposed to better and better displays that makes it difficult to go back.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#44

Post by microtonal »

askafriend wrote: post #41
TheHalfDeafChef wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notwithstanding the other issues mentioned, but the MacBook Air is not exactly user repairable. IIRC, it is a SOC. So any part that breaks the entire thing needs to be replaced. I got a MacBook Pro 2018 and though it works it still makes wary.

I've not had a single hardware issue in the more than decade I've been using MacBooks. I've literally never wanted to replace anything in a laptop myself in the multiple decades I've been using laptops.

In a decade of using MacBooks, I had faulty RAM twice, once a broken 'f' key, once a completely unusable keyboard (one of the butterfly generations, keys would often get stuck).

But at least the service of Apple Stores was very good. Unfortunately, many Apple authorized service providers are terrible.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#45

Post by askafriend »

microtonal wrote: post #44
askafriend wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not had a single hardware issue in the more than decade I've been using MacBooks. I've literally never wanted to replace anything in a laptop myself in the multiple decades I've been using laptops.

In a decade of using MacBooks, I had faulty RAM twice, once a broken 'f' key, once a completely unusable keyboard (one of the butterfly generations, keys would often get stuck). But at least the service of Apple Stores was very good. Unfortunately, many Apple authorized service providers are terrible.

Ah that's unfortunate, especially the keyboard issue which I know bit many people.

My main point was that most people probably don't need user repairability since they wouldn't have repaired the issue themselves anyway.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#46

Post by jbjbjbjb »

Dell XPS is seriously overrated. I’m not surprised at the comments. To be fair the latest XPS I have hasn’t been to bad but still the touchpad sucks, I don’t know how much of the other gremlins are due to Dell or if they’re Windows or bugs in my monitor. In any case my experience isn’t great and I much prefer using my MacBook.

If you do choose Dell check the support forums before you buy. Maybe try a Lenovo.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#47

Post by alxmrs »

i recently traded in my dell xps with ubuntu for a macbook air, because:

- the arrow key / page up and down placement on the keyboard led me to jump all over the page when typing

- the camera was placed at the bottom of the screen, which looks super unflattering (an issue of importance in an all video conferencing world)

- unexpected ubuntu on the hardware quirks that i had to deal with before getting to the coding that i wanted to do

- M1 is _fast_. it makes everything feel like lightning.

Re: Ask HN: I am a coder and I am thinking of buying Dell XPS 13. What do you think?

#48

Post by andrecp11 »

Out of curiosity, with COVID I imagine people are WFH more and there's a tendency for that to continue. Did you think about buying a desktop instead? Usually is much better value for the money and Linux is likely to run without issues too.
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