Dell XPS 13 Review • Hacker News Board

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#141

Post by balladeer » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:35 AM UTC

People I know, who have used this laptop (the previous avatar), never had a good thing to say about this laptop - from the extremely high prices to rampant overheating.

3 years back I went for an Air, and till date that's been my only iProduct - yes, the iPrice just doesn't make sense to me, price was the reason I didn't buy any other laptop but the Macbook Air. My needs were clear >= 4GB RAM, 100+ SSD being the prime needs along with extremely good battery life and extremely light-weight and solid machine (And I was indeed lured by the polished/pretty OS - but I do still love my xubuntu). Yes, Air delivered that. I am from India and at that time a comparable machine (wasn't one available really) was available for at least ~30% higher than the Macbook Air price and the that scenario is pretty much still the same (both the higher price part and "alternative not really available" part). (I guess it may not be the same in US or other western countries)

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#142

Post by hippich » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:38 AM UTC

dmm wrote: post #122

lhl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in following along on the process: https://major.io/2015/02/03/linux-support-dell-xps-13-9343-2... With an updated BIOS and a bunch of patches, it looks like it's getting close...

From the link: you could replace the bluetooth/wireless card with a different one. Can you really? Many laptops have whitelists and if a device doesn't present the correct pci id it won't be enabled by the bios.

I would be surprised to see that kind of setup from Dell. From my experience they produce work horses and don't mind people tweaking their laptops. You can disassemble, replace memory, hard drive, clean CPU/GPU fans, assemble it back, and still have valid manufacturer warranty. And yes, I personally replaced wifi and bluetooth cards on my inspiron, precision, xps15 laptops without problems before. So unless they drastically changed their vision, I would expect them to still build product which is hacker-friendly.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#143

Post by beeworker » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:41 AM UTC

jmcdowell wrote: post #131

Encosia wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I traded in my MacBook for an i7 ATIV Book 9 Plus about a year and a half ago. The Samsung was (I think) thinner and lighter than my Air, but had a higher than MBPr resolution display and i7 processor. Basically like a high end MBPr in an Air form factor. The Samsung was a pretty dramatic upgrade and I sold my MacBook almost immediately. I only miss it occasionally when I'd like to be able to build an iOS app. Today,…

I haven't used the Suface Pro 3 myself but I'm wondering, can it become your sole/main dev machine? Or is it only good for some light coding?

I don't use the Surface Pro 3, but my friend does. He used it as his work "laptop" for the duration of a gig at one company. The dock attachment is a good addition if you want it for that purpose, but its tablet form factor makes it work better than any laptop I've seen for being productive off the office desk, like sitting in front of the fireplace and writing a bunch of text. His use has convinced me that if I ever need to get a new personal laptop (my company provides me with the only one I use) I would get the Pro 3.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#144

Post by zanny » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

listic wrote: post #61

zanny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...

Nice. I wish ThinkPads had that. I'm ok with the way Ubuntu works on my old X200s, but I'm uncertain about the device support for latest ThinkPad models. Do you know of similar official support for Ubuntu in other decent laptops? EDIT: Oh wow, ThinkPad X240s and X250, along with many other models, are certified. http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/models/?query=&c... I wonder how am I supposed to use fingerpr…

https://system76.com/laptops

I have a Galago Ultrapro personally, but if the XPS 13 2016 is any good (and they don't jump the shark like Lenovo is, what with the Intel bootguard DRM bullshit - hell if they put coreboot on any model XPS notebook I'd be all over it instantly like butter on toast).

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#145

Post by cgag » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:52 AM UTC

jbk wrote: post #13

It seems great, but I really need a 16GB RAM option. (At least they have the 512GB SSD) With a couple of VMs, and a webbrowser, 8 GB can get tiny, and those machines don't evolve, so I'd like to plan for a couple of years...

I'm using 16 gigs of ram right now, and I'm upset by the idea of only having 8 gigs, but just out of curiosity, why do you regularly run multiple VMs?

I almost never run any VMs, but occasionally one to play around with other distros. I see a lot of people talking like running multiple VMs is the norm for devs, and I'm curious what people are doing that requires it on a regular basis.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#146

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #127

MetaCosm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was excited until I read 8GB max... that can't be right can it? What modern developer machine would have an 8GB cap?

What do you use more than 8GB for? Only things I can think of are massive Illustrator files and large Windows VMs.

Might have multiple app servers running on the same machine for development. 16gb is pretty useful.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#147

Post by sytse » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #72

A Developer Edition (with Linux preloaded) will come at some point. Currently there are driver issues of which the non-working audio is most persistent. Most elaborate info on it here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1413446 In this Reddit thread... http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2u0jjd/linux_support_... ...you find comment from barton808, who identifies himself as the Team Lead of Sputni…

I had a previous developer edition. I was hard to get over the fact that you paid for a Linux laptop but it still was not visible for people, everyone immediately pointed to the windows key on the keyboard.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#148

Post by Igglyboo » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 1:57 AM UTC

steveax wrote: post #134

Igglyboo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really need to step it up this year or their status as the go to dev laptop is going to fade. I really dont know why i can't get a touchscreen MBP yet either..

I don't understand the appeal of touch screens (really, not trolling). What sort of tasks do you find one superior for?

They are extremely convenient when laying down on my back and my laptop is on my upper chest. It's very awkward to try and reach the touchpad in that position.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#149

Post by mmilano » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 2:00 AM UTC

I ordered a XPS 13 in 2014 over the phone since there was a problem with checking out at the website at the time. I spent 15 hours (started logging hours after the 2nd) total fixing their mistake when I realized they didn't order me the developer edition. Those hours were also spent fixing the screw up of them sending it to the wrong address.

I did end up getting the laptop. It was pretty nice except I could hear an electrical hiss coming from the bottom of the laptop when the room was quiet.

I had a friend who had one and confirmed the sound was coming from his as well.

I sent the laptop back and spent another 2 hours with their "support" for that.

I'll never buy from Dell again.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review

#150

Post by tkms » Fri, Feb 20, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #136

MetaCosm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was excited until I read 8GB max... that can't be right can it? What modern developer machine would have an 8GB cap?

Well one plus is the total RAM footprint of a Linux distro + a DE, is less (by a lot) than just OS X's kernel. Right now, xnu alone is using 960MB on my laptop. Oink oink oink. Edit:MBP82, created new user accounts, reboot, login, launch Firefox, load CNN, wait 2 minutes. Did this twice each Fedora 21 Workstation (Gnome) and OS X 10.9.5. Fedora free -m used = 614MB. OS X top PhysMem Used = 2866M, Activity Monitor Mem…

The RAM footprints of most development tools on Linux are also less than on other operating systems, due to shared libraries and not just shipping every dependency bundled with binaries. A developer on OSX told me he was close to maxing out his 16gigs of RAM, blaming it on having to run 2 vagrant VMs simultaneously while working. While I wasn't able to establish a conclusive cause of his sizeable memory consumption (he was busy), I spun up 3 vagrant VMs of my own, simulated work, and opened/visited many more sites in Firefox to try to hog resources. I could hardly break 4 gigs of RAM used (out of 16), in Ubuntu 14.04. 8 gigs might not actually be so bad if you're doing development work using tools that aren't shipped as complete packages, but rather adhere to the unix philosophy.