Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition • Hacker News Board

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#91

Post by Alupis » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

dntrkv wrote: post #80

jraedisch wrote: post #43

Having a lot of ram is nice, but every time I read that people need at least 8gb for development, I ask myself what it is that they are running. I am running chrome, sublime, docker, hbase, redis, memcached, mongodb and probably some more stuff and I hardly swap with 4gb, or maybe I just do not realize it because of my ssd. Am I missing some ultra useful, memory annihilating dev tool?

Chrome, IntelliJ IDEA, and 4 Java modules running simultaneously goes through 8gb without any hesitation. Hell, IntelliJ alone uses over 4gb sometimes.

> Hell, IntelliJ alone uses over 4gb sometimes.

And I thought my Eclipse install was a hog, weighing in at 500MB's through 1GB sometimes.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#92

Post by endlessvoid94 » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #45

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #27

Devil's advocate time! What's to keep Dell from heavily customizing and releasing / packaging a version of Ubuntu in the same vein that apple customized, released, packaged nextstep as OS X? The only thing I can think of would be "talent at the company". And I know next to nothing about the internals of dell, let alone what they've done since being repurchased and privatized. Kind of a fun thought, even if it's a lit…

Dell is historically monumentally incompetent at software. Michael Dell's own book discusses the epic failure of a large software project they embarked on many years ago now. That's not to say Dell has to remain incompetent at software...with a will to do so, and enough money and competent management (which Dell does seem to have), they could theoretically build a top-notch software engineering organization.

Are you referring to "Direct from Dell"? (I haven't read, but want to add whatever book you're talking about to my reading list).

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#93

Post by andrewchoi » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #79

I've been using the previous gen XPS 13 and my 2009 MacBook Pro for the past eight months. My experience with the XPS 13, and Dell in general, has been disappointing. If I had to make the decision again, I'd definitely get the M3800 instead of the XPS 13. 1. Google about trackpad configuration (palm detection, etc.) on the XPS 13 Dev Edition, it seems to be a combination of the hardware and Linux driver support. Mayb…

+1 for the M3800; running one with Ubuntu 14.04 for work right now and have no complaints.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#94

Post by scoj » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

_halgari wrote: post #84

Sadly I can't get too interested in a machine like this. What I want in a work machine is the following: 1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated crap) Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can anyone…

Take a look at Dell's XPS 15, seems to fit your bill. I have the older version XPS 15, and it doesn't have the hi-res screen (1920x1080) and isn't too thin/light, but is great for me.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#95

Post by kbenson » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

_halgari wrote: post #84

Sadly I can't get too interested in a machine like this. What I want in a work machine is the following: 1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated crap) Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can anyone…

Someone already mentioned[1] here the M3800[2], which seems to fit the bill for the most part.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341506

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

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#96

Post by MichaelGG » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #79

I've been using the previous gen XPS 13 and my 2009 MacBook Pro for the past eight months. My experience with the XPS 13, and Dell in general, has been disappointing. If I had to make the decision again, I'd definitely get the M3800 instead of the XPS 13. 1. Google about trackpad configuration (palm detection, etc.) on the XPS 13 Dev Edition, it seems to be a combination of the hardware and Linux driver support. Mayb…

Is the electrical noise a high pitched whine? Coil whine? Every Intel laptop I've used has it. It's supposedly due to power saving going on and off. At least on my ThinkPad, disabling power saving (ie running the CPU at full power all the time) made it go away. I think I may have developed tinnitus from it. It's unbelievably unprofessional.

'Course, disabling CPU power saving modes kill battery, but my T440p never got much life to begin with (I get maybe 70 minutes max now, down from around 2 hours. But I'm running VMware for everything, so perhaps that hurts.)

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#97

Post by skwirl » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #20

the lack of a native ethernet port rules it out for any operations work that requires working on the datacenter floor. actually this is a frustrating trend, native ethernet adapters are 0 cost to CPU instructions, I know you can use thunderbolt (and I've not looked at the spec in detail) but USB ethernet controllers use the CPU when plugged in- and I'm not a large fan of that honestly. what happened to the very small…

>USB ethernet controllers use the CPU when plugged in- and I'm not a large fan of that honestly.

I thought the issue was that these laptops are thinner than an Ethernet port.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#98

Post by dntrkv » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #19

To ask those complaining about 8gb not being enough... Please name one thing that won't allow you to do which is crucial in your day to day workflow. I'm not saying i don't believe you, I'm just genuinely curious. Edit: Looking at this thread, I have to say there has to be a cause and effect here somewhere. You have a million web-developers saying they need more than 8GB to use Chrome to surf web-pages and web-apps.…

Spinning up 4 (sometimes 5) modules of our companies Java project and running IntelliJ IDEA. IntelliJ alone goes over 4gb of ram usage at times. Chrome easily hogs a couple gigs. And then about a 1gb for each Java module.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#99

Post by mjewkes » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

_halgari wrote: post #84

Sadly I can't get too interested in a machine like this. What I want in a work machine is the following: 1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated crap) Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can anyone…

I'm in the same boat. The only machine I can find fitting those specs at the 13" form factor is a Clevo W230SD[1]. And I have serious concerns about its build quality.

[1]http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7339-clevo-w230sd-eta-0320201...

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#100

Post by gknoy » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #30

josteink wrote: post #19

To ask those complaining about 8gb not being enough... Please name one thing that won't allow you to do which is crucial in your day to day workflow. I'm not saying i don't believe you, I'm just genuinely curious. Edit: Looking at this thread, I have to say there has to be a cause and effect here somewhere. You have a million web-developers saying they need more than 8GB to use Chrome to surf web-pages and web-apps.…

Running eclipse. I wish I was joking. (I'm pretty sure it's shoddy third-party addons rather than eclipse itself - a clean eclipse can run fine in <1gb - but either way I end up in the same place)

I was going to ask if one of the fine IDEs from JetBrains (e.g. IntelliJ) would suit your needs, but then I discovered that my PyCharm instance is currently using 9GB of memory. Whoops.