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Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

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111–120 of 140 posts

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#111

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…

u should try Dell M3800 .

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to Safari because of that. I like Chrome better functionality wise but Safari seems to be better optimised at least for Mac OS X.

I've read that Safari on OS X (and IE on Windows 8) use less battery than third party browsers these days. So that's a good reason also.

Yes, that was the other reason; because of the high load it would kill my battery really fast. That improved. Not enough, but a bit anyway.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#113

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 am looking forward to owning a Surface Pro 4 which will have everything except for the discrete GPU.

For me - the touch screen, the pen and the extreme portability more than make up for the lack of GPU and if I need to play high-end games I can use my Playstation, Xbox or my tower workstation that has an Nvidia GPU. Outside of games though, I think the Surface Pro's GPU is fine for most graphics work using Photoshop, et al.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#114
post #52

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?

I think the usual response is virtual hosts. On Mac, run windows or linux, on Windows, run linux, etc.

What do you use for that? What would be the best solution in 2015?

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yeah, that's the one. It's been at least a decade since I read it. I didn't find it all that good, honestly. I wouldn't push it to the top of your reading list, anyway. It might be more of a "skim it" title.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#116
post #11

does ubuntu really handle HiDPI? i have a 4K screen at home and it is a disaster.

1. Chrome is the most visible app that breaks.

2. Sublime Text works okay if youre running Gnome since it uses the gtk text scaling factor. But if you use something like dwm it will not work correctly.

3. Gtk apps as such work well.

4. XFCE is the window manager that works best because it has a simple no nonsense knob to set the dpi exposed via the control panel.

5. Oddly enough dwm works fantastically well since I can control all the font sizes manually via things like .emacs / .Xresources

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#117

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 go…

My laptop (a Toshiba Satellite) has an annoying level of coil whine. If it's from power saving, it's GPU power-saving state related, not CPU. It's not noticeably affected by turning off CPU power saving modes, at the very least.

It's most noticeable when scrolling image-heavy webpages, or with pretty much anything that ends up with framerates in audio frequencies. Older versions of Dwarf Fortress on the menu screen, for instance.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#118
post #2

This looks like the perfect laptop for me at this moment. I just worry that a ceiling of 8GB of RAM means it won't be the perfect laptop for me next year. And I'd like my laptop to last me 2-3 years.

Second that, 8GB of RAM is a bit meager.

My current laptop has 8GB of ram, and I have to agree.

It's not at the point where it's constantly an issue, but it does become an issue relatively commonly. Especially if I have, say, Eclipse and Pale Moon (FireFox fork) open at the same time.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#119

Why oh why does it have a buttonless clickpad? I've got a ThinkPad T440p and it's terrible. I despise every minute of working on it and have to bring a mouse around. Is this just copying Apple for looks? I'm dying to buy a laptop that's as good as my X201 (and keeps 12" format, though thickness doesn't matter much), but with modern specs. I'm probably gonna break down and get an X250, which is limited to 8GB of RAM f…

I bought a used X230, upgraded to 16GB of RAM, added an SSD, and it's been an awesome machine so far. But you're right, the X250 will offer a better display. At least Lenovo seems to have eased up on the hardware blacklist where this model and the T450 are concerned http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/31rnsv/t450_and_x2...

Also, here's a link related to the 16GB SO-DIMM modules that you mentioned https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB-...

Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

#120

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.…

My laptop has 8GB of ram, and I hit the wall fairly frequently.

In particular, I tend to run a tab-heavy browsing style. Between that and Eclipse and whatever I'm puttering around on in Eclipse, it adds up.

And it's not a 8GB limit, unfortunately. In practice it's substantially less. If I go above about 5GB in use, I start dropping file cache, and things slow down substantially. (It doesn't help that I'm not running an SSD currently.)

Is any of this crucial? No. I could work around it, and did so frequently on my previous machine. But, if nothing else, the time adds up. And RAM usage isn't exactly going down over time.

And that's not even getting into when I boot up a VM.

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