I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really do want a decent Linux laptop. I will keep an eye on the XPS13 in case I make the switch.
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
11–20 of 169 posts
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#12I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really…
Thinkpads make rock solid GNU/Linux machines. I highly recommend the X220. It has some issues such as not being Coreboot compatible and needing nonfree firmware to drive the wireless chip. The former has no fix, but the latter can be fixed with a little hack and an Atheros chip.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#13Notebookcheck has a test of this laptop: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook-La... I love their review because they go into very much detail and some of the information is hard to found elsewhere, like real measurements of screen contrast and brightness, the one parameter that already eliminates 95% of laptops every time I look for one, and of loudness.
This is not the haswell/HD screen version though. I'm currently looking for a laptop and it will be either the XPS 13 or a rMBP 13 inches. I'm currently favoring the rMPB a little bit because it seems it get less hot than the XPS. It kinds of scare me when the review says the laptop gets somewhat warm while surfing and I've had really bad experiences with overheating Dell laptops. What's your experience XPS 13 owners…
Never noticed heat in mine, or for that matter, the fan running, except when I compile stuff.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#14I had one of these for some months and I'd say the only culprit is that there are only 1 mini DP and 2 USB ports and nothing else: no SD card slot, no Thunderbold or Firewire. Even a third USB port would have been nice. There isn't any kensington lock port, either.
The screen is glossy but for some reason, it's not actually catching too many random reflections (so it's much better than my MacBook which can hardly be used when sitting back to the window).
The touchpad feel isn't as good as a MacBook but it's large and much better than those from most other PCs I've tried. Overall a nice machine.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#15does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ? Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though. Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display atta…
No DPI scaling, but it's OK for me. I always loved small fonts in term windows anyway :)
6 hours is a minimum for quite a heavy use; I myself found that mine easily does 8-9 hours when programming (Flash is a terrible battery and CPU hog).
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#16I own this laptop, had it for almost a year. I love it except after a while I noticed random hard freezes, basically the display freezes in place and the system doesn't respond. I would have to hold down the power button to force an unexpected reboot (in the words of Moss). It would happen after a day, or a week of use.
Turns out it's a problem with the kernel in 12.04 and the Intel 4400 chipset. The only solid fix is to simply update to a non-LTS release. Since updating to 13.04 I've been okay. I shouldn't have to wait much longer for 14.04 so I should have an LTS release soon with the updated kernel.
The only other problem I've had is some updates deleting my firmware for the wireless, I've had to re-download it. But I did not have this problem when upgrading Ubuntu.
Despite these issues, otherwise it's been a very solid laptop.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#17I have one of these and think it's pretty good. I am really happy to have been able to give my money to someone selling me something with Linux on it.
I think the standard for friendly hardware should be open firmware support (Coreboot), rather than what’s preinstalled on HDD.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#18does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ? Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though. Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display atta…
Many desktop environments can do scaling well enough, in my experience. Not sure about Unity, the Ubuntu default.
Edit: for non-retina screens (i.e. it's fine on my 14" 1920x1080 laptop.) For retina (not this laptop), it might not be ideal yet. I took a screenshot (XFCE4) with very high DPI, and you can see some GUI elements don't scale: http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#19I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really…
I compared this to a Macbook Pro 13", which is the closest comparable hardware. It came out better in features and cost ($300 cheaper then a Macbook Pro with similar SSD and memory), and was thinner and lighter.
I wanted the Macbook Pro, but I didn't see the $300 difference in the Pro.
Re: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review
#20I had one of these for some months and I'd say the only culprit is that there are only 1 mini DP and 2 USB ports and nothing else: no SD card slot, no Thunderbold or Firewire. Even a third USB port would have been nice. There isn't any kensington lock port, either. The screen is glossy but for some reason, it's not actually catching too many random reflections (so it's much better than my MacBook which can hardly be…
Hasn't the PC world moved on to USB3, ignoring Thunderbolt? And even Apple has dropped Firewire at this point.