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Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

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Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#271

Post by 7ewis »

fermienrico wrote: post #176
zdragnar wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what do you love about the touch bar? I tried used one for almost a year, and never used the touch bar once. I was forced to use an external keyboard because I needed a tactile physical escape key (caps was already taken by Ctrl or cmd, I forget which).

I don't think the GP said he/she loves the touchbar. They said, they love the touchbar Mac. I agree with you though, I have a touchbar Mac and I would be more happy with out the touchbar part.

Correct, wasn't specifically referring to the touchbar, however I do use BetterTouchTool and have a few custom buttons on there.

They aren't too useful to be honest, but it's cool. I show things like my companies stock price on the TouchBar.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#272

Post by saagarjha »

jjuel wrote: post #169
nkrisc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has. It's in MacBooks.

The 'Force Touch' trackpads I am not a fan of at all. I do not like them nearly as much as my 2012 MBP that actually clicks. They had them perfected and then messed with them IMHO.

Really? I find the Force Touch trackpads to "click" in almost the same way as the older ones did.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#273

Post by saagarjha »

oarsinsync wrote: post #222
SyneRyder wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac user since 2006 here, who often tries switching back to Windows. The biggest deal breaker for me has been the Windows 10 update system, where it will sometimes start installing updates when you shut down your computer and tell you "don't turn off your computer". There's been times when I've been stuck at a cafe for 45 minutes & nearly missed a train home because Windows was still sitting there saying "Don't Turn…

The Mac has a snooze light? Where? I’ve been using a MacBook Air since 2010 and MacBook Pro since 2015 and haven’t seen anything resembling a snooze light. Would love to discover this!

You missed it: it was only present on MacBooks and non-Retina MacBook Pros.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#274

Post by spatular »

tamatsyk wrote: post #55

Good summary, I share most of the points provided in the post. Also, I think a few more things worth to mention. Pros: - XPS has a decent hardware (I got 16GB, i8Gen, 500GB SSD and forgot about having a few docker containers running on the background which was an issue with my MacBook Pro 15 (8GB, 2.5Gh) - It is really 1k$ cheaper than the same config MacBook model. Apple's Retina and Touchbar are really cool, howeve…

I have XPS13 with Killer wifi (Atheros QCA6174). At first there were stability problems but they were completely solved with FW update from Atheros's github repo and a kernel update (to >= 4.9 I think).

Later it turned out that an Intel 8260 card I've bought to use in PC-based AP cannot be coerced to work in 5GHz band no matter what I did, so I've swapped them, now Atheros is in AP and Intel is in XPS, with everything working flawlessly. So it turned out that the Intel card is less functional...

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#275

Post by wtallis »

paulie_a wrote: post #183
morley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned keyboard portability. I find it incredibly hard to switch from ctrl on Windows to cmd on Mac. In college I had to switch frequently between Windows and Mac, and it was a nightmare. Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standal…

I find the Mac keyboards to be garbage for two reasons, the command key is awkward and the tactile feel is subpar

> the command key is awkward

How do you usually try to press the command key? If you're going for it with anything other than your thumb, you're doing it wrong. Note that Apple keyboards often have narrower spacebars than PC keyboards, so the command key is closer to the center of the keyboard (and closer to your thumb) than the alt key on a standard PC keyboard.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#276

Post by deathanatos »

sigi45 wrote: post #18

You don't use the trackpad on a lenovo. You don't have to! Srsly while i do own now a macbook pro at work and really like the touchpad, i'm a touch quicker with the red knob in combination with AwesomeWM as a window manager. Main advantage: my hands rests on the device and don't have to move below.

I've actually taken to using the trackpad more often on my Thinkpad T460p; it seems to me the TrackPoint has actually regressed in recent years; on Linux:

* the default sensitivity is very low; you really have to haul on it to move the pointer significantly. Worse, the hardware starts trying to "correct", making the motion harder and harder to accomplish! (And you can see the correction when you let go completely and the pointer just starts drifting for a while until the correction re-corrects)

* attempting to change the settings results in the kernel driver crashing or something; errors get emitted to dmesg and the device resets. So setting two settings is tricky: you have to loop on setting the first setting, and then once that succeeds w/o crashing, loop on setting the second setting. If that fails, it's back to square 1![1][2]

That said, the Touchpad is not as accurate as the TrackPoint can be, or at least, used to be.

I mostly use an external small wireless mouse now, but that removes a hand from the keyboard. sigh

[1]: Here is another user with the same issue, though he doesn't fully realize it: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/58c0dn/t460s_trac...

[2]: https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-input/msg51145.html but alas, no response.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#277

Post by spatular »

e12e wrote: post #263
bogomipz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"WiFi is super shitty in XPS series. If you have not had any issues yet - than you have not bought one yet. It is better to replace with 30$ adapter to not have issues with differently configured routers;" This is really surprising. Can you say what specific replacement worked for you on that laptop?

Wifi hw is also an issue for surface pro 4 (under windows and Linux both). Apparently ms finally fixed in the 5th generation. Anyone know if there's any really great wifi cards internal or USB, that allows full AP, "war driving" etc - and also 5ghz and such? Preferably with great drivers for Linux and freebsd? (I doubt internal is an option for my surface pro 4, but for refurbished ThinkPads/dells it might do the tri…

XPS's Atheros QCA6174 works fine with recent FW. I use it in AP mode in 5GHz band in ac mode, though I had to adapt a kernel patch from OpenWRT that ignores frequency regdomains. I've also tried to use Intel 8260 for this, but with no luck.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#278

Post by abrowne »

abrowne wrote: post #117
morley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned keyboard portability. I find it incredibly hard to switch from ctrl on Windows to cmd on Mac. In college I had to switch frequently between Windows and Mac, and it was a nightmare. Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standal…

I am the same, but with the Mac command layout burned into my brain (and thumbs). My solution when I switched to Linux from Mac is to make the control key the one next to the space bar, like command is. Luckily it's super easy to swap control and super or alt (depending on Mac or PC layout) using xkbd on Linux. In MATE and KDE it's in the keyboard settings; in GNOME it's in Tweaks (with Xfce you need to use a config…

Replying because I can't edit: for anyone googling, it's XKB (no D).

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#279

Post by p2t2p »

grimgrin wrote: post #220
Clubber wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Dell should fix their trackpad.

Who has a useful trackpad anyways? An actually great one, besides Apple? I have no idea why this is the case? Patents or too expensive to justify? Genuinely curious

Surface's trackpad is as good as Mac's even though all other parts of experience is trash.

However, now Mac has this force touchpad which you don't really press, so it recognises all of the presses with no respect to where you do it. Nobody has anything like this and I must tell you that one gets used to it reaaaaaaly quick.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#280

Post by wtallis »

shittyadmin wrote: post #197
eknkc wrote: post #36

What I'm mostly curious about these posts is, how the heck do you guys switch operating systems that easily? I guess it would work if you are already using Linux or Windows on a Mac hardware but that's gotta be rare. I mean, hardware is nothing compared to the OS.. I can switch to any other Mac and it would take me a couple hours to be comfortable. That would be it. If I'm switching to a Dell XPS, I don't really care…

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really don't see what anyone likes about Macs or macOS, I bought a rMBP a few years back and it's to this date one of the worst purchases of my life, I hate the touchpad (the clicking thing is much slower than tapping), I hate the keyboard (feels really cheap) and macOS too, mostly due to Finder and Objective C being absolute garbage like nothing else I've seen. Wound up bootcamping it…

> the clicking thing is much slower than tapping

That has nothing to do with Macs vs PCs. Everything with a touchpad gives you a tap to click option, and if you didn't spend enough time with a Mac to realize this then you can't really make a fair assessment of the platform in any way other than hostile first impressions.

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