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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

#291

Post by kellengreen »

reacharavindh wrote: post #9

I have a Dell XPS 13 as my personal machine. It runs Linux. Everything works. But, I still find myself using my MacBook Pro (provided by work) for almost everything even at home. Two things that keep me in the Mac land. 1. Retina Display and the 16:10 aspect ratio. 2. Smooth, and usable touchpad. XPS13's display is too rectangle and I'm not watching movies in it. It feels too cramped for looking at code. GNOME out of…

I agree with the lack of proper touchpad support. There are ways around it, but I'd like to not have to spend a day determining if libinput, mtrack, or synaptec is the right driver for my needs.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#292

Post by Apocryphon »

bdcravens wrote: post #121
Apocryphon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's a market for a PC OEM about making their laptop convenient to convert into a Hackintosh.

I don't think any hardware manufacturer will touch Hackintoshing; previous company in that space (Psystar) was sued out of existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different, but any marketing that suggests it would likely be problematic. Besides, the community has done a pretty good job of identifying compatible hardware http://…

They don't have to make it public knowledge... it's just, behind the scenes, they try to prioritize designs that are easily Hackintoshable

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#293

Post by kendallpark »

The XPS 13 was my first laptop! I've had a 2008 XPS 13, 2012 MBA, 2013 MBP (work), 2015 MBP, and 2016 MBP (work).

I don't particularly like MacOS but I prefer anything Unix to Windows. I ran Linux on the XPS and the 2012 MBA. When Retina wasn't well supported on Linux, I made the switch to MacOS for development. I miss tinkering with Linux, but grew accustomed to a dev workflow with Mac apps (Tower, nvALT, etc).

The reason I stick with Macbooks: they can take a beating.

My XPS 13 was falling apart after a few years, and had gone through three (!!!) motherboard replacements (fortunately, under warranty). I've had minimal issues with my Macbooks. I don't know what the state of the current XPS 13's is, but all I care about is "how often is it going to break in the next four years."

The touchbar and the ever so fussy butterfly keyboard on the newest MBPs have reopened the possibility of me moving back to a Linux XPS 13. I just wish I could get some kind of update on the durability of that machine.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#294

Post by spatular »

saagarjha wrote: post #269

> However, the XPS 13's fans do kick in quite often, even when just doing light tasks like browsing the web or typing. I was hoping it would be more like the MacBooks, which usually won't need to ramp the fans up to an audible level unless you're doing heavier work, like encoding a video or loading a news site web page without an ad blocker... but alas the fans often kick in and are audible during normal usage. I hav…

Hmm, on my XPS 13 (9360) fan kicks in only after about 5 minutes with one core fully loaded, and it's not that loud. It usually happens only during Hangouts videocalls or heavy dev work. Browsing / playing 1080p videos / text editing / gimp is not enough to trigger active cooling. But I use linux. Maybe he had windows install with antivirus or whatever hogging CPU...

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#295

Post by MitjaBezensek »

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…

I switch between all three major OSs on a regular basis. With so much of our software in the cloud it's not really an issue. The funny thing is that each OS has some apps that you really miss on the other ones. But it's not that onesided and you can be productive on any of them.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#296

Post by markmark »

bunderbunder wrote: post #51
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…

Can't speak for everyone, but I've always been a polyglot on OSes. I'm usually either remoted into a Linux box from a Mac, remoted into a Linux box from Windows, remoted into Windows from a Mac, or several of those at once. Pretty much all the software I use is cross-platform, and even Windows is a fairly acceptable Unix nowadays, so the biggest transitioning problem I have is keeping track of which modifier keys to…

I've been working on a mac after being a long time windows user, and as you say, most of the software I use is cross-platform. The biggest problem is modifier keys, and I still prefer how windows does window management (oh, and finder is garbage).

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#297

Post by MAGZine »

niedzielski wrote: post #255
procinct wrote: post #185

I have a 2015 MBP and a Dell XPS 13 (I forget the year) and the thing that blew me away the most with Dell is the support. One day I went to turn my XPS on and it wouldn’t start. After some research it seemed like a dead motherboard. I was concerned I was going to have to send my laptop away for months to have it fixed but surprisingly because the XPS is an enterprise grade machine it qualifies for their pro support.…

Although the machine has been working wonderfully, I had the opposite experience with support. My battery started swelling on my 2017 XPS after a year. Dell will not sell me the original 97 WHr battery, only a 56 WHr refurb. 56 WHr does not last long on my GNU / Linux configuration and it's really lowered the value of the machine for me.

Perhaps they would not sell it to you, because the entire line of cells were defective, and they did not want to burn your house down with a defective battery.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#298

Post by markmark »

blitmap wrote: post #38
reacharavindh wrote: post #9

I have a Dell XPS 13 as my personal machine. It runs Linux. Everything works. But, I still find myself using my MacBook Pro (provided by work) for almost everything even at home. Two things that keep me in the Mac land. 1. Retina Display and the 16:10 aspect ratio. 2. Smooth, and usable touchpad. XPS13's display is too rectangle and I'm not watching movies in it. It feels too cramped for looking at code. GNOME out of…

1) LOVE 16:10/8:5. Currently I have a 3240x2160 panel in my HP Spectre x360. I WISH it were 3240x2400. I WANT 2400p PANELS. 2) I'm far from an expert on this: I don't know why it's taken more than a decade to figure out trackpad motion.

Of all the things other copy from Apple, so few copy the 16:10 screen. At least the Surface display is what, 3:2 now? But everyone else is still bloody 16:9.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#299

Post by VirtualAirwaves »

yulaow wrote: post #28
skrebbel wrote: post #5

I like this writeup but I sort of expected it to contain a "Windows 10 Review from a lifelong macos user" embedded in it. I was surprised that this was just about the hardware. As a happy lifelong Windows user, surrounded by programmers who call me insane (or an idiot, even) for liking it, I was curious to learn more about what a developer who's used to Mac thinks about the Windows 10 dev experience. (notably for a m…

I always had very little sympathy for those who express very strong opinion _against_ other OSes and their users, professionals or not. In 2018 every one of the main OSes can be used efficiently for programming purposes, windows10 too especially now that it has the WLS

I develop on Windows 10, in CUDA/C++, Erlang, and F#. And I never use WSL, even though we deploy on Centos. Windows is best if you use it as Windows! Take the time to learn Powershell, and use the Powershell console, not "cygwin" or bash in WSL.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#300

Post by pedalpete »

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…

I'm so glad you mentioned this, I find that when I have to switch back and forth between mac and windows, I struggle with muscle memory switching from ctrl to cmd, and on mac I always struggled to figure out which window is my active window.

Such tiny things, but it's one of the things that has kept me on windows (even though I used a mac most of the time for the past two years).

Some of my co-workers switch between mac, windows & linux without skipping a beat.

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