Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 396 posts

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#341

Post by sundvor »

xur17 wrote: post #321
sundvor wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X1 Carbon is a beautiful laptop, with the best keyboard in business. I am still using my original (i7/8/256) one from 2012, and it's holding up incredibly well. Build quality is second to none. I would love to upgrade to the latest quad core goodness, and better energy saving tech, but as long as it works I'll keep on using it. It would be good to see a toughness comparison of the MBP against the X1 Carbon, espec…

I just got an X1 Carbon that I use with an egpu dock for work, and I absolutely love it. Thinner and lighter than a MacBook, the keyboard is great, and it runs Linux. Only complaint I have is that the egpu doesn't support hotswapping, but egpus are new, so I'll give it some time. Also, a trackpoint :).

Congrats. :-) Yep, forgot to mention trackpoint! I don't even use the mouse pad anymore, it's just that good.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#342

Post by eksemplar »

codegladiator wrote: post #229
Clubber wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Dell should fix their trackpad.

I am really surprised with the down votes considering this is "hacker" news. I will soon loose all meaning for the term hacker.

I fix things for a living and spending time “hacking” my OS to make the trackpad tolerable would steal time from that.

I kind of agree with you though, I wish some people would do it. The MacBook trackpad being damn near magic compared to anything else that isn’t a surface is the main thing keeping me from Linux. That being said, I also work with efficiency, and the thought of millions of users “hacking” at their OS in exactly the same way, over and over and over, is just so much wasted potential.

I guess it’s hard to write decent trackpad software for hardware you aren’t building yourself though, but it makes you wonder why companies like dell don’t bother making their hardware worth purchasing by having decent software support for it.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#343

Post by gls2ro »

dest wrote: post #167
dshep wrote: post #10

As far as non-apple laptops go, XPS13 seems a solid choice but I think this Huawei would be my first choice now (look at that screen!) https://consumer.huawei.com/us/tablets/matebook-x-pro/

Note they have put the webcam in the F6 key.

It is not on the F6 key but it is between F6 and F7 (a new key added with camera symbol on it) as far as I can see in the picture with focus on keyboard.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#344

Post by bdcravens »

PeCaN wrote: post #319
bdcravens wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://…

The difference is Psystar: 1) Was kind of a scam 2) Sold computers with OS X already installed 2 is the real violation that got them sued. Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X. Selling them with OS X installed in violation of Apple's EULA is a good way to end up in court.

I literally acknowledged this point:

> Obviously if a company isn't selling product with OSX installed it's different

> Obviously it's legal to sell computers that are compatible with OS X

Never said it wasn't. Only that most companies wouldn't market their product's alternative illegal uses, as that puts them in a gray area. (Almost every product can be used for illegal purposes after all)

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#345

Post by xamarinthrw »

vvanders wrote: post #178
cannam wrote: post #137

I recently sold an XPS 13, an i7 9543 model from 2015, which was the first laptop in a long time that I regretted buying. I got it as a Windows machine and never ran anything else on it. Technically it was broadly fine. The specs were OK, it was reasonably repairable, I had a hi-dpi screen, the case was solid. But the keyboard felt really dead, the wrist rest was smeary, the screen had a grainy impression, the machin…

+1 on Surface. Have a Surface Book with discrete GPU and been really happy with it overall. Really a fan of the 3:2 aspect ratio.

I've heard this very often. I am interested in knowing more about it. Is it just a matter of feeling or are there things you can pinpoint which work better for you? Compared to 4:3 (narrower) and 16:9 (wider)

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#346

Post by kayoone »

markmark wrote: post #302
kayoone wrote: post #24

For me it's the little things that keep me on mac. - Amazing touchpad, no need for a mouse at all - Light, yet powerful and great battery life - best in class display - being able to easily copy and paste between iphone macbook - being able to easily send files between all osx/ios devices with zero hassle - being able to take calls on my macbook and transfer them to the phone if needed - bluetooth headphones working…

I would say there is plenty of competition for best display these days (I say this typing on a current model mbp15).

yes, but it's still up there with best, imo anyway

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#347

Post by ericd »

dingo_bat wrote: post #340
wtallis wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't please everyone, and the people who are looking for things to complain about are pretty low on the list of who you should be trying to please.

I am not looking for things to complain about. And I doubt the parent was too. It's a genuine issue. As far as not being able to please everyone, how many old people are using macbook pros? Is that number more than the number of regular users who prefer a better touchpad?

It might be annoying for a regular user to have that disabled until they figure out how to enable that, it could be literally unusable for a less capable user to have touch to click enabled. If you're not savvy enough to know that you might be able to disable it, you're probably also unsavvy enough that spurious clicks are disastrous, because you aren't comfortable enough to undo things.

I think they may have thought about this a little bit before making their default decisions.

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#348

Post by bwbw223 »

lallysingh wrote: post #195
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…

shell, emacs, chrome. What else do you need?

Vim and Firefox :P

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#349

Post by shittyadmin »

wtallis wrote: post #280
shittyadmin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I figured I'd get used to it eventually, so I didn't want to just up and change what seemed like it should have been a good default, what you're suggesting would mean basically turning off a hardware "feature". In the end it just wasn't for me and I didn't accept it until I had basically switched to using my desktop machine full time.

I typically give things like this their fair shot - some of them I get used to, like Windows switching to grouped single icons without titles... I hated it at first, but eventually it made some sense to me. Only when I've absolutely given up on them do I bother changing settings.

I try my best not to let those negative first impressions stick, to give them a real shot, and this was part of the machine I'd purchased, I figured I better try it...

Re: Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user

#350

Post by abrookins »

FireBeyond wrote: post #309
abrookins wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982 . That was only the last and final blocking issue I ran into, after a series of minor (or at least, not serious) problems that I powered through during too many late nights. Couple of things: - Hyper-V. Was excited for this…

> Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Which WSL distro did you use? Perhaps only works under, say, Ubuntu 18.04... (not perfect, but better, perhaps)?

You know, I tried 16.04. 18.04 is worth a shot!
Post reply on HN