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Dell will no longer make XPS computers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#81

Post by imiric »

vel0city wrote: post #74
imiric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Product names make no sense. Why should they? Every company has different priorities, and it's on you as a consumer to get familiar with each company's product line before making a purchase. Would you prefer it if all products were named " "? So in your PSU example, "Seasonic PSU"? Of course not, you would like to have more detail than that. So how about "Seasonic PSU 800W modular"? OK, that's better, but what if o…

That's the thing though. I don't really want to have to know whether the Seasonic Prime PX is the same tier as the Corsair RM or the RMx or the RMe or the HX. None of those names gives me any indication of what the product actually is, and from a quick glance the letters don't seem to even directly stand for any particular feature. Its one thing to have say a Seasonic 800M versus just the Seasonic 800 and know the "m…

> Why on earth would I care to get decoder rings for several different brands to cross shop?

Because products usually can't be compared spec-to-spec anyway. So even if you had to choose between Seasonic 800M and Corsair 800M, which might coincide on these specific criteria, how one company describes their product doesn't translate to how another company does. None of it would tell you which is the better product for you, which is ultimately what you want to know.

Consider CPU clock speeds, for example. The industry moved on from advertising MHz and GHz since they're not good indicators of performance. Consumers should also be aware of core count and types, cache size, power consumption, etc. Yet even if manufacturers embedded all of this information in their product names, CPUs from different manufacturers still wouldn't be comparable. So companies do their best to identify product lines internally, and give them somewhat consistent names.

I'm not saying that companies do a good job at this—most, in fact, make a mess out of it—, but I find that preferable to having obscure names like "Pro", "Plus", "Max", etc. with claims that it's simpler, when it's actually even more confusing than before.

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#82

Post by _fat_santa »

archero wrote: post #26

I once heard a repair tech say that XPS stands for “eXpensive Piece of Sh*t” and now that always comes to mind, although it never totally made sense to me as I didn’t think they were particularly expensive. I have an XPS and I did replace the battery at one point, but other than that I think it performed fairly well for my simple needs. I think I paid $499 for it around 2018.

I've had a number of Dell's in the past and IMO their "consumer" and "professional" lines might as well be different brands that happen to share the "Dell" name.

Their consumer laptops are all garbage IMO, mainly cause I find they try to max out specs so it looks good on paper and skimp on really basic things like the hinges, batteries, etc.

Their professional laptops are much better, my parents just got rid of a Dell Latitude that I passed down to them after college, and when I bought it for college it was already 5-6 years old so all in all it had a service life of more than a decade. Specs might be down compared to the consumer line but everything else IMO is much better built (chassis, battery, hinges, etc)

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#83

Post by imiric »

vel0city wrote: post #80
imiric wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Dell customer, so I'm not familiar with their product lines, but from what you say "Dell Latitude 5450" is indeed clearer to me than "2024 Dell Pro 14" Plus". I can get familiar with the number scheme and infer that higher numbers indicate better performance, larger screen, etc. "Pro" and "Plus" will always be meaningless and arbitrary.

> infer that higher numbers indicate better performance But bigger numbers don't always indicate better performance. A Dell Latitude 6420 (a Sandy Bridge) is much slower than a 5420. Same with a 7320 versus a 5440.

Then that's a confusion the manufacturer should address. Consistency and clarity is key. But it's not solved by scrapping all of it in favor of "Plus", "Pro" and "Max".

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#84

Post by lotsofpulp »

legitster wrote: post #45
xnx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has its share of naming problems but not attempting to artificially split their laptop product line between consumer and "enterprise" is something they should get credit for.

One half of their product line literally has "Professional" in the name.

But the quality of components in an Air versus a Pro is presumed to be the same, just the specs are different. So all you are doing is shopping for the screen size, screen type, storage size, RAM, weight, etc that you need/want.

Whereas, with a Dell or HP, I would have to figure out which models are going to be built with cheaper materials that will wear out or have a higher chance of breaking.

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#85

Post by vel0city »

imiric wrote: post #83
vel0city wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infer that higher numbers indicate better performance But bigger numbers don't always indicate better performance. A Dell Latitude 6420 (a Sandy Bridge) is much slower than a 5420. Same with a 7320 versus a 5440.

Then that's a confusion the manufacturer should address. Consistency and clarity is key. But it's not solved by scrapping all of it in favor of "Plus", "Pro" and "Max".

Here's four potential model numbers/names.

Latitude 6420

Latitude 5540

Inspiron 5555

2011 Dell Pro 14"

2024 Dell Pro 15"

2024 Dell Pro Max 15"

Which ones are the recent bigger laptops? Which is the older smaller laptop? Which is better, Inspiron or Latitude? Which is better, the Dell Pro or the Dell Pro Max? Which naming scheme makes these things way more obvious?

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#86

Post by cam_l »

kwanbix wrote: post #37
lizknope wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product names make no sense. Some web sites make a "product selection tool" where you answer a bunch of questions and it tries to direct you to models that will suit your needs. I was recently buying a Seasonic power supply. What is the difference between Prime, Vertex, Focus, or Core series? Then there is Prime TX, Prime PX, Prime GX. I have no idea what all this is. I ended up just picking something in the 800W ran…

I call it the Toothpaste Dilemma: When you go to buy toothpaste, like Colgate or most brands, you're bombarded with so many options. It gets worse when you read the labels—everything seems either identical or has massive overlaps. It's frustrating and unnecessarily complicated.

>everything seems either identical or has massive overlaps

Whenever I find marketing copy like this, I use it to filter out the whole company's product lines. This heuristic never fails, because I don't even know what I am missing out on.

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#87

Post by imiric »

vel0city wrote: post #85
imiric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that's a confusion the manufacturer should address. Consistency and clarity is key. But it's not solved by scrapping all of it in favor of "Plus", "Pro" and "Max".

Here's four potential model numbers/names. Latitude 6420 Latitude 5540 Inspiron 5555 2011 Dell Pro 14" 2024 Dell Pro 15" 2024 Dell Pro Max 15" Which ones are the recent bigger laptops? Which is the older smaller laptop? Which is better, Inspiron or Latitude? Which is better, the Dell Pro or the Dell Pro Max? Which naming scheme makes these things way more obvious?

I personally don't care about the year of release. The display size is good to know, but it doesn't tell me whether it's an IPS or OLED, which I care more about. Besides, I'm much more interested about the CPU, RAM, disk size, etc.

So should all of these be part of the product name as well, just to please me? Probably not.

Yet if the manufacturer segmented their product by arbitrary brand names (which could also be "Base", "Pro", "Max", etc. mind you; I just think these are overloaded terms, and custom terms like XPS, Latitude, etc. would be clearer), and then subdivided these with sensible model names that encoded this information, this would make more sense. Given that I as a consumer get familiar with it, which one might want to do before deciding to spend thousands on a product.

Again, I'm not saying that Dell has done a good job at this, but potentially it _can_ be done well. For example, I think MikroTik does a decent job at this[1]. It does lead to product names that are difficult to parse/pronounce like "CSS326-24G-2S+RM", but once you're familiar with the scheme, it's easy to know which product has which specs, and to compare them.

Anyway, it's fine if we disagree. I think we both made our case.

[1]: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/Manual:Product_Naming

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#88

Post by jhickok »

pjmlp wrote: post #12

On a tangent, I was never able to acquire XPS with Linux, the online store for various European countries always showed it as non available.

I had one with I think a 7th gen Intel processor, and while it ran Linux pretty well the coil whine was enough to drive me absolutely batty. I made it about a year before I traded it in.

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#89

Post by Ferret7446 »

legitster wrote: post #67
imiric wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really appreciate when brands just name things like they are. Sure, but I find this branding even more confusing. "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" "Oh, neat! Is it a PC or laptop?" "It's a Dell Pro... laptop." "..." At least with XPS, Latitude, etc., consumers were able to easily distinguish between models, after getting familiar with the product line. Naming all products " [Pro,Pro Max]" will always be clear as mu…

If you find this branding more confusing, then you are probably not familiar with laptop shopping in this segment. Here are all of the 2024 models available: Latitude 9450, Latitude 7350, Latitude 7350 Ultralight, Latitude 7350 Detachable, Latitude 7455, Latitude 7450, Latitude 7450 Ultralight, Latitude 7650, Latitude 5550, Latitude 5455, Latitude 5450, Latitude 5350, Latitude 3450, Latitude 3550. You have to memoriz…

I think those kinds of model numbers are fine, as long as it's prominently explained somewhere and I don't have to chase down some forum post from a few years ago because the company can't be bothered to explain its own products to its customers.

Re: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

#90

Post by jhickok »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #64

To be replaced with "Dell," "Dell Pro", and "Dell Pro Max"... Those tiers seem oddly familiar. They also throw away what I thought, as a proud long-time Dell Precision owner, was decent branding of their different lines for various market segments. But maybe it's a good thing - most major brands seem to offer too many laptop choices. Shopping for a laptop recently has left me, ironically, running for Mac. The experie…

My experience is similar to yours, and I went to a Macbook Pro during the M1 launch and am pretty happy with the decision, though I would prefer Linux. I take myself to be a tech enthusiast, but I did not have the patience to wade through hundreds of opaque product pages to find what it was they were really selling.

For a time Microsoft had a relatively clean Surface lineup, but a quick check reveals that it's significantly more difficult to shop than it was.

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