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by examancer
3087 days ago
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Expected the new XPS to have a developer flavor soon, but also expected it to be limited to 16GB still. Was not surprised since the Windows version has the same limit. Went ahead and purchased a 32GB System76 Galaga Pro last week with the same i7-8550U available on the XPS. It's a slightly larger 13", but feels a lot closer to my 5th gen XPS 13 than the MacBook Pro the Galaga replaces. Comes with a retina-like matte IPS 3200x1800 screen that is a joy to use. No touch, for better or worse. Keyboard layout is actually superior to the XPS for development with dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons. Pop!OS is nice and worth a spin, plus it has XPS levels of support under Ubuntu 16.04 which is available pre-loaded. Camera is in a much more useful place than on the XPS. It's also cheaper at most configurations. Downsides are a smaller battery (probably to make room for both an M.2 SSD and a 7mm 2.5" drive bay) and a touchpad that while multitouch and decent isn't as good as the XPS touchpad. Also, while the screen hinge feels more solid than the XPS's, it doesn't go back as far as I would expect. XPS uses better materials in spots, like soft touch carbon fiber in palm. So far I'm extremely happy with the Galaga Pro and would recommend to anyone who wants a small powerful laptop like the XPS 13, but is turned off by its 16GB limitation. |
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Pros: - Gorgeous screen, lightweight, Ubuntu 16 feels snappy. - System76 customer service is amazing. - Sub $2000 machine with 32GB RAM and i7. (Mine was $1850 after shipping & tax.) - Lots of ports! The fold-out ethernet port is especially nice, for those rare times when you need one.
Cons: - I dislike the keyboard layout quite a lot, but I'm hoping I get used to it. The right-hand column of home/end/etc gets hit quite a lot by accident when I'm trying to hit enter, tab, etc. Also, the center of my space bar has a dead spot unless pressed very hard. - Battery life is bad. If you're just browsing, you get maybe 4 hours. Anything intensive will run the battery down in under an hour. I mostly use it at home so this isn't a big problem for me. - As stated above, the touch pad feels unresponsive, esp. if you're used to a macbook pro. Not sure whether this is a hardware or software issue. - They charge you $77 (after shipping & tax) for a second charger. (It also seems to be a nonstandard size, so good luck finding one from an OEM.)