I applaud the change to a 16:10 screen (the ratio used in all Apple laptops and sadly few others for years). The extra vertical space for the same area is very welcome; 16:9 feels very cramped at laptop sizes once you add a few menu bars and headers and banners. I hope more laptop manufacturers decide to go this direction.
Agreed. And Id prefer they return to 5x4 for all tablets and tablet PCs. I had a tablet PC back in 04 that was a 5x4 ratio Toshiba R10 and it was marvelous. I ran Linux on it! 16 years ago!
I don’t know why, but those proportions rather perturb me. Being so used to having displays be wider than tall, that almost looks taller than wide. I think it’s fantastic that it exists, though.
iPads are growing up into computers, and have a 4:3.
It's odd, but it's really hard to find high-quality computers these days. Everyone skimps corners by giving things like 16:9 instead of 4:3. That makes sense on the low-end, but the top-of-the-line just doesn't seem to exist much anymore.
At this point, waiting for the mobile Ryzens to appear across the laptop ranges seems like a good idea. They've crammed 8 cores instead of 4 into the same TDP and made laptop chips that are in the same ballpark as the dekstop counterparts:
The graphics should also be better than the Intel ones.
So far the only interesting laptop I've seen is the Lenovo T14s which is their lower-end ultrabook from the X1 Carbon. Frustratingly they've limited it to 1080p screens in the AMD version when the Intel version includes a great 4K option:
As you mentioned, AMD laptops are gimped, either by an inferior screen, lower amount of memory (imagine 8GB limit for an 8-core Ryzen or 16GB limit for a dual core i3) or some other specification is not up to high end standard.
The HP Omen 15 has a solid 300-nit 97% sRGB screen, 70Wh battery, and dual channel 16GB. There's also the HP ENVY x360 with available 400-nit/1000-nit screens paired with 16GB and an 8 core Ryzen 7 4700U. Both a bit pricey but I'm glad they exist.
I agree the vast majority of AMD laptops have unacceptable compromises baked in. I can't help but believe this will change now that the APUs are arguably on par for games and massively more efficient for other tasks.
My understanding is that it is now legal for OEMs to implement Thunderbolt on AMD laptops, though it may cost more since it's not baked into the CPU. Of course, no OEMs have taken the opportunity to do so yet.
> Would those AMD 8 core chips consume a similar amount of power to the i7-1065G7? (quad core 10nm)
A very quick summary: about the same.
Intel seems to still have the lead on quickly going to lower energy states, but AMD still has the upper hand on better node: TSMCs 7nm is better than Intels 10nm+, but 11th gen 10++ seems to have finally matured enough to be on par, so Tiger Lake will be interesting to see.
If your parameter is "I want a notebook today", then Renoir Ryzens are the best to go[0]. If you can wait until the late part of the year, maybe Tiger Lake will shake things up (again) in the mobile arena, or maybe they're spilling rumors to keep people away from AMD as much as they can.
[0] HOWEVER it seems there's no well-rounded notebook with Zen2 yet. I was almost decided for an Asus Zephyrus G14, but decided to wait a bit and see if something a bit larger (with larger battery too) becomes available in my country.
No, and I've had mixed experiences with HP over the years. Looks pretty nice, has it been reviewed?
The Asus G14 looked good too, but once they became available reviewers gave me a it fo an angle that I haven't considered from using it and it was then I decidede to wait. Pretty much the same happened with the Asus TUF A15 (good on paper, but actually terrible once you get it -- it's missing a couple of heatsinks inside who knows why).
So I got into a situation where there are apparently good Ryzen notebooks on paper, but once you start using them they all come with gotchas.
Another gotcha that I have: most are not being paired with good GPUs, and I run quite a lot of code that can be accelerated with CUDA, and while not a deal breaker, having a CUDA-capable GPU is a big plus for me. And most of the Ryzens are coming with 16x0 instead of 20x0's :/
I've been watching these like a hawk. HP Omen 15 seems like the least compromises so far. Good battery, good screen, good cooling. It's a plastic lid and screen but that doesn't seem to hurt anything. The 1660 Ti is full 80W so it's very close to a mobile RTX 2060 (especially the Max-Q).
I seriously hope Dell finally found a way to make more solid laptops because half of the ~30 XPS laptops I've seen around me needed to be send back because of issues with the device freezing or with the display.
I started out in November last year with an XPS and after multiple freezes I requested an repair that would take my laptop out for multiple weeks. Having seen my previous company send multiple laptops back multiple times I didn't have much trust in the certainty of resolution for my issues with the xps. My coworker at the time didn't have any issues with her XPS but I gave up on Dell and switched to Mac. Sadly my coworkers XPS broke down after 2 months and it's still being repaired after 5 weeks...
The specs of the XPS certainly are the best and the feel is great and I so hoped it would be a succes but it just sucks the experience is so bad. I often hear others still raving and reading about non problems so somehow I still think I might have seen a really bad batch enter the Netherlands over 2 years time.
I was very interested because of the 16/10 display and the general design but besides the Intel CPU being apparently not that great compared to current AMD chips (including thermals and battery life) and the 32GB not available in my country (and not upgradable) it seems there is currently a great lack of QA at Dell that is really off-putting.
Only because apple won’t do simple repairs. Eg, blwn capacitor worth 40 cent? New motherboard worth hundreds! [1] Of course, to the end user, the effect is the same...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I find it highly unlikely that there are repair contractors with people sitting behind magnifying glasses and soldering irons.
I would suspect that toss and replace is the norm across the whole spectrum of hardware sellers.
You could debate Apple's design choices like... say... riveted keyboards, and they'd argue durability as a retort, but I don't think they're any better or worse than others in terms of warranty work.
From my knowledge of working as an ACMT, Apple processes every part it takes out of a computer during repair service. I couldn't say how many are fixed in the manner you're talking about, but I can say that a significant proportion of parts we received for warranty service were clearly 'remanufactured' parts. So that kind of toss-and-replace doesn't even really happen at Apple itself.
Maybe not (although Louis Rossmann does say that he checks and has many videos where he does), but they do typically at least check the connectors and the main components.
My brother has had a water-damaged macbook pro repaired by a third party repair shop when apple said the only thing that can be done is a logic board replacement and they fixed it without replacing it.
Replacing the cap might not actually be a win. Would need to know more about the actual hardware costs, as well as how often swapping 1 cap really fixes the problem (like, why did it blow to begin with? Will it just blow again in 3 days?)
Right, but apple don’t charge $20 for a motherboard, its more like $900, vs a third party repair shop charging $100 for labour + $0.40 for the cap. The third party is still a lot cheaper because apple don’t want to repair those parts.
For Dell XPS, if you are in the US, Costco is a great place to get them. They often have really great deals. You can return your laptop within 90 days of purchase no questions asked. If you buy using their branded credit card, you automatically get another year of warranty free. Costco customer service is great, and I trust them more than any manufacturer.
Agree with this but Costco doesn't sell the Ubuntu system AFAIK. I bought my XPS at Costco, wiped Windows and installed Ubuntu manually. Still saved money over buying the Ubuntu version elsewhere.
It takes some time to get full support for the very newest hardware in Linux. This is nothing new. And it's why buying a previous-gen model at a discount can be a better deal overall.
I just run whatever the latest Ubuntu version is at the time of release for my XPS machines, and it works fine. Or at least no worse than Ubuntu normally works.
Not parent, but I would have done the same. I transitioned to MacOS from Windows 7 in 2011. When I opened my 2019 XPS with Windows, I got immediate anxiety due to how much Windows has devolved in the last 8 years.
On a brand new system, opening new windows lagged. Multiple popups constantly required my attention and kept getting in my way. I couldn't imagine using the Home version, where you have to deal with Ads on the Start menu on top of all that.
Not OP, but Windows 10 is a spy device that happens to let you do some useful things with it. Also, I think it's great to support FOSS when able and not be apart of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
I actually spent a couple of days trying to preserve the Win install so I could dual-boot in case I wanted to test my code under Windows or play games, but I finally got tired of f&cking around and gave up.
I have no interest in running Windows day to day. I live in Emacs, the CLI, and Common Lisp, all of which work best in a Unix-based OS. So it's MacOS or Linux. Plus I'd heard too many horror stories of how difficult it was to turn off all the Microsoft spyware, advertising, and no-choice updates to ever consider Windows seriously.
This was a couple of years ago before WLS was production quality. I might try again if I was doing it today, but only if I could turn off all the Microsoft daemons. Even so, I still find it philosophically distasteful to have to engage in technological warfare against my operating system just to stop it spying on me.
If you don't care about windows then you sacrifice about 20% of performance vs linux on baremetal according to benchmarks on phoronix of ubuntu bare vs ubuntu wsl.
My sample size is much smaller but with two xps13 in one year, one refurb was basically DOA. The brand new one had major power issues and even with extended care it took them a month to get it straightened out. Finally got a new one and it's been working great. They will comp you by addidng additional onsite warranty though. Great machine but the QA sucks on dells
well it's not only that the developer editions most often have coil wine or deformed cases. no the xps 15" with windows are more often broken as well, deformed cases broken cooling, etc.
I alternate between a (now ageing 9350-model) XPS 13 running Ubuntu and a (newish) MacBook Pro (for work), so perhaps my experience is interesting to some.
I like both, but switching between the two is a bit jarring. The different keyboard layout is particularly annoying. Maybe this is worse with a British keyboard though. I switched the Mac to use the 'PC' layout, which helps a bit, but adapting between the cmd-ctrl-fn is difficult. And there are inconsistencies in the readline behaviour that I haven't worked out. I'm fairly indifferent to the feel of the keyboard - maybe a slight preference for the XPS.
I like the 16:9 ratio of the XPS, but not a big deal.
The 20.04 update has been such an improvement. The fan used to be constantly running, maybe because of the previously-experimental fractional scaling, but since the update this runs so smooth. If anyone from Gnome/Ubuntu reads this: thank you!
The trackpad on the MacBook is obviously nice: support for gestures and the bigger area. I can't stand the touch bar - I'm constantly accidentally pressing buttons. TouchID is nice - the fingerprint reader in this new version sounds good.
Few other things that are better on the MBP: speakers, brightness (especially the auto-adjusting brightness), and webcam (this version of the XPS has the webcam below the screen, which sucks).
I don't make any use of the touchscreen on the XPS and I haven't got around to turning it off from the BIOS. Seems kind of wasteful.
The coil whine on the XPS is really bad. Interested to know if this is fixed/better on the newer models?
I replaced the battery on the XPS recently, but turns out the battery isn't as official as Amazon promised so the LED occasionally does an angry flashing sequence. But yay for being able to replace this.
Also the Dell support turned out to be pretty good. At one point there was an issue with my screen and they sent a guy to my house to replace the screen for free.
I had considered buying the 15 inch XPS to replace my Thinkpad X1C (6th gen). I really need 32 Gigs to run kubernetes and compile GraalVM images locally. But the latest XPS 15 has the RAM soldered to the board. This means if I want 32 Gigs, I have to pony up the premium price. They do have a Precision that is basically the same specs that DOES allow upgrading the RAM. The biggest problem is, Dell's website has the option to remove Windows and add Ubuntu... but you can't add it to the cart. It complains that McAffe won't fun on my OS of choice... and I can't remove McAffe! That pretty much stopped me right there.
For me, it's been battery life. Even running TLP, my Current ultra-light just isn't seeing great battery life. It's fine now working from home, and plugged in all day. But should I ever get back to taking it to meeting after meeting at the office.... I want to say, I see 4 hours unplugged depending on what I'm doing. (not watching video)
My current Dell XPS had the pretty common battery swelling problem but within months of purchase. On previous models they replaced it for free but they stopped doing that. So add a possible battery replacement to their list price if you still want a Dell. Based on my experience with customer support and this battery issue this will be my last Dell. I'm looking at Lenovo for my next laptop.
If this happened within a year I would simply insist they replace the battery under warranty and highlight that there was no element of discretion about it. They would do it.
I did insist. I don't remember the details anymore because it was a couple of years ago. I would have taken them to small claims court over it if I had been in the US but I was overseas long term. Either way, they have lost a customer who has bought many of their laptops over the decades. Over a $100 battery that clearly had a manufacturing defect.
I had this happen ONE DAY before the year of purchase was up on an XPS 15 9570. Very glad I messaged Dell Support straight away, as they ended up replacing it for free without much pushback.
I've been using the XPS 13 DE at work for 3+ years and it has been a great experience. It originally shipped with 16.04; I was able to upgrade smoothly to 18.04 when it was available and I hope to do the same with 20.04.
I use it with a docking station and two external monitors with no problems. It's normally physically connected to the network so I can't comment much on the wifi. I don't do anything with Bluetooth.
My personal laptop is a MBP but if Dell ever came out with a XPS 15 DE I would immediately switch.
Dell has a strange website. Last time I was looking for a model with lots of RAM it took me ages until I understood how to get to the part that lets me configure it freely.
I agree, they used to have a configuration page where you built up your PC,now you get to scan through what they offer as canned configurations. I totally dislike it, especially since they have different sections and you have to go to each a scan for the config your looking for (and the price of course).
One year of ProSupport for free is a pretty good deal at that price (looks like limited time offer). When I bought mine (32gb with Windows) a couple of months ago, the same specs were $100 more but without ProSupport. I chatted with a sales rep and got an upgrade for 1 year of ProSupport and 256gb -> 512gb ssd for about $1 more.
I would recommend strongly to not buy Dell laptops. The quality of the laptops are very bad. I bought a XPS 15 two years ago for around €2000 and the screen isn’t working anymore. The laptop hasn’t moved from my desk. Look at the support pages, there’s so many issues with no resolutions.
Current issues:
Screen distorted - Have to use external monitor
Laptop randomly freezes for 30s - Great for meetings
I would recommend strongly to buy Dell laptops. The quality of the laptops is very good. I bought a XPS 13 four years ago for around $1000 and everything still works great. The laptop has come along during international travel.
Agreed. Do not buy Dell. You'll find hundreds of people with the same problem on support boards, but if you call support they will act like you're the first one ever to have a problem.
Happened to me with the battery swelling issue on the 2016 model. I would never buy another Dell after that experience.
I just got the 32 GB version! My top complaint after rocking the Ubuntu 13 laptop for the last 4 years was lack of 32 GB option. (Other people complain about the webcam, but I hardly use it).
I've got a 17" in process -- looks like a 5 week delay for it. Picked up a M2 drive that I'll be adding to turn it into my Linux laptop. Pretty excited to have a good 16:10 screen on something this size, will all sorts of expansion options when 32G won't cut it anymore.
I run Ubuntu 20.04 lts on the Dell XPS 13 i7 10700 (12 ht cores!). I bought the windows version ~8 months ago. It is a great form factor and quiet and Ubuntu is a dream. I run dual 4k 32 inch monitors from the laptop when closed via the many USB c ports. It just works.
I have the current model (9300 ~2020) running Ubuntu 20.04. I do not have coil whine, and I couldn't find anyone else reporting coil whine when I bought it 2 months ago (I bought the Windows version and installed Ubuntu myself).
I heard there were problems with build / coil whine when I last bought a laptop back in 2018.
I wanted to run Ubuntu as the primary OS .. ended up choosing a ThinkPad. Still certified for Ubuntu, and the fact it came with a Window's license was a benefit for the few times I've needed to use Win10.
I don't know how Dell makes any money on this laptop. It's too expensive. It's much cheaper to buy a Windows Dell XPS 13 laptop with the same specs and then just install Linux on it.
What’s the story with full disk encryption on Ubuntu these days? Last time I checked (a while ago) it was a bit clunky, but now I’m considering a Linux desktop after 10 yrs of macOS and filevault, so checking my options. Thanks!
The initial setup is definitely easy, but I wish additional setup would have a graphical interface. Notably, changing or removing a passphrase, both of which should be tucked away somewhere in the settings.
Your current options are gnome-disks and cryptsetup, and the former simply didn't work with long passphrases last time I dabbled with it.
It's also quite difficult to encrypt an existing setup without formatting the drive. You'd need to unmount your root partition, and since you can't do that from a running system, you'd need to boot off of a USB stick first. BitLocker is definitely easier in that regard.
I stopped using it recently, but cryptsetup (with luks if it matters) definitely allows passphrases. I think my longest was ~50 characters? Not sure if you were going beyond that.
I can't seem to find any old (or new) complaints about it limiting, or anything about a fix for same. You sure it was that?
When I got a XPS 13 ~4 years ago full disk encryption didn't work at all on Ubuntu due to the NVME drive and Dell support had no workarounds and neither did the internet. I certainly hope it's fixed by now.
Interesting, I've had no problems with full disk encryption on my XPS 13 from around then but I did switch to Arch Linux at the same time I was setting it up.
Good to see this because it means demand for new Linux laptops is still here (or even growing) but why wouldn’t someone go for a System76 laptop instead that comes with custom, FOSS firmware too?
I've been havin XPS 13 for nearly 2 years now. Personally, haven't had any issues in terms of reliability.I even managed to spill my soup on it a couple of times and it ended up working after it. Battery capacity halfed over this period, however I can't comment on this,as I don't know how other laptops perform in this area.the only weird thing about it is the camera positioned at the bottom of the screen...
I have a normal XPS 13 for work. I don't like it. I have increase font sizes on the laptop screen. No expandable memory or storage. Fan on high is normal. Some versions BigFoot wifi controller that will drop out all the time when it's slightly warm. One of devs had to get an external cooler to help that issue, but eventually went for an external WiFi adapter.
I am running Ubuntu 20.04 on a Dell XPS 13 9370 from a couple years ago. It’s amazing! First time I’ve had a Linux distro that really works well including battery life, sleep, devices etc.
I had previously given up on this and was excited that WSL2 was finally available, but installed 20.04 and haven’t looked back.
Great that Dell is supporting their Laptops with Ubuntu and Linux. I like the developer experience of Linux. Most things work as they should out of the box and the system is stable. Plus it feels like the right thing to use open source software where you can contribute back if you want.
When you click through to purchase, in the Customize section at the bottom there is a "Keep Your Hard Drive" option up to 4 years. What exactly does this mean and why up to 4 years and not more, e.g. forever?
I ordered my XPS 13 last night, it's not the developer edition, but I plan on pulling the 128gb ssd and replacing it with a 512 anyway, and at that time will convert it to Ubuntu 20.04. I can't wait!
Does the sound-card make any popping sounds turning on and off?? I have an older XPS 13-9343 and sadly this was a huge issue with Ubuntu/Linux. It would pop on and off whenever you used audio.
I plug in my speakers through a Thunderbolt dock, and I have not experienced it. It shows as a USB sound output though. Let me know if you would like me to try plugging the speakers in directly to the laptop and rebooting it a couple of times.
Thanks for the info. Yes that would be great if you could check that. My issue was the built-in speakers popping whenever audio stopped and started (sound card turning off and on). It was especially loud and unbearable when using headphones plugged directly in.
> We neither develop nor support the Linux drivers for our devices, and this is common, as free and open source is the Linux way.
> As such, if you encounter an issue with your Killer Networking adapter in Linux, your best, quickest, and most accurate line of support is going to be the community, either for the Linux distribution that you are using, or the driver itself.
That's interesting. So they don't actually provide any meaningful support at all over a vendor that doesn't officially support Linux. It's just pr bullshit. Here's your laptop with Linux pre-installed, but if you have problems, though shit. Fuck that.
My laptop as well, it has the worst wireless connectivity of all of my devices and it just doesn’t come up on book or wake from sleep. I noticed the brand in the spec, but figured it probably didn’t matter. It turns out that it became the thing I hate about the machine, and later found they have a hate club on the Internet. I wouldn’t buy another machine with their wireless. Chip was:
Killer Wireless-AC 1535 (802.11ac)
Killer is often criticized for not adding much to a laptop beyond some extra cost. The benefit Killer touts is prioritizing latency-sensitive traffic, e.g. for games. I haven't used one and can't say how effective they are, but suspect it is true that for most people, the difference wouldn't be perceptible. The software might be more efficient, but it isn't going to make the radio waves travel any quicker.
But I haven't heard about reliability issues, and as long as that's the case the worst outcome is paying a couple extra bucks for a fancy WiFi card with no difference/a small enough difference you can't notice it.
Is this still a glossy-only screen option? I would happily by the XPS 15 with a non-glossy screen. I have been forced to use the Precision models with Ubuntu pre-installed and suffered both mediocre performance, battery life, build quality, and even the sound output not working.
Unfortunately I am using a Mac from my employer for the first time in years. It is nice to have hardware that works extremely well again! But the glare is bad in certain lighting conditions and the touch bar is extremely annoying. I have caps lock mapped to escape, but it is just a more difficult place to get my pinky finger to.
My understanding is that the non-touch FHD screen is not glossly, but then it is also not flush. I got the touch FHD to have the edge-to-edge glass. The glossyness hasn't bothered me, and you can get matte screen protectors cut for this model off of eBay.
I have an older precision. Built like a tank and then some, great specs, ugly as hell, on the heavy side, awful battery, huge brick sized charger, but everything replaceable, takes being dropped in it's stride, takes any abuse it receives in it's stride.
No. Lenovo doesn't sell linux laptops in the US on the open market. You may be able to buy one through the IT sales channel or in some other countries.
gnome is terrible comparing to macOS WM/DM. So many bugs and there is no way to tweak things like in mac. Please do me a favor and look about it before buying.
Not that I like GNOME, but that has to be the first time I've seen someone advocate macOS on the basis of customization. Could you say where you found macOS to let you tweak something that GNOME didn't? Is this including extra tools (GNOME Tweak Tool), or pure stock?