[legitster]

XPS was never their professional product line. Latitudes were their workplace fleet devices that mostly went head to head with ThinkPads.

This is probably good evidence that they needed to simplify their branding. Having their halo consumer product compete for market mindshare against their professional products is counterproductive. Especially when everyone wants to cross shop against MacBooks.

In contrast, ThinkPad's X1 shares almost nothing with the rest of the Thinkpad's professional line, but it sits there adding prestige to the brand.

[razakel]

Inspiron is their consumer line, Latitude their business line, Precision their pro line, Alienware their gaming line, so what exactly was XPS meant to be? Their fashion line?

[jsheard]

XPS pre-dates them acquiring Alienware, it made more sense at the time. That was their premium consumer/gaming line.

Dell bought Alienware in 2006 though so they took their sweet time before cleaning up the product lines.

[diffeomorphism]

Their consumer fashion line.

[DaiPlusPlus]

My Dell Dimension XPS P166s from 1996 sure was fashionable in all that beige

[soared]

Im generally a fan of the Latitudes I’ve had for the past few years. They don’t do anything special or great but generally just work. The body gets scratched pretty easily and the power button behavior is annoying, but other than that I’ve had no issues.

Even got a lucky BSOD 2 years ago that nuked windows and somehow got me admin access!

[legitster]

My work went from Thinkpads to Latitudes. The Latitudes are pretty sturdy, and I'm told are pretty competitive on price/performance. But nothing beat the ThinkPad on durability/repairability/tactile feel/etc.

When I quit the job, I immediately bought an identical ThinkPad. It's nearly 8 years old but I still use it regularly use it as a pub trivia host as it can take a beating and have beers poured on it and still run like a trooper.