Ask HN: Is Dell XPS Developer Edition a Good Replacement of Macbook Pro?
Hi,
I've been waiting few months for yesterday's MacBook upgrade and I'm dissatisfied, as most of you. I read many comments about alternatives and one of recurring favorite is Dell XPS Developer Edition. Could I ask you about your experience with this model? I'm interested in high-end version (16gb and UltraSharp screen). Is it worth this money (less than Macbook, but still)? I actually want to buy "best machine money can buy", which is powerful (for JVM development, besides personal stuff like movies and web), but still easy to carry-on while traveling. Most of the machines are Windows-oriented, which doesn't fit my workflow and there's a limited choice of laptop fully compatible with Linux. Dell XPS 13 seems like one. Do you have positive experiences with this? Would you recommend it?
I just get rid of normal desktop and use mainly my office machine - heavy, powerful ThinkPad W541 with 32GB ram and i7, but it's plastic and the screen is so-so.
Thanks!
111 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadMy only complaint is the limited ram.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/razer-blade-stealth-2016
It's basically a rip-off of the (2015) macbook machined aluminium body design. It has the 7th gen processors rather than than the 6th of the new macbook, and a similar price.
Not sure about linux support, from what I've read there may be an issue with the webcam.
I've been using a Retina MacBook Pro 13" (early 15) and 15" (mid 15) and just picked up the xps 13 9350 with iris pro.
There are definitely some quality control issues but once you get a working model with no faults (I had one that wouldn't reboot and had terrible coil whine, one that had loose trackpad and yellow tint on screen but this could also be because of Amazon's shitty packaging where the laptop was in a box with only some brown paper crumpled in) - atleast they took them back no questions asked. I'm amazed how far windows laptops have come along.
The only real downsides are that it power throttles (and thermal too, but I placed my own aftermarket thermal paste and it doesn't cross 66 C on full load now) due to the iris GPU itself consuming 18W at it's rated turbo boost with the SoC's TDP being 15W (long turbo) and 25W (short turbo). Perhaps go with the i5 model that has the HD 520 or the new 9360 that has kabylake with better thermal and power consumption (HD 620 is roughly similar to HD 540 but won't throttle). You can also use Intel's XTU to undervolt and better battery life and throttling if you're going to use windows.
Linux runs flawlessly, infact so does OS X if you can replace the wifi card. AMA
What do you primarily use it for?
Please tell us more! What card am I supposed to replace it with, and is it anything involving soldering or just sockets and switches?
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157
There are numerous guides on replacing the wifi card in the dell, ifixit has guides. And because this isn't apple, the laptop has a upgrade/repair/owner's manual (online).
How do you install OS X on this machine ? Any tutorial you can recommend ?
Do you mean Iris Graphics 540? I think Iris Pro Graphics 550 included on-chip eDRAM and isn't available on any of their 15W Skylake CPUs, it's a 28W only part.
I thought only Pro SKUs get EDRAM but turns out I was wrong.
For Skylake they switched it up so that Iris 540 and Iris 550 are both GT3e, and Iris Pro 580 is GT4e. All with eDRAM. My comment above is incorrect, Iris 550 is not the "pro" version, Iris Pro 580 is.
I never understood how people can deal with multiple rounds of RMAing (or whatever) a defective product and still turn around and recommend it to other people. If a company can't consistently deliver their products intact and functional, why should I waste hours of my time (which effectively increases the price of the product by hundreds of dollars) picking up their mess?
The fact that this is still a thing kinda says to me that PC laptop OEMs still aren't ready to go toe to toe with Apple in the customer experience department, despite the overall improved quality of their offerings.
And as I said, `but this could also be because of Amazon's shitty packaging where the laptop was in a box with only some brown paper crumpled in` - I'm not even sure if the issue was because of improper shipping or factory defect. If you're all that worried about wasting your time, go to the nearest retail store and test your unit as you buy it.
I also forgot to mention, I bought the defective models through Amazon Warehouse Deals - so it could very well have been a return due to the said defects.
If we're talking about MBP replacements, Purism also has an interesting one: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-13, but they're much smaller than Dell.
Also, do realize that the UltraSharp model will have a significant impact on battery life. The comments I've looked at for the XPS 15 9550 (4K display) say that the battery life is basically halved, but it's supposedly still around 4.5 hours of battery life.
If you prefer the 15-inch, you might want to wait for a while - they still only feature Skylake CPUs and I think an upgrade is imminent (given the recent XPS 13 upgrade and all.)
I don't have any personal experience with the machines, but I'm planning to buy the XPS 15 once it gets an upgrade.
Initially I though I would never use the touch-screen, but it is actually quite useful when reading things (scrolling) or quickly clicking basic things when not really sitting behind the keyboard on a desk. Same for the light in the keyboard, very useful when working at night and on airplanes etc. The screen in general is really really good, some colleagues have the 1920x1080 screen, I would pick the 3200x1800 screen again next time since it's much nicer to read from and allows you to use smaller fonts (= more code on one screen)
Linux support is generally much better than other relatively new notebooks I've had, but still sometimes things break. The Developer Edition is released a bit later than the Windows models, probably to stabilize Linux support. I've only used it with Ubuntu, but I see others use several other distros which seems to work without much issues.
Here are my pros and cons:
Pros:
1. The hardware is great; the developer edition favors more Linux-compatible hardware (obviously), and for us, it didn't require very much setup. Usually the default configuration will be enough. The touchpad, like the MacBook, has a glass surface and feels excellent.
2. Like the MacBook, it's very light. The screen looks great, and honestly on Linux I prefer 1080p.
3. Dell has a very reasonable warranty, and is very quick to respond. Example: You can install whatever Linux distribution you like, replace the SSD (so long as you don't ruin anything while you're there, of course).
Cons:
1. It's fragile. Unlike the Macbook, you have to be at least (more) careful with this thing. We ended up breaking the screen without much effort; I wager it was the fact that it was in a backpack that got dropped somewhat aggressively.
That being said, we also bought the $60 accident protection, and Dell sent out a technician from a local repair shop to fix it for us within that week. If the technician can't fix it, they will over-night you a shipping box and a FedEx label to send your laptop back in.
Just be careful with it; treat it like the $1000+ machine that it is.
2. No replacing the RAM. It's soldered onto the board. That's not a problem for me because I barely push ~4GB.
Conclusion: I use a MacBook now; my XPS 13 is actually coming in tomorrow and I'm very excited. I think it's a great machine and a great MacBook replacement, and has excellent Linux compatibility. Dell's customer support is great, just be careful with it; it's not an aluminum body or several layers of glass in front of the screen. Make sure to buy the one with the right amount of RAM so you don't regret it later. If you're worried about storage, there's a $150 500GB M.2 SSD on Amazon, buy the lowest storage version and upgrade it. Get the protection plan. It's cheap compared to the cost of buying a new device.
If you don't mind something heavy, check out the new Thinkpad P50 or P70. They have actual desktop-level performance, terrific screens (matte, color corrected 4k IPS!) and the new NVMe SSDs. I do most of my daily development on a P70, and increasingly just lug it along when I travel even though travel was the reason I bought the XPS 13.
- 4k touchscreen
- i7 Skylake processor w/ identical stats to that on the $2400 15" macbook pro
- 16 GB RAM
- 128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD (I replaced the HDD with a 500 GB SSD from Amazon)
- NVIDIA GTX 960m w/ 4 GB GDDR5 RAM
It's sturdily made, I take it everywhere. The only thing I miss from my mac is the trackpad. You can't beat mac trackpads. However, the trackpad on the Inspiron is great, much better than many of the others I've tried. When you take into account it has better graphics acceleration than the $2800 macbook pro, you find that dollar for dollar, it's one of the best value laptops out there. (Seriously, compare it to even Dell's XPS 15, you'd have to pay ~$1650 for an XPS 15 to get comparable specs to the $1300 Inspiron 7559. The Inspiron even has double the graphics card RAM of the $2550 XPS 15!)
- cranked the screen to 80% brightness
- have two browsers open with multiple tabs (plus YouTube playing in the background)
- doing development
I'd say it's about average. If you play games the graphics card is going to soak up energy within a couple hours, but for heavy gameplay you'd want to plug it in anyway. I always want more battery life, but it does well enough and has such good specs otherwise that I can't complain.
So for ~$1900 I have something that blows the MacBook Pro out of the water.
I'm asking because, AFAIK, Xeons need proper cooling (think datacenter conditions).
It would be really cool if they made them for less climate controlled environments.
Out of curiosity, what has you disappointed with Apple's new laptops?
There are other OSes that are just as good as macOS!
* My XPS has a really awful touchpad. When I first got it, it was definitely my main reservation. I tried a 2014 model and noted that it wasn't much improved.
https://medium.com/@securitystreak/buying-a-professional-pen...
Granted I owned the older 9343 model but despite the many BIOS updates (and several Linux distros) my laptop kept up phantom right clicks and cursor jumps - very annoying! No issue with Windows 10 though.
I sold it onward and happy with the real-estate 15" provides me once more.
I suppose that the thing will only improve with future Ubuntu Hardware Enablement Stacks that include new kernels and so...
The warranty just ended, so unless they finally fixed it for good, the machine may have been a waste of a thousand dollars. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it keeps working.
I ultimately went with a retina MBP (early 2015). My next laptop is likely to be either a Lenovo T460 or a Dell P50 (or their successors).