Hands-On WIth Dell's 4K Infinity Edge-Equipped Laptops (hothardware.com) 77
MojoKid writes: Dell's 2015 version of the XPS 13, the company's 13-inch premium ultrabook, is arguably one of the most acclaimed laptops of the year, with its "Infinity Edge" display that comes in resolutions from 1080p up to UHD 4K, with almost no bezel, and a carbon fiber composite chassis design with a machined aluminum lid. Based on the product's success in the market, Dell recently announced they were bringing the design approach and 4K Infinity Edge display to both their XPS 15 consumer based ultrabooks as well as their Precision 15 professional line up. At Dell World 2015 this week Austin, the company had both 15-inch versions on display for demos and this quick hands on shows just how compact and well-built the machines are, though they're also now refreshed with Intel Skylake processors and PCIe NVMe SSDs.
Gaming? (Score:2)
XPS 15 is a productivity powerhouse that can also be used for multimedia and gaming.
It's going to fry .
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Re: Linux? (Score:2)
The XPS 13 variant actually ships with Windows!
Re: Linux? (Score:4, Informative)
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We get a pretty good number of questions, from folks with these laptops, over on the StackExchange AskUbuntu sub.
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How about an actual review? (Score:1)
A review would have been interesting, this is just fluff.
A tribute to Harriet Klausner (Score:2)
I particularly like how the first link is to another of his clickbait "articles". It furbishes a genre-spanning experience which will appeal to both constituencies, without appearing to be a forced mash-up.
I give it 4.5 stars.
Looks good, except for awful keyboard (Score:5, Interesting)
I've tried to use these keyboards, and just can't get used to them. It seems like laptops have come with flatter and flatter chicklet keyboards, with less travel, that just doesn't allow the fingers to find home. There is no dish to the key caps and no dish to the rows. Looks good, feels like crap.
Now that the screen dictates the size of the laptop, it's also disappointing to see all the wasted bezel space around a smushed keyboard, with shortcut and function keys to get to 9-key cluster that would be above the arrows. Even page up/down over there would be a plus. Direction arrows at least exist here though.
At least the touchpad area is generous, but again, that makes it impossible to rest your palms anywhere without the cursor going nuts.
Took reviewing the video to see that the screen is glossy mirror finish. Another looks shiny, is actually crap, feature.
Please give power users a laptop free of "modern" bling.
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Writing from a 2014 Dell Latitude E7440. Non-chiclet keyboard, quite standard layout (Ctrl at the corner, etc), 1080p matte, metal hinges that open up to 180 (pi rad), ~1.7kg, trackpoint with 3 physical buttons :) (BTW, all of that for 700 GBP (UK Universities deal), practically equivalent to T440s (~1000 GBP).)
Gimme those "little things" (specially the trackpoint!) instead of the crappy chicletness, glossiness, dumb layout, etc. and I am yours, XPS!
Re: Looks good, except for awful keyboard (Score:1)
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It looks like a standard US keyboard's enter to me or were they retarded enough to put that small enter on non-US layouts as well?
It's a standard US layout. The source of confusion is that the UK has it's own, rather special layout in which enter is a 180-rotated L shape that is smushed to the very far right of the keyboard.
I've been living in the UK for nearly four years, and the UK layout really drives me nuts (even with the software layout switched back to US, the physical key shapes mean that enter often requires a physical hand movement to reach and I find the shift keys are way too small -- it's not optimum for touch typing!)
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I would need to agree. My career is based on using a computer daily, and I do a lot of typing, and I am able to touch type. I never experience much difference from a chiclet keyboard, vs a normal keyboard. just as long as there are indents on the "F" and "J" keys. That way I know my hands are in the right position for typing.
I expect the issue that people have with keyboards is that they just want to nitpick on something that has changed.
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It looks like they reused a keyboard from a smaller model, rather than making a bigger one for this form factor. I have an 15" NEC LaVie Z that has a full size keyboard with nunpad.
The touchpad on mine is intelligent enough to reject palm presses and small enough that it doesn't get pressed accidentally when typing anyway I don't see the advantage of a big pad over a really good small one, it just means more hand movement. Then again I have my mouse set to maximum sensitivity too.
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Does it have the conventional layout?
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I don't know about Dell, but Apple and Lenovo seemed to do a decent job on their chicklet keyboards, when using them has a natural feel.
Toshiba on the other hand seems to hire idiots to design they keyboards Chicklet or not.
Re:Looks good, except for awful keyboard (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm fine with they keyboard size, but the mirror-like screen totally ruins almost all laptops nowadays for me.
I recently spent about $1k extra to get a Mac instead of a high-end Windows laptop, just because the Mac has ever so slightly less screen glare. After a few weeks of using it I have to say that was money well spent.
I suppose I must be unusually annoyed by screen glare compared to most people, but I think that I am not the only one, and I think if Dell or Asus would release a high end laptop with a matte screen option for say $300 extra on top of the regular price, they would probably find a nice niche market.
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I think if Dell or Asus would release a high end laptop with a matte screen option for say $300 extra on top of the regular price, they would probably find a nice niche market.
They already do. Dell's XPS 13 (non-touch) is in fact a matte screen (IPS, 1920x1080, and one of the best I've seen). I'd assume that the non-touch version of this XPS 15 laptop will also be a matte screen (but you'd want to check this). (Having a touch screen obviously requires a glossy overlay for the digitiser, so you'll always be limited to the non-touch variants.)
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Yeah, I was choosing between the 15" MacBook Pro and the Dell XPS 15 and I was leaning towards the Dell with the matte screen, until I discovered that it was no longer available in my market.
The new XPS 15 will be available in mid-November, hopefully with a matte screen option. 1920x1080 is a bit on the low side for a 15" laptop, but it is acceptable, especially when you save $1k+ compared to a Mac.
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Yeah, it's annoying that the only >1920x1080 options for the Dell XPSes are the touchscreen options. On the plus side, though, by buying the lower-res screens you apparently gain massively in battery life.
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You know the 1080p XPS 15 has a matte display right?
The early 2015 XPS 15 has a matte display, but the XPS 15 is not available in my market. I guess they sold out sooner than they thought.
The new XPS 15 will be available in mid-November according to Dell.
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At least the touchpad area is generous, but again, that makes it impossible to rest your palms anywhere without the cursor going nuts.
System Settings > Input Devices > Touchpad > Sensitivity > [X] Palm Detection & Enable/Disable Touchpad > [X] Disable touchpad when typing
Problem solved.
I'm surprised more people don't know about this.
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Regarding keyboards, I took some crazy glue and put a dot of glue on the F and the J keys. That elevated dot on each key works to allow my fingers to find the home keys.
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We've replaced nearly half of the ones on the Dells
With what? . Just curious
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I don't understand the question. We replaced the trackpads with the only thing that will fit, which is another piece of Dell garbage. That usually took about four hours on the phone each and two weeks of begging despite having a "guaranteed" next business day response. They guarantee a response. They don't guarantee that they'll actually do something. Dell's support is as dreadful as their trackpads. I'm sure we're already over a man-year into this current XPS fiasco. Nearly six figures wasted becau
Re: How is the trackpad? (Score:1)
That was your mistake. Dell trackpads are wear items and not covered by the warranty. We usually get about six months out of the before our users start complaining.
Re: How is the trackpad? (Score:1)
Are they as bad as the ones on the Latitudes? We had a VP here smash hers in front of our COO. She, like everyone else with one, was fed-up with the crappy trackpad.
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We had a VP here smash hers in front of our COO.
I'd love to work at a place where C level employees trash laptops in front of each other. None of this quiet desperation stuff.
Action! Excitement!
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That is why I tend to stick with Think Pads for PC laptops. I actually don't use the trackpad much but the Pointing Stick. Just because that way I don't need to move my hand from they keyboard.
coil whine (Score:5, Interesting)
Did they finally fix annoying coil whine? Dell wasn't able to do that for their top XPS models in last 2.5 years. Replacement boards also had this issue and Dell didn't care.
Here is 56 pages thread: http://en.community.dell.com/s... [dell.com]
Qualiity is crap these days :-(
Re: coil whine (Score:2)
Wow! I've been considering an XPS 13 but I think I'll reconsider reading that...
16gig max?? (Score:1)
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What kind of power-work do you need to do on-the-go that 1. needs more than 16G of RAM, and 2. can actually get some work done on before your batteries are drained.
Can't speak for the OP, but some of the bioinformatics analyses I do would fit into that category. The battery life on these things is pretty good (Dell claims "up to 17 hours") so I'd guess even with all cores running at full speed you'd have a bit of time to do stuff.
It seems a bit crazy that you can't get a 32Gb equipped laptop at least as a high-end option.
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I run up against the 16GB limit on my work laptop with multiple VMs doing cluster development. Also, it's about future-proofing. I tend to keep my laptops for 5+ years (typing on a 2010 MBP), and I'm pretty sure by 2020 16GB isn't going to be enough.
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You can put 32GB into the Precision laptops - they have four slots.
Of course, they're a bit bigger and heavier than these.
Go BIG, Dell, or go home to mama (Score:5, Interesting)
I am asking Dell to ship laptops. with no OS encumbrances. No MS tax.
Are you still beholden to MS' bullying tactics? Where Michael sold his soul and signed on the dotted line?
Or are you hardware makers, pure and simple?
Ship this flagship notebook, without an OS. This is your wake-up call. Go mano a mano with the big boys. I think it is time. The Force awakens. We can buy your Windows-encumbered hardware, sure, and reach for the moon. Or you can sell us the hardware with our choice of a distro, and we can shoot for Mars instead.
This is your wake-up call, Dell.
Pop quiz: Do you hit the snooze button? Or show them there's a new sheriff in town, and he would like to play on your sandlot.
Bare bones never sells worth spit. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am asking Dell to ship laptops. with no OS encumbrances. No MS tax.
The geek has been whining about this since the nineties and the answer is always the same. The mass market shopper in his tens of millions buys nothing but the plug-and-play product.
The "known good" balanced and tested configuration of hardware and software that will meet his expectations of price and performance without hassle --- and can be returned for refund or exchange under warranty if it doesn't.
Walmart, with its enormous purchasing power, wasted about ten years trying to find a credible Linux system that could be sold and serviced for significantly less than the budget HP or Dell desktop. Nothing ever came of it.
The real meaning of the M$ tax is that the product that sells in very small numbers will always be always harder to find and cost you more.
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http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd [dell.com]
Who's your daddy now ?
Re:Go BIG, Dell, or go home to mama (Score:4, Insightful)
Both the XPS 13 Developer Edition and the Precision M3800 come with Linux, though it takes some searching to find (dell.com/ubuntu seems the best starting point). IIRC, you actually pay ~$70-80 less for selecting Linux.
By contrast, I wasn't able to find any similar offerings from Lenovo, Asus, HP, etc. Say what you want about Dell, but they seem to be the only big name competing for Linux in the laptop space. (There are several small players/re-branders of course, but their products are very generic since they don't have the engineering expertise.)
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I am asking Dell to ship laptops. with no OS encumbrances. No MS tax.
In the time it took you to write that you could have just looked on Dell's website and found that you can get an XPS 13 with Ubuntu 14.04LTS preloaded.
As for no operating system at all, DO NOT WANT!
Last thing I want is to buy an off the shelf product and then actually screw around trying to get drivers / hardware working. If it doesn't work out of the box it doesn't get bought, unless I built the box myself.
Almost Perfect (Score:4, Informative)
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I have one of the new XPS 13's and the trackpad isn't too troublesome at all. One day a Windows update came out that forced me to recalibrate it, and that sort of thing has been standard for the machine since I got it, but things seem to have stabilized now and it works pretty well. The keyboard IS a little flat, but it works better than any other keyboard in the same form-factor that I've tried. Whether or not it's a form factor worth having is a different discussion.
16:9 is the devil (Score:2)
More importantly, where are the 4:3 screens for business and science works. 16:9 is useful only if you want to watch a movie, or if you're talking about replacing a 24-30" screen with a 40-45" (essentially trading up to two 8:9 "square" work areas below toolbars). On a small screen, the vertical dimension is too shallow, especially give that app toolbars and OS taskbars take even more space from the top and bottom.
Nah... (Score:3)
"64K ought to be enough for anyone" (Score:1)
How many years before 64K displays become the norm?
These won't be your ordinary TV or PC displays though - there's not much point in cramming 64K into something that typically takes up 10%-30% (left to right) of an average viewer's field of vision. 16K, maybe, but 64K, not for your average viewer.
No, these will either be wall-sized displays that are intended for people to view "up close" at least some of the time, "virtual reality" displays that are intended to fill up almost all of the field of view, or "