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re: Dell XPS Thoughts
Posted on 4/14/15 at 4:05 pm to GalvoAg
Posted on 4/14/15 at 4:05 pm to GalvoAg
quote:
Yep, $799 is a great deal for an i3 and 4gb's of ram.
To be fair, this notebook is a direct competitor to the Macbook Air, and it beats the $999 13-inch Macbook air in price, weight, dimensions, screen resolution, and battery life. It matches or exceeds everything in the MBA except for the CPU, and we're talking about a 10% performance difference at best. But if you go up to the $899 XPS 13, you get an i5. $999 gets you an i5 with 8GB of RAM, and $1299 gets you all that plus a 3200 x 1800 touch screen. I think Dell will do just fine. I know you're not comparing it to Macs, but it's a relevant consideration. It's refreshing to see Windows laptop makers finally take a note from Apple, and I'm looking forward to more well-thought-out designs without the high margin. We should've had laptops like this years ago.
I wish the laptop market would simplify itself a little more instead of all these hybrid-but-not-really models. Anyone spending more than $600-ish on a laptop ought to consider only two options now -- the Dell XPS 13/Macbook Air style with a normal, non-touch high-res panel and an SSD, or else a full hybrid tablet/notebook that actually detaches from the keyboard (none of this quasi-sort-of-flips-to-use-it-at-an-angle-backwards nonsense).
The Yoga 3 has the touch screen going for it, and the small CPU bump for the same price as the XPS 13, but like every single other ultrabook that's tried to compete with the Macbook Air, it's still missing the 10+ hr battery life (and it's just slightly thicker and heavier). If we are to believe the claims and understand that they are based on very light usage, Yoga does 7 hrs, Macbook Air does 12, and the XPS does 15.
quote:
The Yoga and XPS are made out of the same materials. The Y series is more study than both of them. At least look up what you're talking about.
The XPS has a unibody aluminum chassis. The Yoga 3 uses about half and half plastic/aluminum. I don't think either one would necessarily present durability problems or superiority over another based on materials used alone. But I question your statement that any laptop is more durable than another, especially laptops that have been redesigned and released this year, unless you have evidence.
This post was edited on 4/14/15 at 5:49 pm
1
Posted on 4/14/15 at 6:53 pm to ILikeLSUToo
I wonder if the touchscreen is really worth it on the XPS since it seems that would be awkward on a laptop?
Posted on 4/14/15 at 7:19 pm to daviddsims
Not in my opinion. If I have to reach across a keyboard to touch a screen, it's a screen that shouldn't be touched.
It's frustrating that there aren't RAM upgrade options. They're doing the same bullshite Apple does with the soldered NAND. I would pay $849 for an i3/8GB version, but nope, you don't get to really customize anything until you reach the $999 point.
It's frustrating that there aren't RAM upgrade options. They're doing the same bullshite Apple does with the soldered NAND. I would pay $849 for an i3/8GB version, but nope, you don't get to really customize anything until you reach the $999 point.
Posted on 4/14/15 at 10:50 pm to daviddsims
quote:
I wonder if the touchscreen is really worth it on the XPS since it seems that would be awkward on a laptop?
I use my touchscreen all the time for different things. To get the better screen I believe you have to get the touch screen.
Posted on 4/14/15 at 10:52 pm to GalvoAg
quote:
Now I know you have no idea what you're talking about. The Yoga and XPS are made out of the same materials. The Y series is more study than both of them. At least look up what you're talking about.
Clearly you haven't seen a new xps in person and you own a yoga so you are defending it. I had a yoga 2 pro and it was a great machine and great quality. The new XPS13 is much nicer as it should be due to the better materials it is made from and the new i7 Broadwell processor.
Only complaint with the yoga 3 pro is the processor they use other wise great machine, just not enough hp for what I need.
Posted on 4/15/15 at 11:55 pm to Das Jackal
quote:
I work for a Dell re seller and honestly my faith in their laptops have taken a hit the last couple years. Seems like we are having more and more problems with them.
I was seeing constant video issues for awhile.
We're not a reseller, but I work in an enterprise environment and our standard machine is the Latitude. Right now the E6440. One of three video issues were popping up on about half of the new machines I was getting in for a couple months. Seems to have gotten better lately.
Issue 1: Green dots showing up all over the screen. Easy enough to replace.
Issue 2: External video ports don't work. MB swap.
Issue 3: No onboard video at all. Again, MB swap. Really good at these.
Yay for TechDirect I guess.
This post was edited on 4/15/15 at 11:58 pm
Posted on 4/16/15 at 1:19 am to 3deadtrolls
It is interesting to me that such a large majority of anecdotal evidence cites experience with several of the same brand rather than just one. Of course, there are seemingly legitimate reasons for that -- like the IT guys who have to deal with bulk purchase orders and service those laptops for X number of years. PC shop owners see laptops coming and going and often have something particularly negative to say about one brand. Then the regular consumers, I guess, may keep buying that same disappointing brand because it's cheap, or they bought several of the same brand for family members within a short time frame, and perhaps a startling majority of those units started exhibiting problems soon after.
This thread contains some Dell horror stories. I'm curious who would show up and what we might read if we started an Acer thread, or HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and ASUS. I wonder if, statistically, there are enough members here to show a reliable trend of failure rates, and if analyzed painstakingly, could it be pinpointed to a manufacturer.
Those brands, plus a vast majority of others including Apple, have their laptops assembled in Compal's, Wistron's, and Quanta's factories. Those three companies are the largest laptop manufacturers in the world. But a couple more stay firmly in the mix, such as Pegatron and Inventec. Together, these five companies are responsible for building well over 100 million PCs every year for worldwide sales. Not a single major brand (ASUS, Apple, HP, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, and Toshiba) sources its computers from a single manufacturer. A lot of them source from 3-4 of the 5.
And then of course a vast majority of the internals, including the motherboards, come from Foxconn, Flextronics, and some from Pegatron. And those companies fabricate or source chipsets based on designs from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Creative Technology, etc. They get their capacitors and chokes and whatnot from companies like Global Sources. Really, when it's all said and done, nearly all of our laptops come from the same places and have the same points of failure.
It would be interesting to see more data on individual laptop model reliability, not just brands, and to see if there's a trend among certain components used (incidents akin to the AMD GPU issue in Macbooks a few years ago). The problem is, all of the various tech sites and their laptop reliability surveys/stats can't seem to agree on who's the worst, or the best, or even in the middle. The one trend is that Apple is almost always at the top. There are a few not-as-obvious reasons for that, but this is too long already and I don't want to give Gman a hardon.
This thread contains some Dell horror stories. I'm curious who would show up and what we might read if we started an Acer thread, or HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and ASUS. I wonder if, statistically, there are enough members here to show a reliable trend of failure rates, and if analyzed painstakingly, could it be pinpointed to a manufacturer.
Those brands, plus a vast majority of others including Apple, have their laptops assembled in Compal's, Wistron's, and Quanta's factories. Those three companies are the largest laptop manufacturers in the world. But a couple more stay firmly in the mix, such as Pegatron and Inventec. Together, these five companies are responsible for building well over 100 million PCs every year for worldwide sales. Not a single major brand (ASUS, Apple, HP, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, and Toshiba) sources its computers from a single manufacturer. A lot of them source from 3-4 of the 5.
And then of course a vast majority of the internals, including the motherboards, come from Foxconn, Flextronics, and some from Pegatron. And those companies fabricate or source chipsets based on designs from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Creative Technology, etc. They get their capacitors and chokes and whatnot from companies like Global Sources. Really, when it's all said and done, nearly all of our laptops come from the same places and have the same points of failure.
It would be interesting to see more data on individual laptop model reliability, not just brands, and to see if there's a trend among certain components used (incidents akin to the AMD GPU issue in Macbooks a few years ago). The problem is, all of the various tech sites and their laptop reliability surveys/stats can't seem to agree on who's the worst, or the best, or even in the middle. The one trend is that Apple is almost always at the top. There are a few not-as-obvious reasons for that, but this is too long already and I don't want to give Gman a hardon.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 7:16 am to ILikeLSUToo
quote:
This thread contains some Dell horror stories. I'm curious who would show up and what we might read if we started an Acer thread, or HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and ASUS. I wonder if, statistically, there are enough members here to show a reliable trend of failure rates, and if analyzed painstakingly, could it be pinpointed to a manufacturer.
You're right. In our case, we're just simply all Dell so that's what I see. The video issues I was talking about were affecting other locations, but we order a ton of laptops so I'm sure it was a bad batch. Recent machines have been fine.
But yeah, behind the label, especially in the consumer side, it's all the same thing most of the time.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 9:44 am to 3deadtrolls
We've had a few that we had to change multiple motherboards and hard drives in. And still having some problems. We eventually gave one of our customers a Toshiba and took the Dell back to use in the office. Since then they've had no problems..
This post was edited on 4/16/15 at 9:46 am
Posted on 4/22/15 at 12:42 pm to tigersnipen
First night with the XPS and I am not quite sold yet. The screen seems a little fuzzy and not as clear as it should be even with the resolution set to max. The trackpad is good but not quite on the macbook level. I will give it a week before I decide to send it back. I did by from Microsoft so I got Windows 8.1 with no bloatware which is good.
Posted on 4/22/15 at 2:00 pm to daviddsims
Which one did you get? 1080p? Fuzzy screen sounds like the Windows Scaling is somewhere above 100%.
Posted on 4/22/15 at 2:36 pm to daviddsims
I'm confused, the screen on the xps13 is the best you can get for a ultrabook as of right now. If it is fuzzy it is due to scaling or in proper resolution.
Mine is set to 3200x1800 and is crystal clear.
Trackpad does take some getting used to, but learn the gestures for windows 8 and it works better. Plus the touchscreen works great for scrolling message boards.
Mine is set to 3200x1800 and is crystal clear.
Trackpad does take some getting used to, but learn the gestures for windows 8 and it works better. Plus the touchscreen works great for scrolling message boards.
Posted on 4/22/15 at 5:56 pm to tigersnipen
I got the non touch screen one. I am not sure what it is but it definitely looks a little fuzzy and not as sharp as it should be.
Posted on 4/22/15 at 6:45 pm to daviddsims
Well... check the scaling
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