[HN Gopher] Dell admits it made a mistake when it abandoned XPS
___________________________________________________________________
Dell admits it made a mistake when it abandoned XPS
Author : jnord
Score : 75 points
Date : 2026-01-06 12:49 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| haritha-j wrote:
| Well I could've told them that for free.
| biglyburrito wrote:
| Yeah, but then they wouldn't have listened. It's only the
| _expensive_ advice that they listen to.
| eimrine wrote:
| That "seamless" touchpad is the ugliest thing I have seen this
| year. How do you guys touchtype on it if you never know when to
| get out the hands? Proprietary software which supposedly allows
| to not bother about it works not on all OS and probably not
| always.
| davidw wrote:
| Just posted on that same subject. That stupid touchpad... I'd
| be typing along and then I guess some portion of my thumb
| towards the palm would brush it and WOOSH, the mouse pointer
| would warp across the screen and I'd be typing in _some other_
| window.
| kyriakos wrote:
| I'm typing this on one right now. I honestly thought the same
| but I got used to it within a day or two of use. Its muscle
| memory at this point.
| eimrine wrote:
| My muscle memory is for vim and not for eating a cactus
| without getting punctured.
| davidw wrote:
| I used XPS laptops with Ubuntu for years and thought they were
| great. The last one I got, though, at the last place I worked,
| had that weird, 'seamless trackpad' or whatever they call it. I
| couldn't stand the thing. I much prefer the basic trackpad on the
| $250 Chromebook I use for personal email/browsing these days.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is the entire area under the keyboard a trackpad or do you have
| to just guess where the edges are?
| rationalist wrote:
| On the previous one that OP is talking about, you had to
| guess. On the new ones just announced, there are physical and
| visible lines.
| davidw wrote:
| It was a maddening guessing game, where occasionally - but
| not always - the edge of my lower thumb would touch the track
| pad and send the mouse pointer warping off to some other part
| of the screen while I was typing.
| lights0123 wrote:
| It is slightly wider than the space bar. I've never had an
| issue with mine, as it is located exactly where I expect it
| to be.
| lostlogin wrote:
| MacBook trackpads are their single best feature. Even 10 year
| old ones seem to be better than everything else out there.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Dell needs to admit they're in deep shit.
|
| I just bought our entire G&A team M4 Macbook Air 15" for the same
| price as our Dell Pro laptops.
|
| They are 20% faster, have 2x the battery life, and 8 more gb of
| RAM. Also standby actually works.
|
| We had done an initial batch of Dell Pro 16 laptops and with 16gb
| of ram + the 255h (now 258v) it's over $1100 a laptop. Only
| problem is... they need 32gb of RAM on Windows 11 because the
| performance was terrible. We were seeing average 88% memory usage
| for our G&A team at 16gb. The upgrade to 32gb of RAM moves the
| price to $1500+ each, they also recently swapped to soldered RAM
| for both Intel and AMD, so we are forced to the $1500+ option
| with a faster CPU.
|
| Initial reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, about 50% of
| them are new to Macs and have figured it out, additionally they
| all love the battery life and performance (most are switching
| from 11th and 12th gen Intel).
|
| Our more tech savvy members have mentioned the better screen,
| webcam and audio as positives.
|
| I am considering switching our call center (~200 members) to Mac
| mini's, the same price as our Lenovo mini PCs and will last a
| long time, the Core Ultra 210 is not great. My only fear is
| people stealing them really.
|
| Why would I pay $2000 for Dells mid line series of business
| laptops? How much is this XPS going to cost vs a Mac book Pro?
| walterbell wrote:
| Apple has kept prices stable for existing models, but is
| rumored to be paying 50% more for DRAM in 2026, which may
| impact pricing of new Apple devices that will be launched in
| 2026.
|
| edit: https://hanchouhsu.substack.com/p/overview-of-the-memory-
| mar...
|
| _> The full-year price increase for Samsung's storage products
| supplied to Apple in 2026 has been finalized, with DRAM prices
| rising by 53% and NAND prices rising by 52%. Earlier rumors
| suggesting an 80% full-year increase for DRAM were inaccurate..
| Apple negotiated the prices down to the aforementioned levels
| and signed long-term agreements (LTAs).. Kioxia also signed a
| similar agreement with Apple, with price increases consistent
| with Samsung's._
| bearjaws wrote:
| If Apple can keep the price near $1500 for the M5, it will
| still be a no brainer. They are currently $200 cheaper,
| granted for less memory. I also am in the camp of you don't
| need quite as much memory on Apple, our most significant
| usage is Chrome, Excel and Teams.
|
| My main reason Apple can charge slightly more: Better
| performance, screen, battery, camera, microphone, and
| trackpad.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my last job, I just bought my own laptops for a variety
| of reasons. Know that may not work for everyone. Also for a
| variety of reasons. But worked dor me.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Apple may be a good deal now, but historically they have been
| the expensive option. I would be concerned about the rug pull
| of spending time training people on macOS, setting the
| expectation that they will have it in the future, and then
| Apple returning to premium pricing before the next upgrade
| cycle.
|
| At least with Windows you have several hardware vendors
| competing to force market rate pricing.
|
| There are several good reasons to choose Apple, but I
| question the wisdom of choosing them for price.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Hard to know for sure, I'd be curious the breakdown in cost
| for enterprise laptops, it's hard for me to understand why
| the price has increased 50% while Apple has increased 10%.
|
| Lenovo, Dell and HP are pretty much all the same price at
| this point. It's basically an oligopoly.
|
| The prices have crept up over the past 5 years and they
| have no reason to lower them. They know they aren't even
| competing with Apple since most large enterprises are all
| in on Windows.
|
| My bet is they have basically made their prices the same as
| Apple, and they plan to keep it that way.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| If you have the freedom to buy from Best Buy, Amazon, etc,
| this is certainly the case.
|
| However, depending on how you procure this hasn't been the
| experience for over 20 years. By the time you're done with
| CDW or whomever is your VAR, you're not comparing a $600
| basic PC laptop to a $1200 basic Mac Laptop. They know
| you're like the GP and going to pay $1500 minimum and are
| probably game for $2000. They sell the "Business" line with
| whatever terms added.
|
| When I did this in K12 in the late 00s the price for a
| truly terrible Dell or IBM/Lenovo was the same as an iMac.
|
| For the corporate world there have been times you couldn't
| get Virtualization support, hardware dock ports, and
| various other bits of support until you moved to buying the
| "Business" line and after a certain number of units the
| direct to retail options send you down the VAR path.
| There's simply too much money involved for them to make it
| easier for you.
|
| I have not had to deal with this as a buyer since 2019 but
| the song seems to be the same as I work for a company that
| sells through CDW. Per the reps, the same stupid games are
| being played.
|
| The only times I haven't had to deal with this is when the
| companies I've worked for just hand you a credit card to
| walk down to the Apple Store or are using Apple's program
| which is basically the same thing but comes with a shared
| App Store account and some better support for swap outs.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Historically they've been the expensive option, but
| historically they've been much more niche than windows
| laptops. So their unit economics might be better nowadays
| due to volume.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Apple is rumored to have long term price controlled contracts
| for DRAM. That would fit their 20 year MO
| gambiting wrote:
| I read this recently, made me chuckle:
|
| "Man, I wish Apple ram upgrades were priced like the rest
| of industry"
|
| <monkey paw curls>
| bearjaws wrote:
| I didn't even think about that, all the reviewers were in
| a fury about soldered RAM... and now almost everyone is
| soldered. It's a shame.
|
| What I really hate is you don't even get the main benefit
| - high bandwidth and low latency. They are just soldering
| lpddr5x RAM which doesn't really need to be.
| jordanb wrote:
| Fairly long history of Apple doing something anti-
| consumer and then all other manufactures following their
| lead. Same with non-replacable batteries, no headphone
| jack, have to pay extra for a charger, etc.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| So soldering RAM is all about being "anti consumer" and
| has nothing to do with the much better bandwidth?
|
| Not to mention that iPhones work with any standard
| Bluetooth headphones and USV C standard headphones.
| rationalist wrote:
| The average person isn't upgrading their RAM. The average
| person might want to use headphones.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And the average person buys Bluetooth headphones and USB
| C headphones
| ghaff wrote:
| Been debating about buying a Mac mini to replace my old iMac
| --which I don't use at this point. Have a newish MacBook Pro
| but it's not the best ergonomic choice to use with a big
| monitor.
| cptskippy wrote:
| What a weirdly worded post. You could have said something like:
|
| "Dell has priced it's Pro line of laptops in-line with Apple's
| Air equivalents, however Window 11's high resource utilization
| means we have to pay for higher spec machines while still
| ending up with reduced battery performance, and inferior
| screens, webcams and audio."
|
| But instead you make weird misleading statements like "and 8
| more gb of RAM" and "it's over $1100 a laptop" that need to be
| decoded but are easily misunderstood if the reader lacks
| certain domain knowledge.
|
| Then you have these unqualified statements like "they also
| recently swapped to soldered RAM for both Intel and AMD" which
| implies that it's a bad move but don't articulate why or
| acknowledge that Apple has been doing this since 2008.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Bro, this is HN where the are so many obscure acronyms,
| frameworks, random Saas providers assumed everyone knows.
| This isn't a site where discussion can break down to the
| level of detail you seem to want. It just needs to be on the
| level anyone who knows what an XPS even is can follow.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification Bro. I now realize that I've
| been using this site incorrectly for 15 years.
| g947o wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
| g947o wrote:
| This is HN. I much prefer someone's raw, unfiltered words
| than ChatGPT generated legalese. I have enough of that
| nonsense at work.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Maybe they should just shut the company down and give the money
| back to shareholders...
| Marsymars wrote:
| > We had done an initial batch of Dell Pro 16 laptops and with
| 16gb of ram + the 255h (now 258v) it's over $1100 a laptop.
| Only problem is... they need 32gb of RAM on Windows 11. We were
| seeing average 88% memory usage for our G&A team at 16gb.
|
| Is that really much different than macOS? Checking my 32gb Mac
| Mini now, I'm sitting at 84% memory usage with just browsers,
| chat apps, some RDP/terminal windows, Mail and Apple Music
| open.
|
| I'd also note that Dell does sell Qualcomm laptops - I've got a
| 12-core/32gb Dell Qualcomm as my work PC - every piece of
| software I use for work is now native ARM64 and I've got no
| complaints about performance/functionality.
| bearjaws wrote:
| How much is cached files? That is one thing I always note on
| Apple, typically I sit around 6-8gb of cached files.
| Marsymars wrote:
| 4.3GB... which seems roughly similar to my 32GB Windows PC
| - it's sitting at 89% memory use with 3.5GB cached.
| gruez wrote:
| For windows specifically cached memory looks very similar
| to unused memory so when someone is complaining about
| "windows is using all my memory" it's very unlikely to be
| caused by caches.
|
| https://softwareg.com.au/cdn/shop/articles/Windows-11-RAM-
| ty...
| ZiiS wrote:
| It you bought anything except RAM, a laptop refusing to use 12%
| for no obvious reason would be note worthy.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I joined my last company, it would have been politically
| unpalatable to run Windows which was what I was used to, Linux
| was sort of frustrating to me at the time (even if I'm sure I
| could have adapted and it has improved in the last 15 years),
| and then there were Macs--which I had never used but turned out
| to be very straightforward.
|
| And I've been mostly in the Mac camp ever since even if I'll
| use other OSs as needed.
| dkarl wrote:
| I take the "premium" experience of Apple hardware for granted,
| and if I wanted to buy a Windows laptop, I'd have no idea which
| brands make similar quality laptops for Windows. I'm shocked at
| the Windows laptops I see in the wild.
|
| Is that what Microsoft Surface laptops are? Did Microsoft get
| in the game themselves to make sure a premium-quality laptop is
| available for Windows?
| g947o wrote:
| Yes about the surface part. They thought all other 2-in-1
| touch devices were terrible and needed to do something.
|
| But Microsoft stopped caring about hardware a long time ago.
| I would never recommend overpriced Surface Pro to anyone
| unless you have a special need for that form factor. As to
| Surface Laptop, you have so many better choices.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Also standby actually works.
|
| That's a Windows issue. The recent active sleep (or whatever
| it's called) has been buggy across basically all hardware.
| yellottyellott wrote:
| omg is this a thing? i thought i was dumb or something.
|
| i bought an expensive 240hz qd oled and i kept coming into my
| office with the damn thing on without the screensaver, just
| burning in after having left it asleep.
|
| i'm so paranoid i just turn the whole computer off now.
| viraptor wrote:
| Yup, it's extremely broken for software reasons. I see this
| across multiple Dells and ThinkPads. Linux has no problems
| sleeping on them. Windows just wakes up randomly on its own
| or never goes to sleep. Sleepstudy debugging doesn't show
| any reason. You can do some hacks to force it to hibernate
| instead of sleep to work around some of those problems.
| g947o wrote:
| Modern Standby https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/design/de...
|
| Yes it's shit. I have a work laptop that have all sorts of
| problems. I would leave work and return the next morning to
| find that the laptop had a bluescreen and rebooted. Many
| times. So IT disabled modern standby. (Now it takes almost as
| long to boot as a cold start, but at least I don't lose my
| work.)
|
| Although I have a personal laptop at home that seems to do
| fine. Still, that's nowhere as responsive as "instant on"
| experience as you would find on a Macbook. Of course,
| Microsoft lied again.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > We were seeing average 88% memory usage
|
| My 64GB MacBook Pro sits around that level after using it for a
| while, too. So do my Windows and Linux machines even with
| different amounts of RAM.
|
| There's a popular page explaining it for Linux, but it's
| applicable to every OS: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
|
| Isolated RAM usage numbers aren't useful because spare memory
| is used for caching. Even if you are using 88% of the RAM,
| that's not indicative of a problem unless you're encountering a
| lot of swapping. Even swapping a little bit isn't bad if it's
| not stalling the machine out. You have to look at actual
| performance, not RAM usage percentages.
| zenoprax wrote:
| I don't understand why the default way to show RAM usage on
| Linux isn't to simply show "In Use vs. Available".
|
| I don't care how much cache is being used and I can't really
| do anything about it even if I did.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I truly hate, more than anything else in the tech discourse,
| that this gets trotted out every time the discussion of RAM
| comes up. "unUsED rAM iS wASTED RAm", always used to defend
| and justify abhorrent and incompetent software development
| practices. Even with 32gb, I routinely run into out-of-memory
| crashes on a near-daily basis with workloads that should not
| in principle be anywhere near that usage.
|
| If they were making decisions based on RAM, they were almost
| certainly encountering real-world issues which prompted
| looking at their usage statistics in the first place, rather
| than just looking up their RAM usage metrics for funsies.
| Krssst wrote:
| I think the point is not that one should not look at RAM
| use, but be careful when looking at it since total RAM use
| may include the amount that is used for disk cache which
| will fill to use whatever is available (and will be freed
| back if necessary).
|
| It makes sense to watch memory use but one should make sure
| to discount the amount used for disk caching from the
| total.
| hinkley wrote:
| This is talk about how the OS uses that RAM to make your
| software better.
|
| But to that point, having to explain to people why this
| 32GB machine with two processes using 10GB each can not, in
| fact, fit another 10GB process because the response times
| of the two existing processes relies heavily on that
| "unused" memory that is actually part of the working set of
| the machine. And also occasionally one of those services
| spikes to 14GB so what happens when that happens?
|
| So in that regard showing that memory as used has
| advantages for avoiding arguments with people who are not
| equipped to have their half of the argument in a useful and
| meaningful way.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've had to explain too many times to people who should know
| better that "rss" is not how much memory a process needs but
| how much the operating system allows it to have. Put other
| stuff on the machine and that number will go down. No it's
| not that improvement you think you made to that data
| structure. If you want that, look at total memory or heap
| size after GC if it's a garbage collected language.
| gbear605 wrote:
| My 32 GB MacBook Pro sits at about 50%, even after months of
| being powered on, unless I'm running programs that use a lot
| of memory. That's at least what Activity Monitor reports,
| perhaps Activity Monitor reports it in a different way.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > They are 20% faster, have 2x the battery life, and 8 more gb
| of RAM.
|
| I thought the minimum spec was 16gb ram as of a while ago?
|
| > Mac mini
|
| If you're paying for power, it would be interesting to see what
| effect that change to Mac's has.
|
| I went from a nuc 9 to a mini and use less than 10% the power
| on the mini, and it's more powerful.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Dell needs to admit they're in deep shit.
|
| Yup, since forever and the reason is:
|
| > ... on Windows ...
|
| There's no fixing that.
|
| It doesn't matter how much inconsistent and how much suckage
| there's in every new MacOS release: it's simply impossible to
| suck as much as Microsoft products.
| smt88 wrote:
| You can install Linux on Dell laptops, or Dell will do it for
| you:
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-
| laptops/scr/laptops/app...
| skissane wrote:
| > or Dell will do it for you:
|
| Only in certain countries. Dell refuses to sell laptops
| with Linux installed in Australia. And they've never given
| a believable explanation as to why.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| What is G&A?
| newsclues wrote:
| General and administration staff?
| financetechbro wrote:
| Yup
| walterbell wrote:
| Dell XPS 14 starts at $2,050, while the 16-inch model will demand
| $2,200 starting Jan. 6. If you think that's high, that's because
| Dell revised its price point from $1,650 and $1,850,
| respectively.
|
| 25% / ~$400 laptop price increase due to market price increases
| for 16GB RAM?
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| DDR5 is about $250-300 more expensive now for 16gb than it was
| at all time lows. The $400 price might be to absorb any
| additional cost increases while maintaining their existing
| profit margin.
|
| EDIT: sorry, my numbers are off. It's $250-300 more expensive
| for 32gb not 16.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| That's the same price as a 14 inch 10 core M5 MacBook Pro with
| 24GB RAM and 1TB storage.
| heelix wrote:
| I had the 17" XPS, which was lovely. A nice 16:10 screen, which
| was the main thing I was looking for. Battery was easy to
| replace. Easy memory and M2 drive replacement. It was a pretty
| good laptop for x86. Main issue was heat/sound. Linux was pretty
| easy to get going on that hardware. You could get at the
| internals - so cleaning out the fan was doable. (order new
| screws, as they ship with silly soft metal on the orignals)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/4SdAQu9.jpeg
|
| When they released the 16" series, most of the updgrade features
| were gone. Memory was tied to the CPU, which puts you in the same
| position that Apples does. Not a fan. I swapped out the 17" for a
| 16" macbook. I doubt I'll look at an XPS again.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The only thing I didn't like about my XPS-15 was when the battery
| got pregnant and made the trackpad stop working.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| We dropped Dell after almost 30 years of exclusive use for our
| desktops, laptops, and server/storage infrastructure.
|
| They can never seems to get their shit together.
|
| Going public and then back to private. We stuck with them through
| that, even though it was a shitshow trying to get a hold of
| anyone. They blur together, but this might have also been the
| time when they offered everyone the opportunity to leave and it
| was a ghost town at Dell.
|
| We stuck with them when they outsourced their support, which we
| later realized was the best years of support. More on that in a
| sec.
|
| Outsourced support turned out to be better because we could
| triage everything ourselves, then tell them which piece of
| hardware was broken and they would send a tech or replacement
| part. Basically exactly what we expected for when we purchased
| premium support.
|
| We stuck with them when they brought their support back to the
| US. Each tech person wanted to make a career out of each ticket.
| We couldn't get broken hardware fixed without screaming and
| begging.
|
| Keep in mind, we always bought the best hardware with the most
| expensive support level. Precision laptops. Precision desktops.
| Best servers and storage.
|
| We tried to stick with them when their sales teams basically
| wanted to remind us every time they don't really want to talk to
| anyone anymore. Everything is done online and they prefer not to
| talk to anyone.
|
| We tried to place an order for a laptop refresh, which was going
| to be followed by desktop refresh, and then a complete
| server/storage refresh. The sales teams made it seem like they
| were doing us a favor by even quoting us anything. More reminders
| to use the customer portal and don't call or e-mail us. That was
| the final straw and we did the complete refresh with a different
| brand.
| NegativeK wrote:
| > We stuck with them when they brought their support back to
| the US. Each tech person wanted to make a career out of each
| ticket. We couldn't get broken hardware fixed without screaming
| and begging.
|
| The people I talk to doing laptop repairs and trying to get
| parts from Dell say that Dell is treating them like potential
| scammers. They've diagnosed the broken part, everything is
| under warranty, Dell was previously fine with trusting these
| people.. But now Dell is forcing them to prove, every time,
| that the part needs to be replaced.
|
| It's the weirdest combination of time wasting and incentivizing
| this team to be _lower_ skilled that I've ever seen. Because,
| I'm guessing, Dell was dealing with too much warranty waste and
| decided to crack down on everyone.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| > Because, I'm guessing, Dell was dealing with too much
| warranty waste and decided to crack down on everyone.
|
| If that's the case, then it's further mismanagement from
| Dell.
|
| All of the parts get refurbished and go back into
| circulation. Not in a secretive way. Dell points out that
| replacement parts for warranty claims might be a refurbished
| item.
| lostlogin wrote:
| What did you stay for 30 years?
| themafia wrote:
| > Everything is done online and they prefer not to talk to
| anyone.
|
| There was a time where even this was fine as Dell Premier was
| actually functional. When the bottom fell out of that part of
| their service we left for good.
|
| CDW had better Dell support than Dell did. :|
| rationalist wrote:
| I have a 2020 XPS 13, and love it. I was disappointed when the
| keyboards in the batch of 2020 XPS 13 laptops after mine, had
| rattly key caps. My XPS 13 is still doing well after the last
| nearly 6 years, and I look forward to trying the new XPS laptops
| if I can get one with the specs I want.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| IMO XPS had a terrible reputation and needed sunsetting. I highly
| doubt these will be much better
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| My top of the line XPS battery swole so much it broke the
| keyboard.
|
| Repaired under warranty.
|
| Less than a year later that battery was swollen.
|
| No warranty replacement. No OEM batteries available through Dell.
|
| I buy 4 replacements from Amazon and none work. The XPS line has
| battery DRM.
|
| I have an i7 with a discrete card, 64gb of ram, and a 4k screen
| that's worthless.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The XPS line has battery DRM_
|
| Good comment to cc: to your Congressional reps. Only
| legislation can fix this.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'd like to think congress is busy sorting out some of the
| more pressing issues. But maybe they can walk and chew gum.
| klipklop wrote:
| This post talked me out of buying the new XPS that is going to
| be released in a few weeks.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Never buy an XPS. Always been trash always will
| rationalist wrote:
| My nearly 6 year old XPS begs to differ.
|
| I've seen quite a few various laptops with swollen
| batteries, and their users don't understand that can't
| habitually store their laptops in the sun (well, in sun
| rays through windows).
|
| Those people also don't even realize their battery is
| swelling, and that it's a bad thing.
| trympet wrote:
| Additional anecdata: my top of the line XPS 15 had to be
| repaired twice due to a "stuck" trackpad issue. It seems to
| me like they crammed as much compute as they could into
| that tiny chassis while their manufacturing tolerances
| really weren't up to the task.
| timpera wrote:
| I recently switched from a XPS 13 with tons of issues, replaced
| twice, to a Surface Laptop 7 on ARM64. Absolutely no regrets,
| it's so much better. They really need to focus on quality
| control.
| lateforwork wrote:
| The problem with Surface laptops is fractional scaling of its
| displays. Scaling is set to 150% which causes display artifacts
| which some people don't notice, but others are distracted by.
| If you are a UI developer you want 200% scaling. 150% and 300%
| have display artifacts.
| trympet wrote:
| > If you are a UI developer you want 200% scaling
|
| Isn't it good to test your UI on different scale factors? I
| run several non-uniform scale factors concurrently for that
| exact reason.
| api wrote:
| Radical idea many won't like, but if I were CEO of Dell I'd
| consider it: buy Framework.
|
| Then don't ruin it. Put real resources behind it. Think of it as
| almost a reverse merger, not financially but spiritually.
|
| It would make them unique and relevant again.
| thayne wrote:
| I kind of like your idea, except I wouldn't trust Dell not to
| ruin it.
| tux3 wrote:
| I haven't bought a Framework, but I wouldn't wish ill on them
| either.
|
| Spiritually, Dell can only desecrate Framework. Nothing good
| would come out of that, I feel quite certain.
| themafia wrote:
| We need more laptop makers not fewer.
|
| Dell does not have a "spirit." Nor do they need one to survive.
| They simply need to be competitive and once again create
| desirable products.
|
| The fact that we have more competition is part of the reason
| you're seeing this admission in the first place.
| tcbawo wrote:
| I have a Framework laptop. It was expensive for the specs, but
| I really appreciate the philosophy of openness. I have replaced
| both the keyboard and battery, which was easy and painless. At
| least for Dell, I don't think Framework's target market is a
| fit for acquisition like Alienware's was. Although, Dell is big
| enough that they could probably build a competing brand
| themselves. It would be great for consumers if they did.
| lateforwork wrote:
| It is so hard to find Windows laptops with working keyboards,
| trackpads, displays and speakers!
|
| My Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 laptop has working keyboard and display but
| speaker has driver issues (one speaker turns off after a while
| until I reboot), and the right-clicking on the trackpad does not
| work in some places.
|
| Surface laptops have good keyboard and trackpad but the display
| uses 150% scaling, and that has artifacts (such as 1px lines map
| to 1.5 device pixels, but use 1 device pixel, so are out of
| proportion).
|
| The older Dell XPS line was reasonable. It had 200% scaling
| display, normal keyboard and good trackpad, but the new version
| has weird keyboard and trackpad.
|
| Windows PCs are made by multiple manufacturers which in theory
| should have produced great choice and quality, instead they all
| suck. Mac laptops are made by a single company, so no choice, and
| yet it is excellent.
| macbem wrote:
| I had an XPS 9560 / 9570 or something like that. Top of the line
| spec, mind you.
|
| It had a Killer WLAN network card that would frequently
| disconnect from wifi on any OS - so much that I had to switch it
| out to a different one. The speakers blew up within the first
| year and the cooling system had to be replaced too - thankfully
| warranty covered that.
|
| I bought the XPS only because I couldn't justify the cost of a
| Macbook Pro back then (easily 30% more expensive and the XPS was
| already a stretch), but I regretted that since the first day I've
| had it. Bulky, unpleasant to use, frequent hardware issues. Never
| again.
| bri3d wrote:
| While we're doing anecdotes, I don't actually hate my 2025 Dell
| 16 Premium at all, and it looks like they fixed most of my
| quibbles with the new XPS 16.
|
| Figuring out which laptop to get was horrible because of their
| completely inexplicable branding, which I'm glad to see them roll
| back, but the computer is fine. I'm not sure I can agree with all
| of the "Dell computers are bad/dying" arguments.
|
| I think they went through a huge quality slump from ~2020-2023,
| as did most things, but so far my experience has been that
| they're quite good now. I haven't had any standby issues (or
| issues of any kind, really) using Windows. Windows 11 is Windows
| 11 but Tahoe is also Tahoe so that's a net medium. A little bit
| of Group Policy tweaking to remove the junkware and a little
| wince when hit with new-Notepad aside, it's good enough. I also
| tried running Linux on it and everything was straightforward
| except for the webcam (most modern Intel laptops use a new Intel
| thing where the CPU has the ISP on it and the camera is attached
| over CSI, and the kernel support is quite bleeding-edge) and the
| usual Nvidia graphics switching and arcane Linux power management
| problems, but I really got it for Windows anyway.
|
| My only beefs are the terrible virtual function bar (this was
| stupid the first time vendors tried it, and trying it again in
| 2025 is a really incredible choice, I'm glad they backed down on
| this ludicrous idea) and that the OLED model only comes in
| touchscreen form and the digitizer is ever-so-slightly visible.
| Otherwise I like it as well as my M2 MacBook Pro; the screen is
| square and notchless, the performance-to-dollar ratio was far
| superior, and the physical build quality is quite good. The
| "infinity" touchpad that's not really infinite is a stupid
| gimmick on paper but overall I don't notice it at all - it works
| just as well as any non-Apple touchpad I've used, which is to say
| about 85% as well as an Apple one.
| didntknowyou wrote:
| loved my xps but the built quality is BS. mine fell apart after a
| year (even with light use), and was pretty much dumped for parts
| when i upgraded.
|
| my macbook pro on the other hand is still going after 10 years,
| and even tho i upgraded i kept it as it was too solid to throw
| away.
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