I would encourage people to consider buying business laptops. In my experience many developers don't even consider business laptops and only buy consumer devices.
Business laptops have the following advantages over consumer laptops:
- they're much more reliable
- better support
- a lot fewer problems with drivers and other incompatibilities
- they are designed for work, which means you will have fewer problems with things like virtualization
- generally speaking, the keyboard and the track-pad will be better
And the good thing is that some of the disadvantages of business laptops like size and bulkiness have also disappeared. You can now find business ultra-books that look good and work well.
I've never had any other notebook as a "business" one. I only bough used ones, as they are pretty expensive new, but sometimes you get one still in warranty. And that's the best thing there is about business laptops. Your laptop broke? Next day there's UPS guy picking it up, and the day after you have it repaired/changed. No need to deal with a classic warranty, taking it anywhere, etc...
Oh, and the ease of maintenance. To open it, you get one screw on Dell Latitude, maybe two on Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad. 10+ on acers/asuses and whatnot. Not to mention you can't even open some of those. And with the NBD warranty comes that they will just send you parts you request and can replace yourself, without taking the notebook from you.
The build quality is also somewhere else. I would never a buy a "consumer" laptop, nor I would recommend anyone to buy them. I'm convinced they are intentionally designed like crap.
I owned a thinkpad and I was not impressed with its repairability. It was a T61. You can get at the RAM and HD easily enough, but the rest is not made to come apart easily. Lots of taped bits and subtly different fasteners: I think I counted about 65 screws of 8 or so sizes when I disassembled it to replace the motherboard.
All of the thinkpads from that T61 on have seemed like filmsy crap. They look sturdy, but the "metal hinges" are just covers over regular hinges, and there are lots of unsupported plastic bits that are squishy. Try pushing on the bezel at the bottom of your screen. Squish. I also hated the bit of wavy plastic with rattly buttons they put above the keyboard, which just screamed low-quality. My friend's 240 had the same issues. It seems like the thinkpad line is the same as everything else now, they just happen to have chunky industrial styling.
I'm not sure if it's still the case, but a few years ago a good reason to buy from Dell's business line was that they came with a completely unmodified copy of Windows - no crapware, no "helpful" add-ons, not even a Dell specific desktop background. That was lovely.
The Dell Latitude 13 (7370) is the business version of the XPS 13 [1] [2], although for some strange reason Dell decided to swap the Core i5 and i7 processors in the XPS for Core M5 or M7 CPUs.
If I had to guess, it's because they're betting that for business users buying an ultrabook-style laptop, the battery life you gain with the M-series is more advantageous than the extra processing power.
In two previous jobs I had Latitude notebooks. Both were pretty old at the time I was using them, so the battery was pretty much unusable. Besides that, they were working very well. Reliability-wise, these things are totally worth the price.
I have a T530 at the moment and I'm really happy with it. I bought it with a quite high end config (but not the most possible) ~ 3 years ago and it is still competitive to most new high end laptops; of course it is bulkier and heavier, that's the main drawback. Other than that, the only thing that could be better for me would be the FHD screen, which is not bad but not perfect either - a previous Lenovo with only a lower end HD screen felt paradoxically better on some aspects, like the contrast, even if its colors were also less accurate. And I would not be against extra autonomy, of course, but it is already correct with a big 9 cells battery.
I've started to look at current models to see if I could replace it and for now it seems to be very difficult. Of course they all tend to be smaller and lighter and with more autonomy and a CPU that can be faster, at least for short period of times, but current models also seems to be plagued by either some various quality or design pb (like the XPS 15 or the Surface Book), or have some specs that I don't like (glossy screen, bad keyboard, extremely off-centered touchpad, ...) or even directly disqualify them (RAM < 16G -- I already have 16G on my 3 years old laptop, why would I buy a new one with less RAM?)
I might consider an MBP, despite the glossy screen. It seems to have less quality / design issues than even very high end PCs. And as a bonus the screen ratio is slightly less stupid.
Have you looked at the T460p? Quad-core Skylake, Nvidia GPU, 32 GB RAM, M.2 (unofficial in WWAN slot) + 2.5" drive, FHD IPS display without PWM flickering, 6-cell removable battery.
When the logic board in my current model MBP failed, I had to leave it with them for 6 days. When the graphics card had an issue in my previous MBP died, 4 days.
With a Dell, you can at least choose to pay for NBD repair. UPS guy shows up, it's repaired and back in your hands within 48 hours. And that's if they don't have a service contractor in your area that will come to your home/office.
There are lots of shops that, for a fee, will give you a replacement Mac for the fixing period.
That said, moving my data and preferences and everything to the replacement box (and having to delete them afterwards, so nobody gets into them) is too much work. I'd rather have a spare laptop/desktop myself ready to go when the need arises.
As professional programmers, spending like $2-4K for 2 laptops every 4 years or so isn't that much to ask (which we can also reduce from taxes AND sell afterwards).
Heck, if we owned a taxi, we'd spend far more on its maintenance and operating expenses for the same period, and make far less.
That's one of the reasons I've been recommending Apple computers to friends and family. It's nice having a store nearby they can make an appointment for service.
I used to also recommend Lenovo laptops with their onsite warranty plan, but after so many privacy missteps lately, I've stopped.
Even so, the big problem for me is the lack of ethics at the company. I don't see the privacy of consumers as less valuable than the privacy of corporate users.
No you don't. They will overnight you a box. You pack it up, call for pickup, it then gets overnighted to Apple. They fix it that day then over night it back to you. All on their dime.
I had my iMac serviced last year. I made an appointment online. After waiting 5 mins at the store, they checked me in and did some diagnostics. I was in and out in 15 mins
I'm coming to that conclusion too, at least in locations with easy access to Apple Stores. Moving back to the US so my next laptop will be a Mac; here in Indonesia the third party service centers are a joke (for most repairs they would have to place an order for replacement parts and that would take weeks, people resort to taking their laptop to Singapore and servicing them there).
Well I have the previous generation "Precision" M3800 which is supposed to be the top of the range "serious" line from Dell, and I can vouch for that generation's coil whine too (It's fully loaded including the Nvidia quadro card). That said, I cannot find any fault with the build quality as per this review. Mine is rock solid, nothing squeaks, nothing feels loose. It's rock solid. So other than minor coil whine I am very happy with this (older) machine. The only issue is the perennial problem under Linux with graphics card switching (optimus), and also scaling is terrible under all window managers in Linux, and under Windows, with the built in 4k screen versus the external monitor. Nobody gets this right except Apple.
I have some "coil whine" on my XPS 13 ultrabook only when the LED keyboard background light is on. Just another aspect, every laptop is different - maybe even within the exact same product line (I'm sure they don't use the exact same electronic components throughout).
On the overall thread topic: One reason I don't consider a Mac is that I can't (or don't want to) live without a touch screen any more. Yes it's "glare", but I can live with that more easily than not being able to just point at what I want with a finger, or scroll. I rarely use the touchpad.
The XPS 13 is a compromise: At home I'm equipped with 24 and 32 inch displays on a 16 GB RAM PC with SSD, I wanted something as lightweight as possible to carry around. It's heavy enough already - I'm eagerly awaiting 500 gram 17 inch display foldable mobile computers...
Those are good points but XPS are solid laptops that satisfy almost all of those requirements. It would be helpful if you could point out how XPS 15 are specifically lacking compared to other business laptops.
Have to agree - although I've switched to a Mac for personal development work (and caveat, my dev at work is only building a few reporting tools in Ruby), my Dell Latitude Ultrabook issued by them hands down beats the majority of other machines I've used. Enough performance, strong battery life, decent trackpad and keyboard, and very quiet. Expensive, but will probably be issued to people for years after I've gone.
As I mentioned elsewhere I'd suggest comparing any 'business' (or 'workstation') laptop with an Alienware equivalent. I found that very often you're paying premium prices for CAD certified graphics cards and other drivers, when if you're not doing CAD it's generally wasted money.
This is why I take the "business laptop" thing with a grain of salt. Most "business laptops" these days are just the consumer laptop with a slightly component configuration: Xeon CPU, Quadro GPU, ECC RAM etc. I have a hard time buying that the build quality is particularly different. On the Assembly Line the workers or robots are just grabbing from a different supply bin.
XPS Precision is not a real Precision as it's used to be. It's the same XPS, but with pro graphics. Seems that was an Dell's experiment to name regular consumer laptops Precision and it doesn't seem to be a very successful experiment.
I'm glad people are doing reviews of laptops from developer perspectives.
It amazes me that it's 2016 and none of the windows based laptop makes have come out with anything that approaches the macbook pro. Microsoft seem closest with their surface book line, but that seems beset by driver issues, and Razer might have something with their Blade series, but that doesn't seem to be available in the UK 3 or 4 years on from launch. ASUS also seem close but again beset by a few odd build quality issues.
If I knew anything at all about this kind of thing i'd be tempted to do a kickstarter to fund the development of a quality developer laptop that was windows/*nix based that aped the macbook pro as much as possible.
>It amazes me that it's 2016 and none of the windows based laptop makes have come out with anything that approaches the macbook pro.
The problem I see is that Apple sells a business quality laptop at premium pricing yet people compare them to consumer junk on the Windows side of things. The problem is these models aren't at Best Buy, so a lot consumers don't see them, and if they do they balk at the price because a laptop should be $599, not $1099. You just can't compete with a macbook at $599 or $699.
I find the Thinkpad line in general is really nice. HP and Dell also have a business line of lighter/thinner laptops that compare in quality, but cost just as much.
A lot of it must have to do with patents. I am just addicted to the quality of the MBP touchpad. I don't think I could use another laptop now. Plus the nice-to-haves like the magnetic power plug so you don't have to worry about tripping over your power cord and messing up your motherboard.
>> but the problem is that this laptop can wake up randomly and if it's in your bag it can overheat. And there is no way to tell if it's on.
Deal-breaker, right there. I had a hard enough time with a previous dell/ubuntu combo pulling this trick and roasting itself alive in my bag, and I've no desire to repeat.
Hot summer's day, arrive at a customer meeting. My previously fully charged Dell laptop has been running since I was on the hot and stuffy underground whilst shoved in to its laptop bag. It's now a nuclear ball of fire, with just 15% battery left and how it didn't suffer a complete meltdown is a strong testament to the quality of the hardware.
This happened a bunch of times. Add to this random BSODs, keyboards that would break far too easily, the sheer weight of the thing and more inconveniences I'm surprised I stuck with it for as long as I did.
5 years ago I switched to Apple MacBooks and will never go back.
Just another sample-of-1 statistics: XPS 13 9333 owner here, with Windows 10, never had that issue. I've seen it on Windows 7 on my Dell XPS 8500 desktop PC though - and I had gone through all events and devices and disabled any settings that might wake up the system for any reason.
Yoga 2 pro as well. Was common with Ubuntu 15, now it is rare with Ubuntu 16. I used to think this was a straight up Linux / Ubuntu bug, but seeing the anecdotes here for the other major OSs', and for other laptops, makes me think that all laptops have one crazy bad chip that controls power and cooling. Is that the BIOS' job?
Had this happen on a HP. It drained the battery to the point it would no longer charge. And when I went to HP about this support said the battery was a consumable and not covered under warranty.
i think the main reason most of the windows laptops wakeup while in sleep mode is they have wake on network activity checked in the power settings. i had a toshiba and an msi that did that but stopped when i changed the settings
Laptops in this price range should not have coil whine, electric buzzing sounds or screen flicker. I would've returned it immediately.
I have to use a very expensive HP Z-Book for work with a power adapter that has a loud coil whine. I've fixed it by not using the power adapter and only plugging it in when I'm away for lunch or on the toilet.
My employer previously supplied me with a Lenovo 440s, with a low res (1440x900) display, a dual core i5, and an inability to power the 4K monitor I had at home above 30hz, that I throughly despised. When I moved over to a new team I got given my current rMBP, which I enjoy considerably more.
I think that moving forwards an Apple laptop is going to be a hard requirement before I work for an organisation. It's not that other companies don't make good laptops, it's that Apple doesn't make bad laptops, so I know if the company has a policy of buying them I'm guaranteed to get something good, instead of the POS Lenovo that the IT department bought.
You could just require your employers to spend as much on a ThinkPad as they'd spend on your Macbook and get a much better machine, imo. I'd work with a ThinkPad for the keyboard alone.
I think this is a perfect advertisement for a MacBook (Pro). When I buy a computer (for business) I want it to just work and continue to work for years and years. Not having to deal with things like coil whine and screen flicker are extremely good reasons to purchase an Apple product. I've been a Mac user for years and I didn't even know what coil whine was and had to look it up. Sure, Apple products have their flaws, but they generally don't force you to deal with electronic buzzing sounds coming from the graphics drivers and the computer frying itself on the way to work.
Building a computer to play with and learn from is great. But when you have to get work done, it pays to get the best. Spending time fooling around with problems that shouldn't be there in the first place is a time & money waste.
> Building a computer to play with and learn from is great. But when you have to get work done, it pays to get the best.
Right, but "the best" is completely subjective. I've wasted more time trying to get OS X and Macs to do what I want than I've ever spent building my own desktop machines or getting Windows to do what I want.
That's the reason why the vast majority of businesses don't run OS X too. It's not the best for them. Not even close.
If I had to use OS X daily, it would be death by a thousand cuts for me since it's missing so many features. The things that it's missing are really stupid and simple too, like the ability to just disable a monitor without having to unplug it. I can't spend all day hunting down third party solutions to every problem in OS X. There are too many. Nevermind the fact that the software that many businesses run wouldn't work on a Mac unless you virtualized it.
Using Mac hardware without OS X turns that nice hardware into crap, so that's exactly what Mac hardware is worth to me. I need to buy it to test stuff for iOS though, so I always buy refurbished desktop Macs since Apple won't let you upgrade their laptops.
IMO all laptops suck anyway. I don't get why people buy them. All my work is done at a nice fat PC desktop with 32 GB of RAM, a fast CPU and multiple SSDs which was thrown together from commodity parts...for cheap...which is easily upgradeable...and which also smokes the refurb Mac Pro (Mid-2012) that I also bought.
(When I go to a meeting I bring my Dell XPS or my Surface Pro, both of which are over 5 years old and still working very reliably with no problems - meanwhile my old 2008 MBP will not be able to run macOS sierra next year.)
This is the sort of thing that makes me afraid to buy non-Apple products. I know what coil whine is--my last Dell laptop (an XPS 15 from be P4 days) had a bad case of it too. It's also frustrating because PC reviewers never talk about things like that. They'll spend pages on benchmarks and not say a word about the trackpad or fan noise.
Which is a shame because the XPS 15 looks neat--way smaller footprint than the rMBP 15".
If you take all the laptops with those annoyances from being possible candidates for a new laptop; What is a good non-apple laptop? I always was anti-Apple, still do, but I just can't fault the Macbook Air 2012, which for the time had reasonable resolution/memory/cpu for the price. But more importantly, it had none of the annoyances.
I'm going replace my current Dell Latitude 14 inch laptop and yes it's a hard to find something decent on the market to run Linux even if price is not the issue. So far my top candidate is Acer TravelMate P648, I mentioned it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12290096 I first need to find a chance to try it in action.
It's easy to explain why MacBooks work well and have a decent battery life. Because Apple has a very limited and predefined line of machines and in that situation it's not a problem to polish OS to work well with a limited line of devices.
For what it's worth, I got an MBP from work and it's power supply has an annoying coil whine/hum. I've looked online and it is common enough I haven't bothered to ask for a replacement. Quality issues like that exist among all manufacturers. Likewise with the software side. OSX still has bugs and I still waste time working around behaviors like in Windows or Linux.
There are definitely benefits to it but there are drawbacks too.
Sounds like a good idea. Some OEMs should follow suit. Sometimes they try with their upper echelon hardware and they always fail somehow. Look at this XPS15 with all its annoyances. I still don't understand why they keep making consumer crap and tarnish their own brand, while they could take that design time of crappy stuff towards the upper echelon stuff, to make them truly great.
Oh, I've been in the business for a long time and have used many, many different types of machines. Everything from (very) cheap eMachines to IBM Thinkpad to Dell laptops; I've used them all and all I can think about is how lacking they are. I'm a professional programmer, I make my living with these things, they have to work correctly, all the time. My father was a mechanic and he had to purchase a lot of his own tools. Did he get the $3 screwdriver from Harbor Freight? No, he purchased the $45 one from SnapOn, and it was worth every, single, penny. I feel the same way about my tools. The chair I'm sitting in is a 10 year old Aeron and it works just as well as the day it was made. Sure it costs more than the $90 "office" chair at Staples, but I sit in it all day every day and it doesn't make my back hurt. It was worth every, single, penny.
If the price is so important, I have a €1800 Fujitsu laptop from work and could name no issue. It even works perfectly with Linux. Consumer devices are not necessarily bad but often the price increase from that to a business tool is worth it, as you say. I just find the Apple praise weird when people often never used an equivalent non-Apple device.
I have used several PCs and laptop PCs, and 99% have been crap compared to something like an Air or MBPr.
And while there are some production runs of Macs with faults (including the coil whine mentioned, it was an issue back a few years ago for some runs), if you are unlucky to chance on one, you can trade it in (or sell it -- Macs always keep a high resale price).
The problems of the PC laptops, on the other hand, are by design, and not fixable that easily.
Mostly the physical design (and the culture and market decisions behind it). The cheap plastic mentioned in the article that attracts thumbprints. The lack of attention to things like coil whine. The screen flicker, fan noise, random wake ups, etc.
I'm well aware. I'm also aware that the nice models are both few and far between and (the few that exist) cost the same (or more) than a Mac laptop.
Here's what Linus (or a certain OS fame) wrote about the situation:
"I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light".
That was back 3 years ago. Since then he also adopted the Chromebook, but the general complaint still stands.
I have a 9530 model of the XPS 15 from late 2013. It's the model immediately previous to this one (I think). It also has the coil whine problem, but only when the charger is plugged in and the battery is at 100%. It also developed a small screen glitch after about a year - but I can't rule out damage by myself or someone in my house as it was stepped on, but full weight wasn't put on it.
The touchpad/clickpad/whatever drivers have been a challenge since day one. I've learned how to customize the Windows registry settings to make it mostly cooperate with what I want and they were mostly fixed by the time Windows 10 was released.
I've actually thought the device itself has been a pretty good performer, battery life is not awful but not great, and mechanically it's pretty durable. The screen is pretty amazing (I have the first slightly less than 4k IGZO panel which I run at 1920x1080).
My biggest complaint is the lack of dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys. But this is a problem on pretty much every laptop made with chicklet style keyboard and it is SO STUPID.
I was considering the new XPS 15 since mine is now three years old and I have the screen glitch, but the fact that they haven't fixed the coil whine problem shows me they just don't care. (That said I've read that not everyone reports this problem.)
I've generally had good luck with the Dell Latitudes though screen quality can be a big variable from model to model and year to year. I've also looked hard at their Precision line from time to time.
I do nearly all my programming on a desktop with a real keyboard. My biggest gripe using a laptop for programming is the lack of the home/end/pgup/pgdn keys and numpad on most models.
I bought this laptop too and spent literally probably 12+ hours making the track pad work how I wanted but never got it there. Wound up returning it. Will be buying my first MacBook instead pretty soon.
I've also had very good experience with Latitudes (and Linux in them), so that's what I asked for again when it was time to renew the work laptop. Sadly the nice Latitude 7000 series doesn't have an i7 quad core option, so I went for the bit sturdier E5470 with i7-6820HQ.
I own the Dell XPS 15 FHD and have experienced same issues. However, mostly I do not notice them. Have not experienced the random wakeups.
Another issue is the crappy broadcom wifi card that shipped with it. Wifi connection would just randomly disappear and only return after multiple retry/reboot combinations. Replaced it with an intel card and haven't had any problems since.
I do like the laptop but do not believe these problems should exist on a laptop with such a high pricetag.
You'd think they could build a laptop wifi card that didn't totally suck, but I've been through a half-dozen different laptops, work and personal, over the years, and they are all terrible.
Which use broadcom exclusively. Wanted to try linux on my macbook once. All was well, except that dreaded Broadcom Wifi. Apparently broadcom gives big middle finger when it comes to truly open source drivers. C'mon broadcom.. it's 2016.
As stupid as it may sound, I really dislike laptops with 16:9 screens. That is why, together with other small things such as build quality, that I cannot seem to find anything better than Macbooks to fit my taste..
It's the most impressive laptop I've ever used. Great 3:2 screen, excellent build quality, a real touchscreen (i.e., multitouch, pen support with pressure, etc), MacBook-tier trackpad. Convertible tablet mode is far more useful than I anticipated and is nice for showing off. The new Linux subsystem is still a bit buggy but is very impressive (I was able to compile and run emacs with a GUI as if I was running Ubuntu natively, for example).
Although the Surface Book is still plagued by Windows and firmware/drivers issues, despite being insanely expensive, and it is also quite small, so its nice 3:2 screen is only as tall as a 15.6 16:9 screen, and obviously narrower -- I prefer Apple 15.4" 16:10 approach; it would probably be perfect if Apple made a slightly smaller version or MS a slightly bigger. The SB CPU is limited to dual core, too. Also the antireflet, quite essential on a glossy screen, seems inferior to what Apple uses.
I used a top-end Surface Pro as a dev machine for 6 months running Ubuntu, and it was great. Three screens, fast, powerful, portable, plus multiple vms. Only really hit the limits when compiling big c libraries or using the Android toolchain. If I couldn't use my current MBPr, I would happily use another.
I have the i5 256GB/8GB model with discrete Nvidia GPU in the base (very handy for photography / light gaming). Haven't had issues with RAM although I rarely need to run VMs, and I have a SD adapter in the base to expand the storage for TV and films and so on.
The top model has an i7 and 512GB/16GB (same dGPU). It was about EUR1000 more if I recall correctly, not worth it to me.
Not sure about hardware refresh. I've seen rumours around that they might hold off for Intel's Kaby Lake parts which would mean 2017, but who knows.
Chromebook Pixel - 3:2 aspect ratio. Best screen because of the resolution and aspect ratio. The Pixel was built for developers, hence the choice of screen. Also comes with the best keyboard and trackpad going, not to mention the best speakers (2013 version) and a rock solid build quality that makes those Apple things feel cheap. Oh, the screen is touchscreen too which helps if you are developing for things with touch screens. Price? Allegedly expensive but who cares if it actually lasts a few years.
ChromeOS is obviously unsuitable for most developers. So then, does Google guarantee that I will have no problems using my favourite Linux distro (or at least Ubuntu), including trackpad drivers, good battery life, functioning sleep mode, wireless and other usual Linux issues on not officially supported hardware?
Also, do you consider a 64GB SSD to be sufficient for a developer?
Well I don't use a Pixel but I upgraded my SSD on HP Chromebook 14 to use as my personal development laptop some years ago - still using it.
Driver support wise it takes a year plus for all the hardware to get supported in the mainline Linux kernel is what I have found. What works is to dump the distro kernel and use the latest stable mainline.
And this is why people are wrong when they say Apple Macbooks are overpriced and you can get the equivalent or better laptop for a cheaper price.
Yes, you can get something with the exact same hardware specs for cheaper, but when you also consider size, weight, battery life, high-quality trackpad and other components, there are very few products that compare - and those that do are at the same or higher price level.
1) Constant problems with Broadcom wireles. Supposedly they employ someone to work on Linux drivers but I never heard back from them.
2) As has been mentioned HiDpi support in Linux is not good, I ended up using 1920x1080 anyways.
3) Defects. I did not have coil buzz, but accidentally shaking the laptop too hard (e.g. in one's bag, or tapping the bottom) would cause screen/gpu to glitch and require a hard restart.
4) Dual video support on Linux is also quite poor. In practice running Bumblebee gave only marginal improvements.
Compared to a MacBook Pro: build quality is worse, it is heavier, battery is worse, wifi problems as mentioned. I would stay away from any Dell products in the future.
I've gone through 2 generations of XPS laptops. The build quality has just never been there. The casing is flimsy. The battery life degrades significantly after 6 months. The charger cord falls out of the charger port. They also seem to overheat and are generally noisy. However, with all of this being said I keep coming back to XPS because, until recently, they were the best looking windows laptops which still perform quit well. I know Lenovos are great but they look like bricks. My current XPS 15 is literally falling apart after 3 years of use and I'm slowly bringing myself to buy a MBP.
You may want to look into Alienware - they tend to have a way better build quality than the Dell machines, and you can get better bang for your buck than typical 'workstation' builds for laptops. I'm not sure how well their smaller form factors are, as I've always gone big - but I've used various Dell and Lenovo 'workstation' laptops and I will be sticking with Alienware for the foreseeable future.
Edit: Also, my use case tends to be database development, data analysis, and virtualization.
I do not disagree regarding the XPS. However I've had similar experiences with MBP. I've owned two now, and both had the charger fray/fall apart and the hinges for the display become weak/flimsy. I've experienced every issue you mention with the MBP.
Thinkpads look like a brick, but that is because they are. My X220 has lasted 6-7 years and barely shows it. I've spilled coffee on it, dropped it, and it just keeps on going fine.
One of the things I look for is build quality. I picked up an HP Spectre x360[1]. It plays rough with other laptops. I had my plastic-cased Lenovo in the same bag - it came out with battle wounds.
In general I have found that laptops are generally 'fast enough' for the dev I'm doing and creature comforts such as battery life, keyboard, screen, and case quality are far more important.
I bought a thin gaming laptop last year (in my case a razer blade, but there are several similar laptops from other manufacturers available now) and honestly it's one of the best development laptops I've had (compared to the Thinkpads and MBPs I've had from work). Plenty of CPU and memory, and a nice screen, and I find that the keyboards on gaming laptops are more comfortable than a lot of other laptops these days).
Agreed. For my use I don't need particularly light laptop, or long battery life so I choose gaming laptops too. Simply, because they are packed with the most powerful hardware.
I am using a previous generation model (Precision M3800) and am quite happy with it so far. I get ~4 hours of battery on Linux. This includes a lot of browsing, watching a few videos. I also have the ability to get a higher capacity battery (from 60Whr to 90Whr) in the future. It is also quite easy to take apart and upgrade any internals you want.
I use mine with linux (Ubuntu Mate + xmonad) and so far I like it (as a disclaimer, the company bought it, not me personally).
What I did so far:
- updated all the firmware to the latest (thunderbolt has a separate firmware)
- bumblebee automatically disables the nvidia gpu on startup (i don't need the extra power or power draw)
I run in 1080p on the 4k screen, which is kind of sad, but the hidpi support just isn't there yet. Gnome3+ might have better support but can't replace the WM for xmonad in those variants.
I used to have the first XPS13 model with linux support officially from dell and this laptop is just as good and even better due to better hardware. Slightly larger and heavier but not an issue for me.
Palm detection support is ass and might have to look into it more as it's driving me crazy. There is also some firmware bug where the screen won't start after sleep.
With proper hidpi support and remaining firmware fixes from dell this will be a nice laptop even with linux.
That's my main issue with Linux, hardware support is always a couple of years behind. Although at some point it catches up and probably surpasses Windows (I can't stand using my touchpad with the official ASUS drivers), this limbo period with less than stellar support is a PITA.
It sucks that you have to carry around the extra weight of an NVidia GPU that's never used though.
If you are considering the XPS 15, you might also look at the E7470. I have been using one of these as my primary machine for several months now and have been quite impressed. The high-DPI display is fantastic, it's built like a tank, and I've had no compatibility issues whatsoever after a firmware upgrade. Moreover, it runs at a reasonable temperature and I can get 7 hours out of the battery if careful (`killall -STOP firefox` is a must, unfortunately).
The only minor annoyance was the lack of driver support for the Alps touchpad hardware. Thankfully, after poking and prodding enough people I was able to get specifications and implement driver support. I do wish that Dell, et al would be more proactive in pushing their vendors to merge driver support but oh well.
I felt horrible when I bought a macbook air 4 years ago. "What have i done, I sold out, I should've bought a lenovo and put linux on it -- which all the hackers do as well."
FFWD to today, I have a quiet laptop. Doesn't flicker on white background when dimmed 30%. Doesn't squeak anywhere. Doesn't wake up randomly. The keyboard is fine. Is easy to open. Fans are not spinning when charging. No coil whine, this shit still happens? Only thing in four years that broke was the battery. Bought a new one for €40.
Thanks for sharing the experience though, seems like I still have to stick to Apple for a while for my mobile computing. Unfortunately it comes with this horrible window manager and dumbed down desktop. That said, the cons list of the XPS15 is more than enough reason to cope with OSX.
Well yes, and failed because of one thing. The irritating broadcom wifi.
I tried it on a Windows laptop as well recently. Not a great time with secure boot with bios/UEFI which do not have support for different OSs as a usecase
I've considered buying a Yoga 710, its borderline Mac with a screen small but big enough for my Web dev / GUI work. Marketed as a premium ultrabook - It had all the necessary specs, very light, backlit keyboard, great screen, gpu and battery life.
But it failed at future-proofing, no USB Type C connector. At the price range £750-800 I would expect a premium laptop to have one. Seeing cheaper sub £500 laptops are equip with them.
I plug into Ethernet and need to expand at work, but this is where it stopped for me.
I've had two past terrible experiences with Dell so I beg myself not to make the same mistake when I see something irresistible or too good to be true. Still searching for good dev machine. I may wait a while until Lenovo announces their new line up for 7th Gen Intel but that could be nearer to 2017.
Been in the market looking for a good replacement to my old thinkpad, but I don't know if people have noticed, most laptops today cannot be upgraded for RAM and in some cases even the HDD/SSD and batteries are soldered on to the board. Add to it, keyboards seem to come down a few notches in terms of quality.
So, earlier my laptops have typically been with me for nearly 6 years each, these days, with the constant upgrades it feels like Iam buying a mobile phone that is sealed shut and demands an upgrade every 2 years. I've now stopped updating OSes as a result of the slowdowns I see everytime I upgrade the OS.
For the love of everything that is good, if you buy this laptop, go for the 4k screen. It's beautiful.
It's a big laptop, you'll use it on a desk, so the battery life is fine.
I use my XPS 9550 for work and carry around a MBP13 for email / reading / surfing.
The biggest problem with the 9550 by far is the keyboard. The MBP keyboard is amazing in comparison. However it is a laptop keyboard, I have yet to encounter a good one (old Thinkpads come the closest). Just buy a decent mechanical keyboard and plug it in.
True, the old Core 2 Duo era Thinkpad keyboards were not bad. Still not a patch on a good quality full sized keyboard, mind. Updated my comment for clarity
The Dell XPS laptops have a reputation for being good to use with Linux, but I read somewhere else that Linux doesn't handle 4K very well yet. Apparently, the UI elements look tiny because they don't scale. Any chance you've tried it, and can comment?
I can confirm. Linux on HiDPI still has a lot of scaling issues that OSX and Windows does not - OSX is far superior here when it comes to handling their "retina" display.
On my 1440p 23" desktop, things seem to render just fine. On my 11" lenovo helix and on my 15" macbook pro (while running linux), it's definitely noticeable.
I mainly use either Gnome or MATE desktop on Ubuntu. MATE seems to handle scaling the desktop elements better than straight Gnome. But it's still a bit off.
The worst part is browsing the web. Firefox has relatively decent HiDPI support these days, but Chrome on Linux is just terrible. A site like Facebook on Chrome shows the newsfeed as this 3" wide centered column, and you have massive white space on the left and right of it. But reboot into Windows and they make that column much wider and easier to read. On imgur on chrome/linux, I find most of the images are "too tall". If I'm watching an animated gif, I find that one edge is vertically outside of my viewport.
Your only fixes is to change the scaling. As you do this, you start to lose the advantages of the higher resolution:
Ultimately, things are still usable, video playback is fantastic, but most of the applications really need to improve their Ux on high resolution screens under Linux.
No problem with scaling (just set it from the display menu), but I gave up trying to get it to work consistently with a second monitor at a different scale. In the end it was much easier just to turn the laptop screen off when using a second monitor.
Battery life with Linux isn't great and there were flicker problems, especially with Chrome. Updating the kernel and setting various Chrome flags helped considerably.
EDIT: I should mention I'm using Unity on Ubuntu 16.04
i'm quite happy with the xps 13 developer edition and debian testing.
hidpi is not handled well in some (or many) applications, but the window manager (or linux as a kernel) has no problem with it. (and i still have very good eyes)
the usb-c dell adapter works perfectly (hdmi, vga, ethernet), i get up to 8 hours of battery, it's light, solid, quite and fast...
just a bit hot when charging.
the only big issue that i have still to solve is, getting a second monitor to work (mirroring somehow works)... but this is what you get when you don't use a destkop environment and have just a minimal install... (the ubuntu that comes pre-installed has no problems with the external monitor)
Not all laptop keyboards suck. I have Asus laptop and the keyboard is great, much better than mechanical for me. Light on the fingers with proper mechanics behind tapping keys. And I am developer, so I type a lot...
I've used a lot of laptops and have still to find one which either types as nicely as a good mechanical keyboard or is as comfortable as the Microsoft Ergonomic (which sadly has rubbish typing action).
Of course this kind of thing is very personal, it depends on a lot of factors.
The 9550 keyboard just feels cheap and wobbly. The action is otherwise actually pretty pleasing. It wants to be the MBP keyboard but just isn't quite there.
Do people really notice coil whine that much? When I built my PC last year with a 970 GTX every review I read mentioned the horrible coil whine. I don't notice it at all. I also helped build my roommates computer with the same 970 GTX and I didn't notice the coil whine at all on that one either. It's possible that both those cards were "lucky" but it seems like literally every single 970 GTX review mentioned coil whine and I have yet to notice it.
It'd be a deal breaker to me. It's one thing to have it on a desktop machine that sits under your desk and probably has a fan going at all times. Very different to have it in a laptop that you're using a few feet from your head and where the fan doesn't run unless under load. I had a Dell with coil whine, and if I was using it in the library or at home that was all I could hear.
Is it possible to dope the coil with something to damp out the whining? I have an old Lenovo that has this, and the noise seems to vary depending on what's onscreen. It can be very annoying.
Yeah, I've done this myself when building switching power supplies. I guess there's no reason not to tray silicone or nail varnish on noise graphics cards.
This laptop model have sometimes problems with sleep/wake but your mileage may vary, widely. I had to return mine because it wouldn't wake from deep sleep on battery, sometimes even after trying a hard reset. No problem with the second unit I got.
I confirm there's sometimes a slight squeak when I press the left of the spacebar but it's hardly a dealbreaker.
So overall I'm very happy with it: gorgeous 4k screen, reasonably powerful dedicated GPU, firm keyboard with enough key travel.
I'm really happy with my Dell XPS 13 (9350). I'm running arch linux on it with herbstluftwm as my window manager. There are some problems with waking up my screen sometimes (I still haven't figured out why, though) sometimes but most of the time everything works fine and I would definitely buy it again. I replaced the broadcom wifi chip with a Intel one (I'd have to look up which chip I ended up using). That was definitely worth it.
I got Dell XPS 13 a year and a half ago that had similar problems. Also a problem with the audio jack - buzzing noise whenever you plugged in headphones. I mainly use Ubuntu, but the problems were on Windows, too. I returned it and got a Lenovo Yoga Thinkpad 14 which has been great, except I broke the headphone jack on it somehow (not laptop's fault).
I know this Dell XPS laptops... their black surface on and around the keyboard and mousepad will look very greasy over time. Maybe it's a problem on every black surface laptop. On first sight macs don't look like this (although they can be greasy too... but you don't see it immediately).
have a look on Lenovo X260 and below. I've read in some articles that some Kernel developers are using this kind of laptop series for their work. Best battery life I've seen on a Linux laptop so far (over 8h, X220 experience).
Sigh... another big hope of mine. I have a Carbon X1 (3rd gen), thankfully a company laptop.
I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move over the XPS line.
We got the HD display with touch screen. Although it's a decent display, there's substantial glare. In fact, scrub the useless touch and get the matte, which also boosts the brightness a little bit. Not to mention, the laptop is so light that attempting to touch the display will just flip the laptop. This is my first "not antiglade" display since the CRT era, and I regret it a lot.
After several months of usage, the display developed several uneven backlighting issues (some spots are quite bright), and I noticed the black is not as black anymore compared to an unused one (we have 24 of them with several to spare). We moved from the HP EliteBook series (which also has their issues), and while the contrast is much better than any elitebook I've used, we never had uneven backlighting with HP.
The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the awful placement of the Home/End keys. No squeaking and decent feedback. But the small keys such as the arrow keys work very poorly. The rubber dome behind them is so small that if you don't press the key with some little extra force it will "pop" but not activate. In particular, this is especially bad for the up arrow, which of the 24 laptops we have was horrifying. If you use bash, remember the up arrow is "recall history". The problem is that the key is slightly slated (for "ergonomics"), causing the dome to be pressed unevenly. I fixed mine by some careful placement of scotch, but it's still not the same accuracy of other keys.
The trackpad is awful for some reason. HP was much better here. No amount of tweaking would allow me to perform fine movements.
Battery life is the same on both linux and windows (around 7 hours new for random workload), so no complaints here. Power management works. But, the HP EliteBook G4 we where using before has a super-easy replaceable battery, and we changed many over the years. The G4 is around 6 hours of battery runtime. Not much difference honestly. Not to mention the G4 is very easily serviceable.
On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The "old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the image especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the point that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with intel, and unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.
Overall, the display is still a bit better than whan HP offers, but the rest is worse. The laptop is a bit thinner and lighter, but honestly there's not much difference here. The appreciated the serviceability of the HP line as components started to fail. Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not much you can swap without replacing the entire laptop.
> I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move over the XPS line.
I've had much worse luck (see my post elsewhere in this thread) when trying an XPS, in the end I ended up getting a new Thinkpad (I don't think they are great but they definitely seem to be more consistent).
> The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the awful placement of the Home/End keys.
I found that the keyboards actually got worse from gen1 to gen3 (the plastic feels cheaper, more flimsy) -- I'm really unclear why companies make $1500-2000 laptops and than save $10-15 on the keyboards ( Apple is the only company that doesn't seem to fuck up like this ). I will say I do greatly prefer the thinkpad trackpad buttons to tapping and that's something that always bothered me on a MBP as well.
> Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not much you can swap without replacing the entire laptop.
The T460S is better at this (you can swap the Ram / SSD) - on the minus side I think the screen quality is slightly worse.
> On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The "old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the image especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the point that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with intel, and unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.
Which kernel are you running? I'm running 4.6.4 and I think it should be fixed in 4.6.X.
I'm also running 4.6.4 (arch). This particular issue was incredibly bad when we got the first models (tearing at the mouse position) and progressively improved, but it's still not fixed.
Note that the modesetting drivers also incur in several performance hits compared to the regular xorg-video-intel. For instance, I can see libreoffice dialogs REPAINT, while inkscape works at 1/4 of the refresh speed.
This is not lenovo specific though. Intel drivers typically lag 1-2 years behind current models at the time you can consider them "bug free enough". This was true for any laptop I've been using the last 10 years.
I cannot fathom how broken the skylake driver is right now.
Business laptops have the following advantages over consumer laptops: - they're much more reliable - better support - a lot fewer problems with drivers and other incompatibilities - they are designed for work, which means you will have fewer problems with things like virtualization - generally speaking, the keyboard and the track-pad will be better
And the good thing is that some of the disadvantages of business laptops like size and bulkiness have also disappeared. You can now find business ultra-books that look good and work well.