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Comment by jitl | Hacker News Reader

Did you look at Dell's line of XPS ultrabooks? I don't own one myself, but the ultra narrow bezels and industrial design look quite nice.

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I looked at the 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Skylake variant of the XPS 13. Amazing looking machine, fits my filter criteria of "has service manual available to mortals" except for one problem - Dell won't sell me one, and neither will Microsoft (Signature Edition). They only seem to be available in the US and even if I was willing to spend the nearly $4000AUD to import one they won't ship to a non-US address.

Several of the best Dell laptops are sold here in Australia with a considerable markup, even allowing for exchange rate. I tried to buy an XPS variant which was considered a 'workstation' for Australian Dell and so had an exorbitant markup which I'm not willing to pay.

Hopefully things have improved now.

If you find the right discount code or sales person (over the phone) you can get the price down. Many employers also have deals with Dell that give you 10-15 percent off.

My issue is that the variant isn't available at all.

You're dodging a bullet. (See my response to op)

That's OK, I hate the Force trackpad on the newer Macbooks, too. (and it looks like using the Synaptics driver or Windows 10 1522+ helps with your issue)

The synaptics driver on Linux is atrocious...

Amazon has global shipping that might deliver from US to your door. Not all products on their site are included.

http://www.amazon.com/International-Shipping-Direct/b?node=2...

I got my XPS 15 from two weeks ago from JB HiFi on Elizabeth street (Melbourne), and $1000 cheaper that what you've been quoted ($2999). It's an awesome machine and everyone in the office is envious - to the point that we'll probably get more soon.

At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.

Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"

If you would have gotten the Latitude 14 7000 instead of the XPS, then you get the Intel wireless + BT out of the box which always seems to just work. It also has an option for an insane 10-hour battery; the default is like 6.

Unfortunately Dell never puts the Latitude line front and center on the website, so you have to know to look for them.

XPS is a high-end consumer line. Latitude is an entry-level business line (the consumer equivalent is Inspiron).

Latitude isn't entry-level, it's just the business line. Yes, they have the high end Precision workstation line, but Latitude models typically are built as good as or better than XPS models.

Nope. Latitude is the entry-level business line, then there's Optiplex, with Precison workstations on top.

There's also Vostro, which is the small/home office line.

I wasn't making a comment on build quality, just on Dell's branding and pricing.

The Vostro is their entry-level business line... Optiplex and Precision are desktop brands only. Latitude ~= Optiplex for laptops :)

> The Vostro is their entry-level business line...

The soho bit was what Jeff Clarke (1) told me, and he runs Dell's PC business. Yes, I have it on tape ;-)

> Optiplex and Precision are desktop brands only

There are Precision desktops and laptops....

(1) http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/vn/bios/jeffrey-clarke

(2) http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/workstations

Dell's website is even worse. I can't just navigate to buy laptop, I have to decide upfront if it's "for work" or "for home". Why does it matter? Will picking one eliminate options? Once I choose, I'm presented with 6 lines - Latitude, Vostro, Inspiron, Precision, XPS, and Chromebook. What's the difference? I guess I have to go read the marketing description for all of them. Who has time for this?

Posting this from an XPS 13. You're right - they look quite nice, and the performance is really there for an ultrabook. Dell has a developer edition that comes with Ubuntu on it out of the box if that's more your style, but Windows 10 is actually not too bad either.

The Precision M3800 is also a great 15" laptop for running Linux (but you can't trust them not to screw up the bundled Ubuntu distro, and need to write some systemd wifi-restart scripts).

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