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Comment by PretzelPirate | Hacker News Reader

Not that I have any opinion on whether you get a MBP or not, but have you tried the Dell XPS line: https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell-XP...

Obvious it doesn't run OSX. I run Linux on mine and it works great.

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I gave the XPS 15" a serious consideration. Wasn't gonna wait for the Apple event and buy one a month earlier. Then I read a lot of horror stories. Couldn't be sure about reliability.

Doesn't really offer too much over the MBP I guess? It was faster as month earlier but the new ones should be on par. If my main OS was Linux it could be the best choice.

I wonder if my concerns about reliability is bogus. Gotta check a little more about reviews.

I own the new xps 15.

Best laptop I have seen yet. No complaints. Great screen, color calibration, cpu, size, weight, good keyboard when on the lap (could be better on a desk), smooth trackpad.

Battery lasts about 4 hours of programming work, 6 or so browsing.

What horror stories have you heard?

Mostly about poor external display connectivity, poor trackpad accuracy and annoying coil whine. I saw 2-3 people mention the trackpad as a con and that was actually enough for me to keep waiting for Apple's event.

Maybe those were isolated incidents. Also there are a lot of XPS models, gotta check for a specific one I guess.

Strange feedback about the trackpad, I actually think this is the best I've ever used on a Windows laptop.

FWIW, I've read a lot about the 'coil whine' too, but neither of my XPS laptops have that problem. Not sure what to make of it.

The trackpad is pretty good for a windows laptop, maybe the best aside from the Surface Book, but still not as good as a MBP. It also has problems registering two finger right click. I had some driver issues on my XPS15 that led to dispay flicker, and also Windows is braindead when it comes to external display management, even though OSX isn't perfect either. I had no coil whine. It's not bad, but when you're coming from a MBP, the XPS15 still needs refinement. I will admit that I might just be used to all of OSX's little quirks and issues, and that the new ones seem more painful on the XPS15 just because they're new. But I don't know, I have Win10 on my desktop and it's fast and I love it, but on a laptop it's pretty annoying. I just feel more expressive on a OSX laptop. I can't get over switching from cmd-stuff with my thumb to ctrl-stuff with my pinky.

There used to be issues with external monitor flicker in the xps 15 but they were solved some time ago, the only issues I know of that remain (and they drive me crazy) is connecting external displays through a usb-c dock (such as the dell TB15) - but at least in my case it's not so bad.

Trackpad is excellent - responsive and smooth. two finger scroll, pinch to zoom and just normal delay and sensitivity is great. Not sure what more one needs (I don't use 3 or 4 fingers really).

Never had coil whine.

Only? My 2013 rMBP lasts a solid 8-9 while browsing.

Yep, Battery life is a big disadvantage.

I rarely go 3 hours without charging anyway, so this wasn't a problem for me.

The 1920x1080 version is supposed to have better battery life.

I've got the XPS 15, and it is the best laptop I've ever owned. I actually opted for the lower resolution screen because it is matte, and you get more battery life.

Windows 10 is actually pretty great, it gets out of your way for the most part. Linux runs perfectly as well. The hardware is flawless, great GPU (Nvidia), nice keyboard, and probably the best touchpad I've ever used on a Windows laptop.

I also own the XPS 13. It's great in all the same way, too, I just found that I prefer the larger screen.

That laptop is beastly. It's served me extremely well. The super thin bezels (infinity display is the term, I think) make it that much more of a productivity machine.

The stories online about coil whine and inconsistent battery life between units scared me away. The last Dell I had also had bad coil whine--I'm not putting up with that in a laptop that costs almost as much as an MBP.

I've been using a Dell XPS 15 as my daily work machine for the last few months and I can say I've had all of those problems. The machine has really loud coil whine even after contacting Dell and having them replace the motherboard and other various internal components (I think they practically replaced the entire laptop at this point). The trackpad is definitely not great and I used an external mouse to do any serious work. I had the touchscreen variant and while the resolution was great I never once used the touchscreen. Overall it feels like a product owner at Dell wanted to match the MacBook Pro's specs but forgot to think about how all the parts fit together. For example, both laptops have backlit keyboards, but only the MacBook Pro can automatically adjust the backlight to ambient light (if the Dell can do this, I've never seen it work).

I have an XPS 15 9550 with the 1080 display. Its fine.

Honestly for me nothing compares to the experience of a Mac trackpad in macOS (gestures, tracking, palm rejection, etc). I got it a year ago and had to wait months for Linux support of the Skylake CPU to get mainlined. Battery life is much worse under Linux than Windows neither of which compare to macOS and the default Windows 10 install is garbage using Software raid even if you only have one drive.

The Windows 10 drivers and bios updates also took months to resolve. When I first received it it had loud fan noises when charging and buggy suspend and resume. Also I had intermittent blue screens until I did a fresh reinstall without the raid setup.

Sure its cheaper (I got mine for $1600) and some people may find the hardware equal to the MacBook (I wouldn't say so but it's a matter of taste I guess?) But, in no way does the set it and forget mentality apply.

Of course if you are thinking about running Linux as your daily this may not be a big factor for you to begin with.

Edit: I wonder if the people who have had good experiences with it have never owned a modern MacBook. I see some comments who match my experience directly for instance the comment that mentions no automatic brightness/keyboard backlight controls. Something you don't even think about until you try to switch away from the Mac.

I have an XPS 13 "developer edition" (comes with Ubuntu installed).

It's mostly good, but 1) doesn't have an ethernet port and 2) only one of the USB ports delivers enough power to connect a USB ethernet adapter thing.

Keyboard's a bit rubbish, but then laptop keyboards just are.

I run Windows 10 on my XPS 15, hooked up to a 42" 4K TV for a monitor using HDMI - it works great except for a couple of Windows programs that don't scale up correctly. I run the 42" TV at 200% because I don't want to squint all day.

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