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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

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You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will work: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la...

And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense so I don't have to immediately drop $250 in dongles just to keep the capabilities I already have.

My problem with a macbook is because you simply can't upgrade anything, you have to prepay for all the disk you want to use for the next 3-4 years. Add them screwing us on magsafe, and I would need $400 plus in extra chargers and dongles (hdmi/dvi/vga so I can connect to whatever random projector / tv I run into), etc. As some snark on twitter said, we should call our new giant kit of cables to make macbooks usable a courage of cables.

I just can't believe these people have the giant balls to roll out a $3k+ laptop that you can't connect an iphone 7 or iphone 7 headphones to without purchasing $50 in adapters.

I'm sitting here hoping linux gets usable fast enough that I'll have something to transition to. I need a unix-ish box that was working power management/audio/the ability to plug into whatever random projector or tv I encounter and assume it will work.

edit: just to be clear, my complaint really isn't about pricing of macbooks. I mean, cheaper is better, but I'm comfortable spending $3k on a laptop. I just need a laptop that has 32g or more of ram, and that connects to my peripherals without hundreds of dollars of dongles that I have to carry around. That laptop better last 3-4 years though. If Dell can profitably sell the above for $2400, apple should be able to very profitably sell the same specs for $3200.

But what's the battery life like on the Dell?

Edit: Googled for "Dell XPS 15 9550 battery life". Results do not look good.

Seems clear the 16GB limit is an Intel limitation. In order to achieve 32GB (like in the Dell XPS 15) they had to use DDR4, which is not as energy efficient as LPDDR3. Skylake only supports LPDDR3 at a max of 16GB. Kaby Lake only supports LPDDR4 in their ultra-low power chips. Comparable products (Surface Book, Dell XPS 13) also max out at 16GB.

In order to get 32GB of ram in the ultrabook category we're going to have to wait until Intel adds LPDDR4 support to their mobile-class processors (Cannonlake? Icelake?).

Eh, I don't really care, though I could see how this could be a problem for some people. But I rarely do more than 4 hours of work away from a wall.

And the macbook pro battery life tests are a joke -- 10 hours as claimed, as long as you don't use your computer. Under actual use beyond light web browsing, it's 4-5 hours. Eg watch a youtube video or run intellij or run even one core at 100%.

There is a law that says you cannot put battery more than defined amount while traveling in flights. It is obvious that if laptop has high end specs then it will lose power quickly. Maybe this is the reason Apple did not upgrade their hardware performance wise (just a speculation).

Totally in agreement. I'll give Linux another try on my rMBP to see if the HiDPI issues have been resolved yet. A quick search shows that MySQL Workbench still has issues:

https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=48867

If that's the only software I use that has problems I can probably deal with that though.

The annoying part with Linux on rMBP's for me isn't the display - it's the fact that my palm rests on the trackpad and causes all kinds of issues that macOS is immune to.

Does Linux not support palm detection on MBP touchpads, like it does on regular Synaptics touchpads?

Does your rMBP come with a discrete GPU?

Yes,

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB

>And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense

Just to clarify for the readers: it's got two regular USB 3.0 ports and a USB-C port, so it's got current compatibility and future proofing.

Ironically enough, if you have a Dell XPS 15 and an Android phone and you travel a lot, you should get an Apple Macbook Pro charger, because said charger would allow you to charge both items.

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