Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

I've been given this laptop at work, I use it with Ubuntu.

It's an amazing machine. Perfect under every aspect. Way better than the XPS13.

It's really, really remarkable. It's thin yet it has ALL the ports you might wish for in a modern laptop, 2xUSB type A, USB-c/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Ethernet, regular power plug, audio jack, sim card, micro-sd.

I'm glad it only has the intel integrated video card so I don't have to deal with proprietary drivers. The only downside is that the fingerprint reader isn't recognized and doesn't seem to be supported under gnu/linux.

Otherwise it would be 100% supported.

Wifi, bluetooth and camera all work out of the box. There's an IR camera, but I haven't tested it.

Had it had the trackpoint, I would have declared the TinkPad definitively dead and would have switched my personal laptop to this exact dell model (I currently use a ThinkPad T440 for personal stuff).

Mine came with a 4c/8t i7, 16 gb ram and a 512gb nvme disk.

It's really, really a remarkable small but capable machine.

It sounds to me like you just described the t480s, I'm having a hard time imagining why I would choose the Dell over the Thinkpad. How is the screen on the dell? The T480s is still a killer daily driver. Is the Dell as serviceable as a thinkpad? Easy disassembly?

> Is the Dell as serviceable as a thinkpad? Easy disassembly?

You can check it for yourself, every Dell model has the full repair instructions posted somewhere on the Dell site (go to the Support page, select the model, and open the manuals tab). For instance, https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/latitude-13-7390-laptop_owne... is the one for the Dell Latitude 7390. I always check these guides before buying a laptop, to make sure I'm not getting something like non-replaceable RAM.

The Dell doesn't have that obnoxious Thinkpad logo.

Haha I have this exact same thought, but it feels so petty!

in fairness, the dell logo is quite visible and centered on dell latitude laptops too.

Talking about Killer, that is the worst Wi-Fi adapter I have ever used, surprisingly used in Dell XPS.

Why was it so bad?

Constant disconnects and failure to connect to the same network again, usually after sleep. Luckily I have two networks (2.4GHz & 5GHz) so I switch between the two.

I also suspect that the Killer adapter was the source of some bluescreens I got, usually after sleep. After some driver updates it has disappeared.

Now owned by Intel: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15809/intel-acquires-rivet-ne...

I've got two T480s (a personal one and a work issued one). I've been really happy with linux on these machines. My previous machine was an XPS 13. The XPS had nicer specs but I've been happier with the T480s. Specifically, the T480s has a better keyboard, no coil whine and more expansion options.

It seems like the T480s is more similar to the Latitude line than the XPS line.

I have one of them for work and I like it in general. Nice screen. Quite fast. Having the function key in the bottom left gets me (I use control+[ as my vim escape key) is slightly annoying but nothing to do there.

There are two issues that seem like there should be a fix for but I can't find:

* Having a left and right side of the trackpad. I would prefer to disable that and just use two fingers to right-click anywhere on the track pad.

* Cursor doesn't disappear when typing. I'm some apps it does and in others it doesn't. I would prefer it do it all the time.

I think you can swap the fn and ctrl key in the BIOS under sth like Config -> Keyboard/Mouse -> Fn and Ctrl Key swap. While I don't have the exact model, I think this has been possible for all ThinkPads for some time.

Yes! That's something I really appreciate about ThinkPads.

The trackpad criticism is fair. I switched to using tap-to-click on trackpads a long time ago (because of how bad linux handled MacBook trackpads) so thats not something that I particularly notice.

My biggest complaint is the poor quality of the speakers.

I don't understand how anyone can support Lenovo after the spyware incident.

Perhaps ignorance - link?

“Alert (TA15-051A)- Lenovo Superfish Adware Vulnerable to HTTPS Spoofing”:

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA15-051A

If I recall correctly, this is the (one of) HN threads from the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072424

Is there any reason to believe the current line of Lenovo laptops shouldn’t be trusted?

I mean, an more or less than any other brand or manufacturer?

Why would you ever trust a company that did that in the first place?

Why would you ever trust Hardware and or proprietary Soft/Firmware.

I mean, if we're never trusting anyone who ever did anything wrong, we might as well give up now.

I'm presuming either the people who transgressed in that scenario have learned, or they're no longer in a position to make those decisions, or there's more oversight etc etc etc, and / or that the community is more vigilant.

Often because there is little practical choice. For example, Dell seems to have done the same type of thing after the Superfish incident:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/superfish-20-now-dell-...

Personally, I try to avoid Dell because they set up their laptops such that the display doesn't work if the backup battery is dead, a move that seems entirely designed to make customers think that something more serious is wrong. Relatedly, they make the battery hard to reach (or at least made in two previous models I've seen).

The trick is finding companies that are minimally decent.

Oh gosh yuck, I didn't know about this. At least, the cert seems to be installed at OS level (https://duo.com/assets/pdf/Dude,_You_Got_Dell_d.pdf) instead of BIOS (like on Lenovo) - but now I'm as wary of Dell as I am of Lenovo =/

Well Lenovo is based in China, so suffers from the exact same security issues as Huawei, HikVision, Zoom and other arms of the government of China's intelligence services who's goal is to siphon off all commercially valuable information and pass it on to private companies like Huawei . And as mentioned, Lenovo have already been caught bundling spyware.

There's no need to install overt spyware once caught the first time: It's easy to hide a backdoor in bundleware or a driver (whether proprietary or open source) to say, allow a well crafted network packet to pwn your machine while maintaining plausible deniability that it wasn't inserted on purpose. Like it or not you need to trust your vendors.

I take my chances with a US owned company, because even with a free press and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, the US has not been caught doing mass scale theft of commercial information to give to private companies with the goal of saving them R&D costs to be internationally competitive.

Zoom is an American company.

and apple is an irish company, and the cruiselines are barbados companies. it's crazy there's someone who doesn't know zoom is developed in and by chinese in china, yet here we are..

https://technode.com/2020/05/15/zoom-suspends-chinese-indivi...

>US based

Zoom is a US owned company.

I’ll agree that is a valid concern, if your threat-model includes sensitive / secret data and state-level actor.

Anybody who works at a company which produces goods or services and uses communication networks is a target.

Even an Excel spreadsheet showing the financial forecasts of a 10 person company is very sensitive information. It can be used to craft compelling buyout offers.

If the conversation between the CEO and the CFO of a 10 person company are discussing a Chinese buyout offer and are using a communications platform owned by China (whether a Motorola smartphone, a Huawei network router, or Zoom) the government of China has shown it is very interested the conversation is taking place, very interested in the contents of the conversation, and is willing to give the contents of its state espionage to its private companies to better compete.

I’m not going to deny that is a concern.

Same reason I now trust Dell even though the did the same.

Besides, the Thinkpad line was never affected.

It's much easier to unscrew and take the back off the Latitudes than the Thinkpads and their hidden plastic clips that you risk breaking. For some reason, even recent Thinkpads are way over-valued on EBay, this is not the case for Latitudes which you can pick up cheap from ex-corporate deployments. The 7390 also has a WWAN slot and you can use any $30 card, not a specific one on the Lenovo whitelist. The battery is also bigger, lasts 10-15 hours dependent on radios/screen brightness.

I am a recent Thinkpad to Latitude convert, the Dells are just better, less cost, better hardware, maybe less Chinese malware.

Lenovo screens are generally pretty terrible. For example, the T480s has an average screen brightness of 302 cd/m^2 and a miserable contrast ratio of 864:1. In comparison the dell 7390 has an average brightness of 315 cd/m^2 and a contrast ratio of 1316:1. Double the contrast makes a very noticeable improvement in how good the screen looks.

Mostly, yes.

The Latitude 7390 is a bit smaller than the T480s (13 vs 14 inches).

If the latitude 7390 had the trackpoint, i would prefer that to a thinkpad.

The 7490 (14'') model has trackpoint.

I have both a Thinkpad and a Dell. I prefer the Dell hands down. The Thinkpad has multiple compatibility issues on linux where things occasionally just stop working. I have never had similar trouble with a Dell laptop. Everything just works. Always.

FWIW, my old Dell XPS had a much better monitor and trackpad than my current Thinkpad, and was very easy to open to change the battery. Unfortunately, it also was necessary to change the battery because it swell up :( It's just my anecdata, and the comparison is really bogus since I'm not even using a regular T4xx (just an E495/Ryzen budget Thinkpad I picked up in retail because my XPS was dying), but I personally think still the Dell has a better keyboard as well. The Thinkpad is a solid notebook that is much bulkier and thus has better airflow, and runs Linux OOTB a little bit better than the Dell (and Dell currently doesn't have Ryzen notebooks I believe), but given the choice, overall I'd clearly prefer Dell.

My work laptop is a 7490, and it's great. Dell really blew it out of the water with this model.

Also: I appreciate that it comes with a "regular" power plug, but mine also supports charging over USB-C. I think more laptops should give that option.

> Perfect under every aspect.

The display is 1920x1080 and 167ppi.

4k content is common now, as are vector fonts.

I feel like to be called “perfect” a laptop display should be at least 200ppi, and at least 1500 pixels tall.

Historically “PC” display standards seem to be closer to 2000 than 2020.

A 13" screen is too small for 4K resolution without a dGPU, scaling still kinda sucks for most apps that don't have a lot of support/development.

The 12” Macbook shipped several years ago with integrated Intel GPU (fanless!) and a 12” 2304x1440, 226ppi display. It’s a bit slow, but it is a workable display. I recently got Gentoo running on mine.

The fact that PC graphics software is still stuck in the 90s isn’t a good reason to ship low res displays.

Unfortunately dell doesn't sell this model anymore, they've replaced it with the Latitude 7300 which is basically the same laptop except they removed the eth port for no real reason as the dimensions aren't discernibly different. Kinda frustrating, especially bec it means that if someone wants to logon to the domain for the first time you need to give them an eth adapter.

> regular power plug

What's a 'regular' power plug? I thought these weren't standardised beyond USB-C?

It's the traditional barrel power plug. It might not be standardized outside Dell, but it's standardized within Dell: the same power supply can be used for a long list of Dell laptop models (there are two power supply capacities, 65W and 90W; the list of compatible models for the 90W power supply I found at Dell's site has nearly 250 compatible laptop models).

Dell now seems to use 2 types of barrel connectors, the older ones are 7.4mm and the newer ones are 4.5mm, usually for the thinner (e.g. XPS, Precision 55xx) laptops. Fortunately, you can get 4.5mm-to-7.4mm converter dongles and velcro them to the older power cords. As a side note, Dell power supplies also come in flavors of 130W, 180W and 230W. The 230W power brick is a monster.

My 7390 is compatible with the power adapter from a circa 2008 Vostro 14! Threw that laptop away a long time ago but still have the power adapter. And because of this compatibility, generic or replacement Dell power adapters are cheap on EBay. The same is also true for replacement batteries.

Does anyone prefer a barrel plug over USB-C?

I've owned many laptops, and the barrel plug on every one got loose over time. Sometimes slight, and power continued; but other times it was enough to require delicate jiggling to keep the power flowing; once or twice an accident was catastrophic, the plug and even the surrounding frame was damaged.

It's why I won't buy a Dell laptop, now that the other brands offer USB-C.

You can draw more power on some laptops than usbc can offer

The Latitude 7390 has a thunderbolt port. I power the laptop through the usb-c/thunderbolt port when I am in the office via the thunderbolt docking station.

Your argument is invalid.

you won't buy the dell because other brands offer only low wattage usb-c, while dells also have fast-charge ports that go up to 230w. oof. i don't even want to argue with that logic. thank you sir for existing.

The Precisions can power from either the barrel plug or USB-C, I just plug in a C connector in the office and it's got power, ethernet and monitors. Tasty.

> I'm glad it only has the intel integrated video card so I don't have to deal with proprietary drivers.

I'm not sure if there is a model with an AMD GPU, if there was I'd go with that.

I don't know.

But I can tell that intel cpu + intel graphics are a dream for gnu+linux compatibility.

better than the xps13 dev aka ubuntu edition?

Hah yeah, it’s probably any thinkpad.

The X1 carbon is such a better built machine that there isn’t even a comparison. The XPS13 looks good but feels cheap, also good luck getting service from dell if anything breaks.

One thing I can't find in any other laptop other than XPS 13 and X1 Carbon is the smooth glass touchpad. I almost never use mouse with my XPS 13 and it became a habit. But unfortunately I haven't seen any other laptops having glass touchpads other than XPS 13 and X1 Carbon.

Well and a MacBook of course.

Good luck upgrading your X1 Ram ;)

yes. more ports, removable disk and ram. bigger battery. better screen. pretty much the same weight.

I have the XPS 13 9360 which I believe was released around the same time as the notebook mentioned in the article.

Mine has i5-8250u, 8GB RAM, 1TB Intel 660p NVMe, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6/BT 5.0 card, 1080P matte display, 2xUSB 3.0 Type-A ports, 1xUSB-C/TB3 port, SD card slot, and a Headphone jack. I don't believe the RAM can be upgraded but the storage and the wireless card definitely can as mine originally came with a 128GB M.2 SSD and a shit Killer Wi-Fi card.

eh, that's the point: the xps 13 costs more and gives you less.

for the same money you could have bought a latitude that you could upgrade if you need to.

The 7xxx latitude line def costs more than the xps line. At least that's been my exp browsing the site. but the value is worth it, you get a more serviceable machine that comes with a better std warranty.

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