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Comment by eertami | Hacker News Reader

I too have an M1 MBP and XPS 13. I pretty much always use the XPS. Side by side, there is no noticeable difference in speed for my everyday work. The MBP is more efficient for sure, but I get 8+ hours of battery from the XPS which is good enough - and I can run Linux without jumping through hoops.

Edit: Missed the 'z', sorry, possibly explains different experiences.

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I had to jump through a few hoops to get Linux working right on my XPS 15, and it was actually a major reason I switched to a MacBook. The backlight didn't work with the original kernel released with Debian Bullseye. That got fixed with the next release of Bullseye, but I still only got something like, 4 hours of battery life? I'm almost certain it wasn't properly switching between integrated graphics and the Nvidia GPU, but there are only so many hours in the day to set this stuff up.

I really liked my XPS when I got it, but I'm pretty jaded about Linux support for laptops ever being good enough to compete with something like Apple. And at the end of the day I care a lot more about having a high quality Unix based OS than whether or not that OS is libre (sorry to say).

8 hours is amazingly good for an XPS13 in my experience.

My XP13 9370 running Fedora lasts maybe 2 hours at a push. I'm actually considering moving back to a 14" MacBook Pro because of the battery life.

Rumours of an imminent M2 upgrade are about the only thing stopping me now.

Same boat as you, waiting for the second generation, I don't event want to jump to the apple ecosystem but the battery life + performance at that price range makes it a almost a non-brainer for me

I got the 14" Max when they first came out and it's an absolutely fantastic laptop. I love it. The Max battery life is quite a bit worse than the regular M1, if thats your main concern go with the non-Max.

Mine is the ultrabook, the XPS 13z 2n1. It throttles nonstop, I've even gone so far to rip it open and attempted to re-paste everything inside of it. Unfortunately the ultrabook CPU can't be de-lidded and pasted without breaking things, I was actually the first person on /r/dell to rip this laptop open..

The XPS 13 is a much larger device (better cooling). The 13z ruined me ever buying another Dell. I really wanted to love that laptop and NOT buy a $3k macbook. I really want the 2n1 feature.

My wife has one of those things for work. She had to downclock the CPU in order to prevent it from running the fans at full speed for her workflows. After that, it was OK, slow, but at least no longer too loud to have a conversation next to it.

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