New XPS 13 Shows the Price of Going Too Thin | Hacker News Reader

New XPS 13 Shows the Price of Going Too Thin

tomshardware.com

75 pointsijidak121 comments

Every time a discussion of Dell laptops is happening I will mention that I own one and it is broken because I "closed the lid" and you can't do that with Dell laptops. That is their quality. They did not recall. In my country you generally can ask a company if they want to honour the warranty for such a gross defect especially when the warranty is very recently expired and for companies that aren't cheap and nasty they usually do. You can't even contact Dell unless you have a current warranty. I can't recommend avoid their laptops strongly enough. Overpriced cheap, nasty and shoddy equipment that Dell does NOT stand behind.

You want a part to repair it yourself? Cost you more than a whole laptop. Dell. Just a horrendous customer experience all around. IBM, Lenove, Asus, Apple all vastly better in my experience.

It really is incredible how far Dell has come. Their flagship consumer XPS line seems to be plagued with issues at every release. A relative of mine has an XPS 15 9550 which has had several issues, the worst of which was the battery swelling and beginning to bend the frame.

This apparently was a widespread issue and replacement batteries were never available, and the model was never recalled despite this incredibly dangerous fault. This relative of mine still uses that same computer to this day, with the battery removed, so it's functionally a very sleek desktop, but still plagued with random issues for which I have to be on constant tech support.

I really liked the XPS 15 9560 until I realised its design and support were trash. It features:

- a system that shut down when I gamed for two minutes, it lasted for months and the support closed my ticket with "this laptop is not meant for gaming, it's your fault" (someone on reddit later found that downgrading a driver fixed it),

- a reasonably powerful GTX 1050 that you can't use because the thermals are awful and 10 minutes of gaming turn the system into a slideshow,

- a good Core i7 that gets throttled at 800MHz for no reason (I was stuck with a potato laptop for years before I figured out what was happening and fixed it with CPU-Z),

- a TPM that randomly failed to unlock my BitLocker drive, the motherboard was replaced twice with no effect, a BIOS update a year later seems to have fixed it,

- a power button that randomly stops working for a minute or two.

I hope they made an effort on the latest ones. That XPS truly is the worst disaster I've ever used.

Crazy! Circa 2005-2008 I had a Latitude that was nigh indestructible. Somewhat infamously I hadn’t zipped my bag all the way on campus and it fell out onto the sidewalk. Aside from a few cosmetic scratches it worked perfectly fine. Logged probably 1000 hours easily on World of Warcraft on that thing - there was even somewhat disgustingly a section where the left palm of my hand had worn off all of the paint due to sitting there for so many hours.

From talking to people in more enterprise IT roles, the Latitudes are what you buy if you want Dell stuff that works properly.

I have an XPS 15 which I bought 3 years ago and it's one of the worst PCs I've ever owned. This is actually my third XPS - the first two were really awesome, but I'm massively disappointed in this latest one.

I've started buying Latitudes at work and they definitely seem like a big improvement but still checking them out.

I can't vouch for latitude either. Not sure if they improved but my 4 year old model overheats and instead of throttling just turns off. Very frustrating when you are trying to get serious work done. Build is good though and feels tough.

I have a 9550 and I remember the battery recall.

They called me, explained the issue, and offered to either pay for shipping them my laptop or to ship me a battery with instructions on how to swap it it out myself, warranty preserved.

Maybe it's because I purchased it from their site and they had my contact details.

I was hoping this would eliminate the coil whine and random ticking I had since day one which they claimed was to be expected. Sadly, I still live with it.

The soft touch coating on the palm rest has now also started to degrade and go tacky.

I never knew it did get recalled, interesting. I guess it might be because I'm from a small country in Europe, recall programs rarely seem to reach too far outside the US and Canada unfortunately.

Well, my Mac Studio is only 2 months old now; the 3.5mm jack stopped working, and if you plug in the power plug "the wrong way" it trips my RCD.

My previous MacBook wasn't perfect either .

RCDs and breakers age. Please have an electrician look at your installation.

The circuit is fine. I've taken it into the office and a friends house and it can be reliably reproduced. The jack on the back of the device seems to be the issue, where there's a brief arc when the connection is made.

> Well, my Mac Studio is only 2 months old now; the 3.5mm jack stopped working, and if you plug in the power plug "the wrong way" it trips my RCD.

Defects happen. Your experience with other vendors may be deterring you from simply calling Apple or visiting an Apple Store for a fix or replacement, but I recommend you do that ASAP.

What happened when you closed the lid?

Presumably, it doesn't sleep or wakes up inside a backpack. I had a 2016 XPS13 with that issue and I keep reading it still exists after all those years.

That's not a bug, it's a feature called "Modern Standby" pushed by Microsoft where laptops essentially run 100% of the time, unless you turn them off.

It's incredibly stupid and contra-productive. It's supposed to provide "instant on" experience while it makes the exact opposite. Because I can't safely put it into a backpack without fear of it exploding or catching fire, I'm forced to go through lengthy turn off/on/hibernate procedure everytime I carry the laptop anywhere.

> It's supposed to provide "instant on" experience

Is that actually the case? I can't think of any of my laptops, PC or Mac, that would have me wait around for them to wake up, including those running Linux. It basically takes me more time to open the lid and get my hands on the keyboard than it takes the laptop to wake up.

I always thought they were trying to copy Apple's "power nap", for checking email and whatnot while asleep. I always found this stupid on macOS, even though by default it only does it if it's plugged-in, so likely to have network access. Whereas my current PC laptop doesn't even have S3 sleep anymore, regardless of plug-in state.

I know about hibernation, but it has quite a bunch of RAM, and despite the fast SSD, it takes longer to go to sleep and wake up than my older, slower ones with S3 did.

> Is that actually the case? > I always thought they were trying to copy Apple's "power nap", for checking email and whatnot while asleep.

I think it's both, or that the latter is part of the former - "instant on" includes things like e-mail being already received etc., essentially a smartphone experience.

But it's not a smartphone, obviously, I've never got burned and had battery swelled on my smartphone simply because I dared to put it into my pocket. Laptops, on the other hand, are not supposed to be mobile devices anymore and should stay stationary, at least according to Microsoft.

I'm not entirely sure. Apparently it doesn't sleep properly and gets hot to the point where it fries the motherboard when you put it in a bag. I've found out that's a common fault, known to Dell since when a story hit the front page here. The bile in me comes from the fact that I don't usually actually do that so it didn't happen still in warranty. On the occasion I did it was because I wasn't home, I was sitting beside an intensive care bed. Dell sure as hell don't warn you that "This is not actually a laptop and you can't treat it like one" But they do know it, apparently. But screw the customers is their mantra, it would seem.

What I do know for sure is that since closing the lid and placing it in a bag it doesn't boot. Doesn't get to bios. Many hours trying to work out led patterns, which inconsistently identify different faults are fruitless and if you replace the motherboard you are gambling that it will work after you incur the expense and it's more expensive than buying a new laptop with ram and disk and a power supply, and if it's not Dell you can close the lid because it will actually be a laptop. There is no way that Dell actually stand behind what they sell you and charge premium prices for.

Utter garbage. Whoever heard of a laptop that you cannot close the lid and put in your bag? Well I have because I found it out after paying for Dell's overpriced, yet cheap and nasty e-waste. There's plenty of people who share that experience with me so you can say that Dell have thoroughly earned this reputation for garbage product and worse service.

So yeah, I'm not encouraging anyone to buy Dell. Why would I unless I hated people?

edit: Added the following links

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/FAQ-Modern-Standby/td-p/7...

Crazy. So it doesn't reliably sleep. That's super lame.

Dunno. Could be. I'd be a lot more sure of saying simply that Dell laptops are not fit for purpose and Dell dodge their responsibilities over selling you something that can't operate as generally expected also failing to tell you clearly and obviously in ways you can't miss before you buy it. Of course if they did tell you before you bought it nobody would.

Could be "doesn't reliably sleep" But that sort isn't the real problem even if it is closely related to some technical cause of the original issue that cascades to this total failure that is 100% Dell's responsibility whatever it's initial trigger.

I have the same "doesn't sleep" issue on Windows (works just fine on Linux). What happens is you will sometimes think you get a black screen, but what actually happens is the backlight turns off. If you shine a flashlight at the screen you'll see it's really a Windows crash screen with a qr code, but I could never get it clear enough to scan. Either way, at that point the power management is completely off, so all CPUs are running full speed.

Given that sleep works correctly 100% of the time on Linux, but I'm not sure it's entirely on Dell, but they sure could take more interest.

It is entirely 100% on Dell and nobody else. Dell designed the machine and sold it. They can't blame their suppliers and the components they chose in someone else. They need to change suppliers or engage in some damn quality control with their suppliers so they aren't selling junk. When Samsung fitted bad capacitors in my TV they came to my house and fixed it even though it was out of warranty because they took responsibility for their product. They didn't blame their capacitor suppliers and easy their hands.

Whatever reason Dell feel they have for selling junk they still did it, did it knowingly, continue to do it, and leave their customers holding the e-waste without caring a damn.

That all Dell.

It's all on them. All of it.

This happened to me several times with more than one Dell laptop. The solution I have found is to set the laptop to HIBERNATE when the lid closes, not sleep. I wish I had known this sooner. This has to be a pretty common issue, I am sure a lot of people close their laptop lid, or set their laptop to sleep and then find their laptop to be an overheated mess in their backpack some time later. TLDR; Hibernate your laptop or turn it off if you plan on putting in a backpack.

> I own one and it is broken because I "closed the lid" and you can't do that with Dell laptops.

That is very odd. Can you elaborate?

I remember some issue on dell laptops with windows 10 not hibernating properly and getting cooked inside people's laptop bags.

Maybe that's what they meant with the whole just "closed the lid" scenario.

That's in no way exclusive to Dells on Windows 10. My M1 MBP has failed to fall sleep by closing the lid at least on one occasion ( and i only noticed it because my backpack got noticeably warm).

I gave up on Dell when I exchanged a new laptop because of soundcard issues and they sent me a dented one which turned out to be refurbished even though I'd bought a new one. I did buy one desktop PC after that and it was my last.

If a company doesn't respect their own products and brand I don't trust owning one.

“"We were unable to fit a headphone jack within the chassis, based off the aggressive design and portability goals we chartered for XPS 13," is at least more honest than Apple saying “have courage” and “you’re using it wrong”.

That said I probably only use my xps13’s headphone jack a couple of times a year. If it broke today I would need a usb-c- based alternative but frankly I would probably put it off for months.

edit: the things are like $20 on Amazon.

But there's only two USB-C ports and USB-C hubs don't exist. If you're charging your laptop and using a headphone adapter you're SOL if you need to plug anything else in.

Edit: USB-C only hubs. Everything I've seen is USB-C to USB-A/HDMI/Ethernet/Audio (though that resolves the above problem if the DAC is decent enough) There _are_ Thunderbolt docks (which this XPS 13 supports) which provide USB-C ports but they're pricey.

USB-C hubs do exist, my monitor has one built in. Works fine.

Is it actually Thunderbolt not plain USB-C?

Many displays (like some consumer-oriented LG models) don't use Thunderbolt. Two USB-C lanes are used for DisplayPort Alt-Mode (usually with HBR3 for e.g. 4k@60Hz) and two lanes for some USB3 variant.

> USB-C hubs don't exist

Say what? I have one right here on my desk. You can get them for like $20 on Amazon etc.

Edited my comment. Does it do one USB-C to multiple USB-C ports or is it USB-C to USB-A?

Like this?

https://www.amazon.de/Adapter-MacBook-Ethernet-Dockingstatio...

The second USB-C port on that is PD only.

> USB-C hubs don't exist

What do you mean? A quick search returns several options. Personally I have an all-in-one USB-C to HDMI/SD/USB-A/headphone/etc dock dongle thing, and it covers my needs.

There are a bunch of options for this, some more flexible than others, but options nonetheless.

I meant one USB-C to many USB-C

If it is a thunderbolt USB-C, then they do. I had a thunderbolt 3 dock for my older macbook, and it essentially connected with just one cable to macbook, which provided charging+external display (or two) connection+a few extra USB ports (a couple of which were usb-C)+headphone jack+SD card reader (and maybe a few other things I cannot recall off the top of my head).

Not sure if something like this would work on non Apple hardware: Satechi 4-Port USB-C Hub - https://amzn.eu/d/6a85dgf

I have a Dell XPS 2in1 from 2019 which only has 2 USB-C ports, however, I'm using a thunderbolt dock so I get a USB-C port back and a USB-C display port output on the back, have never tried connecting a device to it to though.

Anker also have some hubs with one USB-C input and one PD.

> Edit: USB-C only hubs. Everything I've seen is USB-C to USB-A/HDMI/Ethernet/Audio (though that resolves the above problem if the DAC is decent enough) There _are_ Thunderbolt docks (which this XPS 13 supports) which provide USB-C ports but they're pricey.

Although they're not USB-C only, I have two hubs that expose a USB-C connector (for data, not just PD). One HP USB-C Dock G5 and some random Chinese thing off Amazon [0]. They're both USB, not thunderbolt.

The HP is absurdly expensive, the second one is ok-ish (cost me €80). But they're both quite big, and the HP is heavy, so wouldn't be great to use at, say, a coffee shop.

They both have sound cards and a 3.5 mm jack. The DAC on the Chinese one isn't as good as the one on my HP laptop, but it's decent, no background noise or anything. Haven't tested the HP.

They're both able to power the computer through the USB-C port.

---

[0] https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B09MTTZ36K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_...

That's ok, all the xps I've had has faulty audio jacks, might as well save the space

> “you’re using it wrong”

When my high-end XPS started shutting down under any kind of load, the Dell support closed my complaint and told me "this laptop is not meant for gaming, it's your fault".

Went to Apple the next time, at least their products usually stay awake while I use them.

But you then said a driver downgrade fixed it. Remind me again of the software fix for the iPhone 4 “holding it wrong” debacle.

The iPhone 4 came out in 2010 and I haven't suffered that kind of debacle since then. The problems I've had with Apple products are minor in comparison to Dell's. When I've contacted Apple's support, they've always been reactive and never tried to tell me the bugs were my fault.

I've never had another company throw my ticket away with as obviously dishonest a reason as "you're not supposed to actually use your graphics card for graphics" and prevent me from following up. The fact that a guy on Reddit was more helpful than the support isn't acceptable.

I assume they don't exist to avoid confusion when you can't plug in 127 displays. Then again USB-C is already a huge mess.

I use my XPS 13's headphone jack daily when I'm working and in meetings. If I had my way I'd disable microphones on every video call participant that wasn't wearing headphones too.

I use headphones daily (at least 3h a day) for meetings mostly but not the headphone jack ;) wireless headsets are very useful.

Not having a replaceable battery is a real problem.

I have a circa 2018 Xps13 9370 that I’ve used regularly for non-work coding it generally still works great. Recently it was only lasting 60 minutes on a charge, but $50 to Amazon got me a new battery and now it’s great.

I don’t really need a new computer and the battery is the one thing that is sure to fail. The CPU and 16G memory are fine for Windows 11 and WSL2 (or Ubuntu).

It’s a waste to build machines that are designed to become trash, especially in todays world where hardware improvement curves have flattened so machines are usable for many years.

> Not having a replaceable battery is a real problem.

It's such a big problem—not only for the consumer, but also for the environment—that it shouldn't be legal.

Who is throwing away perfectly good computers (or phones) instead of just paying to her them repaired?

Honestly, the more and more things I have, the more annoyed I am by this. I just bought a cheapish foldable e-bike, but since it is some Chinese brand, I am pretty sure it will be just trash once I use up most of my batteries cycles. The same thing goes for my battery run drill etc.

Sure, I could open it up and probably replace the cells, but that is not really feasible for most people.

Why would it be the case for your battery-run drill? Even the cheapest most basic battery-run drills that I managed to find at Home Depot had hot-swappable batteries.

I got a slightly-above-the-cheapest Ryu battery drill, and it came with 2 separate batteries and a charger for them (so that i can use one while the other is charging). Swapping the batteries is as easy as holding the eject button, detaching the battery (which is mounted externally to the bottom of the handle), and then sliding in the new battery until it clicks. If one of the batteries died due to used up battery cycles, you can just buy another battery for cheap.

It isn't one of those with the big bulky battery. I bought this at a discounter (Aldi).

*small correction, it was a Ryobi drill, not Ryu.

Cheapish ebikes often have standard batteries that you can buy on ali or some random website. Check what motor and controller you have and you should be able to find battery.

What level of replaceable battery is acceptable? Like you, I have an XPS 9360 and I replaced the battery recently. I had to remove a bunch of screws and pry open the lid to do it. I don't particular mind this. I'd rather have a thinner laptop than some screwdriver-less battery swap mechanism that I'm only going to use every few years.

For me, the battery was replaceable and dealing with a screwdriver and opening spudgers every few years is fine.

To me any amount of non-security screws is fine as long as none of them are covered by a sticker, or worse a rubber pad that is sure to never stick again

Reasonable number of regular screws 4-8 seems fair. If the battery in normal use lasts appropriate time let's say 4-6 hours at minimum. Otherwise yes, it should be toolless and even somewhat swappable in hibernation.

I tried 3 replacement batteries on my XPS13 (2016) before it started charging properly. It straight up refused to charge the first battery (power led flashes amber), stopped charging the second after a few days and required unplug&plug (which screwed up the chassis). I finally found one on Aliexpress that worked.

It was a horrible experience for me as a broke student going through all that trouble in a non-US country, with no way to actually purchase a genuine replacement.

I sort of resent when repairability is clearly being used as a gatekeeping feature. Only the premium model is designed to be servicable.

I had an old Thinkpad X230 Tablet where everything was behind clever individual covers, one screw each and flip open, and the battery just slid off the back.

I got a newer E585, and there's a single-piece back panel that requires removal of 8 captive screws and then pry it apart, and the battery's behind it with a direct tether to the mainboard, rather than any sort of "we thought you might want to carry a spare and swap them without doing major surgery" packaging.

This is a bigger, chunkier, clumsier machine in every way, so don't pull the "design" or "thinness" card on me.

With all the talk about environmental conservation that we do, it's really important to talk about the damage companies are doing to our planet by making unreliable products in hopes of encouraging wasteful consumerism. I have bought dell computers for years, and while they are reliable for the most part, each model I've bought has has serious flaws that make most people dispose of the entire computer after 1-3 years of use. So many companies (especially cell phone makers) now put out models that fail or slow down after 1-3 years and this is creating a horrible amount of waste that contributes heavily to destruction of the environment in production and disposal, water pollution, and many other negative impacts of all of us financially.

Device failure often means lost photos, work, and vital documents, we rarely hear about the stories of this now because it's marked unpopular and downvoted by online algos. It's 2022 and we still don't have failproof hard drives, even though SSDs have been in place for many years now. Planned obsolescence, and product unreliability needs to have more serious consequences for large companies, especially the ones that have R&D units, it's really an ugly lie for modern devices to fail and have flaws as much as they do.

Must be lucky or not aware those replacement batteries are usually trash. It is what annoys me because I like buying old flagship laptops vs. brand new. But now I think I will start buying new laptops to avoid having to buy replacement batteries that probably have fake EEPROM values.

The problem is exacerbated by the insane charge management. By default, once the battery drops to 99% it will start charging. Keeping the battery at this charge level is harmful.

Dell provides a way to configure this, but who does that? By changing the default charge management, the battery life could be usable many years down the road. My 2015 XPS 13 battery still holds > 4 hours because of that.

I wouldn’t want a computer like that.

I owned 4 laptops, got my first one in 2008. For all of them I have upgraded RAM and disks immediately after the purchase. For some of them upgraded SSDs after couple years of use: both speed and cost per GB are quickly improving over time for them.

A soldered SSD is especially bad because broken laptop = lost data. I never broke a laptop but I think that was just my luck. When it will happen, I want to be able to recover data from the computer.

About the 3.5mm audio jack, bluetooth audio is not good enough for music, it simply doesn’t have the bandwidth. Uncompressed 16 bit / 48 kHz stereo exceeds 1.5 mbit/second, while Bluetooth audio has throughput of 300-400 kbit/second and uses some lossy codecs on the air.

> A soldered SSD is especially bad because broken laptop = lost data. I never broke a laptop but I think that was just my luck. When it will happen, I want to be able to recover data from the computer.

Please reconsider your backup strategy if this is the case. If your data is valuable at all you should be able to drop your laptop in a shredder at any moment and not lose anything. 3.2.1. 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 offsite.

The valuable data is backed up properly. And a laptop is usually a secondary computer i.e. there’s not much there to begin with.

But I don’t like to lose any data at all if avoidable, no matter how unimportant that data is. I still keep VHD disk images from these 3 old laptops, thanks to nearly exponential decline of disk costs per TB.

> And a laptop is usually a secondary computer

Definitely not true. For most college students, a laptop is their only computer.

My comment was about my own use cases. As for students, I think repairability is even more important for them.

Sometimes laptops are stolen or destroyed completely like dropped into the sea, for that they need to backup data.

But I think these cases are rare. Displays, hinges, and motherboards fail way more often, IMO. It’s nice to be able to recover data by moving SSD from the broken laptop into a USB3 enclosure, these enclosures are sold for $20-40. Another good option is getting another laptop based on the same chipset, and simply replacing the disk. None of these options are available for laptops with soldered SSDs.

I produce music. Bluetooth is an instant no-go. Yes, at home I use a DAC with two headphone jacks. But on the go, I don’t want to have to carry a USB to headphone converter.

As an XPS 13 and MacBook Air (M1) user. I would say the following taking aside the operating system factors (Linux/Windows vs. macOS):

- The XPS 13 is better and more expensive except because of the battery and performance against the M2?. In the M1 "it is the battery stupid". Nothing compares to the M1 in the battery side.

- The article doesn't talk about the cooling factor, in the older XPSs it has a fan and again the MacBook Air doesn't have one. The XPS 2-1 doesn't have a fan.

- The XPS with a Thunderbolt dock like the TB16 is basically a desktop, with n external monitors while the MacBook Air only supports one.

- Many more things to detail in favor of the XPS 13 (touchscreen, resolution, 32gb of RAM) but for a nomad the MacBook beats it.

- As a last note I should add that the last Ubuntu 22 Wayland freezes when you connect a second external monitor to the XPS: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1407630/os-freezing-with-dua...

Some aspects are multi-dimensional. More RAM can be good, but faster or unified RAM can also be good. Neither model has both. Same goes for the CPU which isn't really comparable by spec but perhaps more by productivity. At that point we get in to the 'well what are you intending to do with the device' territory and we end up with nomadic use vs. desktop use etc.

I do think that the whole power management (be it cooling fans or runtime on battery) as a complete picture can be compared (pretty much the way you described), but it gets murky again if we try to compare operating systems since they all seem to do it differently. When Linux on the M1 turned out to be very fast, some people thought the systems were artificially limited for no reason and linux would then 'unlock' that free speed, but it turned out to simply be bad power management and run at high performance all the time. That can feel great (or, responsive) but at the same time reduce the on-battery time so much that it becomes pointless.

It's tough to make proper comparisons, even when Apple was all-Intel it wasn't easy as even having 'similar SKUs' in terms of silicon doesn't really tell a useful story for the actual user experience.

How is the Windows situation these days? On my Macbook, my uptime is from OS update that needs a restart to OS update that needs to restart, which is usually every few months. I value the always on and ready to go quality on laptop, do you have than on XPS13 with Windows?

Is the screen resolution handled properly now on XPS13? Is everything the right size but crisper on high dpi displays?

Windows works fine, as Windows. Windows has a lot of problems that starts with the product definition. I think the main product manager should be fired... but Windows with WSL is great if you plan to use Linux instead of another virtualization software.

> The XPS 13 is better and more expensive except because of the battery and performance against the M2?. In the M1 "it is the battery stupid". Nothing compares to the M1 in the battery side

It’s better even though it’s more expensive, worse battery life and worse performance or did I parse your sentence incorrectly.

You parse the sentence correctly. There are many more factors that are in favor of the XPS (weight, memory, touch screen, thunderbolt dock extensibility, sd card, external monitors). Performance seems similar in the latest models, eGPU (not supported in Mac).

But battery life (not carrying a power adaptor) is a peace of mind in a long day. Even for more than one day plugging the M1.

I think there is room in the market for repairable and non-repairable laptops, and if someone wants to sell a non-repairable one, I don’t see what the big deal is.

It’s a trade off. I had an Apple MacBook Pro that lasted 7 years, and I have a Lenovo T400s from 2010 that is still chugging along. I never upgraded either of them. All of the extra size and weight to make them repairable was for nothing as far as my usage was concerned.

And for non-tech consumers, the reaction to a 4 or 5 year old laptop breaking down isn’t necessarily going to be “let’s pay a technician $150/hr + parts to fix it,” it’s going to be “let’s buy a new one.”

So while repairability is good, I don’t view it as essentially in every model of laptop.

> And for non-tech consumers, the reaction to a 4 or 5 year old laptop breaking down isn’t necessarily going to be “let’s pay a technician $150/hr + parts to fix it,” it’s going to be “let’s buy a new one.”

And then they can sell it. A repair shop can buy it, fix it up, and sell it on.

Sad to see the XPS 13 starting out ~10 years ago as a "super"-portable (it was the one that introduced the tiny bezels, if anyone remembers), but still proper laptop, then turning into this fashion monster today.

No headphone jack? C'mon, you must be joking.

I don't even dare to ask if there is going to be a "developer" version of this running Linux, because the target market is so different now I cannot imagine it makes any sense. But OK, in the meantime other players like System76 and Tuxedo are getting better and better - it is not such a void anymore in the Linux laptop space that used to be.

My current laptop is an XPS 13 (9310), and I got it specifically because it comes with Ubuntu supported and installed. My work laptops before that were System76 (which is OK, but way too much of a hassle in Europe when something goes wrong).

I guess the next one will be something else again. Damn, I hate it when there isn't just a go-to model I can pick, and I hate comparing laptops and not just having an easy filter for 'works perfectly with Linux'. Ah well, this one won't need replacing for quite a while.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind getting something a little bigger either (15" that is) if it just comes with RJ45 Ethernet, DisplayPort and HDMI, a bunch of USB-A ports, USB-C, and a headphone jack. You know, stuff we actually use. Now I have docking stations at work and at home (hybrid office/work-from-home), which works well enough, but it feels inefficient and cumbersome.

Laptops have reached weights and dimensions that, at least for my personal case, don't offset the downsides - I prefer without any doubt a 1.4kg laptop, with good repairability/performance/usability (including: cooling), than an unrepairable/poorly usable 1kg one. I hope that the Framework will gain popularity.

Request for Ever thinner laptops does seem silly, but weight is quite a different thing - it really does matter IMO.

If you don't hit certain density targets, electronics begin to feel flimsy and poorly produced.

Food for thought: Thinkpad X1 vs Macbook Pro and X1 Nano vs Air. Same sizes but about 70% of the weight and more durable. Yet, people feel that aluminium feels more "premium" than carbon fiber + titanium and magnesium.

From a material sciences standpoint you can argue that people are just "wrong", just like a knife of solid gold would be a very stupid material choice. However, if people want to buy gold, you better offer that.

I really want to like the Framework, and the internal design definitely appealing to me, but the connectivity is just rage-inducing. It's fundamentally a previous-gen macbook pro with 4 USB-C ports (USB4, in this case), but the ports are buried deep in the chassis and you absolutely 100% need dongles to expose them, to the point you literally need a USB-C to USB-C dongle as a spacer!

Sure, but how else would you have done it to make it better? USB-C is the only universal multi-purpose connector that can carry almost any type of high speed digital and analog signal without going to some proprietary connector. It literally was their only option.

I'd have chosen to embrace that rather than hiding the USB ports behind the dongles. That would allow them to reclaim the wasted space, either internally for better expansibility, or externally for a smaller chassis.

Of the issues with the Framework, it’s interchangeable ports are not one.

> There's no technical reason, other than thinness, for the way Dell soldered the RAM down, for instance.

That's a sentiment that's been repeated a lot, and it's not fully true.

One important property that soldered-on RAM has is increased security. There's been a demonstrably practical way to break full-disk encryption with physical access to a turned on or sleeping computer by re-attaching the memory quickly to another computer. The keys then can be read from the memory.

That's not a vector you have anymore if the memory is not removable.

What type of data are we putting on these laptops? Nuclear keys?

Good security balances practicality. In my opinion that's a bad argument..

This is to save space, and is impactful to the longevity of the hardware and environment.

It’s impactful but in what direction? How many repairable or upgradeable laptops actually got repairs and upgrades? Or was it just wasted material and energy in production?

I don’t have the answer but these things can be surprising.

None of the unreparable laptops get repaired.

None of the unupgradable laptops get upgraded.

Some of the reparable, upgradable laptops get upgraded and/or repaired.

Every corporate IT organization I've ever talked to wants to be able to swap batteries, RAM and disks, and if they're easy enough, keyboards. They'd really prefer if the user could be sent a screwdriver and a replacement for batteries and RAM.

Ok but does the repairability always justify the added material and manufacturing cost? Especially in a consumer application.

I love my old repairable Thinkpad but I have been on the same MacBook Pro for 8 years now with zero repairs.

No amount of security or performance benefits can outweigh even the environmental/eWaste disaster alone that non-upgradable RAM chips/storage and lack of user replaceable batteries are responsible for.

Then there’s the cost thing. Have 8GB of RAM in your MacBook and want 16GB? Whoa, boy; that’ll cost you. That old computer’s pretty useless now, and we go right back to the eWaste problem.

Soldered RAM/storage/batteries are the epitome of greed in technology.

They prioritized the customer purchasing a whole new product over simply upgrading one component; creating a literal never-ending shit-stream of eWaste and products increasingly designed to stay properly functional for less time.

The law chases them; and instead of getting the message and smartening up; they find loopholes to get out of it.

There’s no excuse. It’s greed.

EDIT: More importantly - can we please stop making excuses for these greedy assholes, and start collectively working on change?

We need to start focusing on the planet, and this is a super easy start.

So do you throw away perfectly good laptops - creating e waste - instead of just selling them and using the money to buy a new one?

The problem is that because they can't be upgraded, they are no longer 'perfectly good'.

I recently was donated a 2010 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, and a paltry 128GB SSD.

What the hell is anyone supposed to do with that?! If the RAM wasn't soldered to the board I could probably at least upgrade it to 8GB and someone could at least use it for email and Facebook.

So I don't really get your point.

My original point is that these laptops are not perfectly good anymore - but if I could pop that 2010 Air with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, it could be useful for someone. A student, maybe. Boot it with Windows and you'd probably even be able to run a more recent OS.

I have an old Dell Laptop from 2010 (Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz) with 4GB of RAM that ran Windows 10 as a Plex Server for years. With Macs of that era, you could stick a Windows 10 DVD and install it without any issues.

Pre-Covid (2019), my mom was using my old 2006 era Mac Mini with 1.25 GB of RAM running Windows 7 when she use to tutor. It was good enough to run Chrome and access Google Docs.

A 2010 laptop isn’t “perfectly good”. If the only reason you needed to upgrade to a Mac that was running a supported operating system was because you needed more RAM, you could get money back by selling it. The resell value of a 2010 MacBook - or any other computer is practically nil.

Do you actually believe that this issue was discussed at all in any way by the engineers that Dell contracted to design this laptop?

Like do you actually think it was a factor at all in any way?

The proper solution to that is to use a CPU that supports encrypting RAM.

Soldering RAM does nothing since you can still, at least in principle, reattach it to another device.

The more important reason this is not true is that there is technically feasible DIMM form factor for LPDDR4/4x/5/5x RAM. And there are actual power savings (~20% reduction in J/bit transferred) to be had for using LPDDR RAM as opposed to similar generation DDR RAM. Laptops that support replaceable memory have to use DDR4/DDR5 and therefore cannot take advantage of the power savings you get from LPDDR4/4x memory.

It's a shame to me that LG's gram didn't catch on more (or come with an option for more RAM).

It's everything I wanted from the one Dell XPS 13 that I previously owned and more, with the exception of speakers that are unsuited to quality music.

The battery life is fantastic, it's light weight, thin, larger screen (I ended up hating 13 inches). It's absolutely cool under pressure- just as fast as my last MBP at compiling code, but it doesn't sound like a helicopter is going to take off (tbh I forget if it even has fans, but if it does I've never heard them).

I went through the trouble of booting / windows and grabbing the latest firmware updates before installing linux, but literally everything Just Works. Close the laptop lid and there's practically zero battery drain overnight.

If games are your thing, you're more or less stuck at casual gaming, but it's easily become the favorite laptop that I've owned across HP, Dell, Apple, Acer and Toshiba.

The only downside I can think of is that people other than me tend to hate 10+ keyboards, but I'm used to it and it doesn't bother my wrists at all (plus I get a number pad for quick entry!)

It really does sound great, but for some reason I just really hate keyboards with a numpad, so that was a dealbreaker for me. Silly perhaps, but but then again keyboard really is very important.

The Gram always seemed very interesting to me, until I touched one at a store. I was baffled by how flimsy it felt. Picking it up while opened prompts it to bend and warp far more than I'm comfortable with. I guess rigidity must be sacrificed in the name of lightness, but I could never own a computer that felt like it'd fall apart inside a backpack sleeve.

I've accidentally dropped mine a few times, and my German shepherd has walked on it once or twice. Thankfully, and perhaps by the grace of the patron saint of clumsy fools, it still appears to be in near mint condition.

I absolutely loved the LG Gram 17 (2021) but I had to return it for one reason - the screen was way too glossy. I simply couldn't use it anywhere outside my home (where I'm able to set up lighting in an optional way), which kind of defeats the purpose of having such a lightweight laptop. I've used other laptops with glossy displays and I don't recall it being such issue. Maybe the max brightness was too low to compensate for the very high reflectivity of the glossy display? In all other respects, I thought the laptop was excellent and truly a standout.

If I'm not mistaken the new 2022 gram comes with up to 32gigs of LPDDR5 now

Maaaaan it's not worth dropping more money for new hardware considering that I got mine so recently, but it sure would be nice. 16 gigs goes by quick when you've got bloated tools and compilers.

I have so many weird power problems with my current XPS, I would not recommend Dell, especially a less repairable model.

My current XPS (2 years old) doesn't hibernate well, and the BIOS will lose UEFI/disk settings if I forget to charge it for a few days. Once I had to unscrew everything in order to remove the CMOS battery, to make it boot again (based on random forum suggestions).

My daughter still uses my older one, and after changing the battery for a generic one, it still works fine.

Agreed on the hibernation part. My last year's high end XPS 17 has this kind of issue. Sometimes I get BSODs after a hibernation, especially if certain peripherals are connected. That aside, I do think the laptop is really great (albeit pricey).

So, they have a 13mm chassis in height but cannot fit an audio jack, which is 3.5mm in diameter? They could just extend a 4mm diameter to the edges. You know, just put it here and don't fully extend this swift edge at the side: https://i.imgur.com/yuPFcuK.png

They are giving up functionality for asthetics.

Then maybe you didn't read the article throughly. The limitation is not directly due to thickness of the audio jack, but to the depth of it which would have limited the size of the heatsink.

And if those 13.5mm are used to the brimm by the case, keyboard and PCB, then there's no 3.5mm+ of free space left for the jack.

If you take a 3.5mm drill bit and start drilling in the sides of machine you're 100% gonna hit something critical. So yeah, Dell was right saying their tight packaging left no space for the jack.

I read it, but I don’t believe it.

I guess I have to wait for ifixit‘s teardown though.

From an engineering POV it's an interesting exercise.

From the perspective of product design, are these features really something Dell's customers are asking for?

Along the same lines, while it's easy not to confuse "Air" with "Pro", does this over-engineering (?) hurt the XPS line?

Thin for the sake of thin? Thin at all costs (i.e., no headphone jack? How big is that market?

Imagine the room for innovation if these companies stop blindingly chase being thin: modular, 2 pieces, not-shit webcam... applies to phones too.

I dont understand the appeal of 13 inch laptops. More portable? Are we so weak now? Maybe because I remember old laptops which were always much larger and heavier.

> Maybe because I remember old laptops which were always much larger and heavier.

Depends on the old laptop—during the netbook craze, 7-11 inches wasn't uncommon.

> Depends on the old laptop—during the netbook craze, 7-11 inches wasn't uncommon.

Playing devil's advocate: I have one of these in my hand right now (an EeePC netbook). It's around 22cm x 16cm, around 27cm diagonal, which Google tells me corresponds to around 11 inches. But it's thick, around 3cm at its thickest point, and also somewhat heavy.

(I'd really love to have a more modern device in that form factor; it's a missing step between large phones and small notebooks. This niche seems to have been filled by tablets, but unfortunately they don't have quality keyboards, and most importantly, they don't run the same general-purpose operating system I use on normal notebooks.)

Maybe tablet with bluetooth keyboard?

For me the Thinkpad T series is the sweet spot and I don't personally see any utility from being even thinner and lighter, especially if the connectivity suffers. Seems mostly a case of thin/light laptops looking nicer and therefore selling more, rather than being genuinely good for the consumer.

And I don't understand why people want bigger ones. Maybe that is because we are different and have different needs?

Soon the average laptop will be lighter than the average smartphone

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