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Comment by NorwegianDude | Hacker News Reader

You don't say where you are located, but unless you are in one of the few places where Dell doesn't offer on-site next business day support then XPS 13 is a great laptop.

Their support is amazing: "We're not sure what is causing it, but we'll send someone to replace the whole motherboard tomorrow." "OH, your currently halfway across the world on a island? No problem, we'll be there tomorrow"

I really don't understand how it's done. Clearly they must have parts distributed ahead of time.

I'm just amazed that it's included in the price considering the cost of sending a technician out to a customer. The fact that even here on HN a lot of people think Apple's support is good suggests that Dell might be able to save a ton of money by lowering their support level, so I don't really get why they offer it.

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You should see their 4 hour 24x7 ProSupport option.

We managed to bundle it in with a 1600-device order one year and I was (un)fortunate enough to get to experience it.

“So if I understand correctly, You’ve just spilt a red bull on your work laptop at a LAN party you’re facilitating just now, and it’s 1AM, and you need your laptop tomorrow morning for bump out…?

Ok does 3:30am work for you?”

In 2000 I spilled grape juice on my Dell Inspiron laptop, while 1000 miles from home. They were out fixing it the next day.

It's not a new play for Dell.

In 2001 I fried a Dell desktop motherboard and processor while toying with overclocking.

They flown someone with brand new parts to my home, more than a 1000km away, and replaced it all no question asked.

It's surreal.

In May 2020, my wife's Dell laptop blipped out during her morning coffee from an over-weekend break, and by noon there was a Dell technician sitting at a card table in our garage, 32F/0C degrees, socially isolating from any germs we could have, and he swapped motherboards inside of an hour. Incredible.

Where are you located where it's 32F in May, lol

Could be a lot of places

https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-may-20...

Reaching freezing in early May is not at all uncommon in most of New England, for starters. I imagine it's also not completely rare in the upper Midwest.

Also SF :smirk:

0C/32F? In SF? Even in the dead of winter it hardly ever actually hits freezing. Average is 2.5C / 36 F.

With an average of 36, how unreasonable does 32 really sound at night?

36F is a typo. Average is more like 63F.

Temps vary widely in the Bay Area—microclimates really are a thing. Freezing temps and >100F are common in the east bay, but quite rare out on the coast.

New Hampshire

I had a Dell Precision laptop and a super long subway commute. Apparently the beast wasn't designed for use under those conditions and parts started failing. They replaced whatever it took to get it working again. I was so sad when the new parent company changed our hardware provider.

I really do not understand the love the XPS 13 gets. We have several here at the office. We will never get them again. They break, the keyboard is not pleasant, the machine is not really fast, two handed openings are painful when you come from a different brand, charging it takes forever, we just leave them plugged in, switching wireless to wired in linux (several distros) takes too long, did I mention the keyboard makes me want to vomit?... I think my office neighbors has broken at least 7 times. I stopped using mine as I liked my ancient MBP better, and I really do not like apple that much.

Although I do not have an alternative that I have used, I know colleagues who love their new (last three or four years old) Lenovos, like the X series.

Idk, I'm on my 3rd XPS and I've had none of these problems. Even the keyboard I consider to be above average. I will agree that opening the lid can bit a bit difficult/awkward, but it's hardly a problem.

Gotta agree. Also on #3 and all have been absolutely stellar, even after popping the lid on all of them to do some upgrades.

I mean the level of complaint being "Opening the lid is kinda hard" shows it must be a pretty good laptop. It's like complaining that the waiter asked one time too many if everything was satisfactory at a high-end restaurant.

I have 2 in the XPS line - a relatively old 15 inch and a new(ish) 13 inch.

They're perfectly fine machines.

Dell officially supports linux on them (admittedly, only Ubuntu), you can get 32gb of RAM, and they perform just as well as any other intel based laptop (which is to say - I wish they sucked less power, but they're fine on the performance scale).

I'm... not a clean person with my machines, and I've never noticed any issues with the keyboards.

I have zero issues swapping wireless to wired (Arch linux) - it's basically instant for me, but I don't actually know how you're testing that, since none of the newer 13 models include an ethernet port (I use an adapter). Have you considered that you have a bad usb-ethernet adapter? Every one I've used is fine. Alternatively - are you sure you're not thinking of the Latitude line? Those are very different machines, which I also avoid.

Basically - I'd take an XPS every time over anything Lenovo puts out. I don't even really care about the hardware, I just think Lenovo can't be trusted a god damn inch. Chinese company selling computers with rootkits/MITM pre-installed. It was a sad day when IBM sold their personal computing line to them. I know a lot of folks still like the Thinkpads - but it's not worth it, IMO.

I've had an eye on the Huawei Matebook X Pro on Swappa. My other eye is on the XPS, new from Amazon. The latter is certainly more expensive and yet, doesn't impress me as much as the Matebook. But as we all know, Huawei is not trusted much here lately in the U.S. Is this in fact another Chinese company that's best we avoid? I was considering starting an Ask HN just for Huawei given not much has been posted here on this topic for a couple of years now.

with all due respect - lol

there isn't a fire capable of burning hot enough, to throw every huawei device into

just google the company man, it's a track record that's genuinely hard to believe

20190409 backdoored laptops - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47800000

20190430 backdoored routers - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/30/alleged-h...

20210813 alleged widespread IP theft from a pakistani tech firm, repackaged with backdoors, and sold back to the pakistani gov - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/30/alleged-h...

Yes I remember the router situation where they accidentally left telnet listening on the WAN.

I worked at Vodafone and all the routers get a security review, so it is highly doubtful that they left it in on purpose because they would have known that it would have been found. It was test engineering firmware that got left on some routers, and makes spurious claims even though in the article it points out that Vodafone didn't believe it was a backdoor.

And your first link talks about how someone appears to have added an additional chip to the design, which is unlikely to have come from Huawei. Sounds suspiciously similar to this

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Do you want a list of everything that Cisco (replace with your preferred networking manufacturer) messed up and claim that it's all malicious?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwal...

Tampering with these things is allegedly pretty simple.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/plant...

Besides the Wireguard incident, where has Netgate been a joke like the two being discussed here?

Why "besides"?

I would say that the Wireguard issue is worse than the speculation that pre-production firmware on unreleased routers was backdooring as they actually shipped it.

Of the three links about Huawei, one is someone in India claiming IP theft, one where they made up a claim of backdooring which the original security researchers rejected that claim, and one where it appears that hardware may have been tampered at the manufacturing stage by Americans.

Not exactly smoking gun, Huawei are evil and want to steal your data. I don't trust them, but then I don't trust a lot of the networking providers to not be compromised by a state actor.

Otherwise, they are probably the best of the bunch, purely because of the stack being mostly BSD.

they (or their previous entity) also routinely stole/steal intellectual property from us firms

at one point they were just straight ripping off cisco asrs, lucent gear, etc and presenting it as their own

My last Dell XPS sucked and the support sucked. I bought a top of the line XPS and within less than a year the battery was swollen. Same exact battery model they were still replacing for free on the previous laptop model, but when I called support I was out of luck. So I bought a new battery. And then within a few more months I started getting common the sticky key problem with several keys on my keyboard requiring a lot of pressure to work. Their build quality has gone way down. Strong avoid.

I switched to a gaming laptop and am still comparing brands before I decide who to recommend, but after a year I'm still really happy with the performance and build quality of my current one. Most seem built to take a beating. Which makes sense.

Was your last Dell recent? I remember having horrible experiences with Dell support so I wouldn't buy them. But about 1.5 years ago I saw a great deal on a refurbished beefy machine I needed - and found their support was amazing when it needed some parts replaced. My guess is they did a 180 on support because they had a bad reputation. YMMV because I still hear bad experiences - they partner with local support so it may depend on the quality of folks in your area.

Dell has no proven track of good support. You may say it’s an entirely different company since [too short to measure accurately] and you would just look like the rest of their campaign managers.

If they truely have changed, they would have made a fuss about it, wouldn’t have they.

Dell has a proven track record of great support for a) "business" products and b) under premium support contract.

They throw in a year of that coverage on (most?) new purchases, but you can add at least 3 years.

For consumer and out-of-contract stuff, it's pretty industry standard. Their cheap stuff breaks a lot, but so does most brands.

It just depends on what kind of support you order. Got the basic support? You get to listen to outsourced tech support telling you you have to reinstall Windows first. Got the premium support? They’ll typically replace the motherboard with everything on it the next day.

Just make sure the model you're getting supports S3 sleep mode (AKA real sleep mode) before hand. A lot of the newer Dells don't. Its something the OEM needs to support in the BIOS, so you can't just fix it by installing a new distro.

Since at least the 2019 model Dell XPS 13s no longer have S3 sleep mode and instead uses Microsoft's "Modern Standby" (s0ix)[1], which consumes tons of power whilst in "sleep" in order to have slightly quicker wake times.

[1] https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-15-9570-BIOS-1-3-0-sl...

s0ix is fine so long as it actually activates. The problem is that in some default configurations it doesn't and you end up using a poorer sleep. On my 9305 it was a matter of changing a storage setting in the BIOS and afterwards it was perfectly fine. (If you'll pardon linking my own blog, I wrote about this particular issue a little while ago: https://thomask.sdf.org/blog/2021/08/15/debian-11-bullseye-o...)

I found this with my ThinkPad. If I don't remember to completely power it down, I'll pull it out of my bag and it will be hot.

On my Thinkpad x13 there was an option to use "Linux sleep" or something like that in the uefi (bios?) Settings. I think this just gives it the normal sleep behavior, and definitely reduced how often my laptop would come out of my backpack hot and on low battery (running Linux)

> in order to have slightly quicker wake times.

Unless it pulled a breaking Windows update at night so the laptop won't boot anymore the next morning.

As far as I understand that's an Intel thing. They deprecated it and it is not allowed for high security devices.... (I thibk HS3 profiles?)

I have one of those DELLs for work. Don't.

My daughter just received a school laptop that drains battery very fast when sleeping. What exactly should I look for in the BIOS to set it to real sleep mode?

Even if it does you still can't manually control the fan. Ahahaha, Dell, what a fucking joke.

I think my employers IT policies have a lot to do with it, but fans on my laptop do spin up in the middle of the night. It can be annoying.

I've had a couple XPS laptops over the years, one XPS 13 and one XPS 15. Both have had issues with their trackpads getting wonky. They would just increasingly ignore inputs and react incorrectly to my finger. The XPS 15 (the 2-in-1 model) would also sometimes just not go to sleep and cook itself in my bag, and its keyboard has keys which just break over time under normal use, and that's not covered under warranty. You can't just replace the keyboard, you have to pay out of pocket to replace the whole top case of the laptop.

Your experience might differ, but I'm not getting a Dell again.

> The XPS 15 (the 2-in-1 model) would also sometimes just not go to sleep and cook itself in my bag

happened to my XPS 15, Thats because they remives normal sleep mode and replaced it with always on standby. had to switch ti hybernation

That’s due to swelling batteries, which is apparently common in the xps line

It's also an issue on HPs similar x360 line. And it is a consequence of optimizing for the arbitrary metric "slimness" at the expense of cooling, while stuffing in high-TDP CPUs. Who on earth has a bag or backpack where 15 mm vs 21 mm thickness means the laptop won't fit?

Get something with a bit of thickness to it, like the Latitude 5530 (which Dell will also sell with Ubuntu) and stick to the low-TDP CPU versions.

If your dev work is CPU-intensive you should be doing it on a workstation or server anyways. A machine where your cooling solution can dissipate 3-400W without batting an eyelid is going to beat the crap out of a "high-end" 45W TDP laptop.

When you're on the road, just use SSH with tmux or RDP or whatever you prefer. At your desk, set up a monitor and a workstation for the serious work and keep the laptop on the side for meetings, emails etc. A USB switch for the mouse and keyboard works well and is like $30.

My 2019 16" mbp will randomly try to cook itself in my bag too. Apple never has any answers for any of the bullcrap power management that happens.

The 2019 MacBook Pros are basically hot plates with a computer attached.

The keyboard/trackpad giving up is the battery swelling. And it happens to nearly all of them I think. At least if they run hot.

I had one plugged in 24/7 for 3 years and it’s usually a few months until the battery swells until the keyboard stops working. I had the battery replaced three times.

If only they allowed running without battery I’d get one again. Or if they started testing their machines properly. Great support, sloppy thermal design and testing by Dell.

The company I work for used to buy XPS's for upper management and C-levels. We stopped because every single one of them had their batteries bulge so bad they popped out the keyboards and trackpads. At first we thought it was a problem of traveling with them in standby, but then it started happening on users' desks. Other Dell laptops don't have such a problem, it has to be something with the XPS design.

It happened fairly often to the 2015-2016ish era XPSs. Afaik they fixed whatever issue was causing it

That's about the time we stopped buying them. Maybe as late as 2018, but I'm not 100% certain on that.

Any lithium-ion battery can go spicy. The pouch form-factor common to the thin profile laptops that don’t have easily removed batteries can really swell.

It’s the same phenomenon that warps iPhones

My XPS15 has been a paperweight for 2 years now.

The original Dell battery swelled up and was replaced under warranty. The replacement battery lasted a couple of months and was so swollen it broke my keyboard and trackpad.

Dell support refused to fix it and couldn't provide me with a battery because they were completely out.

I tried 3 different vendors and all 3 batteries failed to work because Dell has battery DRM.

I can't even use it plugged in because the GPU/CPU throttle themselves without a battery hooked up.

My i7, 32gb ram, 4k laptop is a giant dud. Never again.

Just replaced the 97 WH battery on my Xps15 for the third time in 4 years, got the battery from third party on Amazon for $50, no issues, and the second battery lasted longer than the Dell OEM battery. Just search for 6GTPY. Not sure what DRM issue you ran into.

Install the Dell Power Manager application as it has very granular controls to allow you to maximize battery life and avoid the swelling issue. Good luck.

Mind sharing the exact model/link?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096DZJR5K

Had XPS 15 for 6 years for work. Screen started dying all the time in year 2. Magically fixed itself after being taken apart multiple times. Network card died. Replaced. Still disconnects sometimes. Added 16 gigs of RAM. Was super picky about what RAM it took. Battery did swell a bit, but then stopped and didn't affect anything. I never replaced it. Overall, I am not too happy, but can't think of a better laptop.

Edit: Saw another comment on overheating - I only run mine on a coolpad, period. I think it fries the RAM otherwise.

I would offer that the XPS 15 is a better deal since you can get it with a matte screen and it also allows upgrading both RAM and SSD. You cannot update the RAM on XPS 13. Not sure if they've changed the ability to upgrade the SSD is newer models.

Also, I'd say that Dell's customer support is horrendous. I bought an XPS 15 from them but had issues with the trackpad (which I think in hindsight were software/firmware related). It tooks months to resolve it, and by the time they did and they were going to replace it, they no longer sold the white XPS 15. They offered the gray one, which I didn't want, or a refund. They basically told me to buy a computer from someone else as there's "plenty of laptop makers around who might make a white one" (paraphrased). I also had to call them and tell them to stop the replacement, as they originally just kicked it off with a replacement that was not only not the correct color but had the completely wrong specs.

Basically every email and phone call was with a different person, for the same support ticket.

Latest models have suspend issues with Linux though, so keep that in mind if you do not plan to use Windows.

The same issues exist in Windows as well. They actually exist BECAUSE Windows no longer supports real sleep mode. Microsoft does this to push "modern standby" so they can phone home 24/7.

> Microsoft does this to push "modern standby" so they can phone home 24/7.

This seems like a less likely incentive than the expectation created by phones and tablets that the device become ready "instantly".

Qualcomm has moved into the laptop space and brands their products as "always-on, always-connected" such that your programs are not halted while the screen is inactive/lid is closed. Microsoft may feel like some of their laptops compete with iOS/Android devices that respond quicker. Maybe they want x86_64 Windows to work just as well as ARM Windows in this regard.

> This seems like a less likely incentive than the expectation created by phones and tablets that the device become ready "instantly"

It can be both.

I have had my XPS 13 laptop die four times in the past two years, needing a replacement logic board each time.

The laptop is amazing when it's working, default Linux support too, but so far have literally had to ship it back to Dell for at least two months total since I've used it. Usually the turn around is only a few days but they were waiting on a part at one stage for weeks.

I am now looking to do a system exchange with them but am not certain if it's going to go through. At this stage I can't imagine they'd be profitable on this machine given how many times I've had to ship it in for repair.

Hence I sadly cannot recommend the XPS 13 even though I truly love it when it's working and laugh with glee at having 32GB of RAM =]

>"OH, your currently halfway across the world on a island? No problem, we'll be there tomorrow"

Is this real? I travel quite a bit and have a ThinkPad with the highest level of support. When international, it takes at least 10 days to get replacement parts. The ticket is forwarded to the closest support. When I was in Cape Town, this happened to be the UK. It's easy to see how it takes that long to get replacement parts when they are shipped such great distances. The support reps, although friendly, weren't very responsive.

I don't understand why anybody can recommend anything from Dell.

Last company I worked from had ~30 XPSs (various models). On average we had one break daily. Yes, they pick it up, and return it "fixed" within a week, but then it just breaks down 2 weeks later.

One of their "docking station" brick thingies went up in flames, while nothing was plugged into it, causing an evacuation of the building. Another one "exploded". Not bad enough to hurt somebody, but the coffe mug next to it was blown off the table.

My XPS 15 started to get hot, and smoke out of the keyboard while I was reading my email. Scaring the shit out of everybody in the coffee shop I was sitting in.

"Dude! You're Getting a Dell!" "Nah, thanks, I'd rather get a lobotomy."

The only laptop I've had in the past decade with major Linux compatibility issues was an XPS 13. It had loads of screen artifacting, small squares of the screen that would retain a previous frame. After a dozen kernel updates the problem remained.

XPS 13 sucks lmao. I have one and I'd never get one again. Dell don't know how to do cooling for shit. Honestly the most naive design I've seen for cooling; I've had to add a thermal pad between heat pipe and the aluminium back of the case just to sink some extra heat, only other thing possible to do is repaste but the pad makes the most difference.

IDGAF about their "sent DOA and fix later" on-site support. It will NOT fix terrible QC of their motherboards.

> so I don't really get why they offer it.

For a long time, their failure rates were pretty high, i don't know if that's still true. The rock solid support made them competitive for big institutional buyers etc. Comparison then wasn't an apple but a thinkbook, which were way more robust.

I got an XPS 13 and it's the biggest crap you can imagine, especially the docking station. Not sure if it is Windows 11 or if it is the Dell hardware, but I cannot stand it.

I feel the only serious alternative is a Lenovo running Linux.

yep, I had two Dells, one XPS 15 from 2019 and some cheap Vostro, and both had problems with sleep state. The support is great, but I couldn't get Ubuntu to run without issues, and it sucked a lot.

Older Latitude were great for dev work, and I still use my 7450.

* You don't say where you are located * I also would like to know the location. thepoet, would be good if you start commenting on this thread as it is on the front page of HN.

> then XPS 13 is a great laptop.

No, clearly not. Apart from the overheating the first experience you’ll have is opening it: You pull the screen upwards, but the hinge is too strong, so the bottom comes with the screen, and then since the handle is slippery you lose the screen and the whole block slams on the desk.

That’s on paar with the DELL experience. Pretty much everything is wrong about it.

> No, clearly not. Apart from the overheating the first experience you’ll have is opening it: You pull the screen upwards, but the hinge is too strong, so the bottom comes with the screen, and then since the handle is slippery you lose the screen and the whole block slams on the desk.

I've just always opened my laptops with two hands (I'm gonna type my password anyway?), so a hinge not being able to be opened with one hand always screamed "first world problem" type of issue to me. Maybe I'm just too used to crappy laptop hinges and using a nice one would be a revelation. I don't know.

Every single laptop does this, except bulky Lenovos. Is it really too hard to use both hands? How many times a day do you open your laptop anyway? Let alone with one hand unavailable?

Nah, even the lightest macbooks can be opened with one hand. Has a useful notch in the bottom case too so grip isn't a problem.

It's not a big deal at all, I certainly wouldn't list it as a reason to not get a laptop like your parent comment does; it probably wouldn't even factor in to my decision. But it's certainly not a problem in all thin-and-lights.

> Nah, even the lightest macbooks can be opened with one hand. Has a useful notch in the bottom case too so grip isn't a problem.

Not consistent with my experience handling an ex's 11" macbook air. That thing would lift the chassis from a table readily when tilting the screen using one hand.

But it's not some apple-specific phenomenon. Even my chonky X230 with good hinges does this esp. when on carpet with the extended battery, there's no weight under the palmrest.

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