Comment by kaivi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaivi | Hacker News Reader

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I've gotten myself a Dell Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme laptop recently. It's what my ideal laptop is supposed to be: easily serviceable, plenty of ports, indestructible and linux-friendly. Even the onboard WLAN supports monitoring mode. Running NixOS+xmonad on it, encountered no problems whatsoever after it was configured. One major difference from an ordinary laptop experience is the old-style resistive trackpad, but I can live with it because I don't use mouse as much.

The firmware can't be replaced with Coreboot unfortunately, but it is fantastic for a laptop. I have never seen a BIOS with so many configurable settings. There's even a key combo which shuts off all radio, lights and LEDs, which of course can be configured in detail.

Don't get the rubberized keyboard because it's impossible to type a sentence on. I also suggest ordering the m.2 NVMe separately to save serious money, and the Snapdragon X55 DW5930e modem from Aliexpress at a fraction of the price.

I've also heard legends about how great Dell's Worldwide repair program is where people have had parts delivered to them next day on the island of Borneo in Indonesia, but that's yet to be tested.

> I've also heard legends about how great Dell's Worldwide repair program is where people have had parts delivered to them next day on the island of Borneo in Indonesia, but that's yet to be tested.

This was a long time ago, but I bought a Dell with Ubuntu while visiting my parents in Oregon, and took it back with me to where I was living in Innsbruck, Austria.

The hard drive (I told you this was a while back) died on me. I called up Dell, and expected some nightmare of having to ship it back to the US where I'd bought it and waiting months and who knows what.

But what actually happened was some guy showed up at my door the next day with a new drive and swapped it out.

I was so impressed.

I recently paid for Dell's next day service with a new PC purchase. The PC arrived broken, and Dell refused to send anyone out to fix it. Instead, I waited weeks for a replacement, feeling like a chump.

When I complained to Dell, none of their employees seemed to understand that they had failed to honor their warranty, or why I would be disappointed.

The replacement machine works fine, but Dell violated their agreement with me and so I can no longer recommend them.

Were they local to the area?

I'm imagining someone in the US saying, "I've always wanted to go to Austria!", hopping on a plane, and arriving the next day.

I think the guy came down from Munich, which was about a 2 hour drive, but I don't recall exactly, it was a long time ago.

I don't know if I'd describe the Rugged Extreme as ideal for anything except "most likely to survive a car accident"

You can then use the laptop to reset any vehicle error codes using the built-in RS232 port and a CAN adapter!

That’s the tough developer life for ya

I have been way less than happy with my plain 4yo Latitude 7490, although rumor says Dells should be pretty durable:

- The battery got swollen and destroyed the clips in the underneath cover when it pushed it off.

- Have had to replace both of my memory modules (Hynix something), and replace with another brand, after they broke.

- Memory modules requires re-seating at least a few times a month, especially if I run with the computer in a backpack (this is supposed to be possible to do with a durable laptop, no?)

- The NVMe SSD harddrive has needed multiple re-seatings.

- Some possible further glitches I might have forgotten.

Sad on a laptop which otherwise feels pretty great. I like the slighly rubberized coating, the keyboard, touchpad and screen, and weight is not too bad either.

Anyways, this makes me a slight bit skeptical about Dell's reputation as a durable brand in general. Others having some more hard facts on this? (I have been lately looking more towards Asus ExpertBooks, with claimed military standard durability).

Just looked it up, I see the appeal of just toting this in your hand while flying with no other baggage (assuming the battery lasts forever), but what’s the price again? The center review said it’ll cost almost 10 grand.

Yes it's pricey, though you can get one almost new from eBay at 1/3 of the retail cost.

And yeah the batteries are great, `powertop` reported 55h battery life remaining at 60% backlight with a single `st` terminal window open. And the backlight is blindingly bright at the max setting, so it's also usable in direct sunlight.

The laptop will also charge off of any USB-C power source like the weakest phone charger, makes me think that it'll take charge even from serially wired potatoes.

The slightly less rugged, but also less heavy, "Latitude 5430 Rugged" (-Extreme) looks seriously interesting.

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