Comment by jgrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgrowl | Hacker News Reader

I received mine a couple of weeks ago and have been pretty happy so far. Everything worked out of the box in ubuntu (camera, multimedia keys, trackpad, touchscreen, bluetooth, wifi, etc). My only complaints are:

- The Glossy monitor is incredibly reflective. I wish there was a matte option.

- I got the UHD screen option but there are still too many scaling issues in linux. Ubuntu looks fine with some minor tweaks but a lot of programs look horrible (ie. chrome). I ended up just lowering the resolution for now.

- The power cable sticks out really far when it is plugged in. It also makes me worried I'll break it if I forget I'm attached because the input seems a little wobbly.

- I like the keyboard for the most part but a few of the keys squeak occasionally.

- The trackpad also is pretty good, but it feels overly sensitive and jumpy compared to my macbook air.

- WIFI seems a little spotty. It might be that my wireless router isn't very good but my signal is much weaker than it is on my macbook. I need to play around with setting a little more before coming to a conclusion.

- If you open it up on your lap you might pinch your legs!

*edit: I used a 20% coupon I found online somewhere. Not sure how long it was good for: MXPX2T1N9HGH12

I've been using a Dell XPS 15 with the UHD touchscreen display since November and I love it! I also reduced to 1080p resolution, for the same annoying reasons (applications are just too hit/miss).

For the touchpad, I tweaked the initial settings a bit using the following articles:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad http://askubuntu.com/questions/483707/14-04-touchpad-is-too-...

I had a 2014 Retina Macbook Pro prior to this, and the touchpad, after these tweaks, is on par with that experience (although it is a bit more clicky but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Hope this helps!

Awesome, I'll check it out. Thanks!

> The Glossy monitor is incredibly reflective. I wish there was a matte option.

What the hell. This is a subject I have a strong opinion on. A "developer"-oriented laptop must have a matte finish. I want no specular reflections distracting me from my low-contrast text. This simple issue makes it a dealbreaker for me.

That said, maybe it can be mitigated. Quick googling tells me there exist anti-glare screen covers, maybe some exist that fit the M3800.

I actually tried getting a screen cover but I totally failed trying to put it on. Still though, I was able to tell it didn't really help the glare at all. I just threw it in the trash :(

I have another HiDPI laptop with the same wireless card (Intel 7260). I don't think your router is the problem, I'm experiencing the same issues. When I'm not in the same room as the router signal used to drop 50% of the time. Few driver updates later things are much better, but it still freezes sometimes. Consider disabling the power saving options - it does help. It seems Intel totally botched it with this card as the Internet is littered with people complaining about it, including Windows users. It seems the Windows drivers have it covered now, but the Linux ones are still catching up.

Regarding the HiDPI - Chrome is the only thing that doesn't play, but since I'm a Firefox user, that's not a problem. Gnome 3 handles it quite well. Yes, some apps (i.e. Skype) get their font rendering a bit wrong, but otherwise it's fine. But the crisp fonts are something I'm not giving up.

That's exactly what I was seeing. If I take the laptop out of the room with the router I start instantly having trouble. Just being one room away, sometimes I can't connect at all.

Even sitting right next to the router, my bars aren't full which is really strange.

I'll try fiddling with the power saving options. Thanks for the advice.

For posterity's sake... I kept having bad issues with the wifi. The problem seemed to get worse after the computer went to sleep. It would take websites a long time to load and drop out completely sometimes. I ended up getting a new router since I saw on a couple of forums that it helped. Specifically I got a Linksys WRT AC1900. The problems so far seem to have been resolved. Websites load quickly and no cut-outs so far.

See here for scaling issue fixes for firefox/chrome: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

The DC jack is likely wobbly so that it is less likely to break, actually. Rigid stuff will simply break instead of flexing.

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