I think it's really impressive what Dell has put together here. As my old Thinkpad T430 is nearing it's fourth anniversary I have been looking for an upgrade for a while and compared different options with a focus on lightweight, powerful laptops with good Linux support. And so far the XPS 13 seems way more attractive than the new Lenovo Skylake laptops (e.g. the 460s), which have lower resolution displays (some models still start with a 1.366 x 768 (!) display, which is just ridiculous in 2016), less and slower RAM, smaller hard drives and -as far as I can tell from the specs- less battery life as compared to the XPS 13 but are actually 300 - 400 $ more expensive, even when choosing three year guarantee for the XPS. The only thing I don't like about the XPS is Dell's guarantee, which is "send in", meaning that I probably won't see my laptop for a few weeks if it has to be repaired, whereas Lenovo will send a service technician to me who will usually be able to repair the laptop immediately (I already had to make use of this service twice, once to exchange a noisy fan and once to replace a broken display bezel).
I guess I'll wait for Apple to reveal the new MB Pro line before making a decision, but it seems that for the first time in 10 years my next laptop will not be a Lenovo/IBM.
> And so far the XPS 13 seems way more attractive than the new Lenovo Skylake laptops (e.g. the 460s), which have lower resolution displays (some models still start with a 1.366 x 768 (!) display,
Laptop shopping is so frustrating because almost all of the manufacturers are clearly segmenting the market into two groups: shit and non-shit. In the shit group, you get painfully slow HDDs and painfully low res displays that would feel right at home on a laptop from a decade ago. In the non-shit group, you get SSDs, good displays, and prices that are two to three times higher even though the actual cost of the components hasn't gone up by nearly that much.
It's infuriating, not so much for myself (I end up wanting the high-end anyway), but when trying to give recommendations to friends and family on more limited budgets, because the entire lower end of the market is unnecessarily terrible. I just end up recommending Chromebooks because, hey, at least a lot of them have SSDs, and they're cheap. The screens typically suck, but when you're paying so little it doesn't feel like getting ripped off. Buying a mainstream $600 laptop feels like getting ripped off.
There definitely is that market segmentation. It's been there for as long as I can remember. The way I've gotten around it is spending $600 on an 18-month-old laptop which was in that ~1000-1200 bracket (i.e. more than good enough for the power-user to run 3 VMs at once + multi-monitor via a dock or just HDMI out at full 2600x1460 on a 27"). A W-series IBM of Ivybridge[1,2] at $550 is a steal. 32 gigs of RAM + SSDs being as cheap as they are and you'd be golden.
[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-W530-i7-3720QM-Quad-...
[2] These will command a premium, so you might have to wait 30 months rather than 18, just because of the value retention IBM holds in the W/T/X lines. The benefit is you get meticulous machines most of the time.
And you can install Linux on the Chromebooks to give them a fully usable operating system. Unfortunately there aren't that many large-SSD Chromebooks. The best you can really get is the 500GB spinning HDD Asus or something similar.
I really like that we are heading toward more affordable computing. I just wish we would also push for more freedom-respecting computers as well.
I have to admit, I expected laptops to cover that niche you described (not too expensive and not shitty), but it seems to me that tablets with keyboard-covers will rather do that.
Which tablet? I was thinking you were talking about the Surface Pro 4, but its bargain basement model, which is actually not great (only 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Core m3 processor), costs over $1,000 once you throw the keyboard cover in. So, going down-market, the Surface Pro 3 when similarly specced* is $730, which is still a bit high.
* I don't think it's actually similarly specced, it just has the same amount of RAM and SSD space, but I suspect that everything is lower performing, and the screen is smaller as well. Too lazy to look up benchmarks though.
Yeah, I didn't mean anything specific (plan figuring that out myself). But I see iPad Air as a good enough $400 solution comparing to shitty-screen laptops. Just need to find decent keyboard for <$100.
I'm pretty sure Dell sells 'premium support' as a paid add-on, and that it covers on-site hardware repairs. I've used this service myself, albeit many years ago, to have a laptop motherboard replaced.
If you add this option, then the two laptops you're comparing may be closer in terms of price and support. Then it's just about the other factors you mention.
They send a technician (with an enormous backpack full of dell parts) to your location within 24 hours. The tech will work on it on-site until repaired.
I do not believe there could be a less disruptive, quicker way to repair a laptop.
Not sure if they offer that same level of support to consumers, but if they do, know it blows AppleCare out of the water.
I used to buy System76 products, but never again. I bought a fairly expensive desktop system from them for a remote working situation. The motherboard experienced a failure in the first week, and their offer for support was that I pay for shipping it to them, wait for them to diagnose and repair and that I pay for it to be shipped back.
I had to argue just to get them to cover one way of shipping, and even then they required me to physically take the machine to a UPS drop off. I lived in a major urban area at the time and owned no car, and would have required an expensive taxi ride to drop it off at their requested location, and of course they weren't willing to reimburse me for that taxi ride.
I was furious and they simply offered no reasonable way for me to get it repaired. They lost a customer and I'll happily switch back to Dell.
I spilled noxious bong water in my keyboard, and the Dell technician who came to my house correctly diagnosed what the problem was, cheerfully replaced my keyboard, and helpfully offered to come back tomorrow with a replacement for a broken plastic part I hadn't even noticed.
Compare that to the way Apple refuses to "handle hazardous substances". [1]
I don't think you can order Dell laptops with the 24-hour repair warranty, but there's plenty of companies which sell them with said warranty - they buy hundreds(thousands more likely) of them as a businesses and then you can buy them directly as a customer, 24-hour repair warranty included. Every single one of my Dell laptops was purchased like that, I once had the Dell technician replacing the whole motherboard on my XPS 13 on my living room table.
I bought an XPS 15 just before Xmas and the sales rep was really trying to sell me on-site repair and it wasn't even that expensive (IIRC, ~$70 CAD upgrade), keep in mind this is Dell Canada so US might be different.
I got two years on-site for a XPS 13 (9343) dev edition for not many €s at all. One year is standard I think, I paid for an extra one. Screen got some wonky pixels in that time-frame but it wasn't until the power brick started acting up that I called Dell. They did make triply sure that a house call was necessary to make sure that the engineer wouldn't be wasting their time. Friendly guy showed up who used to work servicing mainframes and miniframes until that work dried up. Took the machine apart, swapped in a new screen, gave me a new power brick and went on his way.
They do. I bought my XPS 13 (9343) through the Microsoft Store because they had a rather significant discount and then called Dell to add on an extended next-business-day onsite warranty. Just like with the Lenovo, when I had a key get stuck on my keyboard (the space bar was double-spacing every time, by itself) a nice third-party tech showed up at my office and swapped it out.
The XPS13 appears to have a junk trackpad (no buttons, no middle button) and a messed up keyboard (I don't always use the arrows but when I do, those tiny ones suck.) And no trackpoint? Despite better other specs, poor basic human interaction devices are a showstopper. ThinkPads are the only ones I've seen with fairly good keyboards (even after Lenovo's "redesign").
Dell does have on call service, and in some countries it's better than Lenovo by far. I've had Dell send a guy into a village up a mountain in a 3rd world country, next day (!) whereas I couldn't even figure out how to make a claim with Lenovo in that country (and friends that work for the relevant company there confirm there is no inventory).
The touchpad works well with multi-tap and can handle single/double/tripple tab. Feel free to map that to the middle mouse if needed.
The keyboard is actually quite good once you get used to it. I used to need a keyboard replacement every 12-18 months on my lenovo (yes, you read that correctly). The Dell one has now survived 12 months, so I'd say the build quality is quite good, perhaps even better than the lenovo one (might also be due to design - nothing gets stuck under the keys, which helps a lot).
Dell has even send me replacement parts in the past to repair stuff on my own.
edit: I realize after posting this it might not be relevant since you may be discussing the trackpad as used with Ubuntu.
As of 1 month ago, when I bought and then returned an XPS 15 due to the trackpad, there was no option for middle clicking and no option for navigating forward/back.
There are also horrific sensitivity issues with the trackpad that is extremely well documented in user complaints online - the cursor doesn't start moving until your finger moves about a millimeter on the trackpad, resulting in it "jumping" when you are moving very small distances with high cursor speed.
These are all software issues - I installed Synaptics and it fixed these problems, but introduced others. I spent over 20 hours testing and researching and messing with the registry to have a trackpad that works the same as most any other laptop with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. I obviously didn't succeed, which is why I returned it.
To clarify, this is really a Windows 10 issue, and to some extent an Synaptics driver issue (even though it isn't officially supported by Dell).
Synaptics is terrible (at least from using them on ThinkPads for years). It loses settings, frequently. When using the trackpad, it uses several percent of CPU. That's idiotic.
For what it's worth, I had a bad time with the trackpad with a default 14.04 install. Switching to 14.10 fixed it, presumably due to the inclusion of newer drivers.
There may exist some non-crap trackpad with buttons but I have never used one. The buttonless trackpad on my current Dell precision is just as good as the one on my 2011 MBP.
I'd actively avoid a laptop if the trackpad had buttons now I think.
I haven't seen a non-crap touchpad that didn't have buttons, likely because my definition of crap is different than yours and includes massive surfaces that feel awful and get in the way of using the keyboard, and hoping the proper amount of fingers hit the touchpad within the correct window of time (and weren't too close together and counted as a single finger) to perform the click I meant to.
I don't think it's the fact that it's buttonless that make my new non-button pad non-crap, I think it's the fact that they aimed for the quality (and part cost) of the MBP trackpad that makes it also achieve that kind of quality feel.
I'm one of those strange people that finds mac touchpads maddeningly annoying. I used to carry a mouse with me when I had a macbook for work. So non-crap is the opposite direction from that for me. But hey, to each their own. That's why it's nice to have the choice of a wide range of machines, everyone gets what they want.
With proper palm rejection the trackpad should not interfere with the keyboard. From personal experience, Macbooks trackpads rarely register spurious touches while typing.
I've used a number of computers with apple-style the-whole-trackpad-is-the-button systems. The quality varies considerably, from completely unusable to my favorite way of controlling the cursor (better than a mouse, for casual purposes like web browsing). Mostly it's a problem with the software.
I currently use a Thinkpad T440p, which is of the generation of thinkpads universally reviled for their "shitty" trackpad and lack of discrete trackpoint buttons. I can't comment on the trackpoint since I have no interest in using it, but the trackpad is truly unusable on Windows.
It seems that most non-apple laptop manufacturers that have adopted this style of trackpad have done it for aesthetic purposes, to mimic Apple, and to give users more space to move their fingers over. Their trackpad designs are essentially what you would have if the surfaces of the physical trackpad buttons were also touch sensitive on a tradition trackpad design: the bottom-right corner of the trackpad is a right-click area. I hate to evangelize Apple for fear of being associated with people who evangelize Apple, but Apple understands interface design well enough to realize that that's a terrible way to design a trackpad.
The point of Apple's design is to unite tap-to-click mode of traditional trackpads with the button-activated mode. The tap-to-click mode has always been simpler because you don't have to keep your thumb on the button all the time. This gives your hands more freedom; you only have to maintain one point of contact with the trackpad, and you can pivot around that point however you want, rather than being anchored by a second point. This might help defend against RSI, and also makes it faster to transition between controlling the cursor and typing. But the problem with tap-to-click has always been sensitivity. Typing on a laptop with a tap-to-click trackpad is a horrible experience because your wrist accidentally contacts the trackpad and activates a click event, moving the carat or focusing on a different field and suddenly your keystrokes are being sent to the wrong place. Apple's trackpads solve the problem by changing tap-to-click to push-down-to-click. When they introduced this on their laptops it was fantastic, it was what a trackpad experience should have always been like.
As someone who's used Apple's "Magic Trackpad", which is huge, I can say there's almost no value in a larger trackpad surface, which is what other manufacturers are going for. I don't move my wrist when using the trackpad, my range of mobility is limited to the range of my knuckles. If I want to move the cursor a long distance, I'll move my finger quickly and take advantage of cursor accelleration. For moving short distances, it's intuitive that you wouldn't need any range of motion.
So the "soft buttons" that they put on "clickpads" are terrible. They have all the disadvantages of traditional trackpads in that they anchor your hand position, but there's no tactile indication of where the button is, so sometimes when you want to right click, you accidentally miss the button and left click. Worse, they make the entire rest of the trackpad surface a left click (like in Apple's design), so it's tempting to use it like an Apple clickpad, but if you do that, sometimes your finger will end up over the right click button and it will do the wrong thing.
If you have a shitty clickpad and you use linux, `synclient ClickPad=0` will fix it and make it work like and Apple clickpad. You can also set ClickPad=0 in your Xorg.conf to persist it.
Personally, I've always preferred tap to click over the whole trackpad being a button. I find it infuriating to use a mac with tap-to-click turned off (as it is by default) because the entire surface of the trackpad is not usable as a click button. If my finger is near the top when I want to click, I still have to lower my finger to the hinged area.
Not so with tap-to-click. The entire surface can click. And I've never had a serious problem with spurious clicks that other people report, for some reason I'm not really sure of.
I agree that softbutton areas (for click and scroll) on PC trackpads are terrible, though.
That's true, I forgot about that problem with apple's trackpads. I don't remember running into problems with it too often, but I can imagine that different hand positions and sizes could hit the top of the trackpad more often. The thinkpad clickpads don't have this issue.
Try out the newer Apple trackpads (introduced a year ago). They have no hinge and can be "clicked" anywhere. The haptic feedback really feels natural to me.
Interesting. I hear people like Apple's laptops, yet I despise the pad. Requires too much force to click (and how do you get middle/right without pressing down?). OTOH those machines run super hot and have poor keyboards and folks still like them. Perhaps some people aren't bothered by things like that?
On an apple laptop I use my middle and ring fingers for scrolling, my index or middle finger for pointing, and my thumb for clicking. I click with my thumb while holding the pad with my middle and ring finger for right-click. You gotta click near the bottom because they're hinged across the top.
The inadvertent movement rejection is so good you can just leave your four fingers on the pad without thinking about switching between them.
I own an XPS 13 (the 9333, the first 1920x1080 one).
I have very much enjoyed it. The trackpad, to me, has been excellent, and the keyboard a delight, even with the tiny arrows, which I use constantly since they work in coordination with Fn to be Home, End, and Page up and down. There is no physical middle button, but I switched to the XPS 13 from an MBP so I am used to this arrangement.
The only complaint I have is the small coil whine noticeable in quiet settings, which I believe they've fixed, the lack of anything like magsafe on the power cord, which is a patent issue, and the soldered-on ram, which is understandable given the form factor, but frustrating. I DO like that the mSATA storage is upgradable.
The XPS 13's trackpad does conform to the Microsoft Precision touchpad specification, and handles multitouch gestures quite smoothly in Windows. Any failings of the trackpad in Linux can't be blamed on the hardware.
> The XPS 13's trackpad does conform to the Microsoft... Any failings of the trackpad in Linux can't be blamed on the hardware.
err, pardon? The hardware is designed for another operating system and its failure in Linux can't be blamed on that hardware?!
I have a Dell Rugged Extreme 12, which is the XPS in wolves' clothing... it's fantastic. But in both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, either the trackpad and the touch sceen would randomly stopped working ... often under suspend.
But the trackpad works and has always worked perfectly in Ubuntu Linux. Ironic.
The main bottleneck for PC touchpads has always been the poor quality of the hardware (for example, using low-bandwidth PS2 connections). The Microsoft specification is a hardware specification (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn...). All the hardware provides is a stream of raw input data. It's up to the OS to process that data intelligently.
"Hardware specification" sounds like it's designing the shape and size of an ATX motherboard.
That set of documents appears to be largely focused on the HID protocol for data transfer between a Microsoft-certified touchpad and the driver, not a specification for the hardware design per se.
With that said, open, freely licensed, and non-patent-encumbered protocols are vitally important and it's awesome that Microsoft has stepped up and shown leadership.. if that's what that is. Microsoft has been doing more and more impressive things to work with the open-source community since Ballmer, and that'd be great if that's what it is.
I haven't seen a trackpad with buttons for 8 years (Apple, Dell, Asus... ditched them between 2008 and 2012). People have chosen a long time ago, and physical trackpad buttons are a curiosity nowadays.
All pro style laptops (HP Elitebook/Lenovo Thinkpad/Dell Precision) have trackpad buttons and extra buttons for the nipple controller too. I must say I love having proper buttons and have used such laptops exclusively. Although I do have a Macbook air without the buttons.
You're right that consumer laptops have done away with buttons nowadays.
Lenovo tried ditching them on the ?40 line (T440 X240 etc). It was a disaster. Not just because it was terrible, but lacking buttons just sucks. (Though I am referring to the TrackPoint buttons (on top), which work very nicely even with the trackpad.)
Maybe folks using things like Macbooks just don't notice issues like heat and poor ergonomics? Though that's not a very satisfying idea.
That might be true but even now I don't use the trackpad so it wasn't an important factor for me. With my Thinkpad I either use a mouse or the little red dot, which is a bit more fatiguing for the hands though.
Thanks for sharing your service experience, as I need my laptop for work everyday this is an important point for me.
Sorry dude, you're stuck in 2001. Physical trackpad buttons break, and break often -- which is why they're disappearing. MacBook trackpads are widely recognized as superior, and they are buttonless. The "clit" is also a history footnote at this point, it never got mainstream adoption. If you like Thinkpads that's fine, but don't try to pass your judgement as something universal because it's clearly coming from a very small minority.
Sometimes 90% of people like a technology, and when that technology crowds everything out it's really sad for the 10% that loved the alternatives.
I quite like button-less touch pads. But I also LOVE hardware keyboards on phones. The market decided my preferences aren't commercially viable, but I weep at the imprecision and slowness of touch screen phones, not to mention the general crappiness of terminal emulators without a physical keyboard.
When Logitech stopped making them I started stockpiling Logitech's Cordless Optical Trackman because it's the greatest trackball ever made. It will be a sad, sad day when the last one kicks the bucket, especially since working ones on ebay can be several hundred dollars.
I guess people really just have wildly different feelings. I think Apple's laptops are terrible. Hot, poor keyboard, hard trackpad - you've gotta really press down on the thing. Maybe I'm "using it wrong". (Excellent screens though.)
I think I've had trackpoint buttons fail once, sorta. On a used ThinkPad X201 I got for $300, and just this week, clicks seem intermittent. But it's been under heavy use in an elementary classroom so I'm not sure what kind of stress it's gone through. I've never had an issue with laptop buttos otherwise that I can recall, thinking back to the early 90s.
I don't think you're using it wrong, but the default for the trackpad is a hard click, as you say.
But you can set the trackpad (Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click > Tap to click) to accept a soft finger tap. And two finger tap is equivalent to a right click.
I think the MBP trackpad is the primary reason for me not moving to another laptop, even as I become less and less enamoured with OS X itself.
The Macbook, no-button trackpads also break constantly. Every Macbook I've owned over a few months has had a broken trackpad including Retinas and Airs. On my current Retina, it's broken twice and after the initial replacement during warranty, Apple does not give you any additional warranty on its parts or labor for repairs (beyond 30 days). The repair cost for a trackpad on a Retina or Air: $320 + tax. Ironically, the only trackpads I've worked with that haven't broken are ones with separate physical buttons like the old Macbook Pro ones and many crappy trackpads from companies like Acer that are unusable to begin with. I suspect this is why Apple went with a no moving parts design for their latest trackpads: they simply cannot build a proper trackpad with moving parts that won't break after a few months of even light use.
You realize it's a laptop, not a punching bag, right? Out of the hundreds of Apple laptops I or coworkers/friends have owned, I've only seen a few with broken trackpads, and all were five or more years old and most (all?) had something dropped on it.
Without your great insight, I never would have realized my laptop is a laptop and not a punching bag. Thanks for making everything so clear! I now understand why my punching bag doesn't compile.
Also, your anecdotal evidence is meaningless and doesn't disprove my experience despite your rude attempts to do so.
Apologies, didn't mean to be condescending explicitly. Was intending it to be a light hearted joke to then be backed up with my personal experience. Any time someone has repeatedly broken something which a vast majority of folks haven't broken implies the problem is them, not the product itself.
I really like my new puri.sm laptop (the librem 13") ... especially the fact that it doesn't require any non-free bits in the distribution (in my case, debian stretch). I know some folks have issues with the fact that there are non-free bits under the hood (bios, etc...) but if what you're looking for is a solid, compact laptop with modern internals (I'm looking at you, my beloved Thinkpad x200) that can run a "pure" OS sans non-free components it fits the bill.
I should also note there was a recent price drop for the 13" model. I also love the hardware wifi/bluetooth and camera/mic on/off switches.
Whoa that costs money! My original HP 17" Media Center PC had comparable specs for less! Sounds interesting but many of us gotta wait for price drops or used on eBay.
> Lenovo will send a service technician to me who will usually be able to repair the laptop immediately
What is this guarantee called and where is it available?
Here in Russia, I've had experience of giving away my ThinkPad to the service company for 2 months; they didn't call and the call center girl could not provide further information than "it's being worked on" (the law here requires service centers to complete repairs of such equipment in 3 months,). When I finally had enough and went to the service center for the explainations, or to retrieve my laptop back, and asked them what took them so long, they said they have "emailed IBM but they didn't answer back" (it was a while back and my ThinkPad was X60s, from IBM). It even was working, I just had some issues I wanted them to work through (e.g. the cooling system became noisier and hotter, apparently having been clogged with dust; etc.)
The Dell Latitude E7250 works pretty well, Debian Jessie is missing some drivers and things (eg for Wifi) but Linux Mint (ugh, I know...) works wonderfully well. I haven't tried Ubuntu but I would expect the same experience or better. I was worried about the trackpad being horrible, but I'm actually quite impressed. It's not an Apple trackpad but it's actually pretty decent. (The Disable-Trackpad-While-typing option is almost a requirement though)
Edit: I would emphasize though, if you're going to purchase with Dell, do it as a business (Just pretend you are a business, dont buy it through work). Dell consumer customer support is f#$&ing atrocious. I'm still fighting with them to rectify a problem from an order back in Nov 2015 that I never received. I can't overstate this enough, Dell consumer support is f$#&ing HORRIBLE.
Neither did I, I just filled in a company name at one point in the purchase process and that apparently flagged me as a business. This lead to further complications because their consumer support department couldn't even find the order as a result.
I've an XPS 13, and I like it a lot. I use i3 as my window manager which, due to being keyboard driven, is quite infuriating on this device. The trackpad is incredibly sensitive and the heel of my hand being within 2" or so will trigger a contact. I've attempted to lessen the sensitivity to no avail. Most of the time this isn't an issue because I'm using an external keyboard and mouse, but when I'm on the road it drives me nuts. Enough so that I now remote work on an mbp, and desk work on the XPS.
If you're looking for lightweight, high spec, go for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It's a gorgeous machine. Leaps and bounds better than MBPs. The XPS15 is about on par with the X1C
It's so obvious that I really don't need to be too technical. For the same price point, the X1C is thinner, lighter, has more ram, better cpu and a more dense display. There isn't a single objective measure where the X1C is worse than the MBP
We use MBPs and X1C as developer workstations in our company. Developers often complain about their Lenovo's, while MBP owners are generally happy. In my practice, MBP has better build quality, better battery life and better display. Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation (we're pair programming a lot and it's easy to compare).
> Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation
This may be true for your experience with X1Cs, but it's hardly true for Lenovos in general. My t450s rarely makes any fan noise under stress, and it's never become uncomfortably hot to the touch like my work MBP has. My work MBP also definitely gets very noisy if I'm pegging a core or three.
> Lenovos gets pretty hot and noisy under load while MacBook is silent in the same exact situation
This may be true for your experience with X1Cs, but it's hardly true for Lenovos in general. My t450s rarely makes any fan noise under stress, and it's never become uncomfortably hot to the touch like my work MBP has.
Better TouchPad, namely because of the amazing ThinkPad buttons. And better yet, a trackpoint (although only for those that are used to the input method)
It's not as clear cut as you make it seem. I've used both devices, and while the Thinkpad clearly is a high quality device, subjectively I didn't feel like it was all that different from my MBP.
Of course there is. X1C flexes like it was made out of rubber. I can hold the edges of the display and it's terrifying what how much you can twist them. The aluminum case of the MBP tolerates heat better, the X1C get really loud under load while the MBP is much quieter. Touchpad is just incomparable.
And of course, if you need OSX for work then only MBP provides that.
Did you mean XPS13? I think it would be on par performance- and weight-wise with X1C. XPS15 is _significantly_ bulkier, but in return you get the i7 6700HQ (quad core). I believe the MBPs use the HQ CPUs as well, so we are talking a slightly different class of laptops..
Maybe the 2016 version that just came out is better, I hope. Because last year's model has half of the stated battery life and the screen catches more reflections than a mirror. The touchscreen's responsiveness is very clunk, slow, and unnatural.
Yes I actually have a X1 Carbon as my work laptop and really like it, but again I have the feeling that you can get a better spec'd laptop with similar performance for less money these days.
Honest question: I am a bit concerned about 1080p resolution on a 13" screen. Isn't too small to read ? Or do most people just increase the rendering quality (à la retina) ?
I have a 14" 1080p screen. I put everything to 125% (like font sizes, etc.) It's okay. My eyes are very good at short distances so I don't mind things being small. But yes, Windows 7 does not have enough scaling options to make higher resolutions on smaller screens work. With Windows 10 it is no problem though. With Ubuntu it also shouldn't be a problem. Yes, you do increase rendering quality, but not by much. You can still see individual pixels. But any higher pixel density probably wouldn't be useful, considering the small visual benefits and the higher CPU and GPU and thus battery demands.
I have a QHD version. I have Firefox set to 125% (or 150%). I'm heavily relying on <ctrl> +/- to control the information density in terminals and browsers. That works really well.
Most UIs nowerdays adept to DPI, so no real problems there (idea/intellij just fixed their stuff to work better on HiDPI).
It's today just a matter of choice. I usually use a prescaling/font size etc. that does not pack too much information onto the screen but I enjoy that I can increase the density if needed!
The years of having "too many pixels" are thankfully well behind us (by several years). All modern OSes handle lots of pixels great, so having more pixels is always better, except maybe as far as battery life is concerned.
While thinkpad has removed BIOS whitelist...Ubuntu has introduced charger whitelist. The forums are replete with people having a conked out charger and the replacement charger causing the laptop to run slower.
But I agree with you - the current crop of thinkpad are unworthy. I'm planning to hold on to my t430s for another year.
The killer feature in the Thinkpad line for me is the military-grade sturdiness. Does Dell have the same kind of resistance to spills, drops, heat, etc.?
I guess I'll wait for Apple to reveal the new MB Pro line before making a decision, but it seems that for the first time in 10 years my next laptop will not be a Lenovo/IBM.