Holy cow, yes. My wife's XPS 13 had the crappiest Killer WiFi card, and Dell would not acknolwedge that it was the source of all of our issues no matter what I tried, no matter what evidence I presented. The WiFi card was causing all sorts of issues from slow browsing, to the entire computer freezing on restart/shutdown, to no WiFi after wake up from sleep... the list goes on.
I finally rage quit after a session with Dell support had me run hours of meaningless diagnostics tools and then said everything was ok and to check my router. I told them right from the get go that I suspected the Killer WiFi card was faulty, but the technicians always ignored that piece of info.
I bought an Intel 8265 to replace the Killer WiFi card, and when I went to replace it, the antenna ball broke off of the Killer card and was stuck inside the little socket! There was a tiny flake of solder I was able to grab with my finest pliers and pull it out, allowing me to install the Intel card. After installing the Intel card EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM described earlier went away.
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-8265-Generic-2230-8265NGWMG/dp/...
$30 was all it would have taken to make the XPS 13 from a piece of garbage to an awesome laptop. I'm already paying $1000+, why not $1030+? But now, I will never buy another XPS again because it required 10+ hours of my time to troubleshoot and fix all by myself.
It's almost as if Docker has to start and run in a VM on non-Linux systems.
> however, they still do not have 16GB 13' mac which is a deal breaker.
What are you talking about? You've been able to upgrade the memory in a 13 inch MBP to 16GB on purchase since like 2015 at least
> Touchscreen
I've had two traditional laptops with touchscreens. Both times they got in my way and I stop using the touchscreen after like three months max.
On a 2-in-1 like the Surface Book where touch is a first-class input it's a completely different story, but on traditional laptops a touchscreen is far from an ideal user input device. It's like the N64 controller - you're left wondering if the manufacturer thinks you have a third arm coming out of your chest or something. To use it you have to take your hand completely off one of your two much better input devices (keyboard and trackpad/mouse) and hold your arm in an awkward, quickly painful position if your laptop is in a normal position (on a fairly flat surface with the screen straight or maybe tilted back a little, a couple of feet away from you max). The touch bar isn't the greatest design decision but moving a finger up to tap e.g. the bookmark app control in Chrome is a far more natural movement than lifting my hand to the screen to attempt to poke at the bookmark star which is rendered at like half the size of my fingertip.
Just as an FYI, that's no longer true for both macOS (xhyve) and Windows (unknown underlying tech, but compiling and running dockerd behaved reasonably with the exception that one could only run Windows docker images). In fact, IIRC, even Docker for Mac uses xhyve, so only docker-machine folks use the VM-based solution
They don't have 32GB laptops which would be useful for some of my work though.
By the way, all Macbook pro models still have the 3.5mm audio jack.
Ha-ha, you are right, it was a reference to a scandal they had when removed audio jack from phones. Just a joke :)
Later it turned out that an Intel 8260 card I've bought to use in PC-based AP cannot be coerced to work in 5GHz band no matter what I did, so I've swapped them, now Atheros is in AP and Intel is in XPS, with everything working flawlessly. So it turned out that the Intel card is less functional...
This is really surprising. Can you say what specific replacement worked for you on that laptop?
More recent models have switched to the "Killer" brand wifi card, and I'm not sure whether those have in-kernel support or if it's another akmod thing.
Just google for XPS WiFi issue and you will get plenty of results. This model should be a good fit: Intel 8265 Generic, 2230, 2x2 AC+BT (8265NGWMG), look for Intel wifi cards they are much much better than default ones.
Anyone know if there's any really great wifi cards internal or USB, that allows full AP, "war driving" etc - and also 5ghz and such? Preferably with great drivers for Linux and freebsd?
(I doubt internal is an option for my surface pro 4, but for refurbished ThinkPads/dells it might do the trick..)
So much so, that I think I'm going to go with Asus for my next ultrabook.
http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-...
£1,498.99 GBP one in above list.
It's spacious, I don't get erroneous output, and most importantly, you get a uniform click no matter where on the trackpad your finger is.
In the hinged trackpads, it's a pain to click at the top - often you have to slide your finger down.
This is less of an issue if you're more of a keyboard only type - but for me it's one of the first things I notice when I use a windows laptop.
Other pros/cons I more or less agree on, but in my book this is a big one that is commonly left out.
Little things like that add up - and it's nice when they are just completely out of the way. FWIW I don't have the issue you reported, I can click anywhere on the trackpad, even the very edge. Mostly useful when you're dragging and dropping or selecting text etc.
Nod of agreement to the wifi issue, and the fact that it's extremely fixable with a plug-in adapter.
Also, I think a few more things worth to mention.
Pros:
- XPS has a decent hardware (I got 16GB, i8Gen, 500GB SSD and forgot about having a few docker containers running on the background which was an issue with my MacBook Pro 15 (8GB, 2.5Gh)
- It is really 1k$ cheaper than the same config MacBook model. Apple's Retina and Touchbar are really cool, however, they still do not have 16GB 13' mac which is a deal breaker.
- Touchscreen. Take your touch bar and put it into your missing 3.5 jack plug, Tim's Team, why would I need a touch bar when I have a touchscreen; (no offense to Apple, I still own a few apples because they are nice)
- the webcam is well described, but it is not that bad, it saves a few inches in size which makes its screen look like it takes all space and there are no borders at all;
- while ubuntu became usable with Gnome desktop I almost did not notice all missing Apple's out of the box features;
- it is very light (~1kg), my backpack can be heavier;
Cons:
- WiFi is super shitty in XPS series. If you have not had any issues yet - then you have not bought one yet. It is better to replace with 30$ adapter to not have issues with differently configured routers;
- It has Windows on it and some features are not supported on Linux. For instance, I see no sense in having fingerprint scanner if it does not work under Linux;
- Be aware that screen scaling might not work on some linux machines. For ubuntu 16.04 I got windows so small so I cannot read the text. Luckily 18.04 fixed it, but still;
Overall, it is the best laptop for Linux I've used so far (Lenovo and Asus are good ones as well), having good hardware and being more or less cheap. I hope Apple will simplify ML and add a bit more RAM to Autumn's laptops, otherwise, there are no reasons to go back.