I had an issue that was known with certain Dell universal docking stations. We had the elevated support and got a hot fix in a few days. A colleague with the same laptop, same dock has the same problem and got nothing - they refused to acknowledge or support the dock connection, claiming that they only support “hardware” and not windows drivers. Eventually the driver was released a few months later.

Other OEMs like Lenovo and HP don’t fuck around with stuff like this. Just price Dell like for like with the equivalent support offering. Dell’s pricing is usually very competitive, so you’ll probably find they will still win some comparisons, and when they do the “pro” offering is better.

Note that apple would not sell AppleCare if they were losing money on it. If you can afford to replace a laptop, you might as well do that. Dell’s professional warranty sends someone to your house next day to fix it, which is worth something extra, especially if you are far from an Apple store. But I do not think Apple’s does anything special like that.

But if you break anything on that device and you want to have it repaired, that’s likely to be pretty expensive. In contrast, if you have AppleCare, the repair may be free, or just the cost of the replacement components and no labor charge.

More recent versions of AppleCare have even started covering screen replacements, which can easily exceed the value of the device, or even the cost of buying another one that is identically configured.

So, yeah — I always buy the maximum AppleCare I can. Just one broken component, and it has paid for itself for the remaining lifetime of that device.

With Apple, remember that they are masters of business process, supply chain and scale. You either hump the computer to the Apple store or do a depot repair. There's no man in the van. They put OEM parts or replace the unit and refurbish it in some industrial process. Apple makes of money on this, as the process maximizes utilization and minimizes loss - they are using their own staff or a smaller number of depot contractors, and push losses like shipping shrink to their contractors like FedEx.

But... remember that you have captive to a single supplier for most replacement parts, and replacement parts are a profit center for Apple. It's gross, but if you're not prepared to essentially replace the unit in year 2, and you need the device, you may be better off with AppleCare. Another factor is because Apple devices are unpredictably hit or miss for quality. My company had a defective keyboard MacBook that was replaced in full 7 times. There have been issues with batteries, de-lamination, and other things at various times that are a risk as well.

Personally, I buy AppleCare for Macs, but not for things that are more accessories like Apple TVs, iPads, etc. My kids iPad has a cracked screen stabilized with scotch tape.

Not for laptops, the quality is so high I’m stacking them up as I can’t justify throwing them out or recycling them. I have a macbook pro from 2012 still going strong (albeit slow)

I had the prosupport, still got Indian call center.

Boy was I wrong. The laptop itself was great when it worked. But my XPS 13 shipped with a barely functional trackpad. As with you, I had to spend countless hours on the phone with them to get them to repair the laptop that was well within its warranty. Never again.

Thanks for the warning, friend!

I've been very happy with my dell xps 13 developer edition. Had it for years running windows and linux dual boot with zero problems.

Dell is the only company I know of that really stands behind their products. The default(at least here) warranty includes next business day on-site repair.

The times I've had issues during the last 15+ years Dell has sent someone to fix it, fast. Nobody else seems to be willing to do that if their product fails. Must be really expensive for Dell when something goes wrong.

They do however stop producing/selling batteries much earlier than they should...

Iam pretty sure its only with linux on my xps 13. Any fix? I hate it.

Unless you need x86, just go with an M1 Mac. They're ridiculously power efficient without sacrificing performance.

I've owned ibm, lenovo, clevo, dell, apple, and all of them were okay.

At least the framework people are going in the right direction.

And stating Apple is just okay next to the rest of those is completely disingenuous. Apple clearly had higher quality than all of these manufacturers.

Before this laptop, I'd never had to make sure my AC was turned on before I took Zoom meetings. With this thing, if the ambient temperature is over about 25 C, the CPU throttles to 1GHz and I get about 2 frames per second.

I have a personal Lenovo Yoga that has none of these issues, is 4 years old, and apart from the battery being degraded (my bad), has been amazing. Meanwhile, I can't wait until I hit IT's refresh window on the Mac, as I'm going to delight in destroying it myself.

One instance, which they fixed. Shall we enumerate the issues with the rest of the brands?

Interestingly your rage is what made that take so long in the first place. Engineers like to claim the sky is falling because their keyboard feels weird. How can anyone take someone like that seriously?

> Before this laptop, I'd never had to make sure my AC was turned on before I took Zoom meetings. With this thing, if the ambient temperature is over about 25 C, the CPU throttles to 1GHz and I get about 2 frames per second.

Meanwhile I run unreal engine on a macbook pro 13”, with no issues. Sometimes software sucks.

I had the same problem as you with my new Dell. On my own I replaced the Wi-Fi card with an Intel one and it fixed the problems. That said, I had the same battery issues, etc. as the original poster. I don't hate my XPS, but I would not buy again.

I have a Precision laptop (absolutely top of the line business laptop that shares hardware with the XPS 15) that does this too. The only fix is to either keep it plugged in 100% of the time or perform a full system shut down any time it's going to be unplugged.

It's extremely frustrating and has basically killed any usefulness the laptop has as a portable computer.

My XPS 13's wifi stopped working completely. After a similar experience to yours with support, they dispatched someone to replace the whole motherboard.

The dude completely botched it. The device wouldn't boot into Windows (BSOD), and he told me it was because I needed to reinstall Windows. And he didn't put the laptop back together properly - something inside was jammed under the motherboard so that the back plate wouldn't screw down all the way, and the laptop wouldn't close. Then he said to me, "Can I go now?"

When I tried to argue (politely), he said he'd just call his supervisor, and then drove off! About 15 minutes later, I received an email that the job had been successfully completed. Under the "customer signature" area, I kid you not, he had written something like "verbal confirmation given".

Needless to say, I kicked up such a big stink, emailing customer support, Michael Dell, and Angela Fox at Dell Australia. They sent me a brand new replacement.

I am under the impression that this was a more general Windows issue. Does someone else have more information?

1. Linux kernel "mem-sleep" mode default [0], which determines what actually happens when systemd-sleep "suspend" is called. The default value is "s2idle" for many distros which is as good as leaving your computer running with processes paused... when what most users expect is some kind of suspend-to-ram ("deep"). Obviously this burns through battery pretty quickly but at least it shouldn't overheat.

2. I found this systemd infinite hybernate loop bug [1] (now fixed) when swap is smaller than RAM... although you only would come across this is you accidentally under-provisioned the swap partition on install like I did - but the failure mode was spectacularly bad, because it will retry over and over swapping and compressing the RAM which obviously ramps up the CPU, get hot with the lid closed, make short work of battery and SSD.

Anyway the common issue is #1 which you just have to know about otherwise your computer doesn't really suspend at all, and since most machines are very quiet these days you won't notice unless you dig.

[0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/538541/suspend-to-r...

[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/19550

I'm still having an issue where double-finger-touchpad-scrolling causes my X server to core dump, and I can't force the X server to actually dump a core file, because I can't run `ulimit` before the X server runs. You're kind of just shit out of luck as a Linux user.

At least one of those is mentioned there. But a lot of it depends on the implementation by the OEM, ultimately.

As an extreme option you can always replace the binary with a shell script setting ulimit and exec-ing the original Xorg.

The default behaviour is unintuitive to most people and often they are not even aware it's not doing what they expect. This is the problem, not that it doesn't work, but that it doesn't work by default.

powercfg -lastwake

This will tell you which action or hardware initiated the wake. It should provide enough clue of the offending software. Also the wakes are recorded in the log, you would be able to pull up the event viewer to find the lists of the offending software that abuses this. There is a event ID for it which you can use to track this down, I couldn't remember the number.

Edit: Here the guide for finding this in the event viewer.[0]

[0] https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63136-see-wake-source-wi...

> On occasion, the system stays in the active mode (with the screen off) for a longer interval of time. These longer active intervals occur for a variety of reasons, for example, processing incoming email or downloading critical Windows updates.

At this point I’m fed up - what’s a better Windows laptop? Not interested in touchscreen/tablet modes and I’m willing to pay quite a bit. I am leaning towards something from the Surface Laptop line, but open to suggestions.

I'll give it to them though, they didn't quibble about replacing them. On the third one, the keyboard went dark and the top half failed to identify the bottom half (they snap apart so the top half is like a giant ipad, for those unfamiliar). So dozens of device issues popped up constantly. At that point they were ready to give me a fourth and I opted for a refund.

So support is good, the idea is fantastic (loved that crazy giant ipad!) but the dream of the 'hardware creators making sure the OS works perfectly' makes complete sense and has been proven by Apple. But MS failed to do it. I still live in hope for a future iteration that realises the promise.

PS. I know a few people who have others in the surface line which seem reliable, so those are likely to be much better.

I had this happen, but it was the cat that would nap on the keyboard until the laptop died and stopped being warm.

I have an Apple M1 machine this year too.

Battery life / capacity is much better on the Apple.

However, installing two batteries on the Lenovo is cheap to do and overall performance is comparable.

The M1 is 2 to 3x the raw compute of the Lenovo.

Anyway, I shut the lid and drop the machine in my bag all the time.

How?

Just have it hibernate. With today's fast SSD drives, one hardly notices it. I sure don't.

Lenovo is running Win 10. M1 still on Big Sur.

Perception is everything, I just do not understand why Microsoft leadership would not make such a convenient, useful, and publicly visible feature a top priority.

The two Apple machines I own are exemplary! One is the 2012 i7 MBP. Killer, but hot running machine. The M1 Air is crazy lean. Love it. I worry about it, hope I keep loving it. Harder to fix than the 2012... (And I generally fix my own stuff)

All, but one of my Lenovo machines have been exemplary too. Tanks. Dropped 'em, froze one (literally, it got time in a deep freeze by mistake!), travel the world, bump, clank, slide, thump for a few years kind of travel. Not a lick of trouble.

Maybe I've been lucky. However, I love Lenovo and Apple machines. For me, they work, with one gripe and that's the materials Apple uses for power bricks on the 2012. My ancient Lenovo, back from the Thinkpad days, has power devices that still look and work new! The little brick for the Apple has crapped out, damaged cable multiple times. I have an aftermarket one that looks more ugly, but so far just works.

The Lenovo machines are generally easy to service. I've a W420 that I put parts in a couple times. It never actually failed, just got noisy.

Oh, and I have an old T60p running XP. It's offline, has some dev software license or other on it that I don't want to spend for to replace and I may need. A few times a year I fire it up, and it's got a crappy fan assembly... But, the machine runs fine on passive cooling, so what I do is shoot a little air into the fan so the BIOS sees a spin. Once it boots, the fan is never commanded on again. (Or it rattles like no other) That's the machine I traveled with and really beat hard. Display is crisp and bright, keyboard worn down with no characters visible on most keys, and it's a joy to use still.

I don't know whether it's Microsoft.

One thing I've noticed on Dell and HP machines is their BIOS seems aggressive on performance, and often runs the fans hard. My W520 will do that too, if I set it, and I just don't. The other thing I've noted is the little hinge sensors are set to a hair trigger!

To anyone struggling with the machine magically turning on in your bag, consider a few layers of tape where that sensor is. Make sure it's engaged. And that's if you can see the thing. On many newer machines we can't, because it's hidden somewhere, or is inductive.

Apple tends to put a magnet there to keep the machine closed. Maybe they know something the others haven't figured out yet.

But worth a look. My T60p did the cook in bag thing to me just once. I replaced the battery, because it was cooked!! And I put a little blob of nail polish on the sensor nub, and some tape. Later, the blob broke off, and I used thicker, stiffer tape. (the blob was attached to a little point, just not much to bond with) Point being, that little sensor was hair trigger and just does not need to be.

My M1 air has a fairly aggressive lid open sensor. Only takes a degree or two and it's ON! I think it's aggressive, but not too much, but I also would make damn sure it's closed up type aggressive too. It does have a magnet, will stay closed under all but Extreme circumstances. It's probably okay.

I was about to link to a discussion about that, but that seems to be gone as well.

The relevant kernel docs here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt

Support around the XPS is lacking when there is a hardware defect. I've even pointed out one with the bios which Dell wouldn't acknowledge or fix as my 9360 was way out of warranty by the time I'd identified it. (Random lockups on wake caused by bad i2c behaviour from trackpad, fix disable i2c and "fallback" to spi)...

Ended up with 3 motherboards though as my employer has a good warranty agreement. Shame they all suffered from coil whine and the 2nd engineer sliced a cable with a screwdriver. I genuinely could have done better myself, ended up fixing the coil wine with non conductive hot snott..

Great work Dell...

I had exactly the same thing on my XPS 15. I'd take it out of my bag, it'd be warm and the battery would be dead. Plus one day it suddenly decided it didn't have a TPM module (didn't even show up in BIOS) so BitLocker stopped working, and of late the CPU is constantly throtling and fans running at full blast because it's overheating even with next to no load (I've checked the fans for dust).

I assume you mean the Killer card. If you bug their support about this, they'll often agree to replace yours with an Intel one.

Are there any decent battery suppliers that sell dell compatible replacements?

Next one will be a framework laptop.