Looking to switch from MacBook Air.
Heard great things about Dell XPS 13 after replacing the wifi chip.
My priorities are portability, sharp screen, good keyboard and battery life.
Will be running Arch Linux, and operating mainly out of the command line with i3.
Is 4gbs of RAM enough? Any other opinions/alternatives?
RZ5 :^)
>Will be running Arch Linux, and operating mainly out of the command line with i3.
just buy a fucking used thinkpad you literal meme fuckhead
portability - y
sharp screen - y
battery - ok
good keyboard - no
It's an okay keyboard, but not as good as the one on your macbook air, and the one on the air isn't primo.
I've heard bad things about thinkpad screens. And would prefer something thinner
What else could you recommend please?
>macshit air
>good keyboard
0/10
Thinkpad T460S
Enjoy your coil whine
learn to read
>16:10
don't tempt me so, user
If you get a t420s or t430s you could install a 1080p ips panel.
How heavy do you want to go and what screen size?
Wow, I hadn't considered that at all!
13 inch please, no heavier than 2kg
ended up returning mine
- you should definitely get 8 gb, just because you have no way to upgrade it in the future
- keyboard is terribad - cramped, short key travel, mushy and spongy
- touchpad is okay, but still nowhere near a macbook
- screen is great, but there's autobrightness that you can't turn off, only with some messing with the firmware and only on the qhd touch version
- battery life is nowhere near as advertised but still good, the thing that bothers me is that it seems to drop its capacity really fast
- portability is great
- coil whine seems to be a common issue, mine wasn't as bad but in a silent room you could easily hear it
I'd look at one of the chinkpads; x1 carbon, x260 or even a t460s
Thanks for the advice ,What did you end up replacing it with?
T460, would've probably gotten a X260 instead if it wasn't like 200€ more expensive
it's 14" and 1.7kg, not as portable as the XPS 13 but still thin and portable enough
the keyboard is godlike, you get a shitton of battery life with the 6cell battery, screen is a bit of a lottery, if you get the LG panel you're good, but you might get an Innolux one which is supposedly shit
dell xps 9350 owner here
i would recommend a thinkpad, but there are no thinkpads that can stand against the dell xps design whatsoever (maybe x1 carbon, but it's pretty shit)
there's a list of thing you want to do in case you decide to go for it:
1) take the 8gb or 16gb version
2) take the less storage capacity available (should be 128gb) and replace that fucking shitty pcie nvme pm951 with a m.2 SATA 2280 device (like a Samsung 850 EVO) due to SATA power management (pcie drains A LOT, like 2-3W) and eventually Hackintosh support (nvme not supported or partially supported)
3) take the QHD+ version if you care about sharp screen (but HiDPI will be a fucking pain in the ass unless you use Gnome3) or just go for the FHD screen if you want to use window managers and save some extra battery
4) change wifi card (I use an Intel 8260, there's no support on hackintosh but works well under linux)
5) replace thermal paste
6) keep a little partition for windows for thunderbolt firmware upgrades and bios upgrades (the latter is even possible through bios flash + usb stick)
i must say i really love mine and won't go back for a macbook (i used to have an rMBP 13" late 2013) any time soon
if you have questions, just reply and i'll try to answer the best i can
I would say the X260 -- get the 300 nit screen.
The T460 is good, but the screen maxes at less than 250 nits.
The dell latitudes are good, but they are a bit bigger than what you want. Good screens and keyboards, though.
What is this sorcery?
superior made in nippon technology
Thank you so much for the detail! I have no issues with the design on a thinkpad t460s, would you recommend that over the XPS in hindsight?
Can you elaborate on the thermal paste please? And also the bios point?
Fucking moon where do I buy one?
ebay
I don't know man, I mean Thinkpads (new) and XPS are on the same price level, but Thinkpad have absolute support for every OS you want/need.
XPS is a pain in the ass with Linux if you want to use a tiling wm, and with OSX hackintosh if you want full support (DSDT/SSDT disassemble and patching, kexts support)
But I just love the XPS so much now I don't really know... I would need to try a Thinkpad for a month then I could tell you what to choose in hindsight
The retail thermal paste is utter shit (if you do a search on /r/Dell about thermal paste, you will find my post with some images) so I changed it with Arctic Silver 5
Bios updates are .exe format, so you need either Windows or to use the BIOS flash utility with a USB drive. Thunderbolt firmware updates can be only executed on Windows
literally just re-pasted mine, they practically missed the cpu
>$2100
rip
like a texan misses the toilet after a fat dinner at his local steakhouse, i fucking know
>so poor he can't even enable ClearType
What makes it a pain to use with a tiling wm!?
you are me
i bought an xps 13, found it didn't fit my needs despite being sexy and solidly built, sold it on CL and got a t450s
Rescaling all the shit and configuring xft and single application dpi
GTK3+ handles everything just fine, and Gnome3 is really ok, but its window manager is shit, even with shellshape extension
Why would you have to replace the wifi chip on a brand new laptop?
Because the broadcom one which it has by default it's bretty shieet user
and a fucking dual band intel 8260 costs like 20 bucks if not less