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Windows Hardware

Dell Launches XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop With Intel Kaby Lake Chip, Starts at $1,000 (venturebeat.com) 114

Posted by msmash from the new-laptops dept.
Ahead of CES 2016, which officially kicks off Tuesday, Dell has announced a convertible version of its popular XPS 13 laptop. The machine is powered by a seventh-generation Kaby Lake Intel Core i chip (i5 and i7 options are available), Intel HD Graphics 615 integrated GPU, 4 to 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, a 128GB-1TB solid-state drive (SSD), a 720p webcam on the bottom of the display with support for Windows Hello, a fingerprint scanner, a 46 watt-hour battery, and a 13.3-inch touchscreen, available in QHD+ or FHD configurations. From a report on VentureBeat: The bezel is very narrow, in keeping with the XPS style. The fanless PC offers an SD card slot and two USB-C ports, and a USB-A to USB-C adapter comes in the box. The laptop is 0.32-0.54 inch thick, which is thinner than Dell's 2016 XPS. But the keyboard hasn't been squished down -- the keys have 1.3mm travel, or just a tad bit (0.1mm) more than you get on the XPS laptop -- which is impressive. The laptop weighs 2.7 pounds. The question is whether people will want the convertible option when the laptop is fine as is. The convertible XPS 13 starts at $1000, which is $200 more than the XPS 13 laptop.
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Dell Launches XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop With Intel Kaby Lake Chip, Starts at $1,000 More

Dell Launches XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop With Intel Kaby Lake Chip, Starts at $1,000

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  • Fanless? (Score:4, Informative)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:10PM (#53593857)

    So they put a great all powerful CPU in and don't cool it. Yay for thermal throttling, exactly what you want from your all powerful laptops.

    • If they are using the 7Y75, then it is only 4.5W TDP.
      No fan needed for that.
      http://ark.intel.com/products/... [intel.com]

      Seems like a great CPU for that wattage.

    • modern intel cpus are very low power. its amazing, my last gen i7 is a 35w fanless mini-itx box.

    • Re:Fanless? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ahabswhale ( 1189519 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:22PM (#53594227)

      It's actually a Core M processor. Intel has taken to renaming them because of the bad rep. So, if you see a Y in the part number, it's not a real i7 chip.

      • The Core M processor is actually a dual core mobile Core i7 (4MB of cache [wikipedia.org] instead of 3MB like the i3 and i5). Its primary distinction is that it's binned to operate at extremely low power, and it has aggressive thermal throttling (to keep it within the TDP window). That's why you'll see the Core M outperform the mobile i5 on certain benchmarks - if the benchmark is short enough that thermal throttling doesn't kick in, the Core M's 4MB cache allows it to outpace the i5 and its 3MB cache.

        There was more t

        • But for the 95% of the population who only needs bursty CPU power for web browsing and firing off tweets and Facebook posts, it's pretty ideal.

          I would say that's true even for people who are doing normal office tasks. Even running something like Microsoft Outlook or doing some light editing in Photoshop isn't going to require more than an occasional burst of CPU. Most people overestimate the power they require for their computing. I've dealt with a lot of people who say they require a high-end CPU, tons of RAM, and a nice video card. Then they spend all day in Office apps, CPU basically idle, using 2GB of RAM, rendering nothing in 3D except fo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      Not a real i7, It's just an M chip. Intel was having trouble selling their low end garbage so they decided to change the naming to further cloud what you are really getting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Yeah, not good. I want performance and will not tolerate CPU thermal throttling at any time.

      Dell really didn't think this one through.

      The uneven tablet mode will infuriate perfectionists, too.

      And what's with that Nostril Camera highlighting the user's grooming habits? Yuck.

  • Tired of 2010 options (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vinn ( 4370 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:16PM (#53593885) Homepage Journal
    I'm getting so sick of laptop manufacturers, in particular Dell, offering specs from 2010. You should just be shot if you ship a laptop with 4GB of RAM. Start at 8. No hard drive should be smaller than 200GB. Don't even think of putting anything less than an i5 in an XPS or Latitude line.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      IKR the walmart here is still selling brand new junk with 2GB of RAM.

      Aside from that what's a kaby? It looks like someone wanted to type kirby lake and their lawyer got pissed.

    • I agree w/ the rest of what you wrote, but 200GB hard drive? Why? Even a 64GB flash drive is more than adequate. Also, one can use thumb drives, external hard drives/SSDs or even cloud space. I have potentially up to 5TB of cloud storage as a result of buying Office 365, which lets me upload all my files in case they need to be retrieved or anything

      • Unless you're doing all of your file interactions via a web browser (which is a truly sucky experience), that "cloud" storage is still getting copied to your local drive.

        • Not true. MS Office in windows, save to onedrive, you don't need the local sync client set to sync. On linux, you can use google-drive-ocaml-fuse to mount g drives without locally syncing them. These are just two random examples. Honestly, I agree with everything OP said except 200GB drives as well, it's just not financially practical if you want an SSD for lower level mods, it's the part that is still replaceable on many laptops as well(!!), whereas RAM is almost always soldered. I agree though, all these

        • Yeah. I use the OneDrive utility, which does what you describe. The convenience here is retrieving things if I either get a new laptop or need to do a retrieval. Yeah, I could use an external hard drive as well - which I have, but on Windows, using OneDrive to retrieve things is that much easier. Plus I get to share my music b/w the laptop and my mobile devices.

      • I have a couple of cheap laptops at work which have integrated 32GB SSDs in them.

        Every few days, both of them download several GB of data, then ask for permission to update Windows, and then fail due to insufficient storage.

        There is hardly any data on them, other than the original Windows install they shipped with.

    • About a month ago I bought an HP Envy x360 Convertible 15", 1920x1080 resolution, Intel Kaby Lake i5-7200U, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD.

      Paid $900 Canadian Dollars (~$670 USD).

    • No hard drive should be smaller than 200GB

      Show me a 2010 laptop with a 200GB SSD. I don't use my laptop to sore endless amounts of crap. That's what SD cards, memory sticks and external HDDs are for. 128GB is perfectly reasonable for many.

      4GB of RAM not so much.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vinn ( 4370 )
        Here: https://www.cnet.com/au/produc... [cnet.com] I didn't even bother searching - that was the first Google review I looked at. That system had a 160GB hard drive with a minor upgrade to 250GB. I've been getting 128GB SSD drives in laptops for the past few years, but they almost never work any more in any of my clients businesses. The biggest thing driving it is Dropbox, Google Drive and box.com usage. So many companies (or departments) are ditching fileservers and moving to those systems and they think that th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        My 2011 laptop has a 240GB SSD and another 750GB 7200rpm drive.

        Why the fuck would I put data on shit I have to carry with the laptop when I can just put it onto the laptop? Shit, you're like the Apple fanatic I work with that tells us constantly how slim and elegant his shiny expensive laptop is, and doesn't ever mention the 17 peripherals he also carries around to make the fucking thing usable.

        • Why the fuck would I put data on shit I have to carry with the laptop when I can just put it onto the laptop?

          Removability. Why would I bother doing some manual transfer if I can just click an SD card out of my laptop and into my desktop when I need to do something. It's a fuckload faster than transfering something over some shitty wifi connection.

          Shit, you're like the Apple fanatic I work with that tells us constantly how slim and elegant his shiny expensive laptop is, and doesn't ever mention the 17 peripherals he also carries around to make the fucking thing usable.

          Apple fanatics carry adaptors and shit for reasons because their devices suck.
          I carry only accessories that make my life easier. Such as a 500GB removable drive so I don't spend 5 fucking hours transferring my current video editing stream between my laptop, desktop and wo

    • Meh. Here's the thing, a lot of people want things to be cheap, and getting something this nice and thin and light for under $1000 is a pretty good job of keeping prices low. In order to make that price, Dell was going to have to cut corners somewhere. I'd rather have less RAM (as long as it's at least 4 GB) and less hard drive space (as long as it's over 100 GB) than sacrifice on the quality of the screen (for example).

      In short, I think it's fine to sell a laptop with these specs as long as they also p

  • I wonder if they have fixed the coil whine issue... https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/... [reddit.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Considering they have not fixed the placement of the camera which gives your nasal cavity prime coverage, I doubt they have fixed the coil whine. I have heard from many people that have gone through multiple XPS replacements that it is simply a crap shoot whether you will get one that doesn't have something wrong with it, and Dell support has been largely ineffective. One co-worker had to do a charge back after the 3rd replacement (for coil whine and display glitches) because Dell refused to give him a refu

  • Stop this 16GB as maximum nonsense!
    • Can't wait for 1TB RAM, once the prices get there. But wonder whether any of our '64-bit' OSs are artificially crippled to not support it?
      • TB support has been around for a long time in 64 bit OS's. Even windows desktop supports 2TB and latest server edition 24TB.

  • yeah, but will it run Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:47PM (#53594061)
    without any dirty tricks, i dont want to lay down 1000+ bucks on a new laptop only to be stuck with windows and no possible way of installing Linux on it

    • Re:yeah, but will it run Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hambone142 ( 2551854 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:57PM (#53594093)

      Amen, brothuh!

      Whenever I see "Win 10" listed (which is always) as an OS, I turn the other direction.

      I'd like to see some good hardware with a Windows alternative. Given the spyware with new Windows, I will not be buying any hardware running the abomination. That's unfortunate as Win 7 works pretty well.

      I just resent the intrusiveness of Win 10.

      No thank you.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I have the "normal" XPS 13 and it runs Linux without problems (with a recent kernel)

    • Re:yeah, but will it run Linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cramit ( 609487 ) <CMSpooner@g m a i l . com> on Monday January 02, 2017 @07:52PM (#53594831)
      Dell actually officially supports linux on the XPS 13 and Precision 15. You can buy it with ubuntu pre-installed and save $100. All drivers are on their project sputnik page.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Dell actually officially supports linux on the XPS 13 and Precision 15.

        Where on this page [dell.com] do they support linux? It's Windows 10 only, even in bloody Finland!

  • CES 2016 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:31PM (#53594273)

    Ahead of CES 2016...

    Excellent job, editors. If you didn't get the memo, it's 2017.

  • What on earth? This better be a cheap option and not a high end model. It's now 2017, it should ship with DDR4, 8GB and at least a 1080p camera.

  • USB-A to USB-C adapter comes in the box (Score:3)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @02:24AM (#53596107) Journal

    Quote from the fine article: The bezel is very narrow, in keeping with the XPS style. The fanless PC offers an SD card slot and two USB-C ports, and a USB-A to USB-C adapter comes in the box.

    Apple, pay attention. As a convenience to their customers, Dell puts an adapter in the box.

    • Quote from the fine article: The bezel is very narrow, in keeping with the XPS style. The fanless PC offers an SD card slot and two USB-C ports, and a USB-A to USB-C adapter comes in the box.

      Apple, pay attention. As a convenience to their customers, Dell puts an adapter in the box.

      And I agree, it is something that Apple should consider; but it isn't like it's a Grand Gesture. Those adapters cost about $2.50 RETAIL on Amazon. (I know, all the more reason Apple should include one or two).

  • I have an XPS15 rev (9530). Its really lovely but not anywhere near needing replacement yet. Its well made and easy to look after both inside and out. It runs Ubuntu flawlessley and I've upgraded the mechanical drive to an SSD. It really flies!

    This new XPS13 looks nice and ill definitely be investigating Dells offerings when im ready for an upgrade as i am hoping this trend continues.

  • When Apple released the USB-C Only MacBook Pros a couple of months ago, they were excoriated by lots and lots of people for "Removing all the Useful Ports" and "Forcing people to use Dongles" and "ignoring the needs of 'Pro' Users" (and variants on those themes).

    So, you're saying that just because Dell has decided to include one measly $2.50 USB-C to USB-A Adapter (not even two, one for each port), they are somehow exonerated from all that unbridled Hate? Even though their USB-C ports don't even appear to

  • The least expensive model of the 2-in-1 is $200 more than the least expensive conventional XPS 13. But the 2-in-1 has an i5 processor rather than an i3 and it has a touchscreen. It's hard to do a direct price comparison of the two models because none of the configurations line up exactly in features, but the spread is certainly far less than $200 for similarly configured systems.

    If you want the lowest priced system period or the lowest priced one with the Quad HD display, the conventional XPS 13 is what you

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