Talk me out of buying a Dell XPS ONE 27 Touch All-in-one Desktop

tkjazzer · Apr 13, 2013

EDIT: see below, Dell just updated the computer to Haswell and improved the video card (June 2013)
----------------
I loved my apple products from 2006 until about 2010ish.
2006 MBP, Iphones 2g, 3gs

But after Android Nexus S (and now nexus 4), I started getting disenchanting with Apple.

Then Microsoft Surface RT dropped and I love it. So much so that I'm debating getting a All-in-one for the living room that has touch screen. Any limitation with Windows RT can be solved with Team Viewer and tunneling back to your home PC to run something you can't run on an ARM device.

Thinking the fully loaded one. 16 gb ram etc

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-one-27-2710-aio-t/pd

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414481,00.asp

I'm on the edge...
Please give me your opinion on this device. I will likely still buy a MacBook Pro when Haswell drops (if no USB 3.0 bugs) and MacBook air when ULV haswell comes out.

I need to always have windows around for medical software; however citrix may make this less of an issue in the future.

I was thinking a touch screen windows 8 device would be fun for entertaining. A living room piece.

------------
Edit see below - June 2013
Dell just updated the video card and added Haswell processors.

How does this change the buying decision making?

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770S processor (8M Cache, up to 3.9 GHz)
Windows 8 Pro, 64-bit, English
16GB1 DDR3L at MHz
2TB 7200 rpm SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State DriveBP
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB DDR5 with TPM V1.2
27 inch LED Backlit Touch Display with IPS/Anti Glare and Adobe RGB QHD resolution (2560 X 1440)
1 Year Enhanced Support - America's Best Standard Support

adnbek · Apr 13, 2013

For the price of a fully-loaded one, you can get a much beefier iMac with much better specs. Only downside is the lack of a touchscreen which, sounds to me, is a deal-breaker to you.

Kissaragi · Apr 13, 2013

If you like windows 8 then go for it.

Jessica Lares · Apr 13, 2013

I personally think that's a lot of money to blow off. For entertainment purposes it's a lot of horsepower that is not really needed too. A Windows 8 powered box, hooked up to a TV, would be a better and cheaper choice.

You need to remember that every touch based Windows desktop/tablet/laptop coming out at the moment is shipping with hardware with drivers that won't get updated more than twice. I've been through that with a Dell even which only had hardware designed for Vista. On Windows 7/8, it wasn't even usable due to it being all off centered and too sensitive. It had great specs at the time though.

Either build one yourself, or buy one for ~$500.

Since you have an RT, you could even use it as a remote for this setup.

snberk103 · Apr 13, 2013

tkjazzer said:
.....
I'm on the edge...
Please give me your opinion on this device......

Use what works best for you. If the Dell is going to do what you want, and you like it... buy it. I would never try to convince someone to buy one OS over another. I like and use OS X and I don't care a whit what you think about it. If a Windows system is what you need, then go for it. Asking me for an opinion about it makes as much sense as asking what brand of toothpaste you should use. Use what works best for you and ignore people who think they have a right to tell you what to buy.

macalec · Apr 14, 2013

Get a Mac not a dell!!

spyguy10709 · Apr 14, 2013

tkjazzer said:
I loved my apple products from 2006 until about 2010ish.
2006 MBP, Iphones 2g, 3gs

But after Android Nexus S (and now nexus 4), I started getting disenchanting with Apple.

Then Microsoft Surface RT dropped and I love it. So much so that I'm debating getting a All-in-one for the living room that has touch screen. Any limitation with Windows RT can be solved with Team Viewer and tunneling back to your home PC to run something you can't run on an ARM device.

Thinking the fully loaded one. 16 gb ram etc

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-one-27-2710-aio-t/pd

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414481,00.asp

I'm on the edge...
Please give me your opinion on this device. I will likely still buy a MacBook Pro when Haswell drops (if no USB 3.0 bugs) and MacBook air when ULV haswell comes out.

I need to always have windows around for medical software; however citrix may make this less of an issue in the future.

I was thinking a touch screen windows 8 device would be fun for entertaining. A living room piece.

I can easily talk you out of this. And I've done my homework on this machine. The only models of the XPS One that you should EVER consider are the 2099 and 2599 models. The others have terrible intel integrated graphics, and the base model doesn't have a touchscreen.

The only model you can get with 16GB of RAM is the 2599 model, which is insane for this computer.

If you get the base 27" iMac (really easy to upgrade RAM to 16GB+ from 8GB if you need it, it has 4 slots, and the RAM is in 2 slots, and it's one touch to remove the panel to upgrade it, and it's about 29 dollars worth of RAM from Newegg.com ), which costs $1799, you'll get

-better hardware (NVidia GT 660 vs 640 in the Dell, or the crap intel graphics on the 2 lower configs of the XPS. Yuck.),

-The ability to use either OS X or Windows 8, if you need it

- And a MUCH better screen, audio, and chassis.

Even if you get the touch screen, the iMac will only cost you $58 dollars more.
I've found that touchscreen desktops are almost exclusively used with a keyboard and mouse anyway, so save your $799, or throw it into upgrades on the iMac. I'd recommend getting the 1999 iMac (it has a 675MX GPU, and you should add the 3TB hard drive. It's another 150 dollars, but it's worth it in the long run.)
If you're hell bent on a touchscreen, check out trolltouch. They have touch overlays for iMacs. On the 27" model, the overlay costs $799.

Getting AIOs is expensive, especially if you don't need the hardware's massive speed. But I'd extremely highly recommend that you get the iMac.

Yebubbleman · Apr 14, 2013

tkjazzer said:
I loved my apple products from 2006 until about 2010ish.
2006 MBP, Iphones 2g, 3gs

But after Android Nexus S (and now nexus 4), I started getting disenchanting with Apple.

Then Microsoft Surface RT dropped and I love it. So much so that I'm debating getting a All-in-one for the living room that has touch screen. Any limitation with Windows RT can be solved with Team Viewer and tunneling back to your home PC to run something you can't run on an ARM device.

Thinking the fully loaded one. 16 gb ram etc

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-one-27-2710-aio-t/pd

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414481,00.asp

I'm on the edge...
Please give me your opinion on this device. I will likely still buy a MacBook Pro when Haswell drops (if no USB 3.0 bugs) and MacBook air when ULV haswell comes out.

I need to always have windows around for medical software; however citrix may make this less of an issue in the future.

I was thinking a touch screen windows 8 device would be fun for entertaining. A living room piece.

I'm not going to try to sell you towards or away either your XPS One or an iMac. I'm only going to offer up the notion that ALL all-in-ones are crap and not worth your time solely for how pretty they might look on your desk.

Giuly · Apr 14, 2013

Three words: Carpal tunnel syndrome.

Primejimbo · Apr 14, 2013

adnbek said:
For the price of a fully-loaded one, you can get a much beefier iMac with much better specs. Only downside is the lack of a touchscreen which, sounds to me, is a deal-breaker to you.

Never thought I read that about a mac haha!
The touch screen to me is a gimmick. Maybe use it a lot the 1st time I got it, but I don't really see a use for it on a computer.

Acorn · Apr 14, 2013

an imac that is duel booting with windows 8 sounds like a much better entertainment device to me.

then again, every windows machine that has been strictly windows on it that i have bought i have sold not long after. it just makes more sense to duel boot to me.

spatlese44 · Apr 14, 2013

Acorn said:
an imac that is duel booting...

A fight to the death?

Not sure what this RT tunneling is all about, but interesting that the op started by talking about switching outside the Apple ecosystem with phones. People tend to think of the Apple ecosystem as something keeping people in; it would appear that a break in that ecosystem might be having a snowball effect here.

tkjazzer · Apr 14, 2013

spyguy10709 said:
I can easily talk you out of this. And I've done my homework on this machine. The only models of the XPS One that you should EVER consider are the 2099 and 2599 models. The others have terrible intel integrated graphics, and the base model doesn't have a touchscreen.

...

-better hardware (NVidia GT 660 vs 640 in the Dell, or the crap intel graphics on the 2 lower configs of the XPS. Yuck.),

.

I thought the 2710 had a separate graphics card?

EDIT ok I see -NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB GDDR5 in the dell.

How much better is the graphics card in the mac AIO?

And can you compare the screens?

And yes, realizing I didn't have to do all this work to unlock and jailbreak by iPhone and the nexus did everything I want (and now does it better - nexus 4> siri)... that started the snowball.

Plus windows 7 machines started popping up at work. And that OS was super nice compared to the limited experience I had with vista.

Smart phones taught me to appreciate battery life.... and I got more and more frustrated with my MBP battery life.

When ARM surface RT dropped, I was blown away. There have been some growing pains, but I predict in 3 months, windows 8 will start blowing up and windows RT will improve as windows 8 improves given same app store. I even debated getting a windows phone, but Google started flexing, canceling EAS and I'm not ready for inferior voice recognition on a phone.

If Microsoft gets better voice recognition and can top Gmail / Google calendars and/or learn to play nice with Google, I'd get a Lumia 920 or better.
However I think Google is now the one turning evil so we'll see if that drives me away first.
I can't believe they got rid of EAS

tkjazzer · Apr 14, 2013

Giuly said:
Three words: Carpal tunnel syndrome.

I don't get it.
Wouldn't speaking to your computer and touching the screen reduce carpal tunnel syndrome? There's no flexion of the wrist and no movement of the fingers
Dictated the voice recognition for windows RT

timsq · Apr 14, 2013

Touchscreen sucks in a computer. If integration is what you seek, go for it. Asking a Mac Forum to talk you out of something seems less effective than finding solutions to your wishes/needs. If you like your decision, let us know what you like/dislike and we'll appreciate the testimony. Every time I have to use Windows XP/7/8 for something I wanna choke a b$%^! Some folks like it. Go figure. Apple doesn't have the market cornered on cool, useful stuff. I like easy and as long as it's easy and powerful, they've got my buy.

spyguy10709 · Apr 14, 2013

tkjazzer said:
I thought the 2710 had a separate graphics card?

EDIT ok I see -NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB GDDR5 in the dell.

How much better is the graphics card in the mac AIO?

And can you compare the screens?

And yes, realizing I didn't have to do all this work to unlock and jailbreak by iPhone and the nexus did everything I want (and now does it better - nexus 4> siri)... that started the snowball.

Plus windows 7 machines started popping up at work. And that OS was super nice compared to the limited experience I had with vista.

Smart phones taught me to appreciate battery life.... and I got more and more frustrated with my MBP battery life.

When ARM surface RT dropped, I was blown away. There have been some growing pains, but I predict in 3 months, windows 8 will start blowing up and windows RT will improve as windows 8 improves given same app store. I even debated getting a windows phone, but Google started flexing, canceling EAS and I'm not ready for inferior voice recognition on a phone.

If Microsoft gets better voice recognition and can top Gmail / Google calendars and/or learn to play nice with Google, I'd get a Lumia 920 or better.
However I think Google is now the one turning evil so we'll see if that drives me away first.
I can't believe they got rid of EAS

If you got frustrated with MBP battery life, your battery must be really old. A new MBP will get any unibody lasting 5-6, maybe 7 hours on wifi browsing.

WinRT will fail, and if its taken this long for win8... it's not happening.

EAS is crap, and it's proprietary. Why should google spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a closed-source platform with 3% market share? IMAP Idle does the exact same thing. I blame MS for that one.

adnbek · Apr 14, 2013

Primejimbo said:
Never thought I read that about a mac haha!
The touch screen to me is a gimmick. Maybe use it a lot the 1st time I got it, but I don't really see a use for it on a computer.

Hah! It's true though. Just go on apple's site, pick the most expensive one and add a few upgrades to reach the same price as the Dell the OP wanted. The iMac that you end up with is a BEAST (with the 680mx being one of the best gpus out there AND a fusion drive) compared to the similarly priced Dell.

While Apple laptops are pretty pricey spec for spec compared to PCs notebooks (more due to the intense competition between manufacturers keeping prices low on the PC side rather than Apple's doing alone), iMacs on the other hand are VERY competitively priced relative to what you get when you factor in the quality of the screen and the specs which are almost always the latest tech out there (CPU, GPU and storage).

Jessica Lares · Apr 14, 2013

tkjazzer said:
I don't get it.
Wouldn't speaking to your computer and touching the screen reduce carpal tunnel syndrome? There's no flexion of the wrist and no movement of the fingers
Dictated the voice recognition for windows RT

You're still using your fingers to type, swipe, and zoom though. I can say, as someone that has carpal tunnel, that using an iPad makes no difference, my hands still hurt.

tkjazzer · Apr 14, 2013

adnbek said:
The iMac ... a fusion drive

The Dell XPS One 27 Touch also has a SSD in it. How does that technology differ from Fusion? Is fusion faster than the SSD caching technology in the Dell?

----------

spyguy10709 said:
If you got frustrated with MBP battery life, your battery must be really old. A new MBP will get any unibody lasting 5-6, maybe 7 hours on wifi browsing.

MBP is old. Changed the battery twice.
Core 2 Duo from 2006.

adnbek · Apr 14, 2013

tkjazzer said:
I thought the 2710 had a separate graphics card?

EDIT ok I see -NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB GDDR5 in the dell.

How much better is the graphics card in the mac AIO?

And can you compare the screens?

The 640m is an entry level GPU (it's what's on the entry-level 21" iMac) that would be ok for general tasks but will be slow when it comes to games or any applications that call on the GPU intensively. The 680mx is in a league of its own. It's one of the fastest GPUs of its kind on the market today. There's no comparison.

Here are links with info on the two:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-640M.71579.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-680MX.83519.0.html

Never seen the screen of the Dell, but all iMacs are IPS and of very high quality. I would imagine Dell's screen would be similar but you'd have to do research on that.

----------

tkjazzer said:
The Dell XPS One 27 Touch also has a SSD in it. How does that technology differ from Fusion? Is fusion faster than the SSD caching technology in the Dell?

Well, for one thing, the SSD caching is done natively at the OS level in Fusion so I'd venture a guess it will be better optimized at caching than a 3rd-party solution, but don't quote me on that.

I'd have to know what kind of SSD is inside the Dell to compare the read/write speeds of each, but another plus for the iMac is that Fusion comes with a 128gb SSD while the Dell is only 32gb.

----------

tkjazzer said:
MBP is old. Changed the battery twice.
Core 2 Duo from 2006.

Yeah, the batteries on those sucked. Starting in 2009 when they made them non-removeable, that got A LOT better in terms of max capacity and how many charge cycles they can handle.

glenthompson · Apr 14, 2013

Friends don't let friends buy Dells.

My bad experiences have been with family member's computers, mainly laptops that died. My son had a laptop that died a month before the warranty expired. It was replaced and the replacement died 4 months later.

WhiteIphone5 · Apr 16, 2013

iMac + this

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/17/zorro-macsk-review/

Jedi Master · Apr 16, 2013

MTF, Hi failure rate

tkjazzer said:
I loved my apple products from 2006 until about 2010ish.
2006 MBP, Iphones 2g, 3gs

But after Android Nexus S (and now nexus 4), I started getting disenchanting with Apple.

Then Microsoft Surface RT dropped and I love it. So much so that I'm debating getting a All-in-one for the living room that has touch screen. Any limitation with Windows RT can be solved with Team Viewer and tunneling back to your home PC to run something you can't run on an ARM device.

Thinking the fully loaded one. 16 gb ram etc

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-one-27-2710-aio-t/pd

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414481,00.asp

I'm on the edge...
Please give me your opinion on this device. I will likely still buy a MacBook Pro when Haswell drops (if no USB 3.0 bugs) and MacBook air when ULV haswell comes out.

I need to always have windows around for medical software; however citrix may make this less of an issue in the future.

I was thinking a touch screen windows 8 device would be fun for entertaining. A living room piece.

Very high failure rate. Over heating is the one cause, search the web.

Imac better value, CTO, better OS.....

CTO, is cost to own, fully loaded dells way over priced even if it worked most of the time, check out the faith of Adamo that is where the dell AIO is headed. and keep in mind Dell is going the exit the consumer business.

You will Regret buying this Dell Machine, ok yea it also has known capacitor issues.

get a Sony if touch is that very important.

Good Luck,
Jedi

mmomega · Apr 16, 2013

My advise if you're thinking about a touch screen all-in-one, go to a store that has them and actively use only the touch screen for a good 10-15 minutes and you'd probably change your mind.

I have 2 friends with the HP all-in-ones and they never use the touch function anymore, just because it doesn't "feel right" after the newness wears off, they both within 2 months of buying were back to strictly using the mouse and keyboard.

I am a big Apple proponent but I don't like coming off like a salesman for them, I'll say I think the iMac is a better machine top to bottom but you have to do what makes sense to you. Enjoy whatever you end up with.

tkjazzer · Jun 6, 2013

Dell Upgrades 27 AIO to Haswell and Improves video card

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770S processor (8M Cache, up to 3.9 GHz)
Windows 8 Pro, 64-bit, English
16GB1 DDR3L at MHz
2TB 7200 rpm SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State DriveBP
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB DDR5 with TPM V1.2
27 inch LED Backlit Touch Display with IPS/Anti Glare and Adobe RGB QHD resolution (2560 X 1440)
1 Year Enhanced Support - America's Best Standard Support

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-27-2720-aio/pd

---------------------------------------------------------

New questions:
1) Is this video card better than imac?
2) Is this screen any different? How does this new screen compare to the imac?
3) Does this change anyone's mind?

I'm thinking about buying one once I save a little more money. Why doesn't the imac come in touch? I think Dell is going to make a killing with this machine.

Talk me out of buying a Dell XPS ONE 27 Touch All-in-one Desktop

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