Dells new retina laptop

[dylin]

Dell's new retina laptop

its been announced.

the new DELL XPS

Has new haswell processors and NVIDIA dGPU

Priced at $1,499

Just wanted to hear what else anyone thinks of it. Seems like a good way to keep apple competitive.

Cheers

 

[whitedragon101]

seems like a good way to keep apple competitive.

Cheers

+1

 

[GSPice]

It's being discussed here and here.

I like it, but only because it gives me an idea of what the Haswell rMBP could be.

 

[dylin]

It's being discussed here and here.

I like it, but only because it gives me an idea of what the Haswell rMBP could be.

thanks for the update, gonna check it out

 

[dspsbl]

So am I missing something or they did finally make a scalable Windows? What is it's name - Windows OS IX?

Retina display is a waste without a properly compatible OS and software. Which Windows has never been.

Tiny icons everywhere!

 

[Nismo73]

So am I missing something or they did finally make a scalable Windows? What is it's name - Windows OS IX?

Retina display is a waste without a properly compatible OS and software. Which Windows has never been.

Tiny icons everywhere!

I thought that's what 8.1 is for???

 

[Broadus]

So am I missing something or they did finally make a scalable Windows? What is it's name - Windows OS IX?

Retina display is a waste without a properly compatible OS and software. Which Windows has never been.

Tiny icons everywhere!

I thought that's what 8.1 is for???

I saw some some announcements about the new Dell XPS 15 and almost regretted my buying a refurbished rMBP (mid-2012). But then I remembered reading the following from TechRadar:

So is there any hope? Well, perhaps. Although the final version of Windows 8.1 will supposedly fix the DPI scaling problems. Hurrah. Except I'm not sure people properly understand what's entailed in DPI scaling.
I see nothing that indicates Microsoft has fixed the massively kludgey DPI scaling technology it currently uses. The changes involve increasing the maximum scaling from 180 per cent to 225 per cent and the ability to have different scaling on multi-monitor set ups. Oh, and have the scaling auto-detect and apply suitable settings. TechRadar's own experimentation with the Windows 8.1 Release Preview reveals there are still scaling issues.

But the actual scaling technology has not changed as far as I am aware. And that means it will still be awful. Forget about vector graphics and a nice looking interface. It will still be wonky, mismatched fonts, hideous pixellated bitmaps when larger icon graphics aren't available and all the other uglies.

The truth is, making Windows properly scalable regards DPIs is a very big and difficult job. Which is presumably why it hasn't happened to date. And why I'm 99.9 per cent sure it isn't happening with Windows 8.1.​

Ars Technica also said 8.1 isn't quite there yet as far as scaling goes: Windows 8.1 and high-PPI displays: Better, but still lacking. The ArsTech article is over three months old, so perhaps 8.1 is better now. I have no idea.

At any rate, the fact of the scaling issues makes me less interested than I may have been in the high resolution PC offerings. I've used PC's only for some 25 years, so I wasn't looking to jump onto the Mac wagon, but here I am. Having had an iPhone and iPad for the past couple of years makes me think that Apple has things figured out pretty well with its closed system of building the hardware to match its OS. At least that's the way I see it through my technologically feeble vision.

 

[Starfyre]

battery life is nothing to scream about even if it is IGZO.... ~5 hours on 6 cell and 7-8 hours on 9 cell? Its as if Haswell was never released.

 

[leman]

This looks pretty nice! Good job, Dell.

However, I don't think this model will be very successful. The main reason being lack of resolution independence support in Windows. The nice thing about retina in OS X is that Apple has been planting resolution-independence APIs in Cocoa for years and years before HiDPI actually arrived. And it offers some very neat developer 'tricks' to support HiDPI content. This all was the reason why the transition to retina went so smoothly. Most applications are retina-enabled without any changes and the only ones that make some problems are either some very purely coded ones (which abuse the API) or one's that do lots of custom rendering in the UI. Also, by using 2x2 super-sampling Apple very elegantly solves a number of problems.

With Windows however, except every non-.NET application to be broken in regards to scaling...

 

[Xerotech]

High resolution beyond 1080p for Windows laptops are essentially useless. It cannot scale very well even with Windows 8.1. Even if it did, none of the applications are updated.

 

[OneCharmingQuar]

battery life is nothing to scream about even if it is IGZO.... ~5 hours on 6 cell and 7-8 hours on 9 cell? Its as if Haswell was never released.

This claim is false. The article you quoted in a different thread was of an older model with a six-cell battery. The review was from early 2011.

High resolution beyond 1080p for Windows laptops are essentially useless. It cannot scale very well even with Windows 8.1. Even if it did, none of the applications are updated.

The Modern UI portion of Windows 8.1 scales very well. The problem is that many programs need to be reworked to work well in the desktop. This is similar to what was needed for the rMBP at launch, but it does give the rMBP an advantage for at least a few months after the release of Windows 8.1.

 

[MyMac1976]

Thanks OP!

 

[agaskew]

In the Dell Press Release they mention "Gorgeous Displays". I wonder where they got that phrase from?

I've owned plenty of Dell PCs and laptops over the years and honestly they have all been decent. Hopefully this rMBP wannabe will also be good and will drive competition with Apple.

But nothing will convince me to use windows 8. Ever.

 

[luffytubby]

In the Dell Press Release they mention "Gorgeous Displays". I wonder where they got that phrase from?

I've owned plenty of Dell PCs and laptops over the years and honestly they have all been decent. Hopefully this rMBP wannabe will also be good and will drive competition with Apple.

But nothing will convince me to use windows 8. Ever.

Apple invented the words gorgeous and display?


I wouldn't be surprised if they put out a patent for that..

 

[OneCharmingQuar]

But nothing will convince me to use windows 8. Ever.

By far the two biggest complaints against Windows 8 have been the lack of the classic Windows Start menu and the fact that there is a tablet-like application launcher slapped on top of the desktop. I can understand why Windows 7 users can find the change annoying and hard to deal with, but OS X seems to have already implemented these features. There is no classic Start Menu in OS X, and the Modern UI Start Menu is little more than a combination of the OS X Mission Launcher and Widgets. To me it seems like Windows 8, if anything, is closer to OS X than Windows 7 was.

 

[agaskew]

Apple invented the words gorgeous and display?


I wouldn't be surprised if they put out a patent for that..

Was only poking fun at the press release. The whole design is Macbook-inspired anyway, and apparently so is the marketing

 

[agaskew]

By far the two biggest complaints against Windows 8 have been the lack of the classic Windows Start menu and the fact that there is a tablet-like application launcher slapped on top of the desktop. I can understand why Windows 7 users can find the change annoying and hard to deal with, but OS X seems to have already implemented these features. There is no classic Start Menu in OS X, and the Modern UI Start Menu is little more than a combination of the OS X Mission Launcher and Widgets. To me it seems like Windows 8, if anything, is closer to OS X than Windows 7 was.

Just because OS X has no Start menu and neither does Windows 8 - doesn't mean they are similar implementations in any way.

This is a moot point anyway - it is trivial to download something like ClassicShell and disable Metro/reinstate a Start Menu. Once that is done its like using a slightly faster Windows 7. But why on earth would I pay £200 to upgrade to a version of Windows that I have to tweak to make it work like the old one?

The lack of Start menu, or to be more precise the lack of a built in option to switch it on again in Windows 8, is a marketing driven decision by Microsoft.
And in the interests of impartiality - I would also refuse to pay £200 for a Mavericks upgrade.

 

[OneCharmingQuar]

Just because OS X has no Start menu and neither does Windows 8 - doesn't mean they are similar implementations in any way.

There are certainly very many differences between Windows 8 and OS X. I was just arguing that the two most controversial changes to Windows 8 actually made it more similar to OS X than Windows 7 was. I don't think many people are complaining about the improved Task Manager, the faster boot time, or the higher number of keyboard shortcuts. If you prefer OS X to Windows 7, then Windows 8 is slightly closer to what you already like. I'm not saying you should prefer Windows 8 to OS X, but I can't really see how Windows 8 is a particularly bad operating system if you already like OS X.

This is a moot point anyway - it is trivial to download something like ClassicShell and disable Metro/reinstate a Start Menu. Once that is done its like using a slightly faster Windows 7. But why on earth would I pay £200 to upgrade to a version of Windows that I have to tweak to make it work like the old one?

The lack of Start menu, or to be more precise the lack of a built in option to switch it on again in Windows 8, is a marketing driven decision by Microsoft.
And in the interests of impartiality - I would also refuse to pay £200 for a Mavericks upgrade.

You wouldn't need to pay anything extra for a Windows 8 upgrade if you bought this laptop. In my experience any operating system needs a certain amount of modification to get it working in the way I want. I would, for instance, install something like Hyperdock in OS X so that I can get the OS X desktop window management to work as well as the one Windows.

 

[leman]

By far the two biggest complaints against Windows 8 have been the lack of the classic Windows Start menu and the fact that there is a tablet-like application launcher slapped on top of the desktop. I can understand why Windows 7 users can find the change annoying and hard to deal with, but OS X seems to have already implemented these features. There is no classic Start Menu in OS X, and the Modern UI Start Menu is little more than a combination of the OS X Mission Launcher and Widgets. To me it seems like Windows 8, if anything, is closer to OS X than Windows 7 was.

Well, I have been working with Windows 8.1 for a few days now on my Bootcamp installation. I do like the visual style, but the inconsistency of the UI and the whole user-interaction paradigm is driving me crazy. One notable thing - when you use the system-wise search, the system catapults you from the desktop to the metro screen. This means that you can't use the search and look up stuff in our documents at the same time (I do this regularly on OS X). And there are many things like that. Lots of basic operations involves an unnecessary large number of interaction steps.

Comparison with Launchpad on OS X is incorrect, IMO - Launchpad is a very unobtrusive, optional feature which gives you an additional option to access your application folder. OS X is still a desktop-centric system. For example, I haven't EVER used Launchpad to start a program. But with Windows 8 this is very different, because the Metro becomes the core, and Desktop is basically just an additional operation mode. This is very disruptive for workflows.

 

[neverhadanewton]

It's good to see laptops move on from the average 720p resolution. I'm sure Windows will catch up with the scaling eventually, it just has a lot of legacy programs that will have to be updated or replaced.

 

[agaskew]

There are certainly very many differences between Windows 8 and OS X. I was just arguing that the two most controversial changes to Windows 8 actually made it more similar to OS X than Windows 7 was. I don't think many people are complaining about the improved Task Manager, the faster boot time, or the higher number of keyboard shortcuts. If you prefer OS X to Windows 7, then Windows 8 is slightly closer to what you already like. I'm not saying you should prefer Windows 8 to OS X, but I can't really see how Windows 8 is a particularly bad operating system if you already like OS X.



You wouldn't need to pay anything extra for a Windows 8 upgrade if you bought this laptop. In my experience any operating system needs a certain amount of modification to get it working in the way I want. I would, for instance, install something like Hyperdock in OS X so that I can get the OS X desktop window management to work as well as the one Windows.

I think we will have to agree to disagree here I don't think the changes to Windows 8 make it more similar to OS X - I think the changes make it a lot less like Windows 7, and a lot worse. These are just my preferences though, having used windows for years and therefore bringing my own prejudices. New users may well like it.

 

[dylin]

I think we will have to agree to disagree here I don't think the changes to Windows 8 make it more similar to OS X - I think the changes make it a lot less like Windows 7, and a lot worse. These are just my preferences though, having used windows for years and therefore bringing my own prejudices. New users may well like it.

I honestly felt that with the new "start menu" they rolled out with made accessing certain things more of a hassle. But someone entirely new to it may adapt fast because they have new prior use of older windows' OS's.

 

[GSPice]

I honestly felt that with the new "start menu" they rolled out with made accessing certain things more of a hassle. But someone entirely new to it may adapt fast because they have new prior use of older windows' OS's.

I don't know what is worse, being experienced with Windows or having no prior knowledge about Windows.

 

[Gary500]

Guys, I really don't know what to get. The Dell XPS 15 or the Haswell Retina...I like windows a lot and have never used Mac, which one is the right one for me?

 

[Starfyre]

Guys, I really don't know what to get. The Dell XPS 15 or the Haswell Retina...I like windows a lot and have never used Mac, which one is the right one for me?

I'd say wait and see two weeks...

- If Apple decides to wow us, exceed Dell's 13 hours of battery life and throws in an IGZO display... the choice is clear. Get the Haswell Retina.

- If Apple decides to "pull and iPhone 5S" and give us and incremental 10 hours of battery life, with or without IGZO display.... the choice is clear. Get the Dell.

If you have time and patience to wait and feel inclined to get an Apple because you expect them to do better... then you could wait till maybe January or February of 2014 and see if Apple does a component upgrade with an IGZO 4K display or increases the battery life even further.