Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Arrives at CES Discussion

Today Dell officially took the wraps off its first ultrabook, the Dell XPS 13. Although the XPS 13 shares some design elements with the popular XPS 14z and XPS 15z, this is a completely new laptop with some impressive specs. Keep reading to see more.

Read the full content of this Article: Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Arrives at CES

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Hasn't XPS historically meant "performance" and "multimedia emphasis" for both the XPS laptop lines and the XPS desktop lines? I fail to see much of either in this ultraportable.

 

Dell will argue that XPS stands for both "premium" and "performance" ... and in the 12-13 ultrabook class this should be a good performer. Aluminum and carbon fiber construction certainly translate into premium.

To take a quote from Dell's press materials about the XPS line, XPS means:
"Uncompromised form + function, High performance, and Purposeful craftsmanship"

 

10 char

 

I would have liked to see a 900p screen..... Or at least a better GPU option. I mean, the last SXPS 13 had SLI and the fastest C2D processor.

But, overall it looks sleek! I'd probably get one of these instead of an Air.

 

I second that! A higher resolution would be great!

 

Something tells me that this laptop's 1366x768 is going to suck just like all 1366x768 screens. I don't get. We're getting 3D, advanced tablet computers, super-thin ultra books, prices up to and over $1000-$2000 for these things, and yet the screens are still crappy. Can't anybody improve that? Or is just because the average user just doesn't care...I mean, the MacBook Air has an excellent screen and I just don't see these other ultra books being able to match it. I'd love to have a Windows/PC ultra book some day, but if the screen sucks, I probably won't want to get it...

 

You've answered your own question right there, in addition to cutting costs. Your average joe doesn't care if his laptop screen has a 170 degree viewing angle and/or display 95% of AdobeRGB spectrum. Manufacturers will usually go for the bottom of the barrel when it comes to LCD panels, it's just business. To their defense, there is quite a large cost margin in terms of going with a low end panel opposed to a high quality one.

 

I third this, at least make it a option for those who want a high resolution screen. So far only ASUS offers a ultrabook with a high resolution screen.

 

How so? All the ultrabooks have the same performance hardware (i5 ULV + SSD + 4 GB memory).

I'll give you that.

 

any word on new latitude notebooks? rumor had it that dell is going the present the EXX30 series.

i'd prefer a 13"-14" Latitude over this XPS13. With all the cool features like docking station port, wwan, dedicated gpu etc

 

form-factor and build are exceptional, exactly what i want, but i am not interested until it comes with something better than sandy-bridge graphics.

how soon till we can get an Ivy-bridge update.......... and a 1600x900 screen?

 

If Dell shows off the the new Latitudes at CES it would be a total surprise ... but a welcome one. I doubt, however, that we'll see new Latitudes until the new Intel CPUs are officially announced and available.

Likewise, we won't see new Nvidia/GeForce and AMD/Radeon GPUs until the new Intel chips are closer to launch.

 

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There is an ultrabook out there though: the HP Envy 14 Spectre. HP now has two ultrabooks; the Folio 13 for the business-and-budget minded (budget priced, solid construction, 720p screen), and the Envy 14 Spectre to go head-to-head with the MacBook Air and Asus Zenbook ($1400, but it has a glass trackpad, a 900p screen, and Beats audio).

AnandTech - HP Announces ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook

 

Oh wow. I didn't see that it had a 900p screen, that's great.

 

It could be rock & roll laptop with the new Trinity APU.

AMD Demos Next Generation Trinity Fusion APU For Notebooks, CES 2012 - YouTube

Without this power I won't get excited...

 

This is why the XPS 13 Ultrabook will be a success ...

 

I think it's a good approach to the market, though Dell is hardly the only one to be doing it. Thinkpad Edges, higher-end Sonys, HP Folio 13 all spring to mind as business/consumer hybrids. I know for sure I use my Vaio F at work as much as I use it for personal purposes.

 

no LAN port and Card Reader ?
that 2 will make some people reject XPS 13.

 

Oh, come on. No one uses digital cameras or cell phones with micro sd cards anymore.

/end sarcasm

 

Shame this arrived DOA.

 

They will sell enough to get by. Its certainly not DOA. What ultrabook is flat out better for the price right now?

 

The Dell XPS 14 starts at $899, so I assume the XPS 13 will cost around the same.

HP Folio 13 starts at $899: HP Folio 13

Toshibe Protege Z835 $799: Toshiba Portege Z835 Notebook

I'm not saying they're better, but at least they both have SD card slots.

If anyone from Dell is reading this, I'd buy this laptop over all the others if it has an option for a 1600x900 screen.

 

I've never used an SD card slot on a computer. Ever.

On the other hand, I'd love to see a 900p screen, at least as an option. Asus, HP (Spectre 14, not Folio 13), and Apple all offer 'em in this class.

 

I completely agree that "Ultrabooks" are getting away with murder on the screens... 1366x768 can be found on netbooks... The standard should be 1600x900 for the "ultra premium" models... aka... ultrabooks.

 

Just played around with the dell today at CES, and I am definitely not impressed with the display as others have noted. Will be taking a 2nd look tomorrow to give it a thorough comparison to the hp and others at the Microsoft booth, but so far the display is really not up to par with the competition. Though for the price you could definitely do worse, and the carbon fiber does give it a nice feel on the bottom when you pick it up.

 

true.

it would have bothered me last year, but not this.

 

I use a digital camera with an SD card all the time. But I don't remove the card from the camera and insert it into my computer each time I want to upload photos. I've never done that in all the years I've been taking pictures. I use the USB cord the camera came with. Don't all digital cameras come with USB cords for uploading photos?

 

it depend how you used, i and few my friend group of photographer went out from home seldom bring cable, and copy or exchange photo direct put sd card to laptop card reader.

and i never used cable at home too, i every time take card out from camera put to card reader in pc or laptop.

 

Ummm.....the Macbook Air? The only good "ultrabook" is the one that technically isn't an "ultrabook."

Realistically, the Windows "Ultrabook" is simply a revamp of the ultra-low voltage CPU subnotebook category. Remember the Dell Adamo? The confusingly named XPS 13 "ultrabook" is simply an update on the same subnotebook category, expect with a plastic "carbon fiber" base - cost cutting at work. In hindsight, the Adamo came closer to the Macbook Air in material quality and market positioning, but at the time, the early Macbook Air wasn't much of hit either.

Kudos to Intel for backing the OEMs with huge marketing support, but the reality is that Apple is the 800 pound gorilla in the mobile ULV market segment. Intel is just hoping and praying that "ultrabooks" catch on before Apple dumps Intel and goes all ARM. So far, the signs are not encouraging.

 

Not. Even. Close.
That's real carbon fiber, my friend. No plastic with CF texture. While XPS 13 shares some lineage with Adamo, it's not at all the same. Just the touch pad, for example. We moved it to the SM bus, giving it more bandwidth to support gestures and smoother operation. You can tell the difference in quality over other touch pads of ours within about 5 minutes. The material and build quality of the XPS 13 is easily superior to either Adamo. They should be on retail shelves next month. I urge you to go check them out. I'm not saying it will convert every MBA fan out there, but you definitely won't be walking away saying it's cheaply made.

XPS 13 has some advantages over MBA- smaller footprint, Gorilla glass, edge to edge display, newer hardware (though I'm sure the MBA refresh will give us something to admire again), Windows (some see this as an advantage), price. It's definitely a viable product, and it will sell in big numbers. The enterprise support (custom factory OS images, TPM, Bitlocker, ProSupport) will factor into total sales numbers later on in Q3/Q4 after IT managers have a chance to evaluate TCO and so forth.

$999 base config, i5/4GB RAM/128 GB SSD
We hear you on the screen res. Give us a few months.

Not at liberty to share pre-order numbers, but it's far from DOA. Thriving on Arrival is how I'd put it.

 

Hey Bill B--you should smack somebody in the marketing department for having this be the FIRST quote displayed about the new XPS 13 on Dell's own webpage:



There's a difference between giving credit where credit is due, and sounding like a wannabe. Unfortunately, leading off with this quote has the latter effect.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into this.

Edit:
The Apple comparisons are there in a lot of conversations, so we are not running from the comparison but embracing it.

 

I don't doubt that there are actual carbon filaments in the polymer. The problem is that composites don't conduct heat, and they just don't lend the same feeling of quality as metallic cases.

Carbon fiber makes sense in aerospace, where fatigue is an issue, but in this context, it just looks pretty and there's been too much press attention to use of composites as a means of cost cutting in ultrabooks. I don't know how much the carbon fiber base costs on a per unit basis, but it doesn't lend a product credibility, especially when Dell lead the industry in the adoption of cast magnesium, which in my opinion was superior to Apple's CNC machined aluminum.

Personally, I think Dell would have been better off from a practical and marketing perspective with a carbon fiber screen lid and a metallic base, both from the standpoint of heat dissipation and WiFi reception.

I wouldn't think that there would be very many shared components as the two are separated by two generations of Intel chipsets. The Adamo was also somewhat more upmarket in price, although to be fair, Apple has also reduce the price on certain Macbook Air configurations.

My point was that the "ultrabook" is a reinterpretation of the CULV subnotebook concept of a few years ago. So far, the ultrabook has not made a major commercial impact, although to be fair, the entries so far have been unimpressive and might not be entirely representative.

I'm not a MBA fan. In fact, I'd be far more likely to migrate from a Latitude E-series to a Macbook Pro 13. I'm not convinced that I need an ultra thin form factor notebook that sacrifices performance, color gamut and upgrade-ability.

The 13" MBA still has a 16:10 aspect ratio screen, which represents a unique advantage at this time, but also determines the footprint.

Yes, a glossy reflection prone display. At the high end of the market, there is a small but vehement market for anti-glare screens with decent color reproduction and decent vertical viewing angles. So far, the X220 with the option IPS screen is the only comparably priced market entry fitting these criteria.

Yes, but this "ultrabook" is offering up the same desktop experience as an other Windows 7 computer.

In some respects, Dell would have more of a marketing advantage in this category it was still shipping consumer notebooks with Ubuntu. I might even consider this XPS 13 if it shipped with Ubuntu, but not with Windows 7.

As it is, Dell is shackled to Microsoft, and quite frankly, Microsoft is not inspiring confidence at the moment.

Apple's entire OS X ecosystem is huge selling point, and for the refuseniks, there's always Bootcamp - and we all know that Microsoft makes a lot more on every boxed retail Windows OS transaction to an individual Mac user than bulk OEM licenses to companies like Dell.

Judging by the Macbook Air, price is not key determinant for success. Apple is sitting in the catbird seat as far as margins and pricing power, and now seems to enjoy unparalleled economies of scale for metal cased "ultrabooks," if I can apply that term to the Macbook Air.

I hope that Dell can compete in this category, and perhaps they can since previous Toshiba and Acer entries have been so very uninspiring. There's tremendous room for improvement in this category.

The big risk here is that BYOD is becoming entrenched and C-level executive are increasingly shifting towards Apple products and overruling their own IT managers when it comes to major buying decisions.

The Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal will probably do $100 million per year in retail business, but it also gives Apple direct physical access to some of the most affluent commuters in the world. A lot of key corporate decision makers, who live in Connecticut and the Hudson valley, are being converted by Apple, to the detriment of every Windows PC OEM.

 

Excellent post! Thank you for the great conversation. I'm going to use ellipses to save space.

Edit: Lack of heat dissipation is the reason. We wanted the heat off the lap and out the vents. Cool to the touch base is what we were going for, and we got it.
Heat dissipation is the main why we went with CF for the base. The weight savings (I assume) is there whether we go with CF or cast magnesium. On heat dissipation advantage for an alloy base I would disagree with you, but you make a very valid point about WiFi that I hadn't yet considered.

Fair enough. Both the XPS 13 and Adamo are upmarket. It's just the cost of developing Ultrabooks (love the use of quotation marks on your part, btw) is helped along with research money from Intel. $300M to be exact.

Poor wording on my part. I was using the "royal you," for lack of a better term, as opposed to meaning you specifically. Would have read better "MBA fans might not be converted by the XPS, but they won't walk away thinking quality was a problem." It sounds like you may want to wait and see what the XPS 14 brings when it drops. Probably a closer comparison to the MBP 13 in performance, footprint, color gamut, screen quality usability and specs. They do have the 16x10 market pretty much all to themselves, though. Our smaller footprint has more to do with our slimmer screen bezel than the aspect ratio, but yes, that's also a factor.

Point conceded. I can never win this debate. Feedback on matte vs glossy is a constant, and I always include that in any reporting I do for the product planners.

Been there. Done that. Lot I could say here, but I won't. It's debatable whether a huge marketing push would help or not, but for sure it would increase costs on the services org who would have to train Linux techs. Personally, I consider the Win7 experience a good one.

One man's ecosystem is another's walled garden. I see the OS X/iTunes/iCloud ecosystem as a cash cow for Apple, but I'll admit I have a bias. While it definitely is a method used to extract revenue from customers, there's no doubt it's outstanding marketing and user experience concepts at work.

Tough sell making a pricing comparison based on Apple vs anyone else. What I mean by that is, the linear logic of "Apple price high, hence price doesn't matter" doesn't work. They differentiate on so many things like the ecosystem, marketing, just plain good hardware, and a cult like following that make the comparison hard to gauge with straight comparisons. We have a long way to go in the consumer market, and we will get where we want to be eventually. They have earned their supply chain leverage, and it's up to us to earn ours back now.

We will and thanks.

We are well aware and will be heard from in the space. Like I said, I think Q3/Q4 will tell the tale.

Seriously doubt the influence they may or may not gain from the GCS store will hurt as much as dozens of other factors could, but we'll see. Back to the price comparison: the MBA costs more to start, then you throw in that retail copy of Windows to use Bootcamp, and now you are looking real hard at something close to double the cost of our laptop.

Rep for you. Enjoying this conversation very much.

 

The only other laptop I know of that extensively uses carbon fiber is the Sony Vaio Z2, which is higher-end than the MBA, not lower-end. And as for wifi, I haven't heard of any wifi problems with the Z2.

As for the Win 7 versus Ubuntu point, Win 7 was absolutely the right choice. There are frequent discussions in the Apple subforum about people who want a MacBook Air-like machine, but want Win 7 as their primary OS (whether due to personal preference or the needs of their industry). The general rule in the Apple subforum is that Boot Camp works okay for occasional use (like gaming on a MacBook Pro), but it's just not a good idea to run Win 7 as the main OS on a Mac (due to driver problems, total cost, and decreased hard drive space from partitioning). There's definitely a market for a Win 7 MBA competitor, but nobody has gotten the mix of features quite right.

The Dell has a light-and-thin body and a backlit keyboard, which are both good, but I'd really, really like to see a 900p screen, at least as an extra-cost option, before I call it the perfect solution for people who want a Windows ultraportable.

 

Stay tuned. This bit of feedback we heard loud and clear on XPS 14z. People say they want higher res screen options, and we have rolled this up in the reporting. I have a good feeling about this one going your way on down the line at some point.

 

Great news! It's cool to have this sort of responsiveness from a company.

 

@Dell-Bill B
What's with the lack of ports especially a SD card slot? While it may not be a big deal to some it is to others.

 

Then why is there still a bottom vent? Any time you have a bottom vent, you essential block air flow when you place a notebook computer on your lap. Apple seems to have figured that out, solving the problem by venting the case at the back. You can place a Macbook on your lap, or a flat textile surface, such as a sofa, carpet or bedspread without blocking airflow and potentially overheating the note.

Actually, this one aspect of design is possible one of the least talked about but most significant aspects of the success of the Macbook Pro/Air line. I'm not about to suggest that this is the solution for every notebook, although judging by the similar rear intake/output ventless bottom solution employed on the truly massive Asus G74, there isn't any need for bottom vent slots even on high end gaming notebooks or portable workstations.

So in other words, a base with vent holes isn't a good design for using a notebook on your lap.

If you've ever noticed, a Dell Latitude E-series has a plastic panel at the top of the otherwise all-metal screen cover for the sake of WiFi reception. Now obviously, there are ways of integrating antennas into an all metal case, but there are sacrifices when it comes to reception - hence Apple rather poor reputation when it comes to WiFi reception. That's precisely why I suggested that carbon fiber might have been utilized to better effect in the screen cover than in the base.

I use the quotation marks because the term "ultrabook" is Intel specific, and that alternate generic term of "subnotebook" has fallen from common useage.

Kudos to Intel for supporting the OEMs, although I can only hope that the support extends to the OEM pricing of the 17 watt CPUs, which at historical retail prices represent very poor value in comparison to their 35 watt counterparts.

Microsoft isn't on the same bandwagon, unfortunately. If Microsoft had matched Intel's $300 million in financial support and had bothered to synchronize the rollout of Windows 8 with Intel's rollout of Ivy Bridge, the "ultrabook" concept might have had a very significant impact. As it is, I think that we can definitely count on Windows 8 in time for Medfield.

There is a gaping hole in the notebook market when it comes to a high quality screen in the 14-inch form factor. Dell, and many other manufacturers, offer 15.6" FHD displays with decent vertical viewing angles, Lenovo offers the 12.5" IPS screen option in the X220, and there's nothing in between, short of the 13.3" Macbook Pro and Air.

If Dell can indeed offer a high quality 14" display, it might be worthwhile to offer it as an option across both the business and consumer ranges. It's worth remember that the 14" form factor is still the best seller in Asian and in the North American business sector.

We now live in an era when there are new high end notebook PCs with 150-nit screens and vertical viewing angles of less than 10 degrees. In contrast, it's hard to think of a specific Macbook model that doesn't have 300-nits brightness and spectacular vertical viewing angles. It never ceases to amaze me every Macbook Air/Pro has a TN panel and every one is outstanding.

It just isn't an issue of matte vs. glossy, but also high quality versus low quality. A dim, narrow viewing angle matte screen isn't a selling point. I know that it's a cost sensitive business, but Apple makes a fortune from upselling consumers to the Macbook Pro 15" range, just so they can pay another $150 for a high quality matte display.

The problem with the "Win7 experience" is that its shared by every PC manufacturer and by every PC of every price range. The $1,000+ "ultrabook" user is getting the same substantive desktop experience that $200+ "Black Friday Doorbuster" user is getting. The Windows PC has become a commodity and it remains to be seen if the "ultrabook" marketing effort can change that.

Now I know that Dell is still selling systems preloaded with Ubuntu, namely a Vostro V1440, a V131 and a Latitude netbook. That's not much of a line compared to the salad days of 2008, but at least that's not a complete exit.

Personally, I appreciate the challenges of trying to match Linux support to the hardware cycle. It isn't easy. On the hand, neither is chasing a commoditized, declining Windows PC market.

OS X isn't a "walled garden," at least not yet, and it appear that Apple has developed a dual pronged strategy of OS X for content creators and iOS for content consumers. Will the dichotomy remain in the long term? We'll have to wait and see.

Apple has a remarkably coherent long term business model, one where potential retail products are brought up to a production ready prototype stage for multiple hardware generations before an eventual launch. Heck, the rumor is that the iPad could have premiered along side the iPod Touch in 2007, but the marketing people didn't know how to sell a tablet. The same goes for the 11" Macbook Air. On the face of it, it's an expensive way of doing business, but it works due to the unparalleled profit margins.

 

SemiExpert--

In terms of sub-15" with high-quality screens, you're forgetting about the Vaio Z2 (first and foremost), as well as the Asus Zenbook and Envy 14 Spectre. MBA isn't the only one who offers this.

I can't blame Dell for not pushing Ubuntu notebooks. Who wants to spend $1,000 for a notebook where even common software like Microsoft Word and most commercial games won't run natively? One buyer in a thousand? Ten thousand? And even stuff that does run in Ubuntu is not exactly user-friendly to get up and running. Here's what you have to do to install even something as simple as the Chrome web browser:

How to install Google Chrome in Ubuntu 11.10 (64 bit) - Google Chrome Help

That doesn't sound like a $1000 laptop user experience to me. Now Windows 7? Yeah, actually, it is. From being able to run nearly any program on the market to useful features like "snap to" window resizing with the Windows key plus arrow keys, Win 7 is a good user experience.

That's not the biggest selling point for the MBP 15 instead of 13. You get a quad-core CPU and a dedicated GPU instead of a dual-core CPU and no GPU. That, plus the screen real estate, are big sellers.

 

Yikes, nearly $3000. No thanks. In any case, 1080P screen is resolution overkill for the form factor and the cheaper 1600x900 is ruputed to be just as bad in terms of vertical viewing angles as the one the Vaio S.

Excuse me, but have you ever heard of OpenOffice(around since 2002)/LibreOffice? Abiword (around since 1998)? Does any of this ring a bell?

As far as the fact that "commercial games won't run natively," this isn't an issue? I don't expect to install a .deb in Windows and I don't expect to install a .exe file in Ubuntu or Debian Linux? Different operating systems. If you're look for a free and open source analog to Windows, you're not looking for Linux, you're looking for ReactOS.

I don't think you understand is that Chromium is the open source version of Chrome - same source code. Chromium=Chrome. There's no functional difference between Chromium and Chrome.

If you also don't know, Ubuntu has had an app store style GUI "Software Center" for the last few iterations - since before OS X, something that won't appear in Windows until the release of Windows 8. You don't have to leave the GUI to install apps from the repository.

I'm at a loss as to how you didn't know about that, Mitlov?

 

The Z2 starts at $1849, not $3000. And it's got a 900p 13.3" screen if you don't like 1080p at that size.

I'm very familiar with OpenOffice. Tried it for a while. It's compatibility with MS Word documents is overstated. I tried opening some pleadings from work and I lost significant amounts of formatting. It's better than nothing, and it's good value considering it's free, but it's no substitute for MS Word if you share documents with other people. And you can't run MS Word with Ubuntu. That's a major, major problem for most users.

So you don't have to leave the GUI if the applications you want to install are from one store? Great! What if they're from somewhere else? Then you have to do that non-comp-sci-major-friendly process, right?

And the fact that I can't run a .deb file in Windows is irrelevant, because I can't think of one single program I'd want to run (or your average buyer would want to run) that is only available in Ubuntu. I can think of hundreds that are only available in Windows.

You're clearly very technologically knowledgeable. What you're not grasping--and your last line makes this clear--is that the vast, vast people are not that comfortable with the "inner workings" of their OS. There's just no comparison in user-friendliness for the average user between Windows 7 and Ubuntu. There's a reason most all laptops are sold with Win 7.

Given the user-friendliness issue and the software compatibility issue, I absolutely understand why Dell is offering this machine with Windows 7 instead of Ubuntu. Don't you?

 

Like I said, the standard 900P screen is reputed to be crap, although I wouldn't know because I have been to a Sony Style Store (the Sony equivalent of an Apple Store, only without the crowds of customers) in years. In any case, the pricepoint for 1080P Vaio Z i7 is around $3,000, but you can get the price up to $4,500-5,000.

It makes the Macbook Pro line look like a spectacular value.

The very fact that you're still referring to OpenOffice, instead of LibreOffice, indicates that you probably have tried it since at least late 2010.

As far as document sharing, you should pay more attention to file formats. You seem to indicate that you are a lawyer, but I can assure you that even in this age of electronic court filings, there's no court system (that I've ever heard of) that requires filings in a proprietary file format that can only be satisfied by MS Office. You don't need MS Word to use PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), for instance.

Again, that's not a problem with Ubuntu. The fact that Microsoft doesn't develop Microsoft Office for Linux, simply means that Microsoft doesn't develop Office for Linux. So what? Apple doesn't develop iWork for Windows? So what?

No, not at all. With Ubuntu, if there's an application that isn't in the truly mammoth Ubuntu repositories, you can still install from a .deb package, since the package manager does all the work. You never leave the GUI. It's worth remembering that it's probably a lot safer for casual users to use single software repository or an "app store," instead of chasing around the internet for .exe. This is one, or many, reasons why OS X and Linux are much "safer" for the average user than even Windows 7. If you stick with signed packages from the repository, it's hard to get into trouble. If Microsoft had adopted this concept, we never would have seen the great malware boom and botnet explosion of the last decade.

I might suggest that you should broaden your horizons. There are a lot of cross-platform FOSS applications available on Windows, OS X and Linux/BSD. Actually, for my main connectivity and productivity programs, I could use pretty much any OS. There's very little that ties me as a user to Windows, since I'm using very few Microsoft applications on Windows 7. If you're using using Chrome/Chromium as your browser, for instance, it really doesn't matter which OS you're using.

Actually, in the $1,000 consumer category, the vast majority of notebooks are currently sold with OS X. Apple owns the $1,000+ category with over 90% marketshare, which is precisely why Intel is stepping in with $300 million in support to the Windows PC OEMs. The "ultrabook" is an attempt to recreate a foothold in a market segment that is largely controlled by Apple. Apple is probably Intel's high volume customer for ULV Sandy Bridge mobile CPUs, but Apple also would have given all of that business to AMD for the current generation Macbook Air if AMD hadn't lacked the production capacity.

So what you fail to grasp is that while "vast [the majority of] people are not that comfortable with the "inner workings" of their OS," the OS in question is OS X when it comes to $1,000+ notebooks. Windows doesn't dominate in the category that Dell is entering, or reentering, with the XPS 13 Ultrabook, OS X dominates.

Well, Dell reduced its line of Ubuntu offering at just the wrong time. Linux hardware support dramatically improved and Linux's share of the desktop market skyrocketed by 40% at just the time Dell was pulling back from its Linux offerings.

I'm not about to suggest that Dell should offer any mainstream product exclusively with Ubuntu, but I am suggest that offering the XPS 13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu would have differentiated it from all of the other "ultrabook" offerings. Right now, we are at the bottom of the Windows product cycle, awaiting Windows 8, at the bottom of the Intel product cycle, awaiting Ivy Bridge, and Dell is offering just another windows notebook, albeit in a thinner, Macbook Air-like form factor being supported by Intel.

Windows notebooks have been commoditized and it remains to be seen if thinner, less powerful, but more expensive Windows notebooks can break the cycle of decline.

 

Ubuntu market share rising? It went from 1% of desktops to 1.4% of desktops in 2011, which may not even be more people using Ubuntu, but instead mainstream users (who are all on Windows) buying fewer desktops and more laptops. I haven't found usage statistics for laptops, but I think it's well under 1%. Ubuntu is a tiny, tiny niche, and to call out THIS ONE PARTICULAR DELL NOTEBOOK for not offering Ubuntu, when none of its competitors do either, is hard to understand. I mean, why did you choose to tear into the XPS 13 for this instead of the Asus Zenbook, Toshiba Z835, or Envy 14 Spectre? Why didn't you start a thread in the OS section or something about why everyone should be using a different OS than they're using (and different software than they're using, etc) instead of posting these multiple-page rants about the entire laptop industry in a thread about a review of the new Dell XPS 13?

 

I have to correct you, yet again. For the general pricing category and form factor category that the XPS 13 is (re)entering, "mainstream users" are using OS X. Let me repeat, Apple dominates the market that Intel is trying to (re)enter with the "ultrabook." Intel is throwing $300 million into the "ultrabook" simply because Apple, not Microsoft, is currently dominant in the thin form factor ULV notebook category. Intel wants to go mainstream with higher margin, higher price category ULV notebooks, breaking Apple's near monopoly on the $1,000+ category.

Moreover, it is remarkable that the use of the Linux in the desktop market has genuinely increased by 40% in a year when there was unprecedented fragmentation in the wake of Gnome 3.

Mitlov, I'm just correcting a number of misconceptions that you've raised.

Dell had previously offered a fair complete product line with Ubuntu preloaded.

Overall, what are the prospects for the Dell XPS 13? Better than some, worse than others, and generally poor as we are approach the end of product cycles at both Microsoft and Intel. The only bright spot for the XPS 13 is the fact that Dell has the hardware and the ability to market it to business users, although you have to wonder if it won't cannibalize the sales of Vostro and Latitude notebooks?

The real problem is that the XPS 13 "ultrabook" is a less distinctive product that the M1330 was back in 2007, or the Adamo back in 2009, and overall, the Windows PC has become far more commoditized than it was just a couple of years ago. Basically, Windows 7 isn't a selling point, and to assess the true competitiveness of the "Ultrabook" category, we might have to wait until Ivy Bridge and Windows 8 - or perhaps until AMD premiers its own ULV equivalent.

And indeed Dell's history is a reminder that they have done better - in the past. You could once buy an innovative magnesium case M1330 with Ubuntu preloaded - and it wasn't called an "ultrabook."

 

[citation needed]

 

Seconded.

10 char

 

If that is really true, I would be really, really shocked.

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And to add, the Vaio Z's 900p / 1080p panels are superb.

They are not some 6-bit TN crap panels that consumer-grade laptops use, they are 8-bit TN with 80%+ Gamut with more than average viewing angles. Just to put it out there that the Sony Z series do hold their value.

 

Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD

Google is your friend.