Dell xps 13 2015

Cobalt

Cobalt

New member
Ok guys... So I'm in love. I think about this ultrabook all day. She haunts my dreams. She's just so beautiful. I think my wife is starting to suspect. I troll the interwebs all day looking for her... But I can't find a trace of her in south Africa. Does anyone know where I could get one that isn't from Amazon and then via a US postal service thing? Maybe one of the wholesale pc companies knows when they might be getting stock?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00...ell+xps+13&dpPl=1&dpID=51pSjLqUbtL&ref=plSrch

Also this is not at all meant to be a gaming laptop. Iv got a decent home system for serious gaming but was just wondering what you think I'd be able to squeeze out of the Intel iris 5500 on board? Heroes of the storm maybe? Dota? Maybe the new pillars of eternity? What real world gfx card could you equate iris too?

I love the specs of this notebook. And I think it's way prettier than a MacBook.

Any comments appreciated!
 
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Yeah I strongly considered that one too...but eventually dropped the idea due to lacking gaming power.

Whats wrong with amazon?
 
Hmmm maybe I'm missing something but I can't seem to order and send to south Africa? Am I doing something wrong?
 
I don't think you can ship pc parts from Amazon to South Africa :( Something about the warranty that they won't honour here.

You can however order direct from www.dell.com and ship to SA :)
 
Cobalt said:
Also this is not at all meant to be a gaming laptop. Iv got a decent home system for serious gaming but was just wondering what you think I'd be able to squeeze out of the Intel iris 5500 on board? Heroes of the storm maybe? Dota? Maybe the new pillars of eternity? What real world gfx card could you equate iris too?
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Iris HD5500 is just stock Iris, to be clear, so it doesn't have the on-board L4 eDRAM cache found on Iris Pro. Light gaming should be fine, most titles will run on low settings at 1366 x 768. If you get the XPS 13, just get the 1080p display, because that adds about five hours of battery life to the standard 10-hour run time of the same laptop with the "Infinity" display.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Mobile/Dell-XPS-13-Notebook-Review-Broadwell-and-Battery-Life

Also, get the model that has 8GB of RAM, because that is soldered in to the PCB. You can always upgrade the SSD later, because it is a standard M.2 SATA-based drive, and there will be plenty of those floating around for decent prices.
 
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Thanks for your advice Wesley. Will definitely go for the 8gb ram and I'm probably fine with just a 128ssd since I have a 1tb USB3 passport. I'm still undecided on the screen. Honestly I think I just want as many pixels as I can get my grubby lil hands on. I could always just get a power pack for those extended sessions away from a wall socket. I really don't care about the touch because iv never really seen the point on a laptop. I had a close call a few months back where I almost went Mac for that Retina screen so I think Il always regret if I don't get the QHD screen now.
 
Cobalt said:
Honestly I think I just want as many pixels as I can get my grubby lil hands on. I could always just get a power pack for those extended sessions away from a wall socket.
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The thing is, though, with the higher-res display, the GPU has to drive a 3200 x 1800 pixels display, which is much more taxing than 1920 x 1080. That massive battery drain can't be good over the extended period of time that you're going to be using the device. With the Infinity display, you also have to rely on the scaling in Windows 8.1 to work properly. Outside of a handful of programs which do this properly, the other issue is that using scaling gives you an effective desktop resolution of 1600 x 900. With the 1080p display, you avoid the battery drain problems and you can work at the native resolution without worrying about scaling too much.

Windows 10 won't change this situation at all, as all the weird scaling problems are still there in the latest build and I don't see them fixing it with just a few months to go to the launch.
 
You do seem to be correct. Scaling is crappy in windows and a lot of ppl actually complain that a lot of their programs dont work properly :-(

Well that sucks...

I feel like i need to reevaluate now.

Because i see there are also issues with the trackpad.

Ive used my wifes macbook and it really works amazingly. The screen is beautiful and the gestures are insanely convenient. The power between the 2 is very similar if youre looking at the new refreshed macbooks. Im just not sure if i want to give up all the freedom using windows gives me. I learnt to use dos back in the day and know tons of neat work arounds in windows. But maybe it is time for a change because the track pad issues and screen res problems are starting ti feel like a deal breaker.

Plus mac has decent game support these days. Iv got all my blizzard games on the wifes macbook and i see even new stuff like pillars of eternity can be played on mac.

The biggest cherry on top is that i can get it through fnb although im not sure when they'll start stocking the new ones.
 
Besides, I rate >FHD is a waste of time on such a small screen anyway.

As a whole this trend of near 4k screens is a waste of time unless its on decent sized screens (27 inch)...below that you're just burning processing power and (if applicable battery life)
 
Cobalt said:
Im just not sure if i want to give up all the freedom using windows gives me. I learnt to use dos back in the day and know tons of neat work arounds in windows. But maybe it is time for a change because the track pad issues and screen res problems are starting ti feel like a deal breaker.
Click to expand...

What you should do then, is borrow the Macbook and use it as your own machine for a month. Habits take about two weeks to break and two weeks for new ones to form, so if you evaluate it for four weeks and come away thinking "Hey!... I totally didn't have to work around any of the issues I normally deal with Windows," then that's going to be as good a sign as any that you can make the switch between either platform and still be okay.

Some people are apprehensive about Apple's "walled garden" setup, but that's long before they take the time to actually use the OS and judge it on its merits and overall performance. If you want freedom (peppered with minor bouts of frustration, followed by ecstasy when you fix it), use Linux.
 
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