randominternetperson

I have the misfortune of using a company-issued XPS 13 on a daily basis.  It is a total piece of garbage.  Literally the only advantage this has over any MacBook I have used in the past decade is the light on the power cord to show you when it's plugged into the wall.  The trackpad is atrocious compared to any Mac track pad, to say nothing of the latest Apple versions.   It's bad at ignoring stray touches; the cursor movement is poor; and the gestures (copied straight from Apple) just don't work as well.  But here's the best part.  Because I leave my laptop plugged in 22 hours a day (as I do with my MacBooks to no ill effect), the battery has swollen to that the track pad is bulging out the case and the keyboard is visually/physically bulging.  When I close the laptop there is a 1 cm gap between the screen and the palm rest.

Here's Dell's hand-waving response to this common problem (impacting at least 20% of the XPS 13s we have in house):

https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-us/sln320718/swollen-battery-information-and-guidance?lang=en

Lithium-Ion Polymer Technology:
Battery swelling is a failure mode associated with a type of battery cell technology called Lithium-ion Polymer. Lithium-ion Polymer batteries have become popular across the industry in recent years due to their slim and customizable form factor and longer battery useful life. Lithium-ion Polymer batteries are housed in a flexible multi-layer pouch, which may sometimes swell for a variety of reasons including but not limited to age, usage pattern, and environmental conditions.

In contrast, older model notebooks across the industry used lithium-ion cylindrical cells, which had a metal casing and did not swell.

The risk of battery swelling, while low, is inherent with Lithium-ion Polymer cell technology, which is widely used across the tech industry (not unique to Dell or PCs). The issue is industry-wide affecting all notebook computer companies.

Emphasis mine.  Not unique to "PCs"?  So apparently this must be just as prevalent with MacBooks, by implication.  Funny, I've never heard anyone hear post a complain about a swelling MacBook or any other Apple device.  I thinking Dell is full of shit on this.  Personally, I'll never spend a dime on a Dell PC (and not only because I don't intend to ever buy a Windows computer).

The only good thing about our company standardizing on this crappy laptop is that now every conference room has a USB-C to HDMI adapter since Dell followed Apple's lead and omitted USB-A ports.

ihatescreennames said:

I’ve never understood why Fortune ranks by revenue and not profit. I remember for years and years GM and Ford were at the top of the list and if I recall correctly GM was usually 1. All those years of earning the most revenue didn’t help when it came time to bail them out. 

I agree.

The weirdest part of counting revenue is that if someone buys a MacBook from Amazon (or Walmart), it counts as $1000 in revenue for Amazon (or Walmart) and $800 for Apple (or whatever the wholesale price Apple charges Amazon for a MacBook).  Seems biased in favor of retailers.

knowitall said:

headfull0wine said:

When Steve first introduced the iPhone, he compared the pricing with the cost of a phone and and iPod. You can buy a laptop and a tablet for the price of the Surface Book 3, but you’d be carrying 2 devices around. You pay a premium for the hybridization. I can see a use case where people want both laptop and tablet, yet need Windows OS. The Surface Book 3 fits the bill. 

Impossible, nobody ‘needs‘ Windows.

Tell that to millions of people at companies and corporations who require their employees to use Windows.  Sure there are mavericks in many of those settings that find a way to use their personal MacBook instead, but they are the exceptions.  (Of course there are other companies that allow employees to use either and pay for either, but your assertion was that nobody "needs" Windows.  That's only true if you add "Nobody needs to work at a company that requires Windows."

corrections said:

lkrupp said:

The only thing about DED’s editorials is that he is a sort of Don Quixote fighting windmills. The tech media doesn’t like Apple, they never have and never will. Apple is anathema to most tech writers, geeks, nerds, and many AI commenters. For this crowd Apple shouldn’t even exist and they cannot accept that it does. No other big tech company triggers so much hate and vitriol, not even Google. The knives are constantly out looking for potential ways to take Apple down. If there’s even a glimmer of hope for a failure of some sort it is trotted out like a prize catch. So fight on, Mr. Dilger but I doubt you will change any minds, especially here in AI forums.

Full disclosure: I’m not trying to change minds. I’m trying to establish a pattern of being consistently correct.

That would be a great .sig.  If it wouldn't reveal me for the arrogant ass that I probably am, I would steal it myself.

rain22 said:

I think you missed the main point - $800 to fix a fleck of dust under a key. 

It was a total 100% complete failure of industrial design. Nothing should ever be designed that way.
It’s like designing a car that requires $23,000 to fix a flat tire because they connected it to the engine - and the tires go flat if they get a pebble in the tread. 

And not actually true.  I had one problem a few months ago (just before the pandemic) with a sticking space bar after using my MacBook Pro (13-inch, late 2016) for for 4 years.  I took it to the local Apple Store and the Genius took it into the back room and got it back to me working fine.  I said I thought it was unrepairable, and he said, "no we can take off individual keys and clean them up as needed."