XPS 16 Creator Edition Laptop | Hacker News Reader

XPS 16 Creator Edition Laptop

dell.com

19 pointsmudil55 comments

Please stay away from Dell. Posting from the worst laptop I have ever owned, my Dell XPS that cost over 2.5k usd new. Yes, I hate it enough to rage-post about it on HN.

At least it sort of works after using the best thermal compound available, adding thick feet, and using it only on a cutting board to make sure an uneven surface like my lap doesn't reduce flow. Also, never place the charger on the carpet or it will shut itself off from thermal overload. Everything still randomly overheats with minimal workloads, but mainly it sort of works now :)

FWIW, I've used their Latitude line of laptops and they've been excellent on Linux.

But that could possibly be an exception, and the rest of the company is staffed with shit flinging monkeys, at least that's what I infer from the horrid design of the XPS product page.

My own experience doesn't match yours. I've bought 6 XPS laptops and a couple of desktops (including Alienware) over the last 20 years and have had a pretty good experience with all of them. They always had nice screens, good performance, and held up to the stresses and strains of travel and heavy usage.

That doesn't mean I haven't had a handful of issues, such as several swollen batteries that caused problemss with the touch pad and keyboard. But Dell fixed the ones (onsite!) that occurred during the warranty period and I was able to fix the ones that occurred outside the warranty period.

The only issue that really sticks with me is one I had with motherboard fan controls (not lights, but fan speed) in an Alienware R6 that could only be engaged and adjusted via Windows software. Thanks to proprietary Dell bios shenanigans I couldn't get control of the fan via Linux no matter what I tried.

That said, I don't find this "Create Edition" model appealing for so many of the reasons other posters have pointed out (price, Windows preinstalled, etc.). And I really dislike monitors that use uncommon resolutions (I think this one is 3200x2000).

I've owned several generations of XPS and whenever I need a new laptop XPS is my choice. So far I've loved them. :) Haven't run into any overheating issues so far, but I'm sure we use ours differently.

I had a Dell latitude E6400 for many years, and it was rock solid for me with zero complaints. After that I had an XPS 9550, and it had a lot of issues over just ~3-4 years: issues with power connector, audio stopping working, touchpad issues, etc. Since then I decided to go back to Thinkpad.

I have an xps15 that yes, runs hot when I really use it, but it is otherwise fine. May be a model year situation. I have a 9510 from 2021 and it still suits fine as a daily driver for node / angular / postgres etc running in containers as I do dev work.

I've also experienced numerous thermal issues with Dell XPS'es (keyboard de-gluing and popping up, for instance). Hope their laptops are better now, but I wouldn't vouch for them.

Every Dell XPS Ive ever had has broken within a year or two. However the warranty is amazing and they fixed it within a few weeks.

I have a Dell Precision that's a tank though.

Maybe QC differences in consumer vs business models.

My impression has been that Dell generally provides better long term support such as firmware security updates than Asus. Curious what is recommend instead, Lenovo perhaps?

To each their own my dude. I’ve been on XPS13 since 2014, all three have been solid and are still working. Latest one is from 2023. Developer edition with Ubuntu preinstalled.

Why are these running Windows? If you are targeting AI engineers surely you would be better of offering some kind of unix.

Don't worry there's lots of people out there that will think this will make ChatGPT run faster

Because most corporations require Windows as the client OS, and Apple doesn't do CUDA.

Creator Edition doesn't imply engineering lol.

This is for people to create more doom scroll slop.

They target (slop) creators

Mandatory Windows.

Pass.

And not even Windows Pro

I reckon the 64GB variant might be good value for running Qwen 27b. I'm not happy with the flat gapless keyboard though. It looks uncomfortable to work on. Has anyone had any experience with this type of keyboard from Dell?

If running LLMs, I'd want to know about the thermals. Looking at the 3D view, there are no holes underneath, just a large one on the side and at the back.

$7k Windows XP Home

I boggles the mind they do this.

Yeah, not only it is ridiculous to have a laptop targeting devs to be Home edition, the oldie XPS Linux variants are long gone, yet Dell gladly sells server racks with Linux.

Where is it saying ‘devs’? I mean the title is “Creator Edition” (as in ‘content creator’ as in doomscroll marketing bs maker)

Missing reading abilities?

I guess we are on an age that only the title gets read.

> Engineered for creators, developers, and gamers

So creators first? (But yes, sorry i have been awake for 48 hours)

Alphabetical order, get some rest.

Wow. I would never imagine any promotional text would consider that order tbh. But it seems you are at least not wrong. Nice observation :D

Why would Dell selling server racks with Linux be the reason they should also sell laptops with Linux? Apple doesn't sell Macs with iOS despite selling iPhones with iOS. I get that Dell used to sell laptops with Linux, and that they should in general, I just don't see how selling server racks with Linux is in any way related.

For one, folks have to reverse engineer the same hardware, kind of.

I don’t use windows so what is the difference between home and pro versions of windows? My understanding is the pro version enables device management features needed by a corporate network. Is there a performance difference that would affect an individual developer?

Yes, plenty of developer tooling is only available on Add/Remove OS components for Professionals, besides several OS configurations regarding scheduling, containers management, OS limits,....

Not exactly performance, but features. For example, you can’t use Remote Desktop to connect to a machine running Windows Home.

Also, there are industry specific apps that can require Pro.

Swing and a miss from Dell, yet again. Did someone just go "It's not got more than 128GB RAM right? OK Home is fine then" ??

Is this for developers with a humiliation fetish?

What does this even mean

It means what it says

Publicly announcing they don’t know the definitions of words is a part of the humiliation fetish lol

The site blocks Chromium on FreeBSD.

Thank you unknown person for fixing that.

Pricey. I do miss the days when the first Dell developer laptop was released.

They completely wasted their XPS brand. The XPS 13 dev was the peak of dell and now it is horse shit. I haven't had a Dell laptop be bought for work since then.

Lenovo are quite good at the moment.

I bought the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14" with Ryzen 9900HX and 96GB running Linux and it's even better than my previous Dell XPS 15. Smaller, lighter and faster. And it only costs something like €2K.

Actually Tuxedo effectively looked good on paper but hard and too long to order them in Europe sadly. Especially when it is for work and you need it right now.

The big added value of Lenovo is that you can often be delivered the next day.

I live in Europa and I ordered it for work. Took slightly more than a week.

Why would anyone take any version of this over an m5 max laptop? It makes no sense.

How would this be for gaming compared to something like a Razer laptop with RTX 5070?

Dell have a different range for gaming, with the obligatory LED lights and whatnot. This is for 'content creators', which mostly means video editing, and it promises the benefits of the RTX Spark SoC with ARM-based CPU. This means extended battery life and being able to do editing in half the time.

Given that editing is a bottleneck and cost in the production process, this laptop, with its huge screen and Spark CPU is a no-brainer, however, there is also the ASUS ProArt range, which also comes with RTX Spark, but an arguably better screen, it is not as if there is anything new here for the 'content creator'.

But this does not answer your question, however, I am sure that FAFO applies, so you can expect a glitchy experience, up to the point of unplayable. Honestly, running an obscure North Korean linux on a Microsoft Surface gadget that has been specifically designed with closed source, Windows only drivers would be a preferable challenge to getting your games to work on this.

Therefore, dive in and be an early adopter, the prices will be double next year.

There aren't many arm native windows games.

Imagine paying $4K to use Windows in 2026

More expensive and worse than a MBP , congratulation. What type of jokes is this shit?

Dell Price $3,799.99 Processor NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X, 18 Cores Operating System Windows 11 Home Graphics Card NVIDIA Blackwell RTX 5120-core GPU Memory 32 GB LPDDR5X Storage 512 GB SSD, TLC Displays 16" Touch 3.2K (3200x2000)

Laptops from a Trump chump and genocide supporter, no thanks.

> 128 GB RAM

> $7k

heavy sigh

It’s unified RAM like on a Mac, so it also counts as VRAM. Go check what a 128GB VRAM GPU costs. I’ll be waiting.

And a similar spaced MacBook Pro (128GB RAM) is like $9k+.

It’s not like this is a horrible deal in that regard.

It's just LPDDR5X, standard modern laptop RAM. Sure, it's quite a bit faster due to the way it's connected, but comparing it to the VRAM on a dedicated GPU is absurd, especially considering memory on laptops has been "unified" in this way since forever.

On Apple website, US one, M5 Max with 128GB is $7000. So yeah? lulz

You get 614GB/s of memory bandwidth on the M5 Max (full chip), more than double the N1X / GB10 (DGX Spark). For decode, that'll directly translate into ~2x faster token generation.

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