It's just me, but $1500 is stupid-pricey, especially considering it's not really upgradable (RAM soldered to mobo, anyone?) ...
I bought a Dell Inspiron for $400, doubled the RAM to 8GB and swapped out the hard drive for a solid state for another $100, so I now have a dual-boot (Win7 and Mint 13) laptop, very sweet, very fast, rock-solid, and what, 1/3 the price of their Ultrabook? Granted, it's not quite as flashy/skinny, but saving $1,000 is kind of worth it to me. Just my opinion -- oh, and I did have to go and get drivers for the ALPS touchpad, but there were darn near idiot-proof instructions online, and it took me all of two minutes. (And, had I not done it, the touchpad still worked, but it was klunky and didn't scroll.) Everything else? Out of the box, on the Linux side, it "just worked". Wi-fi, bluetooth, sound, ethernet, webcam, suspend on close lid, recognizing specialized Dell function keys for things like "airplane mode" for wifi ... they all "just worked" in Linux. Funny was on the Windoze side I had to do a bunch of scrabbling around because their included drivers disk was defective. It's just me being an old curmudgeon, but I don't like the move to disposable electronics, given that "thrown away" does *not* mean "safely and economically recycled). Scott for example (since you power-use if anyone does), how long do you keep your average laptop before replacing it? If everyone goes to "pitch it/replace it" every two years, what happens to the mountains of older gear? For that matter, what about the modifications I made to my machine? At the very least, the delightful activity of computer tinkering becomes a thing of the past, which strikes an old nerd like me as very sad. Increasing RAM, swapping out a hard drive ... in most of the new ultrabooks that means replacing the entire unit. That strikes me as obscenely wasteful. Maybe it's a part of the inevitable blurring between single-purpose and multi-purpose devices. The lines between computers, phones, tablets, and other interfaces I haven't even imagined yet, keeps getting vaguer. Are we headed to a world where tinkering, either hardware or software, is no longer possible? That would be sad. TL;DR: ultrabooks meh Theresa On Mon, 2013-04-22 at 18:08 -0500, Robert & Janet Bennett wrote: > > It might be just me but the lack of ethernet would be a deal breaker > (especially when I could get an XPS 14 with gigabit ethernet.) > > Robert Bennett > > > Scott Granneman wrote: > > The review surely would have mentioned if the wireless card had > > problems. > > > > > > > > Your particular need is an edge case. > > > > > > Scott > > -- > > Scott Granneman > > [email protected] > > Contact info at http://granneman.tel > > Sent from Mailbox for iPhone > > > > > > On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Mike B. <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > > > Yeah. It does look nice. > > > > But what about the wireless card? That is always a > > priority. > > > > > > For instance, I cannot change the power level on my card > > (RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter) because it isn't > > supported. I don't know if the cause is the driver or the > > hardware, but it sucks. > > > > > > > > On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Scott Granneman > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > This looks like a really nice machine. > > > > > > http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/ > > > > Scott > > -- > > Scott Granneman > > Contact info at http://granneman.tel > > Sent from my iPad > > > > -- > > -- > > Central West End Linux Users Group (via Google > > Groups) > > Main page: http://www.cwelug.org > > To post: [email protected] > > To subscribe: [email protected] > > To unsubscribe: [email protected] > > More options: http://groups.google.com/group/cwelug > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed > > to the Google Groups "Central West End Linux Users > > Group" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving > > emails from it, send an email to cwelug > > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit > > https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > -- > > Central West End Linux Users Group (via Google Groups) > > Main page: http://www.cwelug.org > > To post: [email protected] > > To subscribe: [email protected] > > To unsubscribe: [email protected] > > More options: http://groups.google.com/group/cwelug > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the > > Google Groups "Central West End Linux Users Group" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails > > from it, send an email to cwelug > > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit > > https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > > > -- > -- -- Central West End Linux Users Group (via Google Groups) Main page: http://www.cwelug.org To post: [email protected] To subscribe: [email protected] To unsubscribe: [email protected] More options: http://groups.google.com/group/cwelug --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Central West End Linux Users Group" group. 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