equivalent to mbp 13"

the_r_sole

the_r_sole

the_r_sole

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25 Aug 2010
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Hi folks,
My current laptop (hp probook) is on it's last legs and has a hardware error which I've not been able to track down, anyway I use it for work so can't afford to spend hours trying to fix it or losing work when you think it's fixed and it's not!

Anyway, I have recently moved to a firm using macs so one consideration might be to get a macbook pro and run any windows programs needed through bootcamp - or just get a good pc laptop and not take any work home with me!

So, I've been looking around the ultrabooks and was wondering if anyone could advise what comes close to the performance/screen/battery/build quality of a mbp - the dell xps 13 looks pretty decent but I'm not sure about the build etc as I've not held one in the flesh (also they bump the price up for a touchscreen which I'd never use for the better specced machines!)
 
I've just picked up an XPS 13 and the wife has a rMBP.

The XPS 13 is very well built, the screen is beautiful (I've got the 3200x1800 version).

Battery is meant to be excellent, but seen reports it's nowhere near as good as Dell suggest, I've only had mine a couple of days and think I agree with this. It's meant to be 11 hours, but currently I'm almost fully charged and it's telling me I have under 4 :confused:

The 13 is smaller and lighter than the rMBP. Touchpad and keyboard are good, but the touchpad isn't quite as good as the mac one (no gestures for forwards and back strangely).

The rMBP has the better magsafe connector, the XPS 13 has a standard charger port.

It's also a little frustrating you can't have 16GB of RAM on the XPS 13. My idle RAM usage is over 5GB, need to look into why.
 
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yeah, I had heard that of the battery life on the xps - will try to get out and have a look at the screens - the ram is the one thing I wasn't sure about - will be maxing whichever I go for anyway!
Which would you go for with hindsight? (aside from os choice)
 
For longevity, I've consider looking in to the Lenovo ThinkPads. Where I used to work, we had some 10 year old lenovo's which still worked amazingly well. Specifically, I'd look at the X1 Carbon :) http://goo.gl/N3Uv7p
 
the_r_sole said:
look pretty good, but more expensive the the mbp for the same spec (unless I'm missing something)
Click to expand...

They most likely are. You pay for what you get :)

If you're wanting something with the same price, it might be worth letting us know what spec MPB you are looking at and what money you want to spend.
 
2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
16GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

which is 1559 (will be getting it slightly cheaper than that but a decent start!)


the lenovo with i5-5300U (up to 2.9GHz) - 8 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD is £1715
 
Between the XPS13 and the rMBP you have to choose which is more important:

The XPS is a fair bit more portable and slightly cheaper (get a VIP code to give you 10% off) whilst the rMBP can have 16GB of RAM and has OSX.
 
At that price, it's more down to personal preference, they'll all be fairly similar in performance - as above depends how much you want Windows or OSX.
 
Minstadave said:
Between the XPS13 and the rMBP you have to choose which is more important:

The XPS is a fair bit more portable and slightly cheaper (get a VIP code to give you 10% off) whilst the rMBP can have 16GB of RAM and has OSX.
Click to expand...

yeah, the portability thing isn't a killer either way - currently lugging a 15.6 concrete slab around so anything will be an improvement!

if i go OSX will be using bootcamp for some software... difficult choice, never spent so much on a machine in all my days! think most of my builds/laptops added together are about the price of the lenovo!
 
the_r_sole said:
yeah, the portability thing isn't a killer either way - currently lugging a 15.6 concrete slab around so anything will be an improvement!

if i go OSX will be using bootcamp for some software... difficult choice, never spent so much on a machine in all my days! think most of my builds/laptops added together are about the price of the lenovo!
Click to expand...

Yeah, that Lenovo is very expensive - but as I said, we had some 10 year old Lenovo laptops that were still better than any of the other laptops in the company.

Needless to say they now only use Lenovo products because of how hard working they are! I tend to see a lot of my friends and designers I know replace Apple hardware after 5 or so years.

For over £1000 you're going to get a very good work horse anyway!
 
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