Ultrabook to replace Air

[Nymins]

After having a Macbook Air for a few months, I just can't get use to OS X and I'm looking to go back to a Windows based machine (I realise I can install Windows on the mac, but I'd prefer not to).

I much prefer the ultra book form factor, so I'm looking for something equal to or better than what I have now.

I've spotted the new 2014 XPS 13, which seems to tick all the boxes. One popped up on the Outlet for about £850inc which was i7, 8Gb ram, 256Gb SSD, FHD Touch display. So I'm going to check there fairly often to see if something similar pops up.

Budget is around £800, obviously the lower the better, but I'm looking for a fairly high res screen (don't care much for touch screen, but if its there all the better), 8Gb ram and a decent sized SSD. Probably pretty tough to find, and I've probably already answered my question with the Dell Outlet, but was wondering if you guys had any suggestions?

Cheers!

 

[Nymins]

Yea I may hold out awhile whilst the price comes down on the Outlet. £750 seems to be the range for the i5, 4GB, 128GB SSD and £850 for the i7, 8GB, 256GB SSD.

Still not too if you compare to the Air, but closer to £700 for the i7 would be perfect.

 

[Nymins]

Sorry, don't understand why you don't just install Windows on the Air which is highly regarded as the best ultra book form factor available.

I triple boot OSX, Windows and Ubuntu on mine. I wouldn't swap it for any Windows machine, it's awesome

I could but it would feel odd to me. I could give it a try and see how it goes I suppose. I realise its the same hardware as any other machine, but the big glowing Apple logo and running Windows feels wrong. Stupid I know but hey ho.

Don't have the room to dual boot as its only the 128GB SSD model. I've been trying to find a way to take an image of the hard drive in case I feel like going back to it, but don't have access to an external hard drive or network share.

I still have my Dell Inspiron 14z (N411z) which I used before the Air. Still a good laptop, so I'm half tempted just to sell the Air, keep the money and go back to my old one and wait until XPS prices go down.

 

[Nymins]

Seen the vaio pro 13 and it looks very nice. Seen a couple pop up on the Sony outlet store too.

Yea the Xps 13s are mostly the Haswell models (9333 I think it is).

 

[Nymins]

Making a bootable drive now just as a backup.

The OS isn't particularly bad, but I just can't seem to be as productive on it as I am on Windows. Probably because I use Windows 7 and Server 8 hours a day at work. Coming home to the mac just makes doing things feel slower.

Don't really like the way it handles application installations/removal, file management, apps that don't take up the whole screen when opened, and a few little bugs that have come up like icons disappearing, Finder not refreshing itself to show a file thats been moved or downloaded.

The hardware is the best part. Excellent battery life and the trackpad is fantastic, even in Windows on a VM.