XPS fingerprint magnet

Just how bad is the palmrest? Is it difficult to clean when compared with other laptops?

 

It's fine. Just wipe it down with a damp cloth if it bothers you.

It's no worse of a fingerprint magnet than a laptop with smooth plastic palmrest, or painted metal (e.g. magnesium alloy). In other words, it's nothing to worry about

 

I'm not sure if I agree with kent, I find this laptop to be highlighting the importance of good hand hygiene - which is good, in a way. The fingerprints do come of fairly easily though.

 

Poul,

I, for instance, wash my hands at least 3-5 times a day. I am a bit OCD when it comes to that and plus I have a cat. I don't, however, go wash my hands of naturally occurring oil buildup when I use my keyboard for prolonged periods of time.

I am just wondering how bad XPS is (with it's carbon fiber palmrest) when it comes to that.

 

It's by far the worst laptop I've ever seen with respect to this. It's relatively easy to clean with a damp cloth though.. and it actually makes me clean the laptop quite regularly, so maybe it's a good thing in an odd way.

 

Totally disagree. The coated surface of the XPS15 is the worst thing I encountered through all the laptops I used in my life. It ALWAYS looks dirty and brrrrrr. Unless you clean it every 30 minutes.

 

I clean my laptop about once a week, it doesn't get embarrassingly dirty during that time. It's quite hard to answer your question about how bad it is, I think this is one of those things you have to see for yourself.

 

If you think this one is bad you should have had the previous XPS15 with the rubber palmrest, that was utterly horrific and the marks didn't come out for some people if not cleaned on a very regular basis.

 

Yeah, it's the one thing that spoils the experience for me, but I guess it depends on how oily your hands are naturally. The slightest grease shows up as a shiny smudge on both palmrest and touchpad, which I can't stand. Definitely the worst I've seen on a laptop to date. If they'd put a slight grain or texture on the material it wouldn't have been so bad. But it's completely smooth. It really needs water to clean, too, dry microfiber alone doesn't do it. So I do have to clean it quite regularly, but as others have said that's probably not a bad thing in the long run, certainly more hygenic because all gunk is instantly visible.

 

Whenever I use my XPS13, which isnt to often, I find myself thinking "what the hell was Dell thinking??". It is by far the worst fingerprint magnet I've ever used, almost like Dell wanted it to be that.


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I think the Dell engineers and designers had a superb vision for the 9550 and almost executed, but were forced to release in late beta stage for money or time pressures. At release, that moved it from industry game changer to more of a curiosity that was almost incredible.

That beta release would explain innovative industrial design and good performance for such a small form factor. It also explains some of the issues (e.g. lousy early BIOS, drivers, the wrong carbon fibre finish, etc.).

Overall, I am really pleased with the 9550; it is a true pleasure to use. But that was after selecting the right BIOS and drivers, clean installing M$ Windows, fixing the defective thermal paste for the CPU/GPU and replacing the defective VRAM thermal pads. That stuff should have been taken care of out of the factory.