XPS line 4th gen Intel Haswell 2013 Refresh?

I rather try them both out. This'll take nearly a month to come, and over 2 weeks to ship, so I'm going to pick up a retina tomorrow, if it blows my socks off I will cancel the XPS. If it doesn't I'll return it and get the XPS. But if the XPS then is plagued with issues, I'll go back to the Retina. I know some people will think this is unethical and abusing their system, but reviews only say so much, and the point of a return policy is so that you can properly try something out without risking it.

 

Just got a quote for $1,765.19 for the mid-tier machine in Canada. ($1,977.01 all in, shipped to British Columbia)

Has anybody gotten anything better in Canada? I got the quote by online chatting with a rep, but I need to call back to order. Is it fairly typical/accepted to try to haggle the price down even more when I call? (So far, he hasn't really budged beyond giving me coupons that are publicly known can get and an additional 2%)

It looks like the US store offers around $150 in savings just in the coupons that it shows from the moment you hit dell.com to the time you see your cart, and those all stack together, which doesn't seem to be the case in Canada.

 

I got $150 off plus $75 off when I get it, so 3%ish

 

So $225 off of the standard price of $1899?

My discounts right now add up to $110, which I think is pretty damn low. Guess I'll have to put my gameface on and see what else I can get. Sadly, I've already exhausted a lot of the angles that I could bargain with (The 2% off is psuedo-student discount, I mentioned that I'm an IEEE member but he said that the MPP discount there can't be stacked with the $100 off that he already gave me)

Would you be willing to email your rep asking if he'd like an easy sale if he can just match what you got?

 

I was just able to get the high-end model for $1,954.99 ( $2,107.23 After Tax ), as well as the 5% cash back giftcard and upgraded 2 day shipping. Which should bring the total to about 1993 after everything

Edit: I used a 15% off coupon code I got from a friend who received it in the mail

 

It was off the 2300 version

 

Lucky!
Don't suppose you have another coupon

 

Unfortunately I don't but, at least everyone knows they are out there now.

 

How'd he get it in the mail?

 

He said he got it in a catalog. It read "Save an additional 15% on your system purchase when using Dell Preferred Account"

 

Top model ordered for $2,009.99 via chat with Maria. No coupons needed.

 

How'd you get that? What country?

 

Just said my budget was $2,000.

US.

 

US seems to be way more lenient than Canada, I tried with like 20 reps and $2125 was the best I could get, and then like 350 for warranty

 

Someone's got an M3800 unofficial review already.

4-6 hr life on the small battery with i7.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...35359-dell-precision-m3800-owners-review.html

 

The majority of prospective Haswell XPS owners here seem to be interested in the 15 - is there anyone looking towards the 13 release?

It would be nice to have a date like we had with the 15.

 

I was just looking at my quote, and noticed that Windows is listed as "Windows 8.1 64-bit English" which seems to imply that it's not Win 8.1 Pro.

This is probably because I got the computer spec'd from the "Home" side of the Dell store as opposed to small business. The price looks like it's the same (on the Home and Small Business sides of the store), but for anybody that's negotiating with reps, double-check which Windows edition you're getting and see if you can ask for an upgrade since the price should be the same.

 

So 6-9 hours with the big battery. Not bad, but it's pretty meaningless if we don't know what the machine was doing during those tests.

 

Is that including tax and other assorted fees?

 

No tax (Oregon), free 1 day shipping.

 

We do, light usage.

 

Anyone know what that max memory should be in the xps15?

 

My order is in progress now, yay. Delivery date is still 18/11 though, boo!

16GB.

It's got 2x DIMM slots, and the 87 series chipset supports 8gb DIMM modules (the maximum available at the moment).

 

Mines in production, same date.

 

any reviews out yet? they are usually out before the laptops hit consumers arent they but havent seen any yet.
would like to order one but want to see how well the graphics card preforms first...

 

You could do what I'm doing it, order it and if it ends up having problems return it.
But some guy has a m3800, which is the same body as the xps15 just with a different dgpu, and he's very impressed.

 

Should be some benchmarks on notebookcheck.

No reviews yet, it seems like no review samples have been sent out/we'll probably see them around the same time us consumers start getting ours

Silly north americans and your ridiculous return policies

 

Our return policies are pretty ridiculous and could easily be taken advantage of, but they work well for times like these, where I simply can't decide between the new retina and the xps 15 without using both

 

$2318 including 13% tax here in Canada for the highest spec. Want to try and find a 15% coupon though.

 

NBR member got his hands on a pre-release M3800, which should be similar to the XPS 15. All good news -- solid build, runs cool, quiet, great display, good sound, good keyboard and trackpad...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...35359-dell-precision-m3800-owners-review.html

 

How'd you get it so cheap? I got 2354 with hst

 

I am pretty sure the real-life battery life would be similar. But yeah, new rMBPs are disappointing. The $1999SKU really needed 16GB RAM at its price. (13" rMBP is the much stronger proposition, though -- poor Zenbooks).

Let's compare the top SKUs of both laptops.

XPS Pros
$300 less (the gap will shrink to $180 with educational discount, increase with coupon/haggling)
Touchscreen
Ease of maintenance/upgrade
IGZO
Marginally better real-world battery life (most likely)
No need to buy a separate Windows copy, if you need one

rMBP Pros
Thunderbolts (if you can find its use, of course)
PCI-E SSD
0.1 Ghz faster CPU (at the cost of 10W more TDP, though its Iris part of die will be unused if 750 is active)
Preinstalled productivity applications (which they should have done long time ago -- no one would pay for their "office suite" when there is free Libreoffice, but it is nice to have for free).
Iris Pro for integrated GPU (though I wonder why you need it, aside from OpenCL)
More Retina-optimized apps ATM
The last gen rMBP wasn't disaster, the last gen XPS was (I actually think this is the biggest factor for choosing rMBP if you are cross-shopping two -- pther advantages of rMBP are situational at the best).

Of course, with Apple being Apple, it will hold its price much better. But then, I need Windows both for my work and games...It looks like I need to haggle with Dell sales rep soon (which is what I hate the most with Dell, though -- I really wish if Dell/HP will adapt fixed pricing like Apple does). It seems like Dell did very good job with XPS15 -- I suppose the fact that they share it with Precision gave them much needed discipline this time around, compared to the last gen XPS 15 which should have never happened. And of course, I am too old-school not to love ease of maintenance.

 

For us in Australia, the prices are ridiculous.

Equivalent Specs (15inch, i7, 512gb SSD, 16gb RAM, DGPU):

XPS15: ~$2,200 (EDU Discount)
rMBP: ~$2,950 (EDU Discount).

There is nothing in the rMBP spec that makes me want to spend $750 more, for what is essentially, on a hardware level, the same thing. Thunderbolt is niche, PCIE is nice, slightly faster spec CPU and Iris Pro is also nice, but ultimately useless for most users.

I think you'll find the 2012 gen rMBP had it's fair share of issues, if you search through the forums. Thermal throttling, noisy/fans failing, screens failing, etc etc etc.

*shrugs*

At the end of the day, though, if you want to use OSX, get the mac. If you want to use windows, get the dell. On a hardware level they're the same, but you're losing out on all the optimisations/tweaks done in software/firmware (if you put windows on the rMBP, for example).

/my2c

 

I agree... no idea where this guy got the price for the rMBP and the XPS 15 but here the apple crap is like 800$-1000$ more expensive at same specs.

 

I don't know how much time you'd be willing to spend on such a task, but the XPS 15 sounds to me like an outstanding candidate for osx86, if you catch my drift ;-)

By the way, I'm really tempted to get the model with the 500GB HDD and swap it out for a Crucial M4 SSD I already have. Warranty issues aside, does anyone know how feasible that would be?

 

The price I used were US prices. Sorry, I didn't know Apple was that expensive outside of US (though I know laptops in general are more expensive in Europe).

Where do you see a model with 500gb HDD? The smallest HDD I saw on the US home website is 750gb, and this model is not recommended (no QHD, no dGPU, dual core CPU). Anyway, According to its user's manual, it should be pretty easy to change HDD -- however, it may be the case that the SSD you have must have the height of 7mm or less (I believe this is the height of HDDs that they put in). If your M4 is taller than that, then it may not work.


I pretend that I didn't hear about OSX86 (coughs).

 

Ugh, sorry... I meant the 1TB HDD (I'm looking at the German website). Haven't had my coffee yet!

 

Screen is the thing I care most about in a laptop. It would be nice if someone compared/ reviewed the Dell XPS 15 IGZO panel vs. the IPS panel of the rMBP15.

 

Here in the UK the pricing for the Dell XPS 15 is better than for the similarly specced rMBP15 (with the Nvidia 750M).
In the US the price difference is $300 while in the UK it is £450 (over $700).

Also, how do you get a good deal on the Dell? I tried several reps over the phone and chat and all they could do is the official price less 7% (same deal as I could have myself by using the coupon Dell have on their website) - very unhelpful.

 

It's the same most places except the US, really.

Talking to people on the phone or chat only gets you the price you could've gotten with the discount coupon anyway. In most cases, they even start from the price without the discount you're entitled to - it won't be included until you insist on it.

 

As much as I'd love to see a new XPS 14 (been waiting over year hoping for a refresh), I don't think it's likely. Both the XPS 13 and 15 had at least one refresh since their release and the XPS 14 has pretty much been abandoned. The idea is great, 14" screen with a 13" footprint as that pretty much hits a sweet-spot, as you've said and if the XPS 14 had an IPS screen and no WiFi problems, I'd have picked it up in a heartbeat. But, I don't think it was as successful as it could have been and I could imagine Dell being somewhat finnicky about taking the same risks, even though I'd blame Dell's choice of components, rather than the concept.

 

Let's hope you are wrong...

XPS 14, with its few shortcoming (especially and mostly WiFi - which is now working OK for me - and I don't mind the screen too much, think it is quite OK), has been the most enjoyable notebook I've had: smallish, not so heavy, reasonable battery life, kind of powerful, DP port can drive my 27" monitor nicely...

That's I'm awaiting eagerly a Haswell (and consequentially new design) refresh: same size though slimmer, lighter, great battery life. Could be awesome.

I don't know if it is wishful thinking, but I guess not only XPS 15 is more popular so it has priority, but XPS 14 may be more difficult to design: almost same specs in a much smaller case... So it may need more time and care...

We can only wish now, I suppose...

 

What happens if I buy the laptop right now and a month from now, the price of the laptop drops?

 

The, uh, price drops?

Honestly, price drops happen every day in technology, firms would lose all their money if they ran around giving everyone refunds every time a price dropped (currency fluctuations, supplier fluctuations, low demand, etc etc etc).

 

Where's the coupon if you don't mind me asking?

 

Assuming you're from the UK, its GX7F?F2S3D8XCK. Valid until 23rd October (today!) Link at end of post.

I ordered the top model for £1574 with the 10% VIP coupon. Roughly £900 cheaper than a MBP...


Dell Coupons & Coupon Codes | Dell UK

 

Check out this ongoing in depth review of a pre-production Dell M3800, apparently an almost exact clone of the XPS 15. Word is, the display is amazing. If the XPS 15 really is the same as this M3800, then I would rather have it than a rMBP at any price. XPS 15 is going to kick a-s-s.

 

Has anyone been successful in getting sales reps to take a good amount off of the price (like, $300-$400)? Lowest I've gotten was a tad over $1700 (for the $1899 model), and that was from a higher-up.

I'm not sure what their profit margins on this thing are, or if I'm literally going to have to wait until clearance to get the price I'm looking for.

 

After talking to them over two days, I got $1740, but I'm in Canada. Looks like somewhere around there is the limit. (I was asking for anything below $1700 even if they made up the differenc ein gift cards or something, but they kept saying that they couldn't).

 

I got the high end model for $1793 using a MedAssets discount, and I'll receive a 5% gift card too so the net amount was about $1700. Doubt they will sell one for a loss - or more likely a basement profit margin - so that is probably near there bottom dollar.

Factoring in sales tax, this was nearly $1,000 less than a similarly specified Retina MacBook Pro (i.e. 2.3GHz Haswell, 512GB SSD, 16GB) so I think it is a good value.