On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 09:49:28PM -0500, Ranjan Maitra wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have two alternative Dell options (unless more suggestions come in re: what
> I should get).
[ ... ]
> While we are at it, any other suggestions from DEll or others?
Yes: Dell Alienware.
Machines in this series are probably some of the fasted portables - I
got myself an Alienware 17 in 2014. Runs up until 3.8 GHz, without
problems.
Cons: Weight.
Lousy battery, it seems: after four yrs. of usage it runs with
small loads only ~75 minutes now. And I had to re-train the
battery to last at least that long. I used the machine at home,
battery plugged in, but most of the time on AC/power cable.
Trackpad surface slightly peeling off now.
Price.
On Fedora 26 xorg the mini-Display port doesn't work here for an
external monitor setup.
Pros: After all the years (the first two or so with MS Windows): still
fast. And reliably so.
Display cloning works reliably with the HDMI port - after
a little help by and tuning with xrandr.
I use the machine both with a testing version of Debian (not
often) and most of the time with Fedora, still 26 - just works.
I can open the case and add or remove hardware, including the
battery - definitely something I wouldn't like to miss ..
Speed. Think about Fedora updates worth half a Gb or more, and
the time it probably takes to install them on slow hardware: on
this machine dnf install messages run down so fast I can barely
read them ...
But careful: Dell - at least when I look at their pages - do seem to
offer Nvidia only for their new machines - and I wouldn't recommend to
use Nvidia GFX. (I bought this machine with an AMD/Pitcairn GPU back
then)
But the AMD card option is still described here:
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/help-me-choose/hmc-aw-video-card-laptops
Still I couldn't find it in their current hardware configuration
options ...
Given the overall hardware performance - despite the glitches I
described, and perhaps a few minor ones that turned up sporadically -
I'd buy easily again another machine like that - provided the current
one keeps going for at least another four years as reliably as it has
done so far, and provided I can have an AMD card, or one even better
than that ..
Oh, nearly forgot that: the current AW's even look lots better than
mine ... ;)
HTH
Wolfgang
--
Essentials of Unix (1982):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw
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