- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
Weird, isn’t that the only Dell brand people view as worth having?
As an IT guy, recent (past five years) XPS laptops we gave to execs were pretty bad. Smaller, yes, but I found the Latitudes were better in terms of build quality. It is a small sample size though as most execs preferred MacBooks.
Latitude is superior to the XPS line for business.
And man did they have a bad run of XPS’s there for a while with their batteries swelling up.
I worked in IT and those latitudes were no exception in my experience. Earlier models were good but we had to replace so many e7000 series batteries bulging out the bottom.
They should replace the XPS name with the Longitude?
Ha!
Latitude 7490 had a string of bad batteries too. Our XPS units kept having things disconnect internally (even after a motherboard swap with warranty). The latitude 7420 onwards have been super solid!
Used to be a field repair tech for several oems. The XPS usually suffered hinge issues. They decided it was a good idea to use press fitted standoffs in plastic to anchor the screen hinges…and the plastic is not very thick.
I believe the precision series kind of took over. They are high-end models but not really built for gaming. At this point, the XPS wasn’t built for gaming either, so I guess having 2 high-end lines just didn’t make sense?
Edit: I should have read the article first! I guess all the names are going away. I don’t care for the new names either, but both were pretty bad. The only difference is we got used to what it is now despite how little sense it made.
the top level names are fine I guess, but all the sub tier names are too much.
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Some companies prefer Dell as an American held company; for security reasons. Dell’s Precision line supports high-end needs such as 3d modeling, theoretical testing for real world applications, statistical analysis of large datasets, etc.
That is where Dell fits. And yes, they have consumer models. I don’t care for the latter.
I have a precision and an XPS,
Chassis is the same, keyboard, touch screen, pad are the same. Processor, disk, Wi-Fi and memory options are the same. Warranty and on premises technician same.
Prices are not the same, and sometimes precision has more GPU options. And I think a 17 inch screen, but these are a different line under the same brand name.
But one has official Linux support and the other doesn’t. But since all hardware is the same, surprise, it just works.
We’ve been flirting with Lenovo legion. In my business we need strong video cards. Shipping white boxes and monitors to people is a real issue with work from home.
We were solely running XPS for years.
The legion aren’t bad, The worst of it is the power brick is a barrel connector. No running off of USB power delivery.
One of the units had a failed fan. I tore it apart and found the part number, I was actually pretty pissed off because you couldn’t buy just the fan you had to buy the whole heat distribution block with both fans and the heat pipes and everything. But then I found the part was only about 50 bucks. Dell wouldn’t even sell me parts without me being certified. So I bought the Lenovo heat block and it showed up with pre-compounded processor, GPU, and VRM pads. It was super impressive and for 50 bucks honestly it was a steal.
I own a Lenovo legion and the main issue is that it sucks on battery, it’s heavy, and the power brick is huge and expensive (I think close to 300€). Other than that it’s a beast. But if you have legions for business, you’ll struggle in meetings were people don’t want to bother with power cables and supplies.
Good point!
We’re mostly wfh, If we still had sufficient physical meetings, It wouldn’t break the bank to stuff a few bricks in every room.
The battery life is also significantly better if you’re doing normal meeting stuff.
Pretty happy with the G series, but only because the XPS series for replaced by it in terms of bang for buck. And honestly, the G series we got are pretty good.
Better headline: Dell kills all brands
Given that Dell has lost most of it’s old reputation in the last couple of years, not surprising that radical moves were taken. Trying to navigate Dells product range was a quick way to get a headache.
It seems like the higher ups doesn’t care or even feel like it, they just want to be Apple… first the possibly even worse version of Touchbar and now this^
They’re like 20 years too late to start copying Apple here. Apple had their shit together with their product line for a good while after Steve Jobs returned and eliminated the absolute insanity of Apple’s mid-90s lineup, which had at least three times more models than any sane person would find useful.
But recently, Apple went off the deep end. Boggles the mind that “Pro Max” ever made it past the brain-mouth barrier in a boardroom, let alone into an official product lineup.
Every company’s lineup these days:
Pro > Pro Max > Pro Max Ultra > Pro Max Ultra Black Edition
The internal culture was pretty much Steve Jobs dependent where he balanced everything to ward off the extremes (like Jony Ive’s design obsession over all reality) which just got succeed by a soporific guy who’s all in supply chain and bargaining to extend that role. Pretty much if Nvidia loses Jensen~
Agreed. I used to be a hardcore Dell fan, especially for their monitors, but I tried a new model this year and it was such horrible garbage that I had to return it. Their support was nearly non existent.
When their Latitude laptop line moved away from the C/D/E lines I knew it was gonna be trouble. They used to have hardware on par with Apple and almost everything in a generation (I.e E-series) was interchangeable and it was easy to work on.
Yeah, I vastly prefer HP Pro/Elitebooks and Thinkpads over anything in the Dell business line.
Which reputation? I used to work for a dell heavy hoster with thousands of dell servers almost 20 years ago - and apart from them being cheap I have nothing good to say about them. Worst is the remote management - several generations of DRACs all broken in new and interesting ways, and support is useless. You just get better discounts at that scale, which for a business owner drowns out the complaints of the tech people.
Notebooks also have similar bugs over generations - and nowadays they also feel even cheaper than they used to be.
Displays were somewhat acceptable - given you’re fine to work around the DPMS bugs they have in pretty much every display for the last two decades - but their display selection page is unusable and lacks most interesting details. So it is better to just get something you can check out in a shop.
Weird. I thought XPS was a pretty well known brand.
Stupid higher up decisions, remember HBO?
simplified naming scheme with labels like ‘Pro’ and ‘Max.’
How is that “simplified”? Which one is better, Pro or Max?
Actual simplified naming would probably be names like “Basic”, “Business”, “Gaming”, or numbers like what Intel does with Core 3/5/7/9.
Which one is better, Pro or Max?
Dell Pro Max Plus, obviously.
Promax feels like ED pills
I’ll hold out for the Pro Max Ultra
You forgot Ultra
I suspect, at some level, that the confusing naming is kind of the point.
What’s the difference between Pro and Max? If the names were clearer, you probably wouldn’t check the website to clear up the confusion.
It nudges potential buyers into interaction with company marketing.
It would be more simple to call some things basic, but it’ll never happen for the same reason food and drinks places have started drifting away from calling things “small, medium, large” and towards the much more stupid “Regular, Large, Extra-Large”. Starbucks goes even more pretentious with it.
You’d be more likely to have something extremely dumb like Premium (shit-tier), Premium Pro (midrange), Premium Ultra (actually premium).
Not saying it’s any better but haven’t you heard of iPhones?
Neither my wife nor I own any Apple devices, but living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m surrounded by people that do. There’s no need for other companies to copy Apple’s questionable decisions.
Idk I honestly don’t even know which iPhone is latest anymore, my gut says 8 but I know that there’s also iPhone X which was somehow the first one with an OLED screen and why I remember it.
Last one I owned was the 5S, great phone, but their branding and looks haven’t appealed to me since then.
2025 = iPhone 17 Air Plus Pro Max Ultra
AMD now has “Max” chips and Dell now has “Pro” and “Max” laptops.
Everyone copying Apple.
AMD has the worst naming schemes in the industry, I miss the simple old i3, i5, i7… for each generation.
I can’t say Intel CPU naming is better though. The i3, i5, i7, i9 is misleading and the full names are even more confusing than AMD’s.
For a little bit there with 12th and 13th gen laptops it seemed like it could have made sense.
U was the low power “normal” chip
P was the higher power chip
H was the highest power chips
Then i3-9 for the stack.
But then 100 and 200 series ditched that and the P series kinda merged with the H series and you have no idea what you’re getting.
Well AMD just blatantly copied Nvidia’s naming scheme for their new GPUs so maybe they’ll copy Intel for their CPUs. I mean, they kind of already did, since the Ryzen 9 is basically i9, and the Ryzen 7 is basically i7 etc. It’s mostly AMDs mobile CPUs that have horrendous names, but Intel really isn’t much better in that department.
Same as it ever was
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Wait, “Dell Pro max” isn’t a joke? Or at least not an intentional one?
Just wait til you hear about “Dell Pro Max Plus”.
In the future, it means we can also expect product names like Dell Pro Max Plus.
oh I can’t wait for 2030 to get my new Dell Pro Max Plus Most Biz VIP Tip Top Rizz
The base model or the AI Max Pro Plus model?
How prescient Orwell turned out to be.
Premium Pro Max Doubleplus Good.
When I was reading the article, my mind was high on memes~
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There are actually people getting paid for this shit
Are they just sitting in a group in multiple meetings to brainstorm new names for stuff?
And I thought just managers are parasites…
Ironically the people getting paid for this shit did come up with better names and they were all overturned by senior management who read a business book over the weekend. SSDD.
Yes, I’ll take one Dell Pro Max Premium please. Heck, while we’re it, please make it a Dell Pro Max Premium Ultra Deluxe with Extra Sprinkles.
I’d like people to actually read the article before commenting. They are renaming their laptops. They’ll continue producing what would’ve been XPS.
replacing them with three main product lines: Dell (yes, just Dell), Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
PC/Android companies not trying to blatantly rip off Apple challenge: Impossible
Calling a product the same as your brand is like calling a movie “The”. Good luck finding it online.
My late-aughts XPS is a gem - milled aluminum, edge-to-edge glass, and the best laptop keyboard ever since Ye Olde Thinkpads. The glory days of chasing Apple with a Windows box and almost getting there. *pours 40*
That said, their QE went to shit, they pulled that bullshit RTO to soft-layoff everyone, laid off everyone else directly, and spent a ton to hire non-US replacements who aren’t up to speed so they can leverage the exciting benefits of AI (lol).
I’ll never understand why they didn’t put huge effort into backing linux when micro$oft started making hardware. Well - I know why they didn’t. Because they make poor managerial decisions. C’est ça.
Land of marketing and advertising, gotta ruin everything. RIP XPS, good little machines.