Dell XPS 9560

One of my childhood computers was a Dell 486. My first laptop was a Dell Pentium II. I’ve had many other Dells since, but they did me dirty on the XPS 15 9560 I bought in 2018. It’s was a beautiful machine, but within months of purchasing it, it started overheating and shutting down under heavy load. I’m fairly certain it was a thermal management design flaw for that particular year and model, and that Dell knew it and was determined to not replace any of them. Instead, they spent probably several multiples of what the device cost sending techs to my house to replace the mobo (which had the CPU and GPU soldered on) no less than half a dozen times. They also made me mail it back to them for a few weeks. This went on for literally three years until the warranty was up and they washed their hands of me. Ultimately, nothing fixed the issue. I had to permanently underclock it to prevent overheating. So, I had three years of issues, a company that wouldn’t replace their defective product and instead put me through the wringer, and I was left with a computer was incapable of operating at the specs advertised when I bought it. I don’t know if I’ll ever buy another Dell, but they ate up most of the good will I had for them with that debacle.

I'm currently typing this on my second Dell XPS 15, and I'm looking for a new Linux-based SDE Laptop for my day job. My first Dell XPS (Dell XPS 15 9560-NGG9X) literally exploded after overloading the USB bus with an external camera. It's completely dead... My current Dell XPS (Dell XPS 15 9500 (FGHDC)) has startup problems, it keeps rebooting until it is warm enough to operate normally. This happened just a month outside the 1-year warranty. I am not the only one with this problem, the internet is littered with the same issue: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=del... I've had enough from Dell, I will never buy from Dell again. The quality is just so bad...

I have an older XPS, the 9560, and compatibility with Linux has been pretty good, but the build quality has left a lot to be desired. I had to replace the Killer wifi card with an Intel card, as the OEM one was flaky and this seemed to be a known issue that wasn't acknowledged by Dell. The battery failed on me 3 times, and I eventually gave up on the warranty and bought a third party battery which I installed myself. The power connector got loose, which required replacing the motherboard. The case itself is not very stiff, so putting it over the edge of a knee or table means the touch pad won't click due to the flex. Perhaps newer models have addressed these sorts of issues, but I'd be wary of buying another considering the Thinkpad I got for work has been very solid.

> 5. Absolutely no coil whine. My Dell XPS 9560 had this since day 1, while my work MacBook Pro and Lenovo P1 developed it over time. In a similar vein - I don’t know what you call it, but the sensation you get when you run your finger over the case of a charging MacBook is just so gross.

1. 120Hz screen with a HIDPI resolution. 60Hz feels very stuttery after using 120Hz on my phone/tablet/desktop. 2. S3 suspend or at least a good S0ix implementation. 3. Good support for replacing UEFI Secure Boot keys. 4. No numpad so that the keyboard is centered. 5. Absolutely no coil whine. My Dell XPS 9560 had this since day 1, while my work MacBook Pro and Lenovo P1 developed it over time. 6. Biggest battery possible. I don't care about charging time or weight. 7. Good Linux support (including firmware updates via LVFS).

My xps15 9560 has been a basketcase under ubuntu or arch linux, mostly due to the nvidia gpu never playing well with, well any other gpu. In general I'd recommend avoiding anything with a "hybrid" gpu solution. The downside is you're stuck with a crappy intel gpu, which at high-res (4k) on my xps15 is pretty crap, so I wouldn't get anything beyond a 1080p display with it. I think life would be much better if we could disable the intel gpu in the bios to only let the system know an external solution exists, but then intel might have to admit to world+oems their gpu's are crap to need hard-disabled.