Linux on an intel HP Envy 13.3

[Jason]

Unfortunately, my xps 9310 purchase from Best Buy fell through. They only had one, and even though they accepted my order, someone must have gotten there first. Five days later they cancelled my order and offered me a $100 gift certificate for my trouble. Meanwhile, the price of the current model, similarly specked has come down to within $100 of the 9310 open box. I'm considering it again.

That's weird. Was it from their online store or the local store? I know that Best Buy in their online store has other sellers. It sounds weird to me that Best Buy itself would accept your order and then let somebody else have it.

[Jason]

Have you looked at any Lenovo sales? Here's one that looks good except for the smallish drive (256 GB) - soldered on. But it comes with Ubuntu pre-installed. There are a few more like that but they're more expensive.

Oh wait, you're wedded to the idea of one with a touch screen, right?

[fox]

That's weird. Was it from their online store or the local store? I know that Best Buy in their online store has other sellers. It sounds weird to me that Best Buy itself would accept your order and then let somebody else have it.

I would be guessing, but when I ordered it, the website indicated only one left. Perhaps someone else ordered it before I did, and my order then came in before the website could be updated. This is Best Buy itself, not one of its other sellers. Other sellers have the same model, but I wanted to deal with Best Buy because if I have a problem with it, I know who I'm dealing with an can return it to the local store. Also, this was "open box", not refurb, so I would have had the full one year guarantee. Their marketplace sellers are probably OK, but I know from various postings that Best Buy doesn't stand behind them if there is a problem.

[fox]

Have you looked at any Lenovo sales? Here's one that looks good except for the smallish drive (256 GB) - soldered on. But it comes with Ubuntu pre-installed. There are a few more like that but they're more expensive.

Oh wait, you're wedded to the idea of one with a touch screen, right?

The 9315 I picked is $100 cheaper, and has more RAM (16 vs 8gb), a larger SSD (512 vs 256), and touch. I don't want to buy my laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed, as I need the Windows to run one necessary program that won't run on Linux or Wine. Dell supports Ubuntu, and all functions work in the Ubuntu 22.04 I installed on my current Dell, so I'm not worried about compatibility. In fact, both the xps 13 9310 and 9315 are certified by Ubuntu to be compatible. (Unlike the HP Envy.)

My only hesitation is the soldered-on SSD and the Lenovo wouldn't solve this. I was ready to buy the one-year old Dell xps over the current model only because the former has a replaceable SSD.

[Jason]

What is taking up the most room on your SSD? Could you use a portable drive for files if they're taking up a lot of room that way 256 GB will be enough. I have a 512 GB drive with Windows 10 and lots of games on a 350 GB partition. And some of the games are quite large. It's not unusual for a game to be 50 GB (or more)! You might have cached files from updates and if you upgraded to Windows 10; you likely have Windows 7 still on the drive (so you can roll back).

The reason I mention this is that I was able to get Windows 7 AND Linux on a 64 GB to drive a few years back. It barely fit but it did fit. But all my files and games went on an HDD RAID array (multiple disks treated as one). A portable drive with USB 3 would be fast enough, certainly for loading data.

Two programs that can help you recover space are Treesize Free - for finding out what is taking up the most room on your Windows partition and Glary Utilities for clearing some files. It can remove programs, too. Maybe you can pare things down so that 256 GB would be more than enough (with large data files on an external drive).

[fox]

First of all, I'm running three OSes on that SSD. Second, I have a virtual machine on at least one of them. Third, I haven't used anywhere near the whole 512 gb; the three OSes use about 300-350 gb together, but that includes all of the free space on their partitions. I could easily cram them into 256 gb if I had to and for that matter, I could get rid of Linux Lite. The Ubuntu partition has a lot of music and photos on it. And yes, there are undoubtedly cached files I could get rid of.

Question is, why bother? If I saw a laptop I wanted that came with a 256 gb SSD, I would buy it as long as it isn't soldered on. The only laptop I'm considering with a soldered on SSD is the current model Dell xps 13 9315, and it comes with a 512 gb SSD. One of Best Buy's marketplace sellers has last year's 9310 refurbs in excellent condition. They have two configurations with touch; an 8gb RAM 256 gb SSD for $899 and a 16 gb RAM 256 gb SSD for $80 more. If I was to buy this one, I would pay the extra $80 for the extra RAM. I would then probably upgrade the SSD, but at my leisure. Ironically, the same reseller has the newer 9315 refurb in excellent condition; it comes with 16/512 for only $899 but of course this model has the soldered on SSD. Not that I would ever need to upgrade it; my worry would be if it malfunctions down the line.

[Jason]

I see what you're saying. You should really treat yourself and get one of these. It's about $1200 EUR which works out to about $1800 CAD for the cheapest model with a 512 NVMe drive. Sadly, Windows is extra. Probably because most of their clients don't want to pay the extra for a Windows license they'll never use. You can probably get a cheap Windows license through Trent, I imagine. Remember, that included Windows license does cost money, it's just hidden. Though they show some present models, the important stuff is customizable (like Dell, I imagine) AND not soldered on, totally replaceable.

Probably not what you want but I just want to put it out there in case somebody else is interested.

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks/Alle.tuxedo#!#1275,1319

[fox]

That actually does look like a nice computer, though rather pricey and with the previous generation Intel processor. By the time you get it here it would cost roughly twice what the equivalent Dell would cost. But it's lighter and you do have to pay for quality. Nice, but something I don't use enough to justify the price.

[Jason]

I'm curious. What exactly, makes a newer generation processor better if it's the same number of processors, speed, etc? I still have a generation 4 Core i5 @ 3.4 GHz with 12 GB and it seems plenty fast to me. I can even play some recent games with it, albeit at lower graphic settings because it's not an i7. I'm sure generation 5 or 6, or 10 is better in some ways than generation 4, but I doubt it's that noticeable. Probably more just a way of selling new devices. Kind of like a car being last year's model like the new model is somehow better. I'd rather have something that has been tested for more than a few months.

Btw, I wondered about your comment about OLEDs using more battery. It seems like that was from one particular model of Dell XPS, though it may have been the one you were looking at. It was hyped as increasing battery life but that doesn't seem to have panned out generally. Sounds like not a reason to buy OLED but not a reason to not buy it either, IMO. It should be great for any multimedia uses, like videos and such since the blacks will be a deeper black. But if you're looking at a mostly white screen most of the time like websites and office apps, it's not turning off pixels so wouldn't use less energy but not sure why it'd use more. Who knows?

My wife and I watch streaming videos on her monitor. Judging by how hard it is to see scenes where it's dark, I think we need one! I don't know why so many movies like to leave the audience literally in the dark.

[fox]

I'm curious. What exactly, makes a newer generation processor better if it's the same number of processors, speed, etc? I still have a generation 4 Core i5 @ 3.4 GHz with 12 GB and it seems plenty fast to me. I can even play some recent games with it, albeit at lower graphic settings because it's not an i7. I'm sure generation 5 or 6, or 10 is better in some ways than generation 4, but I doubt it's that noticeable. Probably more just a way of selling new devices. Kind of like a car being last year's model like the new model is somehow better. I'd rather have something that has been tested for more than a few months.
....

I don't fully understand the mechanics of processors, but from what I've read, the 12th generation Intel processor has more cores than the 11th gen, and is more energy efficient. It may also reach higher clock speeds. I've seen the test results of reviews on the 11th and 12th gen xps 13's, and the test results show the latter performs better. Whether it would make a difference to someone like you or I that doesn't use processor-intensive software is another matter. I doubt that it would make much of a difference to me, which is why I would seriously consider buying the previous generation of xps 13. The reviews I've seen show that battery life isn't that different either, at least on the tests they perform. For all these reasons, the xps 9310 looks as attractive, or more attractive to me than the newer 9315, with the most important difference being the removable SSD in the 9310.

I read that new xps models are typically introduced in May. In the past, Dell has shown that it will make changes to heavily criticized elements of the current models. Elements of the 9315 receiving the most criticism in reviews are: slow U-series processor relative to the faster P-series; removal of audio jack port; and soldered on SSD. I don't care about the first and not so much about the second, but just maybe they will fix the third. After all, their higher end xps plus has a removable SSD.

So my thinking now is to wait until the new model is released, unless a deal comes out on the present or last year's model that I just can't resist. My current xps is still quite functional, so I don't need a new laptop "yesterday". And if the new one isn't particularly attractive, or costs more than I'm willing to spend, the two previous models will probably be cheaper than they are now.

[fox]

....
Btw, I wondered about your comment about OLEDs using more battery. It seems like that was from one particular model of Dell XPS, though it may have been the one you were looking at. It was hyped as increasing battery life but that doesn't seem to have panned out generally. Sounds like not a reason to buy OLED but not a reason to not buy it either, IMO. It should be great for any multimedia uses, like videos and such since the blacks will be a deeper black. But if you're looking at a mostly white screen most of the time like websites and office apps, it's not turning off pixels so wouldn't use less energy but not sure why it'd use more. Who knows?
....

I think that the OLEDs use more energy than the standard non-OLED model because the latter is pushing few pixels. In a Dell xps 13, the OLED model has a resolution of 3456 x 2160 pixels, vs 1920 x 1200 on standard, full HD models. So the OLED might be more energy efficient pixel for pixel, but less energy efficient overall. Dell also sells an Ultra HD model in the higher end xps Plus, resolution of 3840X2400 pixels. That one uses a lot more energy than the standard HD, and presumably the OLED model as well. OLED and Ultra HD options are only available on the xps Plus (model 9320). In the reviews I've seen, the 9315 (with 1920 x 1200) gets double the battery life of the 9320 with OLED. However, this isn't an apples for apples comparison because the 9315 has a U-series processor and the 9320 has a P-series processor.

[Jason]

Thanks for elucidating on those details. It sounds like it's not so much the technology but the resolution that is driving the energy use, which is typically higher in OLED as you point out. I really don't understand why anyone wants to pack more than 1920 x 1080 into a display that is less than 15" in size but then again, look at phones. It seems like Ultra HD has become the norm for them as if anybody would notice the difference.

[fox]

Several of the reviews I recently read reinforce your point that higher resolution than 1920 x 1080 on a 13" laptop is overkill. I agree and will happily stick with this to increase battery life. In many of the recent ultrabooks, the screens are slightly taller and the resolution is 1920 x 1200 (16:10). Dell xps 13 uses this resolution in both the previous and the present models. HP went to that resolution as well in the Intel version of Envy and in the HP Spectre 14, they have gone for a 3:2 ratio (1920 x 1280). I really appreciated the extra vertical space in the Envy when I was testing it out, and I will no longer consider buying a 1920 x 1080 laptop.