Dell xps 13 from Best Buy; here we go again

[fox]

Trying again from Best Buy. (See earlier posts on this thread: https://plugintolinux.ca/forum/index.php/topic,1769.msg11350.html#new).

A Dell xps 13 9310 open box appeared today for sale on Best Buy's website, similar to the one I originally ordered (i7, 16 gb RAM, 512 gb SSD) except this one has Windows 11 professional instead of Windows 10 home. Price is $100 higher than the one I originally ordered with the $100 off coupon included. (That coupon was a sop to me for having my last order unfulfilled.) Again, only one is available, so who knows if I'll actually get it.

It seems that Dell will be bringing in the xps 13 with the 13th generation Intel chip in June, and I noticed that the cheapest models of the 12th generation xps 13 are no longer available from Dell directly. However, Best Buy market resellers are now picking them up as refurbs. A 9315 certified refurb with touch, i5, 16 gb RAM, 512 gb SSD and Windows 11 home is now available for $969, cheaper than the older model I ordered. However, this is with with the soldered-on SSD and only 2 ports. And if you don't care about touch and are willing to accept 8 GB RAM, you can get one for $699 ("refurbished excellent" with 1 year warranty)!

[fox]

This time it looks like I'm getting it, as I already got a notice that it is ready for shipping.

[Jason]

Just curious. What do you do that requires 16 GB of RAM or is noticeably faster with it compared to having only 8 GB of RAM? No judgement. Simple curiosity.

Right now I'm running 17 programs including LibreOffice Writer and Impress and I'm still under 8 GB with Pop OS (7.2 GB) and that's with Pop OS starting up with about 2 GB for me, which autostarts 3 programs on login. I don't normally run this many programs, just wanted to see how much it would use if I did. Typically, I'm maybe around 4 GB, maybe 5.

[Jason]

Btw, enjoy!

[fox]

Just curious. What do you do that requires 16 GB of RAM or is noticeably faster with it compared to having only 8 GB of RAM? No judgement. ....

I definitely do not need 16 GB of RAM for anything I do, and I doubt that it's faster than on the same machine with 8 GB. (No way to test this.) However, 16 GB seems to be moving towards the new standard. As RAM isn't replaceable anymore in any 13-14" XPS, MacBook, etc., I wanted 16 GB for either future-proofing or to enhance the selling value of my XPS, whenever I sell it.

[fox]

I just received the XPS yesterday. It appears to be in perfect condition with two minor deficiencies. The first is that the battery is only at 92% original capacity, making me suspect that it was a demo laptop in some Best Buy store. Not sure I can do anything about that, other than to return the computer if I'm unhappy with it. The second is that the Dell USB-C to USB-A dongle is missing. XPS laptops are supposed to come with this, as they don't have USB-A ports. This one I reported to Best Buy and was told that if I go to a store, they will replace it. I suspect that they may have trouble doing that with the Dell-branded dongle and will probably offer instead to replace it with another brand.

The XPS open box laptop comes with a full one year warranty from Dell; same as if it was bought new. I already tested it on Ubuntu 22.04 and 22.10 on a USB stick. Everything works out of the box - wifi, videocam, internal speakers, touch, sleep; none of these but the wifi worked with the HP Envy x360. I haven't done a good test of battery life yet, but it appears to be less than what has been reported. (I'm estimating 8 or 9 hours.)

I'm going to install Ubuntu this morning. We'll see how it goes.

[ssfc72]

It probably isn't likely, but if you do a few complete discharges of the notebook, the battery may recover to near 100 % ?

[fox]

Installation of Ubuntu 22.04 on the xps was successful and it is now running alongside Windows. To install Ubuntu alongside Windows I first shrank the windows partition to make room for it, but I also had to decrypt the Windows partition after that. I don't recall doing that, or seeing a window in the Ubuntu installer that asked me to do that, on my older xps. Maybe that's why I couldn't get Windows to boot from the Grub menu on that laptop!

I have two minor problems with the setup; neither critical. I'll post them in Support.

[Jason]

I just received the XPS yesterday. It appears to be in perfect condition with two minor deficiencies. The first is that the battery is only at 92% original capacity, making me suspect that it was a demo laptop in some Best Buy store.

Although it's not as likely, batteries can lose capacity just sitting on a shelf. I know the laptop isn't that old but surprisingly, manufacturers do sometimes use used parts made by other manufacturers and in this case, the battery could have been sitting on their shelf for longer than two years. But Bill would probably know better than me. I can totally see how only having 8 hours of life can be limiting. But your guess may be right, as well.

[Jason]

I definitely do not need 16 GB of RAM for anything I do, and I doubt that it's faster than on the same machine with 8 GB. (No way to test this.).

If you can remove some RAM, you can use benchmarking software. But I forgot that you always re-sell laptops later, so 16 GB makes sense in this case. The buyer likely won't need 16 GB either, but she will likely think she does since most laptops will probably come with 16 GB by then.

[fox]

If you can remove some RAM, you can use benchmarking software. ....

Remove RAM from a 13-14" laptop, ha! At least with the thin and light ones, RAM is almost always (if not always) soldered in.

Since I don't need 16 GB RAM myself, the question is whether it's worth it to pay more for the RAM just for the future selling value. I don't know. On current xps 13 models, the extra 8 GB RAM costs $150 extra. But in refurb and open box models of my year sold on Best Buy's website (by BB and marketplace sellers), it's not clear that the extra RAM costs any more. If the difference was $100 and I hold my laptop for five years, I probably wouldn't get all of that money back, but I suspect it will be easier to sell with 16 GB RAM than with 8.

[buster]

Dr Mike, I am assuming you did not write this quote in jest:

" If the difference was $100 and I hold my laptop for five years, I probably wouldn't get all of that money back, but I suspect it will be easier to sell with 16 GB RAM than with 8."

So if this is a serious statement, we all now know your PhD thesis was not math based. $100 over 5 years amounts to approximately 1 nickle a day. You would probably need a month of nickles to buy one coffee.

Now, make a list of your monthly costs for house insurance, car insurance, electricity, gas, groceries, car servicing, TV channels, Internet, phones, and on and on. Take this number and divide it by 30.

Stephen Leacock, the famous Canadian humorist, noted in one of his little essays, that a large business could decide to spend five million dollars within half an hour, but would probably wrangle all afternoon on how much they should each have to contribute to the coffee fund. Small numbers are easier to wrap our brains around.

I too find myself worrying about trivial amounts of money. I have to shake my head. In today's world, $100 over five years is totally insignificant. Pick the computer you want - that's all you need to consider.

At my age, I can't worry about 5 years from now. Really good chance I wont be here anyway. Now you're still a youngster. maybe you'll need that $100 in five years.

[Jason]

I like the cut of your jib, Buster.

[fox]

I'm glad I posted it this way, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the enjoyment of Buster's post. 

Going back to what I posted, it was an answer to Jason's post about whether I needed 16 GB RAM in a laptop. If anything was faculty with the post, it was the written expression, not the math. The 5 years was there to illustrate a likely scenario, not to calculate the per diem cost of the extra RAM. I don't need the extra RAM so the only obvious benefit I'm getting from it would be the salability of the computer 5 years from now. One can never know what people will look for in a used computer 5 years from now, but I do know that with my first Dell xps 13, I bought the minimal amount of RAM (4 GB at the time). That amount was plenty for my use, but it made it difficult to sell the laptop 5 years later. RAM was soldered in even then in the xps 13, so upgrading wasn't an option. Same as now.

So trying to rephrase the question I asked myself if it's worth paying $100 now for the extra RAM I don't and won't likely ever need, given the likelihood that it will be easier to sell, and will likely add something to the selling price of the laptop.

Incidentally, this laptop looks like a keeper. Battery life appears to be better than I expected, and it is noticeably faster than the xps 2 in 1 it would replace. It is also nicer to use in that I can boot either OS from the grub menu, it starts booting when you lift the lid, it has an extra 120 pixels of vertical space (1920x1200 vs 1920x1080) and the videocam is at the top of the display rather than the bottom. The only thing I'm giving up is the 2 in 1 feature, which I never used anyway.

[buster]

Thanks for not being offended by my post Mike. You are a gentleman. I jumped right into a grade 11 lesson I used for years on the difference between what we can call a capital cost, and the dangerous continuous cost.

Capital costs, unless made with a loan, tend to fade away gracefully. Continuous costs kill us.

Paying $10 too much on a computer part means basically nothing. Spending $10 too much on a monthly phone bill costs you $600 over five years. And you get to use the computer part immediately, and if you stop paying your phone bill, your service disappears.

On whether you might want 16 gig ram in the future, it's always been my belief that you can never have too much storage, too much speed with your CPU, and too much ram. You can certainly have too little.

Take the cost of your Internet service and multiply it by 12 months and then 5 years. Compare this to the cost of paying $100 extra on your computer that will last for 5 years.