what the fuck?
why kill your best brand?
ohhh…because you outsourced your entire product development teams to “offshore units” and haven’t innovated since 2015.
Sounds eerily similar to Intel although they’re trying good with the GPU side of things.
What Intel makes up for in GPU, they loose in CPU.
What AMD makes up for in CPU, they loose in GPU.Now we need Nvidia to see whether it will be a full blown flop or full-on dominatiom.
At that point (with Nvidia) you’d only need a CPU, RAM and a MB to make a nearly all Nvidia PC.
An Nvidia case exists already, GPU, networking (NIC, Switch and cabling)Nvidia would likely prefer to sell a whole package as Apple.
so honestly, who would you use now? I’d never buy HP, Acer, Lenovo. total crap machines. what other brands of laptop are any good going into 2025/2026? The XPS was always my go-to but now what options are remaining?
I love my framework, though it’s not as small and battery efficient as my previous xps 13
Dell XPS and Lenovo X1 Carbon are the best laptops for running Linux. I currently have an AMD Framework and, while it’s nice that it’s repairable, Linux support is crap compared to the XPS and X1. I was actually looking into selling this junk Framework laptop and buying an X1 Carbon.
What don’t you like about your Framework? I haven’t noticed anything wrong with mine, but haven’t had it long.
At this point I build my desktops and I’ll buy Framework laptops.
As I work with HP and HPE at work:
Just don’t buy anything below ProBook and EliteBook. They are trash.In fact, don’t buy anything you see at an electronic retailer without looking and inspecting the product very intensely.
And buy the business-line. They are usually better than consumer product lines.I honestly still like Thinkpad. Using a T14s currently.
The latest XPS laptops really seem like they wanted to copy MacBook Pros from a few years ago with the touch function keys and the barren I/O.
I never really understood the purpose of the XPS line anyway. If you want performance, buy a Precision; if you want a light robust laptop with decent I/O, get a Latitude; if you want a MacBook, get a MacBook.
With that being said the new naming scheme feels like a joke. What’s wrong with recognisable model names?
I never really understood the purpose of the XPS line anyway. I
IMHO
Software development and Media work that can benefit from normal consumer video acceleration. They are a lot cheaper than the Precision line and for non-cad/AI tasks and generally outpreform them. The XPS cases are more durable than the latitude and they come with better options for processors and video cards.
From a business standpoint, they were the best option if you needed a normal video accelerator.
The XPS cases are more durable than the latitude
Eh… Maybe? I worked plenty with Latitudes but never even used a XPS, but Latitudes aren’t bad build-wise. There are entry-level Precisions without dedicated graphics, and at least here in Germany they seem to be cheaper than comparable XPS-Laptops.
I’ve issued about 300 XPS, 50-60 macbooks, ~12 latitudes, and 10 lenovo t-series over the past decade. We’ve now deployed a handful of Legions, but they’ve only been out several months. I had a fan failure, but it had a 10" hair wrapped around the stator.
In all that time, no XPS/Mac hinge wear failures. Not even a little wiggle. You literally have to mechanically crush them before the hinges show any sign of failure. (a few of them did get crushed)
3 latitude screens cracked. Most started to have hinge play after a couple of years. They’re not bad laptops, but the all-metal chassis of the XPS/Macs hold up a lot better from normal every day carry mispaps.
If you don’t need dedicated graphics cards or metal chassis, you can get away with a lot of brands. Precision has never really impressed me.
I never really understood the purpose of the XPS line anyway.
The issue here is that you are comparing it to their business lineup, while it was a consumer product.
Dell XPS (“Extreme Performance System”) is a line of consumer-oriented laptop and desktop computers manufactured by Dell since 1993.
My understanding is that it was their premium consumer line sitting above the more entry level Inspiron line.
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.
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~
Every company’s lineup these days:
Pro > Pro Max > Pro Max Ultra > Pro Max Ultra Black Edition
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.
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.
AMD now has “Max” chips and Dell now has “Pro” and “Max” laptops.
Everyone copying Apple.
Same as it ever was
AMD has the worst naming schemes in the industry, I miss the simple old i3, i5, i7… for each generation.
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.
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.
At least it will be clear which one is high tier and which is the opposite. Precision and latitude are incomparable except one reads their specs. Also, I assume they aren’t touching G-series and that’s the only one that matters to me:) G15 is just an amazing product.
I mean… Dell Pro Max?
What would you’ve understood if it was Apple Pro Max; a laptop, a desktop, an iPhone or software if not a subscription package?
How though? Is “pro” better than “max”?
Also, how is there a Max Plus ? How about a Most Maxiest model ?
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.
Not saying it’s any better but haven’t you heard of iPhones?
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
Oh dear. Well thanks!
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.
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).
Yeah, sadly everything has to sound fancy. Imo this is partially to blame on consumers, but I do wonder how much of it is basic psychology vs induced demand that could be reversed if a company would stick with sensible product names for a while.
Instead of basic they could also go with something like “essential” or “home” that maybe have slightly less negative associations.
Which one is better, Pro or Max?
Dell Pro Max Plus, obviously.
I’ll hold out for the Pro Max Ultra
You forgot Ultra
Promax feels like ED pills
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~
Weird. I thought XPS was a pretty well known brand.
Stupid higher up decisions, remember HBO?
I always found the build quality for Lenovo Thinkpads to be better than any of the top tier Dell laptops. Most of the laptops I had in circulation were Dells and the always gave me problems. The Thinkpads just worked.
I never got the allure of Lenovo. the Chinese spyware left a bad taste in my mouth.
I had an X1 years ago bit I’ll take my 9360 over that any day.
The prestige behind the thinkpad brand specifically predates lenovo. They bought it from IBM in '05. AFAIK they’ve always been seen as reliable, well built laptops, albeit a bit pricier.
As far as spyware, with win11 being what it is your options are install Linux or live with it no matter which manufacturer you go with.
I’m pretty sure IBM sold the branding to them since they were already doing the manufacturing. They still do the warranty/maintenance work, though based on the last two call outs I’ve had with their “techs” I might opt for depot repairs or taking it to the local Micro Center for warranty work.
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.
They should replace the XPS name with the Longitude?
Ha!
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.
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.
Imo this kind of shows the basic problem with the xps line. As I understand it it was basically the premium consumer line, not something meant for business use. Meaning it had the nice specs on paper, but not the durability you’d need in a setting with extensive use and where downtime means serious money. But as you demonstrate this distinction was too blurry.
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 tier names are fine I guess, but all the sub tier names are too much.
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.
Now kill Dell entirely.
Land of marketing and advertising, gotta ruin everything. RIP XPS, good little machines.
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”.
