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Dell's XPS 15 laptop out-retinas Apple MacBook Pro

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If you're a Windows user but still covet Apple's ultra-sharp "Retina display" screens, Dell has introduced a new laptop with a display that beats those on Apple's MacBooks.

The new Dell XPS 15 has a 15.6-inch display with 3200x1800 pixels — which means Apple's claims of the 2880x1800 MacBook Pro as the "world's highest resolution notebook" will have to be revised.

In addition to that screen (a touchscreen, no less), the Dell XPS 15 is equipped with the latest "Haswell" series Intel processors, up to 512 GB of SSD storage, with claims of 13 hours of battery life. That puts it on a par with the MacBooks in specs as well — though not beyond. At $1,500 to start, the XPS 15 is $600 cheaper than its Apple competition.

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So $600 for thunderbolt connections, and osx?

Sounds nice, but I don't really need a resolution that high. You would probably have to set the dpi quite high to read standard font sizing.

I'm not sure how to react to this. With that high resolution how it will render fixed size fonts commonly used in menu, titles, dialog boxes, CMD windows, etc. Will it be readable in a long run or will cause a fatigue for eyes?
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Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself...

Some applications do not scale well to dpi changes, others do, it just depends. It's bad enough when you need to increase the dpi on a small 1080 monitor/tv, this would be worse. At least most desktop operating systems do not scale to the resolution, and a 15" 16:9 3200x1800 res is going to be very tiny by default on a clean install. I'm sure Dell did something like change the dpi, if not old folks might be pulling out the magnifying glass to read the screen.
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I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires- Susan B. Anthony
Yesterday we obeyed kings, and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to the truth- Kahlil G.

I'm excited by the XPS 13. 13" seems to me to be the sweet spot in laptops. 11" is too small and 15" is too big (and 17" is gargantuan). 13" is juuuuuuuust right.

So, that (the new high DPI) could be hit or miss. That's what I'm afraid of before making decision to buy. I don't want to end up with expensive laptop that I have to use with magnifying glass.

Past month Dell has started to sell its new Precision M4800 laptops with similar resolution screens (15.6", 3,200 x 1,800, 235 ppi) and the new IGZO technology. But how one can buy it without even see it first and they don't sell it in common stores...
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Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself...

I'd be happier if it was available in 20"

Laptops for me are barely portable desktops that go from hotel to hotel, the surface goes with me to meetings etc, but when I get back to the hotel the real work begins and so I want as much laptop as I can get.

Blake
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool

Currently I'm using a 18" Alienware which I like but if it came in a 20"....

I hate large laptops, too big and heavy to carry around, defeats the portability aspect. Call me a wimp but I consider 15" to be too big. Work gave me a 15" HP mobile workstation, it's 8 lbs with the power adapter. I refuse to take it anywhere and leave it on my desk.

Thats cool and all but yeah Microsoft Windows handles high resolution poorly. You can jack up the DPI all you want, but a lot of other things don't follow. We see it all the time at work where people have these high resolution monitors and they complain that everything is so small. So we first try to increase the DPI so things stay clear, but for some programs it throws things off alignment, or text bleeds past buttons, or splash screens are distorted, or fonts look really off in certain programs. So sometimes we have to change the resolution to make it blurry, but these people sometimes prefer blurry over crisp and clear... its so weird. It's like those same people who have HD Cable boxes but put on the SD channel number. They don't care.

Apple has always been a leader in how they handle scale-able high resolution. That retina Macbook looks beautiful and you know what, people can still read the screen! Everything is so crisp and detailed without straining your eyes. Microsoft needs to take a page from Apple here.

If Microsoft thinks the scaling metro ui is the answer to this problem linux, and Apple will find themselves more popular from Microsoft's laziness.

If they are smart they'll do something, like they had to introduce cleartype for lcd screens, but it may not appear in any of their current operating systems. 3rd party software is generally the biggest problem here once again, but all they have to do is change their dpi to 150% then use their own software to make sure there is no problems. Software with fixed window sizes, and the operating systems variable fonts is already a failure.
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I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires- Susan B. Anthony
Yesterday we obeyed kings, and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to the truth- Kahlil G.

With the exception of the metro screens, the desktop scaling hasn't changed that I've seen at all, and it's still just dpi. I have Win 8 on one of my hdds.

Which Windows version are we talking about and what apps and are they XAML based or legacy apps?

Blake

Wouldn't the best option be to use a scaling of 200% giving an effective resolution of 1600x900? This way text is not too small and would be much sharper as more pixels are used to define each screen element.

FYI, the above image is at 200% dpi. Your average person won't be looking out to make sure 3rd party software works correctly with dpi changes. The software in the above image is a popular anti-virus program too. That's not directly Microsoft's fault, but it's a real problem with programers using fixed sizes, and variable information. I tested a popular browser Firefox, and it did scale with the dpi.
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I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires- Susan B. Anthony
Yesterday we obeyed kings, and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to the truth- Kahlil G.

Sounds great, but 16:9 .... ick. 16:10 is bad enough. I swear these wide format screens are getting to look like the view-port on an army tank.

With flatscreen monitors having a set resolution, if you don't use anything to it's scale the pixels are off, and it looks blurry. In the case of 3200x1800 you could just use 1600x900, and it should scale perfectly, however removes the purpose of having such a detailed screen. That's not what I'm suggesting, however should work perfectly in this case.

Think of it like a desktop zoom for applications, a compatibility mode. Instead of the avast screen in the above image breaking it's borders from fixed limits when using dpi the entire application is zoomed in. They are immune from the dpi setting, and are just zoomed by the application compatibility. Not a perfect solution by any means, but something the user should be able to activate by right clicking the program on the taskbar if application compatibility isn't automatically detected. Then you close the app, and reopen it where it correctly displays with the increased dpi. Microsoft could keep tabs of offending applications, and udpate the application compatibility through windows update like everything else. I at least think it would work for most applications, but I feel it still might not work with older programs which use a video overlay so their videos wouldn't be scaled correctly.

It would push for programmers to simply make sure their programs work with dpi settings, just like Vista forced moronic programers to stop making applications which only ran on admin accounts.
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I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires- Susan B. Anthony
Yesterday we obeyed kings, and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to the truth- Kahlil G.