There's a 1920 x 1200 non-touch display option, which will surely get you better battery life than OLED. But what's most interesting about it is the 1-120 Hz variable refresh rate, which Dell says is a first to for this model. That extremely low refresh should help save power when static images or text is on the screen.

Ah yeah, I should have read the rest of the article. I didn't know about that feature though, that's cool

Oh boy, always on oled displays are so in now. 

I don't see anything wrong with touch bar+proper control keys either. There isn't anything inherently bad about a touch bar in itself.

But replacing your function keys with a touch bar is a bad idea. It's not standard.

Sticking to standards plus giving other alternative control methods are fine. Kind of like how Asus implements a numpad into the toucpad. I think it's a gimmick but it doesn't hurt anyone.

The touch bar is pretty good if a) most everyday shortcuts you use are on the modifiers and the alphanumeric keyboard instead of the f-keys, and b) you can put custom controls in the touch bar. Both of these are true with Macbook: there's a third-party app for controlling the touch bar. E.g. I've put in it a button to handoff the Bluetooth headphones from the laptop to the phone or the other way around.

Also helps if you're using an external keyboard, while the laptop is sitting on a stand. This way the touch bar is just an additional control surface.

But, if you use laptop as a stationary machine, you can just buy an external touch control. Though they're probably pricey due to the small specialist market.

I'm a little miffed with framework actually.

I had a order with them that they chose to cancel because they just randomly charged the account one day months after I had pre-ordered something, and there wasn't enough money in the account because I didn't know when they were going to charge for it. They didn't contact me or anything, they just cancelled the order. Thanks guys.

Edit: Deleted an extra word

I cancelled my framework 16 order because of their "big tent" policy meaning they give funding to Hyperland and Omarchy, I will not give my money to people who fund racists

Yes, but jokes aside, it seems like you can find whatever you need for MacBooks from circa 2010 to 2012. At least, when I needed something, I could find it without issues.

Um, I was just sharing my experience with an xps. You have different experience, with a different xps model I'd guess. I'm glad you're happy with it!

I didn't even share the worst part of my experience: when it died it just died, refused to turn on. Immediate brick, no warning. This has happened to quite a few people I found, from frantic searching at the time.

I've bought dell for 20 years but their quality has been falling for the last decade, in my opinion and based on having bought about a dozen (for various people).

Cool story

Replying to my own comment to give yall one more tidbit.

The latitude product nomenclature is still standard

• 2 first digits of the model number are the "class" the higher the laptop the more high end
• last 2 digits of the model number are the generation (we are current in 60)

So for example the Latitude 9460 is the very high end laptop that came out at the beginning of this year while the 3540 was the entry level economy latitude that came out in 2023

Lenovo has been making thinkpads for 20 years. The complaint that their quality is still less than how laptops were manufactured 2 decades ago feels rather dated.

Top tip, buy a used enterprise laptop. You can get one hell of a deal when big companies throw their entire lineup out after a few years and flood the market. Some have a few scuffs here and there, but others are mint after sitting plugged to a dock for the last three years in a row.
Might need a new battery though, so research how easy it's to swap and calculate that in the cost just in case.

The Latitudes are balls in the worst way. Including the new "Pro" models. I've had i7 and i9 Latitudes that are slower than my i5 XPS 13, and yeah that thing sucks too but at least it sucks predictably.

I got a couple of latitudes and found they had soldered ram so I couldn’t upgrade them later 😭

Shiiizzz i got a T32 with dual touchpad and thumbmouse.... like 15 years old and still runs like a champ.

Yes , quality has gone down

The enterprise ones are shit too.

Tbf I took "build quality for Dell is down" to mean the Latitude lineup because their non-enterprise lineups... eh... I've never seen one with any build quality.

Just give me a bezel, I want a machine not a fashion accessory.

but that's because the OS is designed in such a way where there's nothing there

This is not true. There are multiple third party apps that help you avoid having menu icons disappear behind the notch. I don't use those though, and instead blindly drag my menu icons behind the notch repeatedly until the one I want pops out from behind it.

but that's because the OS is designed in such a way where there's nothing there

Ehh OSX uses the top of the screen as a menu bar so for apps which have a lot of menu bar options, those are gone. A lot of third party apps also let you place helpful widgets on the menu bar so that's kinda not a thing anymore either.