I just looked and it seems to no longer be available.  I was looking at 13- and 14-inch 2-in-1s in the XPS and Inspiron lines. There are no 13" ones available at all right now, but I was looking at one with 12 gigs of RAM and I wanted at least a 512 gb hard drive, preferably 1 tb but I can live with 512.

What do you get in the XPS that Inspiron doesn't provide? There seems to be significant difference in price. Is performance significantly different?

Welcome to the Dell Community @Xooterpust 

What model where you looking at???

Best regards,

U2

The Inspiron models are made largely of plastic while the XPS are mostly metal -- and the industrial design ethos of the XPS is quite a bit more advanced than that of the Inspirons.  Essentially you're choosing between a BMW 3-series and a Hyundai Elantra -- they both seat five and will get you where you want to go, one less elegantly than the other.

If you're looking for GPS functionality and have a WWAN subscription, you can add a WWAN card to some models -- but internal WWAN support is becoming rarer with newer systems.  You may want to consider a Latitude or Latitude Rugged system -- which will almost certainly have that function as an internal option.

If that's what you're going to use, then any notebook with a WiFi card will do the job.  

There are systems that will directly connect to a wireless carrier network through an internal or external WWAN card, separate from a WiFi card (and many tablets, both Android and iPad, are sold in both WiFi only and 4G/5G WWAN forms).  

I think the bottom line is that Microsoft has finally admitted that Windows is a terrible OS for use with a tablet -- and that the hardware manufacturers have come around to the idea that any 2-in-1 system is a compromise between a true notebook and a true tablet, at least to the extent that one device cannot truly replace both a notebook and a tablet satisfactorily.

I was going to use my phone as a hot spot for the laptop rather than use a separate WWAN account for the laptop by itself. Which means, I guess, that I was hoping to emulate the realtime GPS mapping function via a WiFi connection with my phone.  I use some of these technologies but I simply do not understand them or how they interact between devices. I do wonder, though (particularly in the case of 2-in-1s) if computer makers plan to incorporate more tablet functionality into computers that can be made to look and act like a touchscreen tablet. I'm hearing on this forum that things are headed in the opposite direction, but such a trend seems to my nontechnical mind to be going against the flow.

Indeed.  I have an excellent Dell laptop now (though its battery life is terrible) and wouldn't even be looking at another PC laptop except for the fact that Apple doesn't make 2-in-1s. I simply prefer the ergonomics of interacting with Apple products. You pay a premium for it, but the Apple doesn't require near as much trouble shooting and fixing as a PC computer does. But because Apple has quit making 27-inch iMacs and probably will never make a 2-in-1, I may never buy another Apple computer at all.

The difference between a Macbook and an iPad pro grows ever smaller.  If you're OK with the price premium and need a tablet it's still one of the best choices in that realm.

I won't argue that the homogeneity of Apple's hardware makes for easier hardware problem solving, but the OS is just as complex as Windows and the interface to the user just as poorly documented.  They have their issues, just as Windows PCs do.

I keep reading that. I have an older iPad and a newer (but not the newest) iMac, both to my knowledge running their most recent OSes. I may be missing something but to me they still seem to be very different items.

The PC has adopted a lot of the things I like about the Mac, but to me the interface is still more awkward on the PC. On the Mac I like switching between desktops on each of which I have different but related apps running. Switching between those desktops with their apps is as easy as sliding two fingers across my mouse, either to the left or to the right depending on which one I'm trying to get to. Each desktop has a different image, which also helps to distinguish them. On the PC, which now does something similar, switching between the desktops involves depressing the alt key, I think, and an arrow key. On the Mac tapping the mouse twice with two fingers shows me the apps running on the current desktop and, by placing my mouse near the top of the screen, displays miniature versions of the other desktops with their various apps.  I like that ease and convenience a lot.

There is one feature the PC doesn't have: the other OS.  I do run Windows through Parallels on my Mac when I need to. There are just some PC apps without an equivalent in the Mac world--Publisher, for example. Not that I use Publisher these days, but there are other small apps too. 

I'm just partial to the Mac OS interface and ergonomics but can and do live with the PC when I need to. When my Mac dies, I will probably see the need to.