New XPS 13 Developer's edition Wifi card?

It is not that you get intel or broadcom wireless at random - what is included is part of the specs, depends on the concrete configuration you choose (and is listed at the product page) - so no mystery here, just a matter what exact model you order.

It is a real shame that you cannot explicitly choose, and also that it is not listed as broadcom device, but as "Dell Wireless 1560" -  if I had known that is a broadcom, I would have avoided that specific configuration like the pest.

That way I thought: "They're selling it with linux preinstalled, so I don't have to care about the details". Unfortunately only the audio, touchpad, suspend and keyboard problems were mentioned in Barton George's blog - so I knew it wasn't perfect out of the box (but also that fixes were in the works for those problems).  

I mean this was exactly my question. Is there a way to "choose the concrete configuration" to include the intel 7625? Has that changed at all with the newly opened developer's edition? As of right now there aren't any options at all on the product page. If that's not an option fine, but I would like an explanation as to what exactly is going on with certain people getting intel cards and certain people getting broadcom cards...

It is rather disconcerting as a customer to know that paying over a grand for a laptop doesn't guarantee you uniform specs.....

You misunderstood.

You  cannot pick individual  components, but you can  pick between predefined configurations.

And those predefined configurations are of course guaranteed to get you what you order/what you get is according to product description/specs.

Compare the cnx4320 to the cnx4319 - both windows, both 256GB SSD, both 8GB RAM, both FullHD screen, everything the same except: the 4320 comes with i5-5300U and Intel wireless, and the 4319 comes with i5-5200U and Dell Wireless (=Broadcom)

However it is stupid to offer the Broadcom card in the Developer/Linux Edition / not allow people to explicitly pick the wlan interface.  That combined with the limited choices in hardware-configurations when using the DE *** even more. IIRC the only configuration that had intel wireless and came with linux was the i7 Touchpanel variant, so in effect there was no choice at all :-(

However it is stupid to offer the Broadcom card in the Developer/Linux Edition / not allow people to explicitly pick the wlan interface.  That combined with the limited choices in hardware-configurations when using the DE *** even more. IIRC the only configuration that had intel wireless and came with linux was the i7 Touchpanel variant, so in effect there was no choice at all :-(

Our choice was limited to using the exact same hardware configs as the Windows configs or offer nothing, not the choices you suggested. (We'd love to, but we have to work with what we can realistically do!) I'd imagine that you and other Linux customers would have not preferred the nothing option. Certainly, as someone who has been a Linux person for 18 years, I was against the nothing option. Because we're currently seven months out from the launch of this hardware platform, changing the wireless card in the Developer Edition hardware configurations was not something we had the power to do. Perhaps one day we'll have the volume with the D.E. sales relative to the Windows sales to have the power to make that kind of change mid-cycle, but that's not the story today.

As I've stated before, the only 2015 XPS 13 options with Intel cards are the vPro configurations. That is because of the technical requirements of vPro needing an Intel wireless card. Because of the demand for the XPS 13 D.E. we're currently seeing, we're hoping to be able to have the case to provide Intel wireless on all the D.E. systems launched in the future, but we're not able to make any promises yet.

> Our choice was limited to using the exact same hardware configs as the Windows configs or offer nothing

I understand that there can be no extra configurations - and of course I don't demand additional configuration options either.

But the DE wasn't available (at least in Europe/Germany) in all the configuration variants that you can get the Windows version in. At least with my desired setup (i5, FullHD,  8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD) there was no choice. (while there is the vPro variant for Windows).

So my complaint is not that there are not enough variants for the DE, but the wrong ones. Or rather: that Dell doesn't have enough influence to get Broadcom fix their drivers (if Dell bothered at all to come to a solution with Broadcom) and not enough own resources to add support for the wlan adapter to the opensource driver) to ensure proper wlan support.

I see that US customers don't care about additional wlan channels, but here in Europe it is a real issue. Not being able to connect to a wireless network at all just because the driver has a bug that is not fixed since years just ***. Only getting less than 2 MB/s instead of 8 or more MB/s because being forced to use a crowded channel ***.

But the DE wasn't available (at least in Europe/Germany) in all the configuration variants that you can get the Windows version in. At least with my desired setup (i5, FullHD,  8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD) there was no choice. (while there is the vPro variant for Windows).

I see. Yes, this choice is available in the US. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for us to make the same configurations available in all regions we offer the Developer Edition in, but I'm taking note of this feedback to see if there's anything in our power we can do differently.

So my complaint is not that there are not enough variants for the DE, but the wrong ones. Or rather: that Dell doesn't have enough influence to get Broadcom fix their drivers (if Dell bothered at all to come to a solution with Broadcom) and not enough own resources to add support for the wlan adapter to the opensource driver) to ensure proper wlan support.

Understood. Yes, we have a pretty small team that doesn't allow us to do the sort of in-house development you mention, and even if we could, there are NDA/license issues to concern ourselves with. We do work with Broadcom and so does Canonical, though Canonical is the one doing the hardware enablement. We're still aware of the band 12/13 issue and working on addressing it. We're also working with Canonical on the kernel panics people are seeing with the Broadcom driver.

Thanks for the explanation DELL-JARED ! It is explanations like these that make me think "OK they want to improve things but they are restricted." rather than "They are not listening to customers." My plan is just to use an external USB wifi card that I know works out-of-the-box with Ubuntu. I have used this before:

www.amazon.com/.../ref=sr_1_3;qid=1439917394&sr=8-3&keywords=linux+wifi

Yes, thank you a lot for that post Jared.

Indeed it is comforting to know that Dell is not blind to the topic, that you are actively trying to get the problem sorted out. Knowing this is assuring, and almost as important as an actual fix.