Update on XPS 13/15 2016 Developer Edition availability

Assuming you're searching on the German site:

Try these links

Unternehmen: http://www.dell.com/de/unternehmen/p/xps-13-9350-laptop-ubuntu/pd.aspx?c=de&l=de&s=bsd

Privatkunden: http://www.dell.com/de/p/xps-13-9350-laptop-ubuntu/pd?ref=PD_OC

Hope these links can help you.

Hi Michalt,

The European team has fixed this.  If not let me know

Thanks for bringing this to our attention

Ordered mine (cnx9333) , eta 20th of april :)

Dear Barton (and ProjectSputnik team),

I finally ordered a brand new Precision 5510 to replace my XSP13 DE from 2013. I look forward to receiving it!

However, I have a not-so-positive note on the whole experience of making a purchase is Switzerland, which I would like to share with you to improve the process in the future. I had a very minor issue (I wanted an "European" power cord in addition to the standard Swiss one). That was not offered on the website, and I thought it'd be easy enough to sort this out.

There is no customer service "chat" in Switzerland. Calling Dell CH on the phone (seven phone calls), I got a number of answers including 1) you can only do this online 2) I cannot do this for you 3) I must transfer you to my colleague (nobody ever picked up the phone) 4) sales are handled by Dell Germany, you should use their chat or call them. The chat of Dell Germany was supposed to exist, but was out of order. I called Dell Germany (five more phone calls), and got a similar range of answers (including a spectacular "there is no difference between German and Swiss plugs").

At that point I gave up in frustration. However, I personally think that this is no way to deal with a customer who is about to pay ~3800 USD for a new laptop plus accessories. I can easily imagine that any customer that is anything short of ***-bent on supporting project sputnik would have given up after a couple of calls and bought something from another vendor.

Incidentally, I was very keen on pushing for dell (and its linux laptops in particular) to be included in "project neptune", which is  the system used by most Swiss universities' employees and students to purchase laptops. Unless someone has a special reason, all staff and students are invited to pick from the "project neptune" list of vendors and models, and dell is not currently part of it. It may be hard to make the case in favor of Dell (there is a panel of people that have the final say), given how cumbersome is to deal with the Swiss customer service.

I think that this sort of mishaps from some national sales teams spoil some of the hard work that you guys put in the XPS13 and precision systems, which is a pity. Keep up the good work!

Hi Sputnik-Team,

I received my xps 13 DE i5 non-touch in germany yesterday. I am very pleased with the result. You have done a great job and I am glad I supported you. Looking forward to your further development, especially with 16.04...

Cheers and keep up your excellent work, guys!

ThC

Dear Barton,

thank you for your very kind and fast reply. I'd be happy to discuss what happened with the EU sales team, if they think this could be useful to avoid similar issues in the future (in the post I left out the details of which numbers I called, who sent me to whom, etc.). I can be reached at the email in my profile.

Once again, thank you guys for creating project sputnik in the first place and for keeping it going! I look forward to getting my hands on the new Precision, and if I have time I'll try to provide a review.

Thanks THC-DE for the support and kind words :)

@alesfo

I greatly apologize for your experience and appreciate your bringing this to my attention.  I have just forwarded you comment to our European team so that we can investigate this.

Thanks for your support and once again I apologize.

The i5 config, XPS 13 Developer Edition is now available in US!

I both love and hate the words "Out for Delivery" in equal measure.

;)

Hi Barton,

I ordered one with "US" keyboard here in Germany. I was holding my breath and yesterday it got delivered. And to my happiness it is a real US layout with horizontal 'return' key!!

Thank you so much for arranging this! I'm very happy with the XPS13-DeveloperEdition.

Henri

Hi Henri,

Im glad you like it :)  I passed your kind words along to the person in Europe who made this happen.

Just wanted to say thanks! :-) The laptop is amazing and I'm really happy with it so far - big thanks to everyone involved, both in terms of hardware as well as Linux support (especially upstreaming all fixes - this was one of the main factors why I went with the XPS and not with a Thinkpad).

Thanks!

Michal

PS. In terms of one thing that could be really improved: Dell's website & online shop. IMHO they really show their age - they're are pretty slow and I found them quite a bit non-intuitive and not always reliable.

Hi Barton,

Do you know why we're unable to spec a 7710 with ubuntu *and* the 4k display?

I was travelling for most of two weeks and am catching up on email, so my apologies for the delay. VT-x is definitely supported and has been there for every generation that we've been doing Ubuntu on the XPS 13. I believe VT-d is supported on all current and previous generation XPS 13's, though I've only looked on the i7 systems. The same is true for Precision mobile.

Jared,

Thank you for the confirmation.  My own apologies for my own belated reply and thanks. 

Just wanted to say that Dell Greece is clueless.... this long and still the Dell XPS 13 Dev Edition i7 is not to be found, asked reseller and DellGR themselves, completely useless, no ETA, nothing. Horrible.

I've been waiting for months now, and doesn't look good, I hope to be able to support towards the Linux movement, but sales coordination seems broken.