When will 16GB RAM be available?

Can't imagine that Dell hasn't got the message yet.

Do they want to make money or not?

Get a Dell XPS 13 with at least 16gb to market at warp speed!

Stochos,

Message heard loud and clear :)

Turowe,

At this point, unfortunately, we dont have plans for 16GB XPS13 in the near distant future.  Im hoping if we get enough feedback we can add it to the roadmap.

I appreciate the interest and wish I could say differently.

thanks,

Barton

@Barton,

Please tell us that the smiley and the seemingly "tongue-in-cheek" reply is an innuendo of sorts.

Today, Apple retails 13" Retina MBP, i7 3.1-3.4Ghz, Iris 6100, 1TB PCI-e Flash and 16GB RAM for $2699 USD. Certainly Dell can do _at least_ as good.

The only outstanding question right now is if I give my money to you or Tim. How close are we?

@Barton What additional feedback would you need besides what's been expressed in this thread already?

Odd that DELL disqualifies them self from potential buyers by not offering something their competitors do....

ram is cheap, and take up little space - whats the catch? :-)

ram is cheap, and take up little space - whats the catch? :-)

The 13" rMBP is 0.68-0.88lb heavier (depending on whether you're comparing to the FHD or QHD+ XPS 13) and 9-3mm thicker (front to back relative to the XPS 13).

http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_xps_laptop/xps-13-9343-laptop_Reference%20Guide_en-us.pdf

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

That's probably the catch.

Neither Barton nor can comment on products that aren't released, most especially ones that affect more than this project. We're certainly well aware that there are customers wanting systems with more RAM, though, and we'll certainly do our best to make Developer Editions available as soon as we can.

And for what it's worth, for the impatient, the Latitude 7250 and 7450 are available with 16GB of RAM and are in the same size class as the rMBP:

http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/business/smb/merchandizing/en/Documents/32_Latitude_7000_Series_High_Resolution.pdf

Hi D. Jared,

Thanks for the comment.

And for what it's worth, for the impatient, the Latitude 7250 and 7450 are available with 16GB of RAM and are in the same size class as the rMBP:

Size class sure, but the offerings for the displays on the Latitudes you've mentioned are atrocious.  I know in many respects, we're comparing apples and oranges when "comparing Apples to Dell" but I think our hope is that Dell at least tries to rock it like it's 2014 with a HiDPI display for this class. 

Other suggestions such as M3800 is also a somewhat viable option, but with a 1TB mSATA added, we're almost at $3k USD with inferior Intel based hardware than the other vendor, and at >15% markup from their retail -- It's just not competitive with Apple (I never thought those words would come out of my mouth).

Neither Barton nor can comment on products that aren't released, most especially ones that affect more than this project.

This is totally understood, and is a reasonable corporate policy, but this thread, and it's associated request has been active since Feb of '13 -- it's not as if we've been carrying pitch forks from a knee-jerk reaction to a recent competitor release -- they've been on it for years. 

All that said, we do appreciate all your guys' hard work and considerations here, and further, we immensely appreciate your interaction with the community.  I look forward to the day we can purchase a premium developer laptop with all the bells and whistles -- and it doesn't have to be from Apple.

I'll step off the soap box now and buy more Apple Products for the time being.

Thanks again!

Size class sure, but the offerings for the displays on the Latitudes you've mentioned are atrocious.  I know in many respects, we're comparing apples and oranges when "comparing Apples to Dell" but I think our hope is that Dell at least tries to rock it like it's 2014 with a HiDPI display for this class.

Yes, it's true. The highest resolution display offered on the Latitude 7250 and 7450 is FHD (1920x1080), not the 2560x1600 display offered on the 13" rMBP. I suspect that the lack of higher-resolution displays is informed by the pure business focus of the Latitude line.

Other suggestions such as M3800 is also a somewhat viable option, but with a 1TB mSATA added, we're almost at $3k USD with inferior Intel based hardware than the other vendor, and at >15% markup from their retail -- It's just not competitive with Apple (I never thought those words would come out of my mouth).

I had to hunt around because Apple's site is not good at given details on what processor they're using, but the 13" rMBP is using Broadwell-U just like the 2015 XPS 13. The 15" rMBP is using the same Haswell HQ class CPUs as the Precision M3800. I'm seeing the M3800 (includes Thunderbolt 2 and TPM) with 1yr onsite support, i7-4712HQ, 4k (3840x2160) display, 16GB RAM, 91Wh battery, and 1TB mSATA drive for $2785 (USB Ethernet dongle included). I see the 15" rMBP (no TPM option) with no support contract, i7-4870HQ, 2880×1800 display, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe-SSD (AHCI? I don't think it's NVMe) and no included dongles (not even USB Ethernet) for $2999. I'm not sure where you're seeing the markup.

This is totally understood, and is a reasonable corporate policy, but this thread, and it's associated request has been active since Feb of '13 -- it's not as if we've been carrying pitch forks from a knee-jerk reaction to a recent competitor release -- they've been on it for years.

Understood. Since we're low volume relative to Windows sales, we're working with what we can. We're lucky that we've had so much support in Dell for this program. :) Trust me, when we can have a 13" ultrabook-comparable (because as you may know, we can't call it an ultrabook because that trademark mandates Windows!) system with 16GB of RAM, we'll do what we can to make it available with Linux. Otherwise I point people at our Latitudes when they don't want something as big as the M3800, since at least we certify the Latitude 7000 series with Ubuntu and make Ubuntu available on those systems to businesses. (I personally wish we offered Ubuntu on the Latitude 7000 series online so non-business customers can easily buy them, but so far we haven't been able to make that happen.) At the very least, we offer premium systems certified with Ubuntu (don't expect Apple to ever do that) and premium systems sold in the US with Linux (which is more than can be said about other major PC vendors).

The 15" rMBP is using the same Haswell HQ class CPUs as the Precision M3800

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have brought up the 15 inchers, but I'll bite -- Don't want 15".  Don't want Haswell. Don't want Intel HD 4700. Want Dell.

On the other hand;

Apple has 13", 16GB RAM, Broadwell, Iris 6100. Don't want OS X, Apple. Want Dell.

turowe This is totally understood, and is a reasonable corporate policy, but this thread, and it's associated request has been active since Feb of '13 -- it's not as if we've been carrying pitch forks from a knee-jerk reaction to a recent competitor release -- they've been on it for years. Understood. Since we're low volume relative to Windows sales, we're working with what we can. We're lucky that we've had so much support in Dell for this program. :) Trust me, when we can have a 13" ultrabook-comparable (because as you may know, we can't call it an ultrabook because that trademark mandates Windows!) system with 16GB of RAM, we'll do what we can to make it available with Linux.

Nudge, nudge -- I would happily buy multiple 16GB RAM 1TB SSD/PCIe/eMMC, Broadwell i7 w/ Iris 6100, HiDPI 13" XPS with Windows on it (or how about a No-OS option?!). Really, I would also settle for less CPU/Intel HD/Iris spec-wise, but the 16GB of RAM is really necessary for the type of OS/VM/Container dev my organization does. I do understand that this takes engineering and all, so of course I wouldn't expect it immediately.

I'm just fine formatting and installing Linux all day long, and would probably pay the extra MS Tax for having the Windows License handy to run in KVM, VMWare, VB or whatever. I would submit that many Developers in general would also.

Dell's developer program certainly isn't about getting BRAND NEW LINUX USERS to buy the XPS 13, M3800 or other DE offerings, right? It's about developers. Keep the Sputnik/Linux group, have it work on community, support, drivers, certifications, workarounds, etc same as now. Matter of fact, I'm having trouble understanding why even a totally separate hardware offering, but that's Dell's internal horse and cart.

As always, thank you for your comments. We'll be watching and waiting.. Patiently.

Matter of fact, I'm having trouble understanding why even a totally separate hardware offering, but that's Dell's internal horse and cart.

The hardware is identical to that made available with Windows. Even if we could offer different hardware for our Linux laptop/desktop/server offerings, we probably wouldn't want to because that would leave those who buy the Windows variant out in the cold, and we'd rather be good community members (not to mention it probably being more expensive for us).

Selling without an OS is not an option. Selling without a commercial Linux distribution like Ubuntu, RHEL or SLE, we completely and utterly lose any ability to get assistance from a Linux vendor and hardware vendors (Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Synaptics, ALPS, Cypress, the list goes on); we lose the ability to offer support or any escalation paths within Dell or outside of Dell. Without working with a commercial Linux vendor, we lose the ability to certify. A big part of why Linux support for hardware has improved so much in recent years is exactly because of all the OEMs selling somewhere in the world systems with various commercial Linux distributions. And we do in fact have plenty of customers (small, large, and even really big) who want something with Linux already installed. Many customers also explicitly do not want a system that comes with Windows, a Windows license or that provides a dollar to that OS's maker.

The hardware is identical to that made available with Windows.

I understand.  Same hardware, totally different order paths.

Even if we could offer different hardware

I wasn't trying to insinuate that different hardware was necessary, a poor choice of words on my part.  Just that the order path is a different "offering" -- perception to the end-user that it's a different machine.  It's the difference of:

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

and

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd

First result for each on google with each of the search terms "Dell XPS 13 Developer" and "Dell XPS 13". The latter has no mention of the developer edition. Same hardware, different logically separated offerings.

Selling without an OS is not an option.

Servers have this option. Do your servers completely and utterly lose any ability to get assistance from hardware vendors because of this?  Is there no escalation path for me within Dell when I have a problem and choose "No Operating System" or RHEL?

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=pe_r630_1337&model_id=poweredge-r630&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

And we do in fact have plenty of customers (small, large, and even really big)

I know. In a former role, I was an HPC/Infiniband network architect. Got to play with some of the largest Dell compute clusters in the world at the time -- and they surely weren't Windows. Good stuff.

But now, today, and IMHO, Virtualization and Containerization is forefront and are moving like a freight train. This means that small, light, portable and RAM heavy development workstations sure are nice. Really nice.

Just that the order path is a different "offering" -- perception to the end-user that it's a different machine.

Yes, I can see how that is a bit confusing. It's done this way for several reasons, but a couple major reasons are because of the need to include different product information and to attempt to avoid any possibility of situations even remotely like this: http://www.geek.com/news/dell-laptop-with-ubuntu-leads-woman-to-drop-out-of-college-672161/

Servers have this option. Do your servers completely and utterly lose any ability to get assistance from hardware vendors because of this?  Is there no escalation path for me within Dell when I have a problem and choose "No Operating System" or RHEL?

The support structure for servers is very, very different, and there are no restrictions on shipping servers without an OS that we have to concern ourselves with. With end-user systems, the support is very closely tied to the operating system, whereas with servers, there is a vastly different base knowledge assumption. (In that last sentence, I am carefully avoiding server appliances, because those *are* treated differently and tie the hardware to the software in terms of support.)

I know. In a former role, I was an HPC/Infiniband network architect. Got to play with some of the largest Dell compute clusters in the world at the time -- and they surely weren't Windows. Good stuff.

Yes, we have a very long history with Linux. In fact, we started selling servers with Linux in 1999, and keep in mind that PowerEdge just celebrated its 20th anniversary. :)

But now, today, and IMHO, Virtualization and Containerization is forefront and are moving like a freight train. This means that small, light, portable and RAM heavy development workstations sure are nice. Really nice.

That is pretty much the catalyst for Project Sputnik! So yes, if we can offer smaller, lighter systems with more RAM and CPU power shipping with Linux, we'll try our best to do it.

Thanks for the info, I saw the dell releases in the news this morning and got excited then disappointed then finally read the spec properly! (and corrected my original post!)

The latest performance features: Powerful 6th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and the latest Intel HD graphics offer speed and reliability. Boot and resume in seconds with the latest solid state drives now with faster PCIe options up to 1TB6, and get up to 16GB6 of memory.

Can we now start asking for 32? ;)

if you want 32GB, use the 15" model :-)

PS: it always su.ks when announcements of new models show up in the media, but then those are found  nowhere on the website for a couple of days... (not to mention non-US websites... a pity). Also  the selectionn of the different variants is less than  optimal. I find it pretty strange you cannot just apply a filter for example.