Hi,

My brand new XPS13 (i7/8GB/256GB) arrived today and I'd like to share my initial thoughts with you all. 

• Design: nice sturdy ultrabook design with (limited) ultrabook connectivity (only 2 USB ports)
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS runs very fast and stable (in comparison with my other Ubuntu 13.10 machine)
• Display quality is excellent, very wide viewing angles and the 1080p resolution using Ubuntu is very productive. But noticeable white 'pressure point' in the left corner when using a black background.
• Battery life: I'm getting around 6 hours (first charge) which isn't much in comparison to other Haswell based ultrabooks (the Macbook Pro retina 13 can easily get around 9-10 hours, while using a more power hungry CPU)
• Touch screen: personally I don't see the point of touchscreen when working in Ubuntu (even in Windows). When I want to swipe, I just use my tablet. Maybe a non-touch i7 would be an interesting option.
• Coil whine: I'm experiencing a high-pitched sound when my keyboard backlight is on. When turned off, it's still noticeable, but very low in intensity
• Speakers: Sound quality is decent but on regular base my left speaker makes a quite loud creaking sound.

In brief, I'm very glad a 100% Ubuntu machine is available for purchase with optimal driver support (Sputnik Team: thank you!) but I'm a little bit disappointed in the overall quality. The 'coil whine' issue and the speaker problem are well-known internet-forum topics for over a year, and still Dell isn't able to resolve those issues in the 3th iteration of the XPS 13 product. I'll wait to contact Customer Support for a repair since no clear solution for both stated problems has been found.

But, nevertheless, looking forward to the 14.04 LTS DE version!