Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Review & Owner's Thread

[KOTULCN]

Has anyone had any issue closing the flipper door on the bottom, where the service tag info is?

[nipun_jain]

Has anyone had any issue closing the flipper door on the bottom, where the service tag info is?

Yes its a bit rigid, try a couple of times if it doesn't seem to be closed correctly. In fact I almost pulled out a nail trying to get this thing to open!

[apatz]

Can those who have purchased the XPS 13 post the battery life they are getting. Reading the reviews from CNET and Laptopmag, the battery life doesn't look too good.

My battery life is nowhere near claimed! Fully charged when I signed onto the Starbucks hotspot about 10 minutes ago and down to 3:35 according to Battery Pro toolbar. All I'm doing is web surfing and listening to iTunes. No programming or extensive video manipulations.

Whoever does battery life tests should be prosecuted for the liar he (or she) is.

[apatz]

Thank you, now if only I can figure out how to get the ambient light working!

Yeah me too! I'm currently sitting a highly lit Starbucks with lights directly above my table and my keyboard lights are on full bright. That has to be a battery killer!!! Have to manually turn it off using the Fn + F6 key.

[clintre]

So far I am getting between 4hr 30 min to a best time of just over 5 hours. I actually use Battery Pro toolbar as well and it actually has not proven to be accurate until the battery actually gets to about 20% or so.

In fact today I did a presentation for 2 hours, worked an additional 2 offsite and just nor plugged mine in at home after 40 minutes. So that was 4 hours a 40 minutes and I still listed 15 minutes of time left.

I am not doing anything special to get the time I do, so I have not clue why some are not getting better times. I never expect advertised battery life.

[nipun_jain]

Anyone else having a problem not being able to adjust screen brightness when booting up after sleep? It happens sometimes, and neither keyboard shortcut or the brightness settings in control panel work.

[Av8r]

maybe it was a problem with your wifi router?

No, first thing we checked. I have another dell laptop and a smartphone, and they did not experience the same proplems at all.

[Azureal]

Has anyone had any issue closing the flipper door on the bottom, where the service tag info is?

I bent mine on the first day I had it trying to get it to close after opening it. I was able to straighten it and closed it for good! It's a cool little place to hide the details but definitely difficult to open and close.

[7ouie]

Woops. Correction. There is something of note in the quality report.

The 92% battery thing has to do with "desktop battery mode." The purpose is to improve battery life (not charge, but length of usefulness) for users who rarely unplug the AC adapter. It manages the battery by charging and discharging the battery cycle internally (not sure what that means, exactly). Symptom: users will see the battery charge level drop by 9x% when the adapter is unplugged. Work-around: discharge the battery to <7%, then charge back to full charge, which resets the trigger. We have an internal document for tech support coming to explain this, but I need to follow up on whether we have a robust customer-facing document in the works.

Apple is doing the same thing with the new iPad (and getting flack for it). Makes sense though.

[magnuers]

Anyone else having a problem not being able to adjust screen brightness when booting up after sleep? It happens sometimes, and neither keyboard shortcut or the brightness settings in control panel work.

I get the same thing. sometimes after booting up I'm not able to adjust brightness with shortcuts. haven't tried the control panel though, since the shortcut starts working after 10-15 secs or so. Not a big deal, but still..