HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

The XPS 17 will be my next “MacBook”.

It should be out this month and it ticks all the boxes for me (great screen, supposedly good cooling, user-replaceable SSD/RAM, acceptable weight and size for a 17" laptop).

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257006/dell-xps-17-15-r...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ

I've been trying Windows again after ~20 years on Macs (via a borrowed Lenovo Carbon X1 and then a second-hand XPS 15) and — unlike the author here — I'm surprised how much better it has gotten.

Having fully expected to buy a Windows laptop and just run Linux on it, I'm happy enough with the general Windows experience and the new WSL2/Windows Terminal/VS Code improvements that switching full-time makes sense for me.

The perks for me over macOS are the widely increased hardware choice, improved repairability/upgradeability, access to Windows-only software/games, better default desktop environment (window snapping/management, keyboard shortcuts for apps in the taskbar), and being able to boot real Linux images within ~1 second and work out of them comfortably.

The perks for me over Linux are the ability to run Adobe and other Windows apps, lower manual maintenance, fewer rabbit holes (I used Arch for about a year and found I was personally prone to exploring Arch instead of doing pet projects), better general integration with video cards, authentication hardware (fingerprint sensors/Windows Hello), projectors/external monitors, as well as a generally better experience with power management, wake-from-sleep, and connecting/reconnecting to Wi-Fi.

⬐ Cthulhu_

Once there's a terminal emulator for Windows that works as seamlessly as iterm and there's no more weird hacks required like Cygwin / minTTY (I believe the windows subsystem for linux does that) I might start to consider moving; most software I use for development is cross-platform anyway (vs code, intellij, nodejs, go).

But for now my 2017 macbook works well enough. I do think it's overpaid though; outside of the occasional nyan cat gimmick, I've NEVER used the touch pad. At the moment it's closed and to the side while I work on my external screens and the pretty decent Apple keyboard + mouse.

⬐ yardie

Windows Terminal is really good. I'm still a dedicated Mac user but the Microsoft team has advanced exponentially in their support of common, very good ideas.

⬐ nnoitra

Laughable, to run nix commands one has to install the Ubuntu subsystem and run into a plethora of other problems.

OS ranking is pretty much: MacOS > Windows > *nix garbage

⬐ mehrdadn

Could you explain what's so good about the Windows Terminal? I've tried it multiple times and been disgusted every time. The grayscale smoothing looks ugly as hell, the font is large as if I'm elderly, you can't even right-click to get a menu in the window, and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with. All I see is it has tabs which I've lived without in every single terminal. What exactly are people loving so much about it? What brilliance am I missing?

⬐ philliphaydon

> the font is large as if I'm elderly

It's probably the easiest to configure terminal ever...

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindo...

> and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things

Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files.

> with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with

1 guid to identify each option?

I guess Windows Terminal was designed for developers and not users.

⬐ derefr

>> and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things

> Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files.

And one can also point out that macOS opens XCode for (even XML-based) .plist files.

It's getting to be a standard convention, now that IDEs are almost "ships with the OS" kind of software, that the OS thinks configuration files should be opened in the IDE, rather than the system GUI text editor (Notepad; TextEdit.) Because, I guess, the system text editors were never really made to edit code, and make no guarantee that they won't break the formatting of code, while IDEs do make that guarantee.

⬐ mehrdadn

It seems to have been specifically designed for developers who enjoy a difficult UX because anything not up to that standard that is childish to them, which in my experience is the same thing Linux tools optimize for. I guess Windows has been very much trying to cater to that sector, so maybe now I can understand its appeal.

⬐ a_e_k

My reading had been that they plan to build a nice configuration UI on top of the JSON eventually, but the focus right now is on the core functionality (and letting the settings stabilize first).

⬐ modernerd

The main advantages of config as JSON for me as a developer are:

- Settings become more portable.

- Settings become more shareable.

That said, VS Code started with JSONC-based configs and now presents a UI by default (still editable directly as JSONC for those who prefer). It seems possible JSONC could be used to bootstrap a UI for Windows Terminal too if there's demand.

⬐ mehrdadn

The fact that it's JSON rather than a nice little window isn't the main issue. That's not great UI, but it's not the biggest pain point of the UX. For comparison, Sublime uses JSON settings too, but it doesn't require a PhD in Sublime Text to figure out what you can actually configure in that file. I seem to recall VSCode had JSON at some point for some things too (though not sure where it is now, I don't see it). It wasn't exactly fantastic, which I assume is why they've provided a better UI for the settings now, but it was usable. They actually described the options available to you right there. And of course they have their own benefits with regards to portability and shareability like you said. Those are all fine. The problem is Windows Terminal on the other hand seems to go out of its way to make your life hard for no reason, in a manner I have never seen another terminal emulator do. For the life of me I don't get what people like about it. It seems terrible on every axis I can measure on.

⬐ modernerd

Windows Terminal is great. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Just missing a Quake mode for me (summon from a screen edge with a keyboard shortcut), but that's being talked about for v2. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/653

⬐ EForEndeavour

The Magic Keyboard 2 is great, but their mouse has given me nothing but wrist pain and infuriating muscle-memory issues. I still believe its flaw was being designed for appearance first and ergonomics/usability second, but no doubt I didn't give it enough time. Do you recall how long it took you to get used to it?

(For about 10 years, I've been using a bog-standard, symmetrical, 2-button scroll-wheel mouse by Logitech, and am looking to transition to a finger-operated trackball to save desk space, and just to see what the fuss is about.)

⬐ glotgizmo

https://conemu.github.io/

Very powerful.

⬐ efficax

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

⬐ ck425

How is the touchpad? Every non-apple touch pad I've ever used has bee terrible.

⬐ horsawlarway

I use an older xps-15, mostly running linux, and the trackpad is excellent.

I switch between it and a mac for work, and the experience is 95% identical.

⬐ adevx

Probably not very good. Personally I always use a Magic Trackpad 2 so I no longer have to take this into consideration.

⬐ vardump

> Personally I always use a Magic Trackpad 2 so I no longer have to take this into consideration.

I never got it to work with Windows except for just pointer motion and left clicking. No multi-touch, gestures, etc. Not even right clicking. Does it work properly now?

⬐ piranha

https://magicutilities.net/magic-trackpad/features

⬐ modernerd

The XPS 17 isn't out yet so I can't offer a personal comparison. Dell increased the size of the trackpad in the 2020 XPS 15/17, but otherwise it seems similar to previous ones.

YouTube reviews of engineering samples of the 2020 XPS line say they are best-in-class for Windows, which usually means they're not quite as good as Macs (same as laptop speakers, where the MBP also leads).

I find even Mac trackpads slow/frustrating after using a Logitech MX Ergo for a while, so trackpad experience is less of a factor for me.

⬐ horsawlarway

I went with the 13 inch, but basically my approach. I still have a mac kicking around for work, but for my personal stuff I switched to xps laptops around 2017. Honestly, I like them a lot more than the new mac 16 my office has given me.

OSX is getting a lot less friendly for any non-consumption based activity. While I still prefer Linux by a mile, I'm at the point where I'd take Win10 with WSL over OSX.

⬐ jtwigg

I've had an XPS 13 and XPS 15 and both suffered from coil whine, bad graphics and overheating. I would steer clear if I was you. My current dev laptop is a Razor which has been a much better experience than the XPS.

⬐ RandomBacon

I have the 2020 XPS 13, no coil whine. I'm hearing that no one is getting coil whine in this year's model. It's my first XPS, and it's amazing, I highly recommend it.

⬐ VectorLock

And rarely enough that XPS 17 seems to not have that silly offset numpad.

⬐ zamalek

We use Dell Precisions at work and just a fair warning: Dell is completely clueless when it comes to software/firmware. We had stability issues for months with our laptops, which were fixed for the most part by firmware updates. A good amount of the laptops never came round, even though they are identical models and now have the same firmware running on them.

I have considered BYOD a Gigabyte Aero. I will personally never purchase a Dell for myself.

⬐ SCdF

Hopefully they will do better than Ars' experience with the current 13" models: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/dell-xps-13-and-xps-...

⬐ adevx

If the XPS 17 has decent Linux driver support, a high brightness matt display option, I'm all in.

⬐ modernerd

It has an anti-reflective coating but it's not matte. The screens are 500 nits (same as MBP). Not sure about Linux driver support yet. The Arch Wiki is normally my go-to for that but the laptop is very new. https://wiki.archlinux.org/

⬐ hst-m

I have been a big XPS fan for years, 8 hours per day for work, but the new 2-in-1 XPS 13 line is the best yet, recommend everyone check it out

⬐ ColinWielga

The 2020 XPS line is drop dead gorgeous.

⬐ megadethz

The keyboard on the new XPS is awful. No travel. Only viable alternative is a Thinkpad.

⬐ doubleunplussed

Is it different to the existing XPSs? I've had an XPS 13 and now precision 5520, and am totally happy with the keyboard. Sure it's low travel but it's not typical of most laptops, not as low as recent macbooks

⬐ exadeci

Make it a Hackintosh https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/search?q=dell+xps&restri...

⬐ mydongle

I wish Dell would stop using the Killer wifi and use an Intel one though...

⬐ modernerd

The Precision laptops use the Intel Wi-Fi chips. They're in the same shells as the XPS, and have some extra configuration and aftercare options, as well as more intelligent charging software.

⬐ JohnClark1337

Personally I've found that Windows, and even many Linux distros handle multi-monitor far better than Mac OS does.

⬐ blunte

I hope you like high heat, high fan noise, and thermal throttling issues (common XPS issues that myself and others have experienced). I hope you also like random Wifi failures, random freeze-the-world-while-some-app-is-having-a-network-timeout issues.

macOS is getting worse, no doubt. But Windows still has multiple unacceptable problems (ungodly slow unzipping, still!, random heavy lag or freezing, surprise 30 minute Windows Update installations happening during a reboot you had to do during important work, etc. etc.)

Plus, the day to day file management story is still sub-par in Windows. If you've gotten used to Quicklook on a Mac (because it's so handy), you're SOL on Windows. How hard is it to provide a spacebar activated preview popup?

PDF reading and printing is still a nightmare on Windows compared to macOS. Again I refer to Quicklook, whereby you can open and scan/read a PDF near instantaneously; in Windows it's slow and clumsy. Saving (printing) anything as a PDF on a Mac is fast and easy. In Windows it's a slow, multi-click process.

And Linux... on the desktop... still not there. Yes with the right hardware and the right drivers and config, distros like Fedora can be pretty close to perfect. But you still have HiDPI problems sometimes (Windows does as well), random UI-related service crashes, app/package-system conflicts (since there is no one standard package management system that all apps agree upon), and more.

Sadly, the entire computing experience has peaked and declined in the last few years. That said, macOS is still the best desktop OS for everything but gaming.

⬐ skummetmaelk

> I hope you like high heat, high fan noise, and thermal throttling issues (common XPS issues that myself and others have experienced).

Highlighting these as issues on a machine compared to a Macbook Pro is kind of hilarious. Macbooks have notoriously bad thermals and throttling.

⬐ thejosh

I use a XPS13 from 2019? with KUbuntu running Plasma, it's really good. Had hardly any issues and runs great. Main issue with XPS13 is that the RAM is soldered on. Great unit otherwise. Screen is great.

⬐ throw1234651234

I was going to shrug off this comment as someone trying to hate, but there is a lot of truth to it.

I prefer Windows to IoS and the XPS to MBP, but the XPS has problems - it does overheat like hell (but Dell's gaming laptops don't, so there is that). But more importantly, the screen randomly dies on random updates for me and a lot of my co-workers. So does the WiFi.

Nonetheless, we had entire teams convert to the XPS after they saw mine.

None of them regretted it...though they all installed Linux and stopped having the screen going dead problems.

⬐ jboog

I'm sure the bugs you mention about Windows exist and are terrible, but I made the switch to Windows after converting to Mac ~9 years ago and I haven't experienced anything but very minor annoyances.

I still prefer the Mac OS experience, design, and usability, but the price premium for Apple products is not worth this modest improvement. I still have and enjoy my Iphone Xs but might consider switching to Android in a couple years whenever I need to upgrade.

⬐ fortran77

I switched to Windows 10 about 3 years ago. Absolutely no problems. I'm careful to stay on the "happy path", but my Lenovo laptop works fine out of the box, and my Supermicro based desktop dual-Xeon workstation works great, too. Speedy and reliable.

⬐ martinald

I do agree with you on thermal management on Windows 'ultra'books. I've had two now with crazy bad thermal throttling. Often fans going when very little CPU load, and then when I do use the CPU/GPU hard, it pegs it back so much that it is unusable. I've seen it pegging a Ryzen CPU down to 0.5GHz which makes the whole system unusable. The laptop doesn't feel ridiculously hot to touch, so no idea what is going on.

⬐ fxleach

Being a lifelong Windows users I am always baffled at comments such as these because I have never experienced any of those issues except for maybe the Windows update happening for a couple minutes when I shut down. I'm no gamer, but I am usually cramming my computers with high CPU IDEs, VMs, crypto mining software, and anything else I can fart around with. Am I doing it wrong? How can I have this terrible experience?

⬐ Enginerrrd

I've generally had your experience but I've had a few instances where third parties failed to play nice. HP puts weird bloatware and recovery partitions that do some naughty things in their laptops. I had one relatively recent hp workstation laptop that HP messed up so bad it wouldn't update. I just run Arch on it now.

In general though, I've not had those kind of hardware/driver issues ever.

⬐ the_af

> And Linux... on the desktop... still not there.

Disagreed. Besides HiDPI, which is not an issue for me, I don't experience the other problems you mentioned.

⬐ ChuckNorris89

Your comment reads as someone who has an axe to grind with windows since you just trash it without explaining why and just saying that 'X is so much better on Mac, why can't windows be like that' is hardly an impartial argument and more you being more familiar with the Mac platform and less with windows.

Assuming everyone has all the problems you claim to have with Windows or XPSs and that MacOS is 'the best operating system' is anecdotal at best.

We've definitely had some issues with some XPSs at work but Dell's service was great, and I can't remember the last time someone got annoyed by windows or had any issues like you described without the fault coming from poor choices from our corporate IT or buggy apps.

⬐ blub

On paper Windows is good. In practice the telemetry and the story behind its introduction and how they handled communication means that I won't consider Windows as a primary OS candidate until there's a CEO change at least.

It's disappointing to see so many being ignorant about this topic.

⬐ alpaca128

I completely agree. Also the automatic updates which potentially just close an open session including unsaved files is not something that helps trust. Windows has become less transparent and much more controlling, actively ignoring or overriding user preferences, and I don't know why I should use a software like that, not to mention pay for the "privilege" of being messed with.

⬐ modernerd

Automatic updates interrupting work hasn't been an issue for me for a long time.

You can set updates to install outside of an 18-hour window, defer updates for a set period, or disable them: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-a...

⬐ tomp

Does this actually work? I tried (permanently) disabling updates on my Surface Go (running Windows 10) a few months ago but kept failing. The worst thing is, you don't know if what you did works or not, because you need to wait until the next update :D

⬐ modernerd

I've also seen user experience reports in the wild that say, “I tried those settings but I still had a forced update halfway through my Big Important Presentation”.

I haven't had that myself so far. Hate to say it works on my machine but that's been my experience to date.

⬐ llampx

Those users invariably have been blindly clicking away the update notification and have picky themselves to blame.

⬐ alpaca128

Clicking away the dialogue should never trigger the update. It's the opposite of what the whole UI of Windows has always worked like.

And you're wrong either way - I've had forced updates wreck Windows without seeing a single notification or update setting beforehand.

⬐ lostlogin

A work mandates machines with locked down control is always going to be awful. The machine in my house that is in this category gets opened every week or two for it’s mega updates, then closed until the next batch.

⬐ modernerd

Agreed, the update experience for anything used occasionally or when someone else controls the update cycle is going to be miserable.

I've experienced the same with work-issued laptops, and also have an iMac I boot once every few months to be met with 20 software update nags from the OS and various apps. Probably means I should sell the iMac.

⬐ alpaca128

Last time I used the OS disabling updates just didn't work reliably, at least not with a clear and simple setting(let's be honest, this helping link you posted should not need to exist). Deferring updates will only work for some time, until Windows 10 will just update it without warning the next time you wake it up from suspend, resetting your session with multiple reboots. This behaviour alone is inexcusable, no matter how the settings look.

Automatic updates are unacceptable for me, and that's not because I don't do updates(quite the opposite), it's just that I expect the behaviour to be predictable without nasty surprises, and with Windows 10 that became a gamble. I never knew if an update could suddenly run without my permission and wreck the OS(which happened multiple times to me, leading to some stressful weekends).

Maybe not everyone shares that opinion, but I rarely get annoyed by something more than software that tries to be smarter than the user, and automatic updates are just one part of that.

⬐ thunfischbrot

I wish Windows 10 LTSC was the base for all other Windows 10 OS versions. An expensive version that is easy to use with few distractions, does not need a full-time system administrator to run and just works.

⬐ Nextgrid

I installed the Enterprise LTSC version on my new gaming machine and saw all the usual bullshit you'd expect from consumer-grade Windows 10.

A deceptive setup screen that asks you to create a Microsoft account (you need to use the "Domain join" button to be able to create a local admin account, there is no "local account" button by itself).

Spyware features like "personalization", advertising identifier, etc that I needed to uncheck (during the initial setup process there are at least 10 things I had to disable or say no to), also there's a subtle dark pattern going on with the button to go to the next screen, it's no longer called "Next" but "Accept" instead (even if you disable all the proposed options).

Despite the watermark on the wallpaper correctly saying "Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC" I can still only select "Basic" telemetry in the settings. I am not sure whether it's a quirk of the evaluation version or if I need to use a group policy to disable it.

⬐ noxToken

You can sent your Internet connection to "metered" to stop this. I hate that you can't just outright disable forced updates, but this is the working solution that MS offers.

⬐ cercatrova

You can, via the registry.

⬐ goatinaboat

the automatic updates which potentially just close an open session including unsaved files is not something that helps trust

This is literally a preference setting. There are cases where you want to force it e.g. a sysadmin pushing security patches over the weekend but other than that you set the time window, or no window and it just gives a notification that patches are available and you reboot whenever you want to.

⬐ wtetzner

Admittedly it's been a couple of years since I've used Windows 10, but at that time there was no way to disable the automatic updates. Even the registry hacks didn't work for me.

⬐ horsawlarway

I run Arch for most of my dev work so maybe I'm just missing it, but I do a fair bit of dev/testing on windows machines and I don't EVER have this happen.

Like - Literally never in the past two years have I lost work due to auto updates.

⬐ gassiss

It definitely got a lot better over the years, but it still happens sometimes. I don't know the criteria, but it is basically having some update pending install.

⬐ nitinreddy88

How replacing CEO helps. Really?!

⬐ mattblalock

Sounds crazy to me, some kind of propaganda

⬐ Nasrudith

My guess is under the assumption that the solution will never come under the leadership who was the source of the problem.

⬐ swiley

Not to mention your computer being randomly unavailable every other week or so.

⬐ nickflood

Updates are pushed to Windows once a month.

In fact, they are published on Update Tuesday - the second Tuesday of every month.

⬐ ubercow13

Where can I read about the story behind it?

⬐ mattblalock

You sound insane

⬐ anikk

Nadella IT cells are trying to disrupt another discussion like the sheep bleating in AnimalFarm.

⬐ shrimp_emoji

But Nadella's a great CEO compared to his predecessors. D:

But, yeah, that + stuff like your OS restarting behind your back whenever you lock your screen and walk away keeps me on Linux despite the very tantalizing promises of WSL2.

⬐ vijucat

> stuff like your OS restarting behind your back whenever you lock your screen and walk away

https://imgur.com/a/qAWLzsu

Maybe it's been a couple of years since you tried Windows? Right now, if you go to the Windows Update part of Settings, the top 2 options are:

a) "Pause updates for 7 days" and

b) "Change active hours", which can be used to specify an 18-hour window within which, "We won't automatically restart your device during this time"

It's quite straightforward.

⬐ fortran77

It's a shame that anti-Microsoft zealots use Hacker News to spread lies. I don't know what trying to restrict people's choices is supposed to accomplish for our industry.

⬐ bragh

You are laying it on a bit thick there. How can you justify the next stage of the embrace-extend-extinguish cycle and spying on users as enabling more choice?

⬐ bragh

> b) "Change active hours", which can be used to specify an 18-hour window within which, "We won't automatically restart your device during this time"

Why are you lying? That part has been there for a long time and doesn't work anyway, just google for 'windows 10 ignores active hours'.

⬐ vijucat

> Why are you lying?

See, this is why Linux zealots don't effect any change in others. When OP wrote something incorrect about Windows, in my perception, I gave him the benefit of doubt ("Maybe you haven't been using Windows in recent years"). But when I wrote something incorrect, in your perception, you straightaway jumped to "lying".

And it's not as if you don't know that the possibility exists. You wrote, "just google for 'windows 10 ignores active hours'", which shows that you know that I possibly do not know about this.

And yes, I have no idea if this is truly the case. I suppose Microsoft determines that some updates are critical security patches and will push them through despite attempts to postpone indefinitely.

Of course, if they allowed you to postpone critical updates and you got hacked, then it's, "OMG!! This evil corporation WANTED me to get hacked, that's why I use Linux", right? You're hopeless, and I will not be wasting further time replying to you.

Edit: I did that Google search and found that Windows ignores Active Hours in the sense that it still downloads the updates. But it does not Restart the PC. I could be wrong, but I'd appreciate if you can state it politely.

⬐ bragh

> But when I wrote something incorrect, in your perception, you straightaway jumped to "lying".

Because the entire tone of your original post was written in a way to imply that the OP hadn't done the due diligence. The end of your post was quite telling in "It's quite straightforward."

I just don't understand how come there are so many pro-Microsoft comments lately justifying everything bad that they are doing. It feels like arguing with a pure-Microsoft IT department, everything good that happens in Windows is good and everything bad is user mistake and could have never happened.

> Edit: I did that Google search and found that Windows ignores Active Hours in the sense that it still downloads the updates. But it does not Restart the PC. I could be wrong, but I'd appreciate if you can state it politely.

And this same google search shows that this does happen:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window...

⬐ vijucat

> Because the entire tone of your original post was written in a way to imply that the OP hadn't done the due diligence.

You have a problem. The lenses you are wearing make everything look negative.

> It's quite straightforward

In my mind, this was a statement assuring him that it is not complicated; Windows settings can sometimes be complicated, such as involving Registry hacks.

⬐ lostlogin

Wait, you can’t set it up so that it won’t restart itself? In case it isn’t obvious, I am not a windows user.

⬐ gambiting

Not through that menu, but it can be done through the policy editor. You can also just disable the update service if you want to.

⬐ bitwize

No. Sooner or later, you will have to let it update. Updates are important, and Microsoft doesn't want the service calls they're going to get if you don't update and something breaks or you get hacked.

So just like "your contract with the [TV] network is you're going to watch the spots", your contract with Microsoft is you're going to install the updates, and you consent to be spied on, and...

⬐ garaetjjte

>Microsoft doesn't want the service calls they're going to get

Does anybody ever thought "Ouch, Windows broke again! Time to call Microsoft helpdesk"?

(side note: I think updates would generate more issues and calls, not less)

⬐ modernerd

I understand abstaining from a platform on principle.

But it's pretty simple to opt-out of non-essential telemetry because so many people complained about it in Windows 10:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-view-and-manage-diagnosti...

I set telemetry to 'basic' which means I'm comfortable with essential system data being sent in return for my system gaining updates and security patches.

Microsoft does a better job than many about explaining what data it collects, why it collects it, and how to disable collection where possible across its products:

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/

Last year it started explaining which telemetry in Windows 10 is required (system data for updates/security) and which is optional (usage data to shape product direction) in a way that's largely free from legalese:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4468236/diagnostics...

There are definitely Windows users who are “being ignorant about this topic” but that's not true of everyone. For me it's a combination of understanding what is sent, why it's sent, and how to control what's sent. That info used to be a lot harder to find so I'd say things are improving.

Reflecting on my own risk profile, seeing first-hand how much telemetry can benefit product teams, and learning about how the Windows update process works at a global scale (the “essential” telemetry class informs partial/phased roll-outs) also helped temper my initial reaction against telemetry being included at all.

⬐ anikk

It is not at all simple to "opt-out" (i.e. remove malicious software).

I checked the box "no telemetry" on install, yet I still had to disable dozes of spyware "options" manually later. One of them was a keylogger! Microsoft is in the black hat business.

> telemetry can benefit product teams

Pure marketing. If product teams what to know about issues, how about setting up decent bug-trackers like everyone else?

Reporting issues is a convoluted, humiliating and mostly futile process.

⬐ diegof79

> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4468236/diagnostics...

Thanks for sharing the link. However, it doesn’t change my point of view about Windows telemetry.

As I read that page, I see a lot of BS justifying why the only way to improve the product is to have telemetry.

The reason why I call it BS is because they use phrases like “we hear your feedback to improve the product”... that’s lie. I work in UX, and I’ve been involved in user research many times. The data that you get from event logs is related to measuring adoption and engagement. You get better UX feedback from traditional research methods. Telemetry is good for fast market analysis, rather than UX... but that doesn’t sound good when you try to justify it to end users.

Take for example the design of the Office ribbon (there is an excellent video explaining the process). After analyzing the data from usage logs (this was in the pre-telemetry era), and doing interviews they concluded that the main issue was that many features were hard to find (is interesting to note that the conclusion came from user testing, not event logs). The solution: a UI showing all the operations (the ribbon). And because they found that paste was the most used action, they put a big paste button first (this came from event analysis).

After the success of the ribbon, MS adopted it in many Windows UIs (even if they don’t have the same issues as Office). So as you can see the main product design decisions had nothing to do with usage data analysis. The same applies to other big product design decisions (the back and forward with the Metro UI, Cortana... etc). The use of telemetry is marginal to many product design decisions, so there is no reason to force it to every user... other than doing market research.

⬐ modernerd

Sure, telemetry won't inform every product decision and user testing is still valuable.

It does provide insights you won't get from user testing and direct observation, though, as you point out with the usage logs that informed the ribbon design.

> The use of telemetry is marginal to many product design decisions, so there is no reason to force it to every user

If the benefits were purely limited to the design phase, I can see your point for many teams, particularly small ones with niche products where they're less likely to get enough data for it to have much meaning.

But telemetry also has increased value over user testing at different stages of the product lifecycle, like when analyzing what features or products to deprecate or replace.

It also helps for peripheral things like working out what languages localization and documentation efforts should be prioritized for. This year I was asked what five languages a product we make should be translated to. They wanted to start with locales that have the biggest impact and expand to more later. The team who approached me made a list based on support requests and another product in our sector. But our install data showed usage was completely different. We even had two locales that hadn't made the top-10 shortlist. Their guess about the second-most popular language after English was also wrong. By using telemetry we made sure work and funding was focussed where it helps the most users.

Telemetry can definitely be abused or underused, but being on the other side and doing data-driven design and development over the course of a product lifecycle has shown that it has real value.

⬐ SahAssar

There is no such thing as essential telemetry. There should be an option to turn it off completely.

⬐ modernerd

Let's say Microsoft adds one. You tick it and what MS currently considers “essential telemetry” is turned off completely, instantly, and for real.

The risk seems to be that people who don't understand the implications of not sharing basic telemetry, when faced with a box that says “share nothing”, “share essential“, and “share essential and optional” would choose “share nothing” every time, because it just _feels_ better, right? Why would I choose to share anything at all? But they might be angry or surprised when:

- The OS and apps can't tell if you're eligible for an update because they don't know if your hardware/drivers will run the new version, because you won't tell them what hardware/drivers you're running now.

- Updates that affect performance or stability just continue to affect performance and stability because there's no data about the impact of an update, apart from what's provided by angry customers in support channels.

- Bugs and application crashes are not addressed ever or in good time because they are either never known about or not captured in sufficient detail to reproduce.

So, sure, maybe it should be an option. But there are certainly many who overestimate the risk and underestimate the value of basic telemetry (like sharing system info) for them as a user.

⬐ slipheen

I get where you're coming from, but I think it's indicative of exactly what I don't like about Microsoft's attitude, and part of why I don't use their software.

At the end of the day, it's my computer. Not theirs.

Regardless of how much it's "For my own good", that's not their decision to make.

It's my hardware, that I'm paying for. Ultimately, I need to have the final decision on what it does.

⬐ modernerd

I understand and agree with this perspective. I should be able to decide what my device does. (And I can do pretty much equally with Windows/macOS, and more so with Linux.)

But I don't know that, “I own this computer and therefore understand what user defaults will make it most stable and usable for me” scales beyond the informed user to general users, if that's what you were suggesting.

“For your own good” preferences exist to try to make the default experience better for users who don't care enough to understand the tool they're using 10 hours a day. Is choosing defaults that seek to benefit most users really not a decision that software developers should be making?

⬐ tomp

I understand those and I still don't want to share any telemetry. I'm just asking for freedom to be able to select this option.

Btw, what you're saying is 100% bullshit. There is an obvious trivial way of doing all what you suggested, properly & legitimately: paid software testers. Or, alternatively, actually pay users for telemetry (I love it when companies say "we value your feedback" you value it at $0 all right!)

⬐ modernerd

Agree about paying for QA. Users shouldn't be glorified beta testers.

I don't think “just hire QA” or “just pay for the telemetry” solves the issues of how you reliably deliver updates, bug fixes, and asses performance issues at the scale of a company like Microsoft, though. Even the best-funded QA department and millions spent incentivizing data sharing could struggle to achieve a fraction of the coverage that metrics baked into the OS achieves.

> Or, alternatively, actually pay users for telemetry

At a _minimum_, people should at least get free software updates based on findings from the metrics they share. By opting out I'm relying on others to provide that data instead, or for the company to spend more to get it from me or someone else like me, or for them to somehow improve the experience for me without knowing what my experience is.

I recognize that some feel very strongly that software should be possible to improve without any form of automated telemetry, though, and I respect the desire for an off switch and the continued drive for opt-out being the default.

⬐ derefr

Software testing only helps if you're an average user. Most of us here are guilty of doing stupid edge-case bullshit at least occasionally.

The well-known quip of "search for an answer to your problem, find a forum post from ten years ago resolved with an 'I figured it out, thanks'" only happens when you're far outside the idiomatic usage of the system.

Sometimes it's necessary; sometimes long-chosen buisness constraints force down the bad arm of an X-Y problem. But that doesn't make it any more likely that anyone other than you (especially the software vendor's QA dept.) will ever independently encounter your problem.

⬐ anikk

Could you stop the MSFT advertisements?

- All of these are possible without telemetry.

- There is a deceptive button on install that does not work.

- Make it opt-in for submissive persons who want to please MSFT.

⬐ derefr

> Make it opt-in for submissive persons who want to please MSFT.

Users don't read. Anything that's opt-in will never be opted into, because users won't even look at what the dialog says. (See also: organ donation.)

Most of UX design isn't targeted at people with opinions; it's targeted at the 99% of users who want to never make any decisions at all, because they don't see the system they're interacting with as their responsibility to dictate the policy of. They treat even their own computer—at least in the software sense—as "somebody else's computer."

They're used to interacting with the literal "somebody else's computer" at work, and at informational kiosks; and with the non-literal "somebody else's computer" in the form of the game-console walled-gardens, and the cloud-managed IoT devices. So it's no surprise that they think that "somebody else's computer" rules apply to their PC, too.

⬐ Spivak

The shorter version is that opt-out exists so the people that care don't get angry. If the percent of people who opt-out becomes non-negligible it will cease to be opt-out.

⬐ ryukafalz

> The OS and apps can't tell if you're eligible for an update because they don't know if your hardware/drivers will run the new version, because you won't tell them what hardware/drivers you're running now.

Why do you need to give Microsoft a bunch of details about your hardware for this? Why can’t Microsoft publish info about which hardware/drivers are supported in the new update, and then your machine determines whether or not it’s compatible?

⬐ modernerd

Windows uses delta/differential updates for monthly “quality” updates[1] because it uses less bandwidth than big-blob updates.

For diffed updates to work efficiently Windows first works out what hardware/software you have. Then it can either:

1. Send info about the system to an update server and let the server decide what updates it needs.

2. Download a big manifest of all available updates (as you describe) and calculate locally what updates it needs.

Either way, Windows then has to make a request for updates specific to the system, at which point you reveal info about your software and hardware that you were attempting to hide in (2) anyway.

For the semi-annual feature updates, the process is more like you describe where there's a compatibility check then a large download (~3-6GB) containing all new features, even if your system won't be able to make use of all of them.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/p...

⬐ derefr

There's unavoidable telemetry. I.e., there's metadata about your interactions with Microsoft's servers that Microsoft inescapably derives from those interactions. You can certainly ask them to throw that metadata away; but—if you're paranoid enough to be worried what they'll do with it in the first place—then why are you trusting them at their word?

It would seem the only route to privacy, in such a world, is to never interact with their servers at all; which means never receiving updates; which makes any OS into a lame-duck product vulnerable to all manner of exploits; which probably means you should just never touch a computer in the first place, "to be sure."

⬐ SahAssar

Sure, but none of that requires there to be unique IDs or hardware info sent to their servers. Let's not pretend that Microsoft enabled us to make that choice for ourselves.

Requesting software packages from a server should not require them to keep logs or send uniquely identifiable info.

⬐ derefr

> unique IDs

One thing that unique IDs are necessary for, is deduplication. Without a unique ID when talking to e.g. the update server, then their statistics (used to determine which updates should be e.g. CDN prioritized) will be heavily skewed in favor of anyone who has configured their system to poll the server more often.

(Yes, they can partially resolve this problem by looking at the request IPs—but, well, NAT. Sometimes even entire countries are behind a small set of IP addresses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT).

The ideal thing here would be for everyone to have a public IPv6 address, and then that address could be your "unique ID" without really uniquely identifying you or your device, but rather just uniquely identifying "a place to deliver updates to", like a mailing address uniquely identifies a place to deliver parcels to.

(This might not seem so relevant for updates, but a clearer example is in crashes. All OS vendors prioritize the issues in their issue-trackers by their prevalence among users, counted as the number of times a Crash Report has been [voluntarily] submitted that seems to be "about" that issue. Crash reports need to be deduplicated by installation to be useful for prioritization; a piece of software that happens to get into a super-edge-case crash loop and so crash a million times for one user, should not be prioritized over a piece of software that crashes once for a million users. Just the opposite, really.)

> hardware info

If we're talking about software updates, then this is part of the "inescapable metadata." Yes, the OS vendor can stuff each update full of all possible updates for all possible drivers released in the interrim—and that's a workable idea, if you're Linux. It's not workable in the Windows/macOS ecosystems, where "drivers" are third-party bloatware blobs that ship with their own GUI control panels et al. Such a monolithic update, covering all possible bloatware driver blobs, would be hundreds of GiB. It makes far more sense in Windows/macOS to just have the client retrieve the GPU/RAID/printer/camera/etc. drivers (and updates for said drivers) they need, as separate packages, from the server. And that separate retrieval essentially describes, piece by piece, your hardware profile.

> require them to keep logs

I never said it was (or should be) required; only that, if you're paranoid, you should have no reason to believe that they're not doing that, even without any client-side telemetry being pushed. A paranoid person would expect that even Linux distributions keep the access logs for their package servers (incl. gathering them from mirrors), and act accordingly.

⬐ phren0logy

I have been wanting to give one a spin with PopOS. It is coming close to MacOS for my needs, which mostly involve getting out of the way and letting me get stuff done.

⬐ stanislavb

I've been looking for a good laptop to get out of the hands of Apple. Macbook's experience has been slowly degrading along the years.

If these new Dell XPS laptops happen to have good Linux support, that could definitely be my next machine. It seems on par with newest Macbook Pros.

⬐ sensible123

I have an XPS 13 and an XPS 15. I have linux on 13 and windows on 15. I've been pretty happy with both.

⬐ M0T0K0

This doesn't shock me. It had a janky touchpad but loved my Inspiron 3452 with an i3 that I'll be replacing the dvd drive with an SSD caddy after upgrading the RAM and replacing the battery soon-ish.

⬐ davidandgoliath

No, but any and all of the Lenovo x1 carbons are. Try them with the latest fedora live media.

⬐ qppo

Did they fix the audio amplifiers? It's impossible to hold a video call without headphones on the 2019 models, max volume is just too low.

Dave Lee reviewed a sample of this device here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ