What’s Irish for “go away”
I expect they’re dealing with the usual “unusual number of calls”
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Probably from people disgruntled to discover that their Black Friday offer won’t ship until Black Friday next year 
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Just be aware that older ‘OTC’ software won’t run on more recent versions of OSX because they are all or part 32bit, and therefore incompatible.
For example I use a copy of Adobe lightroom 6, which is fine on windows, but not compatible with more recent versions of OSX.
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Very true, I remember 32bit compatibility mode got junked. The introduction of Apple silicon will only have compounded that. I was happy with 24 bit addressing when I started out, 16 meg, how could one ever need more that 16 meg 
How things have changed. Sloppy coding I call it 
Back to my XPS 15
Looks like the sticking point is the 3.5k (3456x2160) OLED touch panel - any attempt to add that to the spec causes the Dell website to show the laptop as out of stock, but the FHD non-touch panel, or the 4k touch panel can both be ordered.
Apparently it’s “in production” - but it might take a while if they don’t have the panels to put in it.
Not clear why the order was allowed through by the system if they are out of bits to bolt into it.
I have a XPS 9360 13" Developer Edition that’s now about 6 years old, and which came with a QHD+ touchscreen and Ubuntu pre-installed on it, still going strong. It was as pricey as a Macbook Pro at the time that I bought it (for work). The biggest issue is the poor battery life, which barely manages 5 hours, even with CPU throttling on. I keep it (1)* because I’m rather fond of it, despite its annoying touchpad and iffy Backspace key, and (2) because it allows me to run x86_64 VMs for my billing system, among others, which won’t yet run on my Mac Silicon M1 Macbook Pro (my main work machine).
Other than that, the display really is very good. Shame though about the multiple Intel processor bug mitigations, and lack of recent Dell microcode updates.
(*) the Backspace key has had an issue where it will delete more than one character at a time, at the merest hint of a press - that has naturally led to a few occasions of much swearing, fortunately mostly undoable with Ctrl-Z ;
(**) due to its diminutive size, the keyboard and touchpad are pretty close together for somebody with big hands - there is some touchpad function which gets activated when the thumb is maintained at one of the positions on the touchpad, and which switches the active cursor back to the beginning of the line while selecting text at the same time, leading to overwriting or removal of the whole selected area when a new character key is pressed, e.g. the return key, or often simply replaced with whichever word I happened to have typed quickly enough before I realise that my previous typing has been overwritten in RAM.
There are actually 2 potential issues here:
- 32bit Intel arch compiled software is no longer supported on any current Mac computer;
- some 64bit Intel arch compiled software will now not run in Rosetta 2, with the latest release of macOS Ventura.
My old laptop generally managed 90 minutes at best, the one I have in France is technically a “gaming” machine which consequently manages about the same.
If I get 5 hours out of it then I will be quite happy - my son has one at Uni and he says he generally manages a “full” day - where full varies but definitely not 8 hours 
That’s precisely why I love my Macbook Pro M1. I can do a full day’s work, and more, on it, without having to charge it up, including active Wifi networking connections.
I recently went to Paris with it for a total of 3 days, used it on the train and back, connecting to my Netgear 4G router for the internet connection, and more than half a day in the hotel room, on battery alone.
When I got home, I still had 50% battery left. That’s some performance.
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Hi Billy,
I think a lot of companies are having problems getting hold of product, due to the Chinese Covid lockdowns affecting their supply chains. I saw the same thing when looking for cameras a while back.
Dell has a build-to-order model, doesn’t it, unless you have one of their standard off-the-shelf models?
One way round all this is to buy from the Dell outlet. They only advertise specific returned items so they’re ready to ship and you save a bit. I’m assuming that’s still operating.
Apple have an outlet hidden on their site too. The original MacBook Air M1 is. an absolute steal if you’re looking for performance. I have 2 M1 models, a mini and a pro, and they’re crazy fast.
Normally, yes - in this case it was a “Black Friday” deal, Dell limit the numbers on those so I’d expect them to be pre-fabricated.
So far they seem to have pre-authorised the card but not taken payment. A bit of a bind as it eats into my available balance, not the end of the world as I can always clear some of the outstanding if i need to splash out.
Which leaves me in the position of either waiting or cancelling.
Stopping the latter is the fact that there aren’t many competing laptops around. As I might not buy another for 10-15 years (and by that time I’ll be old enough to not bother replacing it at all) I’d like a bit of future proofing - hence going for a decent CPU, nice screen and plenty of scope for increasing RAM and/or storage.
Lenovo does the same, or at least did a couple of years ago.
The website is set up for Black Friday or whatever offers, but the reality is that their supply chain has always worked like that and you will get it when there’s a production slot or a delivery.
Just like ordering a BMW used to be, really. You submit the order with all your desired options, get a delivery date, then some weeks down the line your dealer, having heard from BMW, will contact you with what you can have and when, and which options (wanted or unwanted) will be on that car.
Indeed.
I don’t mind that - but when the order form says “in stock ready to ship” and the confirmation says “will ship by Feb 09” I can’t help feeling there’s a bit of bait-and-switch going on.
The XPS 15 is overpriced, but the BF offer was £400 under the current list price (though the claim was £500 off ) which brings it to only just over what I’d be happy with.
The very similarly specified Asus Zenbook Flip 15 is £1400 at the moment (£250 less, indeed it looks like Amazon had it at £1199.99) - BUT it has “odd” graphics (Intel Ark 370M) which might be a bit too much of a gamble and the RAM is soldered in.
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I got 10 years out of my old MacBook Pro, which I thought was good going as I used it in my work all day, every day. You can’t add more RAM to the new M1 chips though, although my 16GB M1 machines handle high res video editing and music production without even turning on their fans. The M1 Mini is an especially great buy if you already have a screen, keyboard and mouse, and don’t need daily portability. The unit’s tiny.
Good luck with your order. I think a lot of companies are attracting as many orders as possible to keep the banks happy, without having the means to deliver. I hope Dell proves me wrong.
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The Mac M1/M2 CPUs look good, sadly I’ve never been a Steve Jobs fanboy.
It’s BSD Unix under the hood though, which is sort-of a plus.
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My old one was 2012. You could upgrade the RAM. I did, to 8GB, I think. Not sure if it would take 16GB. Graphics were integrated and I don’t think an external GPU would have worked.
I replaced my clapped out old iMac when the Fusion drive failed. I now have a super small M1 Mac Mini with an external monitor. I’m now on Ventura. These days only a very few old applications don’t work. I miss the webcam but there are ways round that.
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I’m certainly not a fan boy. It always amazes me how personally some Apple users take product criticism. I remember being branded a ‘hater’ on Reddit for asking if the Intel 16inch MacBooks had thermal issues. Apparently that was blasphemy.
That said, I’ve drifted into the Apple orbit. The computers are fantastic for video and audio production. I then got a basic iPad and finally an iPhone. It does all work beautifully, I have to say.
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OH has had his MacBook “repaired” twice now (actually replaced we think), both times because the battery was swelling and distorting the case so it wouldn’t close. I think that could be considered a thermal issue ! I replaced a Samsung phone with an iPhone so everything would work together. Glad I did.