Dell XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook Tablet -Refurbished-$831 + tax FS

Quote from AceWeb : Did everyone got theirs yet? If so, how is it? I am having many issues on mine and am wondering if it is a bad unit that needs to be replaced or is it all of them having issues. Wifi Issues - lost/no connectivity or stuck on limited. Screen brightness issues ( i set it to max and it is only gets half way of the brightness) Trackpad issues (unresponsive at times and does not register some clicks). Updated bios/drivers no luck. Been with dell support for hours and already had to do a system restore and no luck.

Only issue i had was with the screen stopped responding once. It could have been because it was syncing my gmail in the background with outlook ... (lots of messages). A quick tap of the power to turn the screen off then turn it back on and it was fine and hasn't messed up since.

Just installed bluestacks on it for some android apps too!

Just bought myself a refurbished Acer W700 i5 for $600+tax so I'll see what the tablet trend is all about. You probably won't find one at that price anymore but the specs is decent enough to give it a look:

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/conte....L0EAA.005

Quote from atpdefiler : I think all Win ultrabooks suck right now. It has been months that I am waiting and no one was able to come up with a full HD crisp bright touch screen with decent battery life and keyboard layout (not like Zenbook). One messes up the ergonomics, the other makes it too heavy, most have poor battery, and almost none are 1080p, which is one the laptop market for +3 years. I don't know what these guys are waiting for (may be for Apple to dominate the market again) but they either need to fire their CTOs or should join forces and make a solid device. I don't want too much: 3rd gen i5, +6GB 1600MHz RAM, 13" 1080p clear touch screen, 128GB SSD. They can't tell me now the battery life is hard to achieve with 1080p touch, cmon there's a small SSD and power saver 3rd gen i5 there, eliminating the need for an external GPU. Or screw battery life too, just somebody build my humble/decent/reasonable laptop. I have no idea what those Asian companies and Dell will do when Apple comes with retina full HD touch, may god help'em as Apple stores are already flooding with ppl. Even I will go Apple by then..

I really dont see the purpose of your complaint. You say there are no good laptops out there, except for ones made by Apple; yet I dont see any touchscreen MacBooks out there.. Do you?
Want to check out a Macbook Air competitor, how about a Series 9, or XPS13 FHD? The XPS13 FHD comes with 256GB of storage, 8GB RAM, and a FHD IPS display, with superior gamut to the MBA. It reliably gets 5-8hrs of productivity on a single charge, and can be had for less than a 13"MBA when on sale..

Then again, seems like everyone thinks that quality Windows PC's should be cheaper than Apple's, all because we're used to seeing shit $300 laptops..

Quote from AceWeb : Did everyone got theirs yet? If so, how is it? I am having many issues on mine and am wondering if it is a bad unit that needs to be replaced or is it all of them having issues. Wifi Issues - lost/no connectivity or stuck on limited. Screen brightness issues ( i set it to max and it is only gets half way of the brightness) Trackpad issues (unresponsive at times and does not register some clicks). Updated bios/drivers no luck. Been with dell support for hours and already had to do a system restore and no luck.

The screen brightness can be fixed by going into your power options/change advanced power settings/display/enable adaptive brightness, turn that off. My screen was going in and out the whole time and it annoyed the hell out of me.

Quote from BeerBellyBob : The screen brightness can be fixed by going into your power options/change advanced power settings/display/enable adaptive brightness, turn that off. My screen was going in and out the whole time and it annoyed the hell out of me.

That was it. Dell had no idea what it was and it took them over an hour to come up with your answer above.

Quote from AceWeb : Did everyone got theirs yet? If so, how is it? I am having many issues on mine and am wondering if it is a bad unit that needs to be replaced or is it all of them having issues. Wifi Issues - lost/no connectivity or stuck on limited. Screen brightness issues ( i set it to max and it is only gets half way of the brightness) Trackpad issues (unresponsive at times and does not register some clicks). Updated bios/drivers no luck. Been with dell support for hours and already had to do a system restore and no luck.

Got mine, no issues so far. Updated all the drivers and bios no problem. Only problem i have is with the trackpad and its probably just me. When i'm moving it around it sometimes goes to another app/page.

Quote from Joe1199 : Got mine, no issues so far. Updated all the drivers and bios no problem. Only problem i have is with the trackpad and its probably just me. When i'm moving it around it sometimes goes to another app/page.

Turn off the one finger gestures. Go to control panel/mouse/cypress trackpad/"Click to change Cypress trackpad settings"/Gestures/

The "left edge swipe" causes it to switch apps when you drag in from the left of the trackpad

Quote from Stickboy46 : Turn off the one finger gestures. Go to control panel/mouse/cypress trackpad/"Click to change Cypress trackpad settings"/Gestures/ The "left edge swipe" causes it to switch apps when you drag in from the left of the trackpad

Thank you will give that a try... its not allowing me to rep you again

Got mine last night, can't say I've had any issues so far with connection, track pad, etc. All seems to be working well.

I have no problems with using it as a tablet, but yes it's obviously bigger and heavier than an iPad. The screen size actually has more of an impact on me than the weight. But it's comfortable for me and I have no problems with the size of the device.

It sucks that Google stopped supporting windows synching though, as now it's not possible to sync your Google calendar to the Windows 8 calendar app. Mail works, and you can sync you Google contacts through the Microsoft account site, but there's no option for the calendar. I'm also trying to get the mail notifications and Smart Connect stuff setup, so far that's giving me an initialization error. It's on in the bios so I'm not sure why it's not working properly yet.

So far so good though, I like it. It's a very solid device and everything I've tried on it runs smooth. I'll have to give it a real test tonight though and install Civ V or something like that. And overall I just need to tinker around with it and see what I can do to maximize battery life.

I tend to think they're going to refresh these with Haswell CPU's in about 6 months. I probably wouldn't be able to pass that up.

Quote from mva5580 : Got mine last night, can't say I've had any issues so far with connection, track pad, etc. All seems to be working well. I have no problems with using it as a tablet, but yes it's obviously bigger and heavier than an iPad. The screen size actually has more of an impact on me than the weight. But it's comfortable for me and I have no problems with the size of the device. It sucks that Google stopped supporting windows synching though, as now it's not possible to sync your Google calendar to the Windows 8 calendar app. Mail works, and you can sync you Google contacts through the Microsoft account site, but there's no option for the calendar. I'm also trying to get the mail notifications and Smart Connect stuff setup, so far that's giving me an initialization error. It's on in the bios so I'm not sure why it's not working properly yet. So far so good though, I like it. It's a very solid device and everything I've tried on it runs smooth. I'll have to give it a real test tonight though and install Civ V or something like that. And overall I just need to tinker around with it and see what I can do to maximize battery life. I tend to think they're going to refresh these with Haswell CPU's in about 6 months. I probably wouldn't be able to pass that up.

Civ V run great on it. Especially since it has a touch screen option ..So it takes advantage of the multitouch

Running it right now on 1080p, all settings on medium and its buttery smooth. (i7/8gb/256gb version)

Quote from mva5580 : I tend to think they're going to refresh these with Haswell CPU's in about 6 months. I probably wouldn't be able to pass that up.

It'll probably be a bit longer than 6 months.

Haswell doesn't launch until June-July, and usually the initial yields are too crappy to do laptop chips in significant / cheap quantity right away.


AMD's Kabini has a chance of making more of an impact on the tablet/convertible sector than Haswell will. Everything I've read says expectations for Haswell are lackluster compared to Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge.

If Dell comes out with one of these with a 20 W quad-core Kabini and AMD's superior graphics, I'd be all over it. That's assuming Kabini get's halfway decent CPU performance. The E-1800 only gets like 850 passmark, where a Core i3 does 2500. The i7 is 4000. I'd say Kabini needs about 3000 to be successful, unless they compete massively on pricing, then 2000 would be fine.

Quote from Stickboy46 : Only issue i had was with the screen stopped responding once. It could have been because it was syncing my gmail in the background with outlook ... (lots of messages). A quick tap of the power to turn the screen off then turn it back on and it was fine and hasn't messed up since. Just installed bluestacks on it for some android apps too!

Thank you!! Until I read your post, I didn't even know that we could do it. I installed the Windows 8 version and played Temple Run 2. I was like OMG!! I had it in tablet mode and it worked better than I thought. It ran in full screen and the graphics quality was excellent.

It took me couple of tries to get the hand placement right and after that it was so much fun. I'll try some more apps. Thanks again!!

Are you guys reinstalling a "clean" OS or going with what the notebook comes with? Does it come with a lot of crapware? Is it worth reinstalling a "clean" OS? Or is it good the way it comes?

To anyone that received their XPS12: Make sure your cooling fan is working properly! My fan was completely dead until I updated to BIOS A05.