Dell

Dell’s ‘Maglev’ Keyboard →

January 10, 2018 · 16:05

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

Among the most interesting quirks is the laptop’s keyboard: though it looks and feels just like typical Dell keyboard, it’s built using a brand-new mechanism that relies on magnets. The keys are still physically held in place at their corners, but there are now magnets beneath them to provide feedback. By controlling the strength of their repulsion, Dell can create a deeper, clickier feeling for the keys than their 0.7mm travel would normally allow.

The new “maglev” keyboard felt perfectly normal, at least during my brief use of it. I wouldn’t say it’s among the best keyboards I’ve ever typed on, but I didn’t feel any issues related to key travel, either.

This sounds like something Apple should have implemented instead of their new failure-prone butterfly switches. I am however curious how much vertical space this ‘Maglev’ implementation takes up, in comparison to the latter.

Dell Is Selling the World’s First Wirelessly Charging Laptop →

July 12, 2017 · 09:09

Shannon Liao:

Well, it’s not the tablet part that has wireless charging capabilities, as Dell achieves that through a kind of hack. The company uses an attachable keyboard, sold separately, as a wireless charging base, although the keyboard cannot be charged beforehand and you can’t use it on any metal surfaces.

Dell said today that the Latitude 7285 12-inch is available for sale on its website starting at $1,199.99, and the Wireless Charging Keyboard and Wireless Charging Mat will run you $549.99. (You save $29.99 if you buy them together versus separately.)

This is not wireless charging — it’s inductive charging at best, with the wire moved from the laptop to the charging mat.

‘Windows Trackpads Have Been Terrible for What Feels Like Forever’ →

December 8, 2015 · 14:00

Tom Warren:

Windows trackpads have been terrible for what feels like forever. Luckily, the Dell XPS 13 trackpad feels like the perfect size. It’s still the same large glass pad with a soft finish like earlier in the year, but Dell has definitely improved the driver situation, so the trackpad performs very smoothly across Windows 10. I still notice some occasional scrolling issues in Chrome, but I have those problems with every Windows laptop I use. The cursor doesn’t randomly jump across the screen anymore, and two-finger scrolling is smooth everywhere it needs to be. I’ve tested many Windows laptops this year, and this is without a doubt one of the best experiences for using gestures and just simply scrolling. You would think Microsoft’s own Surface Book trackpad would be better, but Dell has done a great job of balancing the size and position relative to the small form factor of this laptop.

I should note here, though, that Dell had to replace my XPS 13 due to a trackpad issue. The original unit clicked and felt slightly loose, and even the replacement unit felt like that out of the box but appeared to oddly remedy itself.

I’ve been using a Surface Pro 4 trackpad recently and while using a single finger on it is fine, using two or more is an absolutely terrible experience.

Tom Warren notes that he ‘notices scrolling issues in Chrome but has them on every Windows laptop that he uses’ — this sounds as if he’s just given up and accepted their inferior quality for whatever reason. I find this completely unacceptable. Apple’s trackpads have been near perfect for years and their’s is the only one which I actually want to use instead of a mouse. Accepting anything less than excellence is not good enough.

Dell Ships Laptops with Root CA →

November 23, 2015 · 14:22

Rotorcowboy on Reddit:

I got a shiny new XPS 15 laptop from Dell, and while attempting to troubleshoot a problem, I discovered that it came pre-loaded with a self-signed root CA by the name of eDellRoot. With it came its private key, marked as non-exportable. However, it is still possible to obtain a raw copy of the private key by using several tools available (I used NCC Group’s Jailbreak tool). After briefly discussing this with someone else who had discovered this too, we determined that they are shipping every laptop they distribute with the exact same root certificate and private key, very similar to what Superfish did on Lenovo computers. For those that aren’t familiar, this is a major security vulnerability that endangers all recent Dell customers.

Was it Lenovo that started shipping malware with Superfish? This is just another reason to always go Mac—it runs Windows too if needed, but without all that crap to worry about.

via @wojtaszek