bjoernvold.com

Dell has resources smaller manufactures can't match, especially when it comes to corporate support and quick parts replacements. The XPS 13 DE comes with a year of Dell's "ProSupport" service, which includes 24/7 North American-based tech support and next-business-day on-site servicing. For a bit extra, the support length can be bumped to two or three years.

I talked over e-mail quite a bit with a former mentor of mine, Rick, about what exactly to say about the easy experience of using Ubuntu on this nice little Ultrabook. I hadn't really had to alter anything in my workflow after carrying it around for a few days in lieu of my MacBook Air; like I mentioned at the beginning of the piece, the best thing I could say about the thing was that using it was unremarkable. That doesn't necessarily make for a good product review—"Yep, it worked just fine and stayed out of my way"—but my mentor's take was different.

"Isn't that what you're looking for in a mainstream product?" Rick chided. "In 1996 it was: 'Wow look at this, I got Linux running on xxxxxxxx.' Even in 2006 that was at times an accomplishment... When was the last time you turned on an Apple or Windows machine and marveled that it 'just worked?' It should be boring."

He's absolutely right, and if you're content to stay with Ubuntu 12.04, then the XPS 13 Developer Edition is an absolute "just works" experience. Dell has done it—and has done it right—taking its work and contributing it all back upstream for the betterment of the community. The company has elected to put a friendly Linux distro on an attractive piece of hardware with good specs, including a beautiful display and a quick SSD. Moreover, the price isn't at all unreasonable. ...