My day-to-day laptop is a Dell XPS 13 9360 that I bought from Dell Outlet in January 2018 for $636. It has been fine and battery life has been good, only complaints are the nasal inspection camera placement below the screen (fixed on more recent models), and keyboard isn’t as nice as a Lenovo. Stuff from Dell Outlet comes with a “refurbished” sticker but otherwise seems like new and has the full warranty, so if they have what you need it seems like a no-brainer over the Dell retail website. If you can wait, watch for a good coupon that can give you 20% off the base outlet price.
Anyway, recently the right side of the trackpad hasn’t been clicking and the pad seemed tilted. I thought the trackpad was broken somehow and bought a replacement part for $9 on eBay. On closer examination not only was the trackpad tilted but the keyboard was bulging on the left side. A little web searching showed this to be a common problem on the XPS 13 caused by the cells in the internal battery pack swelling (common enough that I wonder why there hasn’t been a class action lawsuit about it!) Continue reading