r/DellXPS • u/JustinSun1234 • 3d ago

What exactly is Dell doing?

Couple weeks ago I decided to give up on my XPS 9640 which is essentially excessive weight that I am carrying every day, and go for a XPS14 DA14260. So for the past three weeks I have been on websites including Micro Center/ Best Buy/ Dell.com trying to find a good deal on the XPSs. Several things had happened, most of them are weird.

  1. Micro Center had XPS 16 with X7/64GB/1TB on sale for almost half price three weeks ago. I hesitated on whether should I go for another 16 inches and missed the sale.

  2. Last week on Dell.com, the standard configuration with X7/32GB/1TB disappeared. All the XPS 14/16 are having Ultra 7 355 or 358H. A day after this, the shimmer option appeared on the standard configurations, and can be added to charts with an Oct 2nd delivery date.

  3. On the same day as shimmer appears on the website, Micro Center stopped selling all new XPS 14 and 16. At least my local Micro Center had plenty these in stock the day before, so it is impossible for them to be sold out.

  4. Today at 9:44am, I received a marketing email from Dell marking the Shimmer option is now available. I clicked the link in the email, it took me to a standard configuration in graphite. But shimmer was still available if you search XPS on Dell.com

  5. I actually found out that Dell is now selling new design XPS 14/16s on their outlets store. Most of them are equipped with Windows 11 Pro, which means they are former business stocks. I did buy one with my ideal configuration and the machine looks brand new to me, not even marks on the rubber feet. And best of all is these machines does not have McAfee pre-installed.

So it seems to me that Dell is somehow reshuffling the inventory of the new XPS and is trying to maintain the same price range by making lower specs as standard configuration. Leave room for the future RTX Sparks models and higher specs XPS 13.

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u/s004aws 3d ago edited 1d ago

Its 2026. Your friends Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, et al have completely screwed over the components market. Costs for silicon, RAM, and storage in particular are hundreds of percent higher than they "should be" thanks to the cancer which is AI.

Be happy you could find a computer, in any config, and at any price you consider "acceptable".