Okay, I admit I love the brushed aluminum top of the XPS13, but the (magnesium?) material at the bottom of the keyboard/trackpad was a fingerprint magnet.

I found a place online that sells full-laptop vinyl sticker skins, and the cutouts for the XPS13 fit pretty nicely, except around the power button. The added benefit to having a sticker cover the trackpad as well is that the trackpad is now a little less sensitive and not such a pain in the *** (but still works fine!) Here's my choice:

https://plus.google.com/113763167140406107715/posts/TgHyiDH4RQe

I should explain the "nuclear" choice.

I grew up in northern Canada, in a little town which no longer exists (do a Google search for "Pine Point, NWT", or look it up on Google Maps and see the blank spot where the town used to stand). Back in 1978, a Russian satellite (not Sputnik) prematurely re-entered Earth's atmosphere and broke up during descent and scattered radioactive bits all over northern Canada. There were tons of reports of birth defects in surrounding towns, etc., and one report I read recently said that only two fragments recovered were NOT radioactive, and one piece emitted lethal radiation.

So I figured it was fitting, since I got into the Sputnik beta, that I remember my roots. :emotion-11:

I'm also wondering how much faster I can get this rig to perform with Gentoo installed, though I'd probably want to get the kernel patches. I've heard that the 3.3.1 kernel fixes some wide-spread wifi problems across several distros.