We last reported on Dell's Ubuntu-powered XPS-13 Developer Edition at the tail end of November 2012, when the laptop was released. Comments from the Ars community on the device were generally positive, though one overwhelming sentiment seemed to dominate: the XPS-13's 1366×768 resolution was totally insufficient for the laptop's intended audience and use case.

The complaint has been heard. In postings to the Dell Community site and to Dell Web Vertical Director Barton George's blog, Dell has announced that as of today, the XPS-13 Developer Edition will be equipped with a "1080p" screen.

In this case, "1080p" means a 1920×1080p screen. The laptop's US Dell store page doesn't specify the panel type, though it does note that it features a brightness of 350 nits and almost a 180 degree viewing angle, so it's almost certainly an IPS panel.

The specs are otherwise unchanged—the Ultrabook comes with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SATA III SSD, and a low-voltage Ivy Bridge i7-3537U CPU. It comes preloaded with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and a few additions, including cloud-oriented software meant to ease the task of setting up complex development environments. All of the code that has been contributed to making the base XPS-13 work with Ubuntu out of the box is fully open-sourced. Code for the Cypress trackpad, one of the most fiddly bits, has even been made available upstream.

No hardware customization options are available, and the price for the XPS-13 Developer Edition is $1,549.99.

The other bit of news is that the Developer Edition is no longer exclusively available in Dell's US store. Barton George's blog post reveals that the laptop will be available for purchase in a number of European countries within a week and in several more EMEA countries after that:

Across the pond Sputnik 2 has started rolling out and will be available online next week. I will post the links when they become available but here is the list of the countries where Sputnik 2 will be landing: Available online – France, Germany, UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland

Available from your Dell rep – Israel, Luxembourg, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, UAE

No word yet on Asia and Pacific availability—George says that Dell is "evaluating options."