xps 13 hasn't been discontinued; it was refreshed last month at the same time as the XPS 15 shown here.
Barton George, the project lead, has confirmed that there will be a follow-on Sputnik coming out sometime in the next month. This (long) thread has the information, especially on the last few pages. http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...
Thank you for the link. Sadly Australia never saw the edition which shipped with Ubuntu, but I'm fine with that as long as i know the hardware supports it.
Ive always been thinking of buying one in the back of my mind. Do dell support linux well in the XPS line?