Dell Latitude Z series

It's amazing to me how much Dell has changed in the past 5 years to 8 years. Back in 2003 I was sending letters of kudos to their consumer support team for the outstanding service I was getting. People getting back to me after hours, lots of follow through and now it's as if they only care if you plan on making a purchase, but are very ok if you don't, doesn't seem to affect them either way.

Call them to discuss strange things going on with your account, you get a clueless person who really doesn't care if things get straightened out or not. Even if you try to get someone above them, their supervisor is just as bad as the person who you were initially talking to.

I have my account all fixed now, but it took so many calls to get to a person who finally figured out what was wrong because he took some initiative to dig into it. Making a customer call in, then when you call they tell you to wait for a snail-mail letter which then tells you to call in, is stupid only Congress or some other government agency could think it up, congrats Dell on being just as stupid (not you Bill, Dell upper management).

So, I have no doubt there are still good people at Dell, it's just now the odds of running into them seem very remote. Dell is trying very hard to kill itself and judging by the people who call me for support so completely frustrated by Dell support (HP and others as well) that even though their computer is under warranty they will pay me to handle that part for them. I end up under charging them because I feel sorry for them proving I am not going to make it long term either since I don't charge enough, but this is another topic that I'm sure could end up pages long.

I'm not sure but it's not unusual for a company to edit their forums to weed out threads or posts that show them in a poor light so I'm never shocked to hear that there are accusations, even when it's not happening.

I like what I see with the Z, but not having the software ready for Windows 7 so people can buy it with the wireless dock and charging stand without having to perform the OS upgrade themselves sometime donw the road when Dell get's it's head out of it's arse is just nuts.

This is their premium laptop, yet to fully option it with everything they have, you MUST buy it with XP which came out 9 years ago. Call Dell and ask why they sell ANY laptop with 4gigs of memory but no x64 bit OS option only to be told that 64bit OS's are for entertainment only, again, so stupid Congress must have help make this decision.

Dell makes something nice then gives you no reason to buy it, then wonders why sales are poor. So, I'm open to the Z, when it finally matures and is available with the right drivers and proper OS to support the configuration.

Bill, I'm also willing to talk via PM if you'd like, thanks for the post and have a Happy New Year.

 

Damn a lot of problems with this machine, always something, i love dells but i also went through something similar with this. I wish it had switchable graphics, dell needs to start to pay attention to that. Certain traditions need to change.

 

If we censored posts on our forums to weed out threads or posts that showed us in a poor light, you would know. You can just have a look at our boards and find plenty of negative comments (sadly enough), so you know if a post is removed, it's not for that reason.

PM me any time. I have a pretty full plate, but I will make time for a conversation or to help out if you need me to.

 

To: ZoinksS2k

Could you tell me what was your CPU (9400 or 9600) and the memory?
What do you mean by saying that 128 SSD is resonably quick?
It should be as quick as Samsung PB-22, isn't it?
How do you know that it has TRIM? Normaly it shouldn't.
I'm also looking to buy one and I'm hesitating how much money to spend.
By chance, I also wanted to order it with two SSDs in RAID0, but found out in different tests that often it roughly increases the performance only in sequential read/write but in more complicated tasks (especialy with small blocks) there is no gain even loss due to incoherent behavior of SSDs and RAID controlers that are not adapted for.

 

Going down your list...

1. Intel Core 2 Duo SU9600 with VT (1.60GHz) 4.0GB DDR3
2. I ran a few tests with HD Tune and Crystal Disk Mark. I didn't save them, but read throughput was in the 190MB range, write was 120's. Add 100mb to these numbers when I setup a software stripe. They are 1.8" Samsung drives with no casings (don't recall the model).
3. No idea
4. CrystalDiskInfo shows what the drives support, TRIM was supported on the 128GB's in the unit I had. TRIM is a good thing.

You can't use RAID0 with the Latitude Z unless:

• Dell updates the Intel Option ROM to allow for it (simple BIOS Update)
• You deconstruct the current Dell BIOS and reassemble it with the full Intel Option ROM. I still think this is doable.
• Use a software stripe in Windows, but it isn't easy and you can't exclusively boot to a striped, and thereby dynamic, volume. This can be done with Linux, but Window's bootstrap doesn't allow it. I was able to move about 80% of the core OS directories to a secondary and striped volume using directory junctions. It's a complete pain and you cannot move the hiberfil.sys file off the boot partition, so I abandoned it. This could still be viable for a volume that has heavy IO requirements like storage for VMWare or a scratch disk for Photoshop.

Not sure about the small block performance on Intel ICH9M-E RAID 0
implementations. I'm pretty sure the increase in throughput would be worth it on a laptop.

 

To ZoinksS2k:

Thank you

 

No problem.

BTW, my return is complete and the full amount refunded. This was a completely painless transaction. I'd go as far as to call it pleasant. Well done, Dell.

 

Anyone use the wireless DOCK? I want to know. If I come in the office int he morning can I lay the Z in the dock and then plug my network cord in it and use an extrernal mouse, keyboard, and monitor without opening up the notebook and powering it on that way? More or less can I have the monitor shut on it and still use it?

 

You plug the network and display cords into the wireless usb hub. You can simply put the laptop on the dock. If it doesn't start up, there is a small button on the right side that will return it from sleep or hibernation without opening the lid.

There are also power and hard drive activity lights on the top of the lid, which is a nice touch.

 

From what I've read there is not a wired lan port on the dock station.