Problems with vostro 1500/1400 - Vostro owners please post your problems here

Does anyone experience their cd-drive running really loud when you put a cd in. I was importing music on itunes and it would rattle pretty loud. Is that normal?

 

I can I tell?

 

Yeah, mine does that too.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please help.

When placing Vostro 1500 with WXGA and 1400 with WXGA+ side by side for comparison, the 1400 LCD is consistently dimmer (by almost two "notches"). I have maximized the brightness setting on both. Display settings on both are the same. In fact, I didn't change anything and verified that they have the same settings.

Is this a common problem for Vostro 1400?

I ordered both to compare. Found 1500 to be overly bulky and heavy to carry around. Leaning toward keeping 1400 but can't live with the much dimmer LCD. Is there a way to tweak it to make the 1400 brighter beside the brightness setting?

Appreciate your input.

 

@ninponojutsu

As you've got a newer Vostro 1400 I was wondering how noisy your system is? I.e. if you put it in a quiet room, how loud is it at idle, and how loud is it under heavy load (e.g. games with the sound muted)? What would you compare it to?

I know this question is not easy to answer, but it's very important to me

Thanks!

 

Almost not sure If I should get the 1500. These screens sound like horror stories.

 

Hrm I've got an interesting problem with my 1500.

So... I just got my 1500 and have been hooking it up to my speakers in my dorm and other's and playing music off of it without the AC adapter (battery power). Frequently, after I wake it up from standby/hibernate while playing music it'll just lock up and freeze for a bit (15sec-1.5min) then it'll be fine for another 2min or so before doing the same thing again. Once I got a BSOD "hardware failure" and another time I just didn't want to wait more than 8min before it returned to normal smooth operation.

I think this is a heat issue because when this happens my fan definately isn't running at a higher rpm. I don't really have this problem with the AC adapter plugged in. I can't find any way to change fan rpm profiles, but I think the heat's the culprit (even though the bottom of my laptop isn't really that hot compared to other laptops).

Any suggestions? Sending it away to Dell for RMA would seriously hinder my capabilities since I'm in school right now, and I really don't want to deal with re-installing/configging everything all over again now that I'm away @ school as well.

 

I got the dell vostro 1500
1 gig of ram(I replaced it with 4, Dell overcharges for it)
120 gig hard drive
standard soundcard/wireless/screen
8600m GT
Owned for about 1 week
Tech Level High

Now I put windows vista 64 on it and Theres just a few things about it that bother me. But first, the things that bother me the most!
1. The speakers rattle... they rattle Loudly with any high pitched frequency they make me want to just stab my ears. I dont know what causes that, it's somewhat in both speakers more so in the left speaker so I assume it's just a flaw in the design.
2.Driver support for vista 64.
Dell REQUIRES that you get video card drivers from them, so Nvidia drivers refuse to let you install them. however there is no Dell video card driver for vista 64. My solution... I downloaded a video driver from www.start64.com that was modified to work with vista 64. Yay...
The digital Microphone (Intellisonic Speech Enhancement Dual Directional Mics) Theres absolutely no drivers for it that work in vista 64 bit. at all, that i could find.
The touchpad thing worked with vista but with a basic driver... so you could move the mouse and click but you could not use the scrolling features, (or turn off tap to click, which is something that bugs me a lot)Dell doesn't provide a vista 64 driver for it under it's vostro support... Solution was to get the one made for that dell lattitude. For some reason it works just fine for vostro but dell doesn't think you deserve it if your on vista 64 apparently. With that i can scroll side to side and up n down and I turned off tap to click so i no longer accidentally close windows or likewise.
I saw some complaints about loose batteries.. Mine wiggles, hardly at all. Nothing that worries me in the least. It's in there as sturdy as it needs to be and I'm not too concerned about how slick the battery is. Just that it has a long life...(I got the bigger battery that lasts longer, if that matters).
Someone else complained that the little rubber feet are different sizes causing it to wobble when placed on a flat surface... I dont have that problem. It doesn't wiggle or shake at all that's noticable.
You CAN get the function keys to work, but you have install a dell program that I didn't care for, I felt it was kinda a bloated program. If it would have just giving me the basics I would have been much happier. As a result, I dont get to use my function keys such as the quick battery check or the wifi snatcher(Who cares, I can see the same things in the system tray). The other functions still seem to work however. Even the contrast ones.
someone complained about static when they plug in speakers to the vostro, I dont hear any.
My screen doesn't appear grainy either, That was another thing someone complained about.
Someone else complained about a whining sound when it's just sitting there. Mines pretty much silent compared to me desktop. The sound it puts out is similar to the high pitched sound a tv puts off. So turn on your tv but mute it, that's about how much noise this thing puts off. Realistically, you shouldn't care.
Literally, the biggest thing I can think of that bothers me about this is the rattling speakers, and the lack of driver support.
If anybody has a solution for the speakers that are built in, let me know
[email protected]
Also I've been benchmarking the 3d performance of this thing since i've gotten it, I dont have a full report ready yet but I will put it up at http://members.dslextreme.com/users/christoph2005/vostro.html I should have the report ready by Oct 16th 07... Maybe sooner.

 

have my vostro 1400 for a month or so already i bought it more expensive coz i got it from an import store theres no dell in our country except a call center. anyways have a few concerns also about my v1400 but relatively im happy with it.

1.) the fan i notice sometimes it blows strong and sometimes it doesnt. it usually when i open a program usually games and photoshop, but sometimes even just IE the fan starts to blow strong but ofcourse hot air is coming out. from time to time it really goes hot also in the lower left where the palm usually rests

2.) the wobly battery. It moves a little but not annoying enough to make me return it. also the unbalanced rubber at the bottom i have that too.

3.) the noisy drive. but i think thats normal.

my real concern is the fan. and the heating up if its normal... also is there a program i can install so i can see the level of heat of my cpu?

 

So vostros come without the windows cd as 'standard' or did they miss out in your case?