Vostro 3700 Owner's Lounge

I thought the Windows 7 key was in the battery compartment, no?

An exchange should not invalidate your BCB, only a refund would do that.

Man I hope they don't screw mine up...

 

lol that is correct .. didn't think to check that ... my old Dell laptop key was on the back ...

 

yeah, both my late 2006/early 2007 era laptops have it right in the bottom, I 've just read so many times on these forums that they seem to be in the battery compartment.

Doesn't matter as if they gave you an integrated graphics model instead of an Nvidia model, it had to go back anyway, right?

My EDD remains 8/10 but I have no shipped notification as of yet...

 

Fixed the dedicated card detection issue by installing DirectX 11. After that it was detected fine by device manager.

Tested so far:

1) Speakers
-> Not that loud as previous laptop. You had to max out volume to hear acceptable volume.

2) Gaming
-> Got a score of 7115 on 3dmark06 ( default setting )
-> Played Starcraft 2 fine on 1600x900 ultra settings ...

3) Keyboard
-> A bit annoying since I am used to regular keyboard especially the arrows keys that are very small.
-> Backled keyboard is nice.
-> Fingerprint reader works fine except you have to try multiple times to get it detect it ..

4) Software
-> Their is no spyware software so you don't really need re-install OS.

 

thanks for the feedback!

 

Spend this weekend reinstalling os for 64bit. You will lose Office 2010 Starter since Dell doesn't ship a cd with it.

1) Backed up OEM activation and make note of product key.
2) Downloaded 64bit Windows 7 and installed it using product key
3) Restored OEM Activation
4) Updates via Windows Update
5) Update all Chipset drivers from Dell Driver Vostro Page

Basically after that everything works except for wifi,videocard and fingerprint.

Fingerprint:- Download drivers from Dell Vostro Driver Page and install finger printer application which should come with your laptop.

wifi:- This is very tricky as drivers listed for this laptop isn't compatable. Note that wifi model is Dell 1501 WIFI N and isn't compatiable with the one on the Dell Vostro Drivers Page. I found it on dell website by searching and had to manually install the drivers.

nvidia: You need to install two drivers found on the dell vostro laptop drivers site.

Good freeware apps:

1) Imageburn
2) Seagate Diskwizard
3) Notepad++

 

excellent info CrashX, thanks.

My order has supposedly "shipped". EDD is still tomorrow, hopefully it actuallys shows up.

I do have an Intel Advanced 6200 half height wifi card here so I think I'll just pop that in instead of messing with the Dell drivers for the 1501 on the fresh install.

 

Interesting that the Vostro 3700 support downloads page now has a A07 BIOS listed but the link to download doesn't work because the file doesn't exist currently on ftp.dell.com/bios...it is dated today and lists the following fixes and enhancements:

1.Update bios microcode for new Intel CPU i3/i5/i7
2.Fixed Intel vbios fix SG uninstall black screen issue
3.Support INT2 (Pin-11) FFS

There's an A07 BIOS on the ftp site for all other Vostro versions, but not the 3700.

 

the eagle has landed...

First impressions while the recovery DVDs are being burned:

-Overall fit and finish pretty good. Lid has a lot less flex to it than I thought, a lot less than the Vostro 3400 video I saw. There is some keyboard flex as mentioned, but I haven't typed on it enough to know if I care or not. I have found two problem areas. One is the where the power plugs into the laptop - it seems ok, but definitely less sturdy than my Latitude D620. Second is the DVD drive. When the tray is ejected, you can wobble it back and forth an alarming amount. I will make a video of this to see if it's just mine or if it's normal for this drive.

-Weight is good, definitely more than the stated 5.95 lbs, but not much more.

-touch buttons on the top bar are working great

-the speakers really do suck, and they suck bad. The speakers in the D620 and my wife's 2007-era $399 Compaq are better than these speakers.

-the screen quality is just ok, viewing angles are a little worse than I had hoped for

Also, now the second recovery disc has been burning for like an hour now, which can't be right, so the Dell software is already pissing me off...

 

Well, Dell is getting poor marks so far. It's very frustrating that after boot the only thing I've managed to do is try to burn the recovery discs and it doesn't work.

Tried twice, both times the first disc burns fine and then when I put the second blank disc in, I get a dialog box telling me another program is using the drive and it never burns anything, no activity light, nothing.

So I tried with a dual layer DVD so it could fit on one disc, and the POS Dell Recovery program tells me dual layer discs are not supported "in this version". You mean the version that comes with a DVD burner that Dell's specs define as "Tray load: 8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+/-R write capability" doesn't support the capabilities of the drive? But there's another version of the Dell Recovery software that does? Great job Dell.

Next step: try the hard disk option with a usb stick or something I guess.