-->*OFFICIAL: Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge*<--

Anyone here purchase laptop "legs" for their xps yet? I'm looking for something more permanent then a cd case/coaster/bottle cap.

So far i've found:

http://www.laptopdesk.net/access-legsf.html

and

http://www.bluelounge.com/coolfeet.php

I like the style of the first ones, but the adhesive they use softens with heat, which makes them pretty much worthless for the XPS M1730 (the whole backside of the laptop where you would place them is easily 70+ celcius while gaming).

The other suction cup style doesn't seem too bad, they just look way too tacky. I could make a set that are more attractive then these.

 

I have to say 8800GTX SLI performs like a dream, but the idle temp does bug me a bit.

 

hey what are your idle temp averages?

 

It's fantastic, best screen I have ever had. The lg must be stunning if it's better than this.

Sean

 

I have the Samsung panel, its awesome, everyone comments on how good it looks when they see it. Only minor gripe is it has some light leakage from the bottom, other than that, well done Dell

Julian, its funny, I am with the Air Force out here, everyone I speak to say the RAAF is fine for you to salary package, but no one ever knows how you actually go about doing it?! Spoke to the orderly room, who didn't really know what to do, but one guy said you need to speak to someone at a place like www.smartsalary.com.au

What I want to know is, I buy the laptop, call up this place, and they organise the paperwork, money etc.? Im confused as to what the process is! Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hey hiroshima. will you update us on how that went?

 

There is an ATO guideline for it, which is here:

http://www.ato.gov.au/print.asp?doc=/content/24632.htm

But the fundamental process is:
1) you buy notebook (invoice must have your name on it)
2) your employer reimburses you for the cost of the notebook
3) your employer then reimburses itself, but taking the money from your pre-tax earnings

The ATO site above explains pretty well in their example how you benefit from the scheme.

Note: 2) and 3) can happen together, as a percentage of the total. For example, if you're doing it over say 4 pay periods, then you would be refunded 25% of the value and pay for 25% in pre-tax dollars every week.

Thats about it really. You should seek assistance from payroll administration (your employer). I'm not sure about using third parties to assist, I just used them as information for me. An organisation as large as the airforce I'm sure would have a fairly detailed process to follow.

My company has less than 100 employees (albeit its an IT org) and we have standard forms etc for this process and its no trouble to do.

Remember, if its used at home for work purposes (of course it is right - you just need all that hardware to make Vista run properly), then you can depreciate it at tax time as well.

 

Thats what I've read/been told Julian. I'll have to speak to customer service when I get back on Sunday to Perth. You'd be amazed at how hard it can be to find/do things in large organisations...

Thanks for that info though, big help as usual.

 

/bump

I'd really like to hear from some people on this.

 

I usually put something in the back of my laptop to life just the end of it from the table to improve the cooling.. While playing Assassins Creed ex. I reach around 68-69 degrees..

Also, I will send you a PM.

 

OC'ing GPU's is not something I would recommend in a notebook anyway.
It already gets hot as it is.
And I believe I read in this thread that OC'ing the 8800's give minimal results.
I rather have a few extra years of system life instead thank you!

Congrats on your new baby!
I've read another person here a few pages back who has it as well.
He mentioned he could blast this sucker at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out and still it runs like a dream.
So does it?
Because despite the fact I have finished this game on my PS3 from start to finish, it's a gem of splendour to take with me on my (future) M1730 where ever I go.
If it's just only for walking about in the city, absorbing all the amazing detail.
Amazing if it runs on 1920x1200... (1200P) because on the PS3 it doesn't go higher then 720P.

Simple: he and the other guy who posted earlier downloaded it from newsgroups or some other dodgy source.
Or the US release is out and Europe is still waiting a few days or whenever the European launch date is.

I am between casual and hardcore.
Do a fair bit of gaming and I really love it.
Also from time to time, I attend a lan party going from Friday to Sunday with some mates.
I am saving COD 4 and the likes to play intensly on my M1730 once it gets here.
(Poor capable desktop lol!)

Heh... and yet you have two behemoth's of GPU's in there.
Know what you mean though. It's a cool factor AND it's nice to have them around for when a moment comes along and you fire up some intense game with a big comforting smile on your face.
Same here. I am not a developer, but I do a fair bit of other stuff on the PC too.
But when I have the energy to do some gaming, I want to do it right and full powered!


it's nice to read some less LG biased posts and experiences from people.
I am very sure the LG is fantastic, but it almost made the Samsung and the Sharp look so bad that I wondered why DELL still has them in the pipeline at all.
I should check my XPS 2, but I am very sure it's a Samsung too.
A little light leakage at the bottom and indeed the grainyness.
The latter I would like to be gone in my M1730, but I guess I don't have a choice in that.


Last night I was pondering in bed or I should cancel and reorder my M1730 with the 2.5 Penryn processor.
I have the 2.4 Core 2 Duo and I know the Penryn isn't that much of an upgrade.
But still I like having the latest thing since the rest of the components are so high spec as well.
Then again, it would mean a whole lot of trouble with Comford Card again and I am moving on the 14th of April.
Choices choices... perhaps I just should stick with it.

 

Yes, it's true. It runs in 1920x1200 with everything maxed perfectly.

EDIT: @Ifti, I too bought this as a game/development laptop. I use it everyday in my job which has to do with Visual Studio.NET 2005/2008 development. It's soooo fast to compile.

 

Laptop legs? I use a pen/pencil! Works really well, is stable, plus you always have one on you.

I'll use the pen/pencil for when im out and about (which will be rare with this machine). For my desk setup, I'll use the Zalman cooler, which I'll order as soon as I get back to Perth this weekend.

Also, I just installed the A06 BIOS update, was a 1meg download, which was something my dialup connection could actually handle

Will run some benchmark's later with the new update. See if I get an increase in performance...

 

Spot on. Even if I still had the Samsung now I wouldnt be disappointed with it at all, and I wouldnt bother with a replacement TBH. The screens in this thing are pretty awesome, no matter which you get!

Personally I wouldnt bother. Save the money for a cooler instead. If not, just use something like CD cases etc to prop up the laptop. They are under it so you wont see them anyways.

Same here - probably since Ive never had a laptop that runs this hot. It feels pretty warm to the touch just above where the GPUs etc are, and it bugs me. Thats why Im looking at finding ways of cooling it further! lol

I was considering something at the back to help extract the hot air faster - maybe some extra fans. Ive been looking at RAM coolers that use fans, that I could place along the back of the laptop to suck the hot air out quicker.....something like this.....





Remove the clips and place it flush with the back of the laptop, so the hot air is sucked out faster. Removing the hot air leaves more room for the cooler air to enter from the Zalman below the laptop, meaning cooler GPU's????.............

 

Wow, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is seriously struggling tonight?!

 

I like that the second one isn't "stuck" on. Nothing more tacky than that.

Pun not intended, I realised the joke after I wrote that.

I'd definitely be interested to know some feedback on something like this - I'm currently using two plastic pegs to lift it up. Not at all ideal.

 

It's little higher than normal in my case because I use external monitor, resolution @ 2560x1600.

Idles @ 64C on avg.

 

To me reading the temps here you guys don´t have to worry. Seems like Dell´s cooling solution handles it really well. The laptop has two GPU´s inside working so the temps are not high at all considering what´s inside it. Have someone checked Nibitor and read out the bios to see where the cards start to throttle down, I think that is around 100 degrees actually.

 

Your still on dialup? how long till you get back on highspeed? you must be bored without having real internet. I know id be going crazy.

 

My financial situation is approved!
Tomorrow DELL is going to contact me!

 

Its a nightmare, will have broadband back when I get back to my place in Perth on Sunday night. The old's will have their internet back next thursday now I think.

Real pain when you're trying to setup a new machine. Heaps of info and vid's I'd like to be downloading, but alas, the best I could do was download a 1mb BIOS update

Well and truly brought my machine to its knee's tonight. Was playing Supreme Commander: Forged alliance multiplayer, me and my bro vs 2 cheating AI, 1000 unit cap each.

At the climax of the game, my machine was struggling!!! To think there's the option to run dual monitors. The game will last many years into the future, much like TA did.

 

I receved my 1730 two months ago and it came with stupid 8700 graphic card. Becose I'm living in Bosnia upgrade option to 8800 is unvailable so I'm stuck with 8700 I'm so disapointed with dell and this is my last product that I have purchased from them! Can someone help me and tell me which driver is best and of course support sli??? Currently I'm using 169.28 from laptopvideo2go and it's not so bad but I still sometimes have low frame rate. Thanks

 

hi,
would anybody be able to post up there chipset temps and memory temps, my cpu slow down is pi***ng me off just want to make sure i have no over heating issues,
70's in memory

 

Finally got my XPS at work. 1730.

Yeah, I did a bios upgrade using the driver from Dell's website for My OS and machine and bit version.

BIOS flash reboots comp.. only comp doesnt turn back on. No power no lights. Wont turn back on. Dell is sending a new motherboard

 

More pictures here:
http://www.lesdelliens.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t5132.html

and here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=162495&page=2
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=162495&page=3

and here are the only pictures in white I was able to find (looks really good):
http://www.xps-forum.de/thread.php?threadid=3261

 

I asked my account manager about the price gap between X9000 and X7900. He conceded that there have the exact same price in their system (but X7900 increased by 600 EUR 1 week ago).

Anyhow, I was able to get the price for my X9000 config further down and I am only paying 40 EUR more for the X9000 versus the lower X7900 price of 2 weeks ago, which means a further 560 EUR discount. My total discount versus stock price is now 37%.

He also said that the price for the X9000 will also fluctuate according to demand in the coming few weeks.

I am so happy about my deal, now I need only worry about getting an LG screen.

I am probably one of the first European to order this system, since it is not yet available on the European Dell web sites and I will post benchmarks when I have received my order!

 

Yup - now I'm sure after looking through those images = its the RED one for me!

Looks gorgeous all together, and with the 8800M's packed in there its got the performance to match....

Now I'm thinking about going for a higher spec'd processor just to give it that little more of a kick! Especially since its going to be doing alot of video transcoding that's been piling up while I wait to order.


72oo

 

Thats better then mine then!! Mine is strange...

Highest temp in idle is about 74/75c

Fans kick in and bring it down to just 69/70c, for the first half hour or so.

After that, when the fans kick in they stay on until the temp is at about 57/58c, before they go off again.

Im not sure why they cut off at 69 for the first couple of times they come on though??!!!

 

^^^^

@ ACHlLLES and Ifti

Do you have a weather thermometer that you could measure the temp in the room you're using it in?

If you do could you post them so as to get a better comparison.

 

I guess I could be considered hardcore in certain genre's of games but not to the point of going 'pro'. I've spent alot of time playing on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 (but mostly the 360). I have two PS3s (one to tool around with Linux on it) and the other to keep updated with firmware. I ended up with 4 Xbox 360s (all running) for when i have gaming nights with my buddies over at my place playing on my projectors and TV sets. I'm mostly into the FPS games on the consoles (COD4 , Gears of War, Bioshock) and sports games. I guess the hardcore part of me had Call of Duty 4 suck out about 9+ days of recorded online playing time (according to the Xbox 360 COD4 'days played' counter). When you're online playing with buddies that you know not only online but in also real life, it can sometimes be just as fun as hanging out.

Anyhow, I got the M1730 to do my HD Video Editing with the benefit of having a powerful gaming machine (forever long that may be...hopefully for a while!). I've been picking up about a game a week for the PC. Crysis, Universe at War, and Gears of War (even though i already have it on the 360 i'm playing it to enjoy how good it looks and the extra 'achievement points'). I'm already itching to buy more games but unfortunately the selection is not that great. At least the PC has strategy games that have a long play life.

 

I reordered in red. I hesitated with the white one. I had never seen white pictures before and it actually looks very neat!

But then I was afraid of getting a perfect LG screen with a lid I may not like. This would have lengthened the string of cancellations and reordering...

 

No, but I have 2 other laptops - one w/ 8400M, and one w/ 7900GTX, both idling @ 60C in the same apt, so I know the 8800SLI runs hotter than others do.

 

What can I use to control when my GPU fans come on and go off?? Or is this not controllable??

If it is, any user guides anyone??

 

The 8800M's must be a pretty hot card I guess.

With my laptop that I'm using now the heating for the room came on in the last hour and the idle temps for both CPU and HD when up 10C. (The actual heat in the room ~3C or so).

I think dropping 5C in the ambient temperature can make a huge difference.
Although having said that I'm sure Dell has operating temp's into the forties, and unless you live in a furnace I don't think you're heating/AC will be running at that!



72oo

 

To owners of the Zalman cooler ......

Has anyone successfully opened it up?? Ive removed the screws but it seems like the plastic underneath is glued to the aluminium, so you cant take it apart at all. Ive tried sliding it in different directions, thinking it may slide off. Ive also tried prying it apart, thinking it may be held by clips, but nothing, its stuck on solid!

I wanted to open it up and explore the possibilities of changing the fans to some with a higher RPM, or maybe adding another 2 fans in.......

 

You can use I8kfan to control it, but best thing to do is to let the bios do all the work like it's supposed to.

 

In terms of PC online games, I would recommend
Guild Wars Prophecies,
Guild Wars Factions
Guild Wars Nightfall
Guild Wars 2 (coming out this summer)

The PvP mode is really fun to play. This is a role playing game with losts of PvP action in very nice 3D graphics.

I have spent so much time on those games, they are very addictive and there are many things to be done (and PvP is never ending)

 

What are acceptable CPU temps?

 

^^^^^

When the plastic starts to melt I think then the CPU is getting hot, or at least that's what someone told me one day...

... but in all seriousness, you seem a little preoccupied with temp's! Its got a one year warranty if anything happens, and I doubt very much that it will, as long as you don't OC or install diff drivers.



72oo

 

Exactly my thoughts...This verges on the obsession

On my M1710 the performance went down as a result of dust-obstructed ventilation and the ensuing high temparatures.

When your system starts getting slow for no reason, it is usually because of this precise issue (more than because of a fragmented disk or a virus). This would tell you temparatures are too high but only happens once your cooling system has started to get obstructed.

Until your cooling system becomes weaker there is no danger in any game even playing for 20 hours a day (as has happened to me in the past on the XPS M1710). Even if like me, you let your computer run 24 hours a day (I switch it off maybe 1 day per month!)

Even when the cooling system started to become weaker, and the system performance declined, the very high temps never lead to a shut down.

The easy preventive solution (more efficient then the cooler) is to use your vaccum cleaner to remove dust regularly, and if this fails, to open your computer and manually remove the dust balls that have formed inside. It is not the normal temperatures (60-85) that will hurt your computer, it is more the abnormal ones when your cooling system has cooled for several months.

I did this 2 or 3 times over a one year period.

I must add that my M1710 was running on my bed with little access to fresh air (and great access to dust really).

I think you are worrying too much. I don't know how long you intend to use this machine, but personally I am changing every year to the new model, so I am not worried about post-waranty death. Even if I didn't, as long as I regularly clean the cooling system, no game used intensively is going to bring your laptop to burn or stop working...

The cooling system on the M1730 has been optimized further, so you should have even less problems (cooling grid stretches over the whole back side)

 

Hehe, you want to feel hot, you should feel my Asus W3J after an hour or two of gaming... Now that is hot!

I like the fact the Dell has the exhaust port on the rear of the machine, not the right hand side like my Asus. You can actually see yellow warping marks on the left side of my trusty (ancient) mouse pad from all the heating its copped!

My M1730 does blow out fairly warm air, but its nothing I didn't expect. A cooler would be good though...

 

I never use any laptop on a bed. One rule I've always held too. Don't like my machine overheating! Also, I like to try keeping the area my machine lives in free of dust as best I can. My first laptop (many years ago) after having it about a year, I decided to have a look inside the bottom, was horrified to find the fans were so clogged with dust and fluff that they could hardly turn! No more placing it on the carpet for me after that.

 

I like to use it on my bed a lot. I don't mind opening my beast and doing the cleaning every 2 months. Makes me feel good actually

 

^^^ You don't find your machine getting very hot doing this?

On another note, who here got the Dell Bluetooth headset with their machine? Only just remembered I had received one! Opened the box, looks cool, no cables! Anyone played with it yet? Does anyone use it all the time? Whats the battery life like on it?

 

Definetly looking for feet as opposed to yet another cooler Ifti. I love my cooler (the zalman) but temperatures drop crazy low if you prop your laptop up 1" at the rear. I rarely go over 70C now so long as my cooler fans are maxed and the rear laptop is raised. I don't even need to offset.

The air at the bottom crawls up to the intake fans, I just want a more "professional" looking riser instead of random items around the house you can shove under it.

I'll probably check out my local hardware store this weekend and see if any chair feet would work or not (thinking home depot would have a good variety). The two options I linked earlier are just terrible. The suction cups are almost passable but the colour is wicked ugly.

 

hmm...

These don't look halfbad:

http://www.pwx.cc/products.html

Good variety in colour too (looking for black/dark gray of course).

 

They do look good actually. Seem to raise about 20mm.

How do they stick on? Seems either by sticking or velco. That could work.

 

Can some please tell me where I can purchase this Zalman NC2000 at? Everywhere I have checked only list the 1000 model. Thanks