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

Im gettin scared and might cancel my nov 13th order because of all these problems im seeing with it!! I want it but maybe itd be worth it to wait for the problems to subside?

stephen

 

1730- 2.4 processor...2gb of [email protected] it be worth it and make a difference if I upgraded to 4gb of ram?

 

Just had my first Vista moment. Went to log on and my notebook kept dispalying a critical error and resetting. I had to do a full system restore and then work out a few bugs as a result. Man they need a safe mode for this operating system. I don't think it was my machine but you never know...

 

There is a safe mode, it's the same as windows XP

 

Don't get too stressed, most of the posters on here, myself included have had a similar momrnt, whether it be screen leakage (haven't noticed it on mine), poor drivers (169.xx gives me lockups etc) the never ending 8800 in or out issue. All these things are natural when you are spending a lot of cash on a peice of tech. I am posting this from my M1730, it is totally sexy, everyone that has seen has been blown away by it. Okay the GPU's are a little underpowered but until Dell 100% confirm when the 8800's are going to be added to their product line they are still the best on the market, Dell will be bringing optimised drivers specifically for the M1730 in the next few weeks and I fully expect to see a significant performance improvement.

We are all early adopters and have to accept that as early adopters we are effectively beta testing this kit in the field for Dell. Don't worry if you hold your nerve when that cardboard box is opened you will be blown away!

 

"There is a safe mode, it's the same as windows XP"

It didn't appear when I couldn't get into Vista. It just gave me two options, load as per normal and fix problem (can't remember the correct descriptions). The fix was an automated fix which didn't fix it but it gave me the option to do a system restore which got me back online with a few minor issues which I have now fixed.

 

Has anyone been watching the Wiki page about the 8700M / 8800M GTX cards...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units#GeForce_8M_series

Is this accurate? Does it tie in with what you've seen other places? Also where did the transfer rate of 51.2Gb/s come from, does anyone know?

 

Doove makes a very good point about not getting too stressed, and it sounds like if you continue with your order you'll be pretty happy!

That said, I'm writing this post on an Inspiron 8600, and I'm in no hurry to buy the m1730--gonna watch the market, see what happens, and wait for current issues to be worked out.

So if you already have a laptop and don't need to hurry, it doesn't hurt to wait a bit. I mean, I can still play NetHack on this machine so that's all I need right

 

I think Safe Mode is F8.
Also, in msconfig, in the boot tab, you can select "Safe boot" as a boot option so it will appear in the startup menu.

 

One thing to remember is that we posters will tend to post questions/issues, and it does not represent the complete picture. For instance, I have 80 posts as of right now and have included questions and issues of my own. Some of these are related to beta display drivers that I chose to try out. I could have opted to just use the pre-loaded drivers.

In general we tend not to post about each successful operation, so all the times I started up windows, multi-tasked, burned DVDs from divx, and enjoyed the speed and snappiness of they system go unreported

No major problems for me, only those at the "enthusiast" level. Normal windows and application use is excellent. You might notice that people do say this... after posting an issue and complaining bitterly... they often finish with a single sentence saying that the machine is great and they are happy overall.

Now that some of the kinks have been ironed out in terms of what has been tried and tested, it should be more direct for a newcomer.

I totally recommend this machine. I love it.

 

We should really emphasize the "attitude" and "personality" component to things. For instance, if you're looking to tweak yoru system to perfection, you will necessarily hit your head against the wall while kicking and clawing your way there. It took me countless hours of downloading different display drivers, installing, rebooting, enabling SLI, and configuring different combinations of 3d settings until I got a 3dmark score of 8,478... and at the time all I knew was that higher was better... without any idea of what the baseline is. I'm still not sure, but I think this is a good score

Of course, I contined to try later beta drivers and ran into walls, but that was my choice to tread such water. Anyway, after all that, I've settled on the 163.75 driver until we get solid reports from the 169.xx or higher versions. With that said, others are pushig the envelope and are using 169.xx and getting even higher performance.

With its customizability, overclockability, overridability, etc, think of this machine like a tricked out race car that necessarily requires special attention to break previous barriers.

However, at "normal" and "typical" operating use and conditions, you won't find any such issues. So again, personality fused with this machine determine yoru experience.

 

If one is always looking for something better and faster, one will, by definition, be unsatisfied and constantly stretch, recoil, and stretch... two steps forward, one step back...

As an example, less than a year ago, I purchased the m1710, which was the top of the line machine back then. A couple months ago, I replaced that perfectly good laptop with this one and tinkered endless hours just for the heck of it. Maybe it's more like a model train set than a race car

 

I can't seem to find the answer to this question:

Have any of you put DDR2 800 PC6400 RAM in to your XPS 1730 and if you did, is the mainboard registering it at 800 or underclocking it to 667?


Before I go plunk down some $$ on some DDR2 800 RAM, I want to know I am getting the full benefit of it. If not I'll just get a 2GB stick of Kingston "Dell approved" crap to put in mine to bring it up to 3GB.

I'd appreciate any feedback.

 

So what I said earlier in this thread seems to be right, that the 256bit memory bus will double the memory bandwidth of the 8700m, I think the 8800m is going to be a lot better than these 8700s and Dell better let us upgrade

 

I'm doing my first defrag with Vista and I'm 5 hours into it!!!!!

I have no idea how long it has to go and it is really pissing me off, all I have is a stupid spinning donut.

My 486 never took this long (granted it wasn't 100gb) so whats the go here?

 

Thats a good question guys. How long is the defrags taking? I'm a maintenance freak, (Naval Mechanical Engineer) so I will be doing this often, so can you guys help a few of us out with this one?

 

I havent bothered with the vista defrag tool, left it for one hour, didn't finish. Try auslogics disk defragmenter, its free and its way faster than the Vista defrag tool, about 1 hour is the max it takes for mine 160gb.

 

Thanks for the tip wogstaa! I'll give it a go.

 

So I have my M1730 here. I put in a Blu-Ray movie into my Blu-Ray Burner drive...and nothing.

Windows Media Player and Center do not play it.

Why? Can they not read BD discs?
If so, what software do I need in order to watch BD movies on the M1730.


Thanks in advance for all answers.

 

Just ran it and it took 20 min for 115gb! Why can't M$ employ these guys and get a decent product?

 

Originally Posted by wogstaa
I havent bothered with the vista defrag tool, left it for one hour, didn't finish. Try auslogics disk defragmenter, its free and its way faster than the Vista defrag tool, about 1 hour is the max it takes for mine 160gb.

Can auslogics disk defragmenter be used with RAID 0 configuration as well?

 

Okay more notes on my experience


It looks sick, I think ill always just start with that

But:

LIGHT FX VISUALIZER STILL DAMN CRACKLES!!! AHHH! Seriously cant the thing just work? I mean the m1710 never worked without crackling and this one only works sometimes without crackles and pops every second of the song!! GRR!

Other people please try this to confirm its universal.

Go to windows media player click now playing, play a song, right click on the visualizer black box area and select dell lightfx viusalizer 3. let me know if it crackles or pops at all.

Charger is not secure enough!!! Grrr! They really need to use magnets, or clips, or springs. or something other than just a damn barrel plug. because the AC jack always seems to partially unplug and my screen freaks out sometimes when that happens.

MY SCREEN CREAKS!! When i squeeze the right hand side of the lid together right in the center of it it squeaks like an old door.

G15 plugins are shady.

battery life is around 45 minutes.... (on full brightness high preformance)

its just gigantic, just to the point where it is very difficult to grab it with one hand in any way.

driver support is just weird.

Just downloaded Crysis, Full version, Truly playable only at all medium settings set on 1440 x 900, very high lagged like crazy, almost any 1920 1200 lagged alot. Hoping for newer drivers to solve that problem.

Great for playing CSS, But css is old....

Mics are great, even at a distance.

Webcam is So so

Included remote doesnt charge over expresscard, just fits the port, takes button cell batteries... very cheap.

Included manual "book" is Very very large, very nice looking, Makes it clear that you are supposed to keep everything that comes with it.

Service tag and express svc tag are under battery!!! HOW DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?! "sir in order to start fixing your problem you need to waste even more time and take the battery out of your system to get the svc tag. then restart your system."

Power buttons and media direct buttons have a very Bouncy press, No click at all, just a bounce... you get what i mean?

The colors on the touchpad LEDS are very crisp.

speakers are just unnecessarily loud...which is great.... and @ woggsta, I still hear phantom bass coming from inside the case.... Maybe the subwoofer is disguised as something else?

I actually like the way the touchpad is off to the left, i dont know why, but everyone that has seen that has liked it.

SD cards stick out a little too much to be kept in the slot all the time, making it hard to use an SD for ReadyBoost. Anyone have a spare XD card they can tell me how much it sticks out of the slot?

Backlit keyboard=awesome, White leds are sick contrast to the rest of the case. But of course i wish i could change the colors of them.

Wait... Ive heard that LEDS change color when you reverse the polarity... anyone wanna give me a walk through to change the color of the keyboard?

....There is an FN shortcut.... for the calculator... ive never seen that before... but its awesome.

I beleive the cause of the Wiggliness of the feet is the Hard drive enclousure, It seems to stick out just a mm or 2 too far.

They give you an adaptor for (drumroll) Hdmi, component, composite, spdif, vga, dvi, Dual link Dvi, Svideo, so pretty much any tv in the world no matter how ghetto can be plugged right in as another monitor.

Nvidia, dell, You guys need to get on the ball with these driver, if i cant play crysis on medium (at least!!!) at naitive 1920 1200... oh the tears will fall.

 

Put the 169.09 driver on and didn't see any noticable increase in performance. I guess these are just more stable than the 169.04 driver.

 

https://www.gelaskins.com/skins.php?Device=7&Category=11&Skin=121&ProductCode=239

Theres a link to the skin that i posted pics of earlier.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v719/Ivealwaysgotmail/DSC02392.jpg

 

I don't know about raid, check their website, it might have some info on there about that.

The keyboard has two connections, one has two wires,that is probably for the LEDS, if you wanna see it, next to the secondary lcd there is a groove in the case, put your fingernail under and pull up gently, make sure the screen is opened all the way and gently pull until the panel comes off, there are four screws to undo and then slide the keyboard towards the screen and you will see two cables connecting it to the motherboard.

I think the speaker crackling comes from another set of ****house drivers provided by Dell, this time for the sound card, They dont crackle for me as I am using the generic windows drivers, if you want, uninstall all of the sound drivers and software and the sound is much better, but there is no settings for quality and different equaliser settings

 

I liked yours so much ivealwaysgotmail I ordered the big fish one - im not going to cut out the dell logo circle in the middle - it'll go right over the top

https://www.gelaskins.com/skins.php?Device=7&Category=11&Skin=121&ProductCode=241

Im sitting here waiting for the courier - expecting delivery this morning, and praying for an LG panel....

 

How did you get it in the Xps m1730 shape? Did you cut the skin shape yourself?

 

You need to change the region to match that of the BD film you want to watch (e.g. US if your BD film is US).

If that doesn't work than download the BD playback patch (link in the last 3-4 posts from me, just click to display all my posts or scroll back a couple of pages)

 

Here's a new question: Does the 1730 come witha TV tuner? The Dell website says it's optional, but I can't see the option on the configuration page anywhere?

 

Somewhere in the South of England - There is a Delivery Truck with my Dell Xps M1730 on it - Due to be Delivered to me today.

It's like Xmas Morning - Except Santa is stuck in a Traffic Jam with no ETA!

Frag, Out.

 

Hi - mines been on 'pre production' for a week now - how long does this phase take? I ordered on 10th Nov.

 

What country? On the US Site it is a $125 option located under the "Software and Accessories" tab.

 

UK - can't see it on dell.co.uk

 

The pre-production can take a day and a month, it depends on how long time it takes dell to get it's components

 

OK thanks, I'll keep waiting!

 

Mine sat in Pre-Production from the 4th of Nov to 15th - When it went into Production.

It then shipped on the 16th and should be delivered today the 19th.

Frag. Out.

 

OK, thanks for letting me know. I ought to get mine next week some time then on that basis.

 

EDITED - SORRY - THIS IS IN RESPONSE TO DEFRAG OF RAID 0 DISKS.........

The answer is yes. Your OS views the array as a single volume and then it's up to the RAID controller to slice and dice according to how it sees fit. I've been defragging using auslogics defrag on my 2x200 RAID 0 since I got this machine.

 

Thanks zergworld. I also have the same 2x200 RAID 0 configuration on my machine. Will use auslogics defrag now.

 

Anyone here running Vista 64bit? Which video drivers are you using?

I'm not happy so far with the performance of Crysis on this new 1730. I expected something much better. 1024x768 at medium to low settings gives OK performance. Nothing like what I expected.

 

So D-Day has arrived and we should see an annoucement from Alienware/Nvidia later today in relation to the 8800M GTX.

I've seen engadget's article where google cache showed the 1024Mb (512+512) 8800M GTX costing.... wait for it...... $1000 extra! Hopefully to sweet god, the M1730 will take these on board shortly and at more real world price.

Anyone know a good website to watch for news? Apart from Nvidia / Alienware ... wonder if Dell is worth watching?

EDIT: Seems the teasers are out check out next post!

 

Well for those who wanna see something very very nice...

http://www.alienware.com/intro_pages/m17x_m15x.aspx

 

The 8800GTX SLI has been out for a few days already...
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071116/20071116005612.html?.v=1

The web site has been taking orders for a few days:
http://www.pcmicroworks.com/blackhawk.htm

Try it...5000 USD for the max config (except on HDD space).

Got the info on the German forum...funny they got stuff written in English faster than we did

 

http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3155

So good and bad news...

Good news: The 8800M GTX is unreal, really really impressive and blows away (sry guys) the 8700M and 7950M. Guess that's not that much of a surprise.

Bad news: Dell are NOT listed (according to article) as being one of the first producers to include the 8800M in any form . So I guess its a choice 17" Alienware or wait for Dell to kick into gear and get us some 8800M's.


On another point the new alienware 17" might have the current M1730 licked... have to wait for webpage to go live.

 

Have you bought the full game? Or are you playing the demo? The demo doesn't support SLI, so obviously it shouldn't run too well on the M1730.

 

No...I bought the full game. I'm going to run some benchmarks and compare them to what I'm finding here on the thread. We'll see.

 

Anybody have this problem?

"I connected a second monitor (LG) via DVI to my laptop and went into the nVidia control panel to choose Dualview (want to be able to run 1 thing on my desktop and another on my LG panel), but i could only choose "Choose only 1 screen". I tried going into my display settings, and again it only showed 1 screen! How can I get it to show two screens? Is it because of my beta driver? (169.04)"

 

Crysis is running well on my 1730. I'm currently using 169.04 drivers and these are great. Also don't forget Crysis doesn't run as well in Vista as it does in XP so maybe you should look at creating a dual boot OS if it bothers you too much?

Also, regarding the Alienware machine, it is awesome yes but it's something I wouldn't have bought anyway... I've got a friend who works for Dell and my 1730 was heavily discounted and Alienware could not have come anywhere near what I paid for my full spec DELL.

 

Just ordered my 1730 (UK), after the lead time for the 1710 was another 6 weeks.

I've ordered the base proc, which I'm not too hung up on proc speed, however the memory types is ships with don't appear to be the fastest it can take. Crucial seem to offer a fast one, I'm wondering if its work replacing the memory from Crucial?

Also, where can I source a good sleeve and bag? I want a bag that doesn't shout "Dell", "XPS", "Expensive laptop" or "Man bag".

 

169.04 on Vista 64bit? I couldn't get those working right. Kept Crashing.

163.75 is what I currently have installed (the vista 64bit versions).