--->The Official Studio XPS 1340 Owner's Thread<---

Has anyone been able to fix the clicking/system freezing for half a second coming from the Seagate FreeFall HDD? I'm running Windows 7 RTM x64.

 

Quick questions before I take a SXPS 13 as a replacement for my m1330.

Can I use it on my lap comfortably(YouTube, music, browsing) with a 9400m(Dell will not give me SLI)?

Have audio issues been fixed where the driver uses 50% of the CPU?

Are the 3hr battery life count for a WLED and 9400m or for those with SLI?

Should I keep my m1330 with LED,X3100,T7500 if I need good battery life(current close to 4 hours).

 

Man, it's been two months since the 1640 got an updated GPU. Where's the 1340 refresh?

The G210M has started appearing in a couple Asus notebooks ( 1, 2) for the September-October period so the supply is obviously available. I would consider them but they're crippled by a ULV processor. C'mon Dell...

 

I'm a little used to 4:30 - 5:00 for battery life, having come from a Sony Vaio Z and a MacBook Pro (the latter of the two having somewhere around ~5:30 even in Windows 7, and better than that for OS X). The XPS 13 seems to get dinged for its battery life and build quality quite a bit; I'm not sure how much there is to all that.

 

With build quality, I think most computers are now compared to MacBook Pro Unibody, so everything with fail in comparison. The main problem with sXPS build quality is vent placement. When the computer is open the screen blocks the vent, which causes a heat problem. I don't find it that big of a deal. Unvolting helps and applying Artic Silver. Coming from a 2-year old 17" notebook, it is a welcome change in heat. Also there aren't many 13inch notebook's capable of gaming.

Battery life needs depends on the user. Some are okay with 1 hour, others want a 4-5hour battery or more. If the battery life isn't enough, then another computer would be better suited for that person. 9-cell battery is what you need then if you get this computer.

 

TennisFan......

I had the replacement as you did from the M1330.

This system is much cooler than the M1330 was and I haven't had any audio problems whatsoever. I also haven't experienced any of the problems with rear vent placement because there are no heat problems...never even hear the fans to tell u the truth.

Its a bit heavier but the one I received is a perfect build and a huge step up from the m1330 with the backlit silent keyboard.

Great system!!!

 

Also, if the HDMI option doesn't show up in the list at first, you may need to right-click and select Show Disabled Devices.

 

That's a hard drive issue. You need a new hard drive. I had the same problem.

 

is the 9500 good? it looks like from benchmarks that its not much of an improvement over the integrated.

 

That's because the 9500M GE is a combination of a crappy discrete GPU and a better integrated GPU. In other words it is a discrete 9200M GS w/ 256MB onboard GDDR3 RAM + an integreated 9400M G. It's performance lies between the 9400M G and the 9500M GS. Is it worth whatever Dell charges for it? Probably not. Is it a nice thing to have (though largely for bragging rights)? Yes .

 

Your replacement stopped the noise completely? Some people here have had the same problem with replacements.

 

According to these benchmarks, the 9500 works better in some cases than others. The TDP (25W) is still too high for the performance it offers though imo. For the same amount of heat it outputs, they could of fit in a 9600M GT (23W TDP).

You should also know the 9500M may suffer from micro stuttering because of different frame times of the two different GPUs.

Hybrid-SLI in a notebook this size was never a good idea (even though I supported the idea initially by submitting it to Dell, twice, and it became popular before it got implemented in SLI form - kicking myself now don't worry ).

As I had already mentioned in this thread, the performance per watt isn't great and it causes more trouble then it is worth (all explained in the link provided). They should stick with a single G210m next time which provides performance probably greater than the existing SLI setup enabled whilst sipping battery life with only a 14W TDP (near integrated levels). Which brings me to...

Hey! Has anyone noticed on the UK site most of the offers (£100+ prices cuts) for the 1340/1640 are ending on 9/9/2009? Is this just normal marketing or are they likely to announce an update or refresh?

A lot of other events are taking place during this period, such as the Apple event and rumored Alienware ' Landfall' product announcement. And Alienware are owned by Dell now right? What do you guys think?

 

I just discovered a dead pixel-ish on my screen. Although from my prior experiences dead pixels were black ... this one is in "ALL COLORS". I tried to clean the LCD screen multiple times, but no success. So I called the XPS support and they are going to replace my whole screen + the glass lol. That's not bad right ?

p.s I'm 100% sure it is hardware-related, since making a PrtScn or External Monitor it displays perfect.

* Also I asked Dell when they were going to release the official Windows 7 drivers, and the guy told me Dell is currently busy with testing all the drivers, but that we XPS1340 owners can expect the new BIOS + Win7 drivers around November !

 

Sigh.. AFTER Windows 7 makes a public release in October, and even the Studio XPS 16 has Windows 7 Drivers AND a Bios update

 

IMO Hybrid SLI would be fine so long as they could have fit something better than a 9200M GS in there (Paired alongside a watered down 9400M G for a lower combined TDP). Either way, as long as we still have bragging rights over the Apple crowd I'm happy .

Here in the U.S. there's currently a specials which add a rather nice 25% discount to both of them (ending 9/10/09) though there are also specials elsewhere.

 

wow that's a big coupon

 

New Nvidia drivers are out: 186.91. I have them running on my 9400M, but haven't noticed any differences yet. Maybe this will solve some of the problems people have been having.

Download here: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/120-18x-series-geforce-driver-releases/

 

Has anyone found any games that actually run better with both GPUs running? I've tried Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Halo 2, Oblivion, and Ghostbusters and they all run the same or slower in SLI. If I could do over I'd skip the 9500m GE and just stick with the 9400m G to save $100.

 

For me pretty much all I've tried .

 

Sure, in my experience most games do benefit - I ran a bunch of benchmarks.

Those results are from quite a while ago using relatively ancient drivers. 6 months worth of driver development (ie. using the latest drivers from Nvidia) have increased performance a little while increasing support for newer games, I've found.

 

My ethernet still ceases to work correctly after trying this.

 

I have a question re the data rates during file copying.

I have the 320 GB 7200rpm drive in my 1340. SiSoft Sandra disk benchmark shows the laptop hard drive reading at about 80MB/sec. Didn't do write test as it requires an empty hard disk.

My disk has 3 partitions, 32 bit Vista OS, 64 bit Windows7 OS, and Recovery.

I tried copying a folder and subfolders containing 1.6 GB of photos and videos as follows:

Running the Windows 7 OS:
1) From original location to another folder on the same partition - overall data rate was 10.5 MB/sec
2) From original location to a folder on the other OS partition - overall data rate was 14 MB/sec
3) From original location to a folder on a USB2 connected WD Passport external drive - overall data rate was 17 MB/sec

To eliminate disk drivers, I tried the same sequence of events running the Vista OS and obtained similar results.

I don't think any of the overall data rates are very good considering the fast hard disk in the 1340. Are these rates what I should expect, or do I have a problem?

Thanks

Geoff

 

Things to think about:

1. You're reading and writing to the same HDD. Your HDD can only do one at a time - so there's going to be some speed loss since you need to read before writing to the new location.
2. Write speeds are typically much lower than read speeds
3. The SiSoft disk benchmark presumably measures sequential access. Most of your files won't be in a single huge continuous chunk, they'd be spread across the drive. It's likely your drive is seeking all over the place, reducing both read and write speeds.
4. Copying/moving/writing/reading lots of small files is slower than performing the same operation on a large contiguous file. One reason is the disk seeking as I mentioned before - if the files are scattered around then the HDD needs to seek all over the place to read the data. I also wouldn't be surprised if Windows needed to perform some sort of IO flush after each file is written, to guarantee the data is written.
5. Write/read speeds vary across the surface of the drive. The outer portions of the circular platters are faster for reading/writing, and the speed decreases as the drive fills up towards the centre.

 

Hey guys and gals, been reading this thread for the last week or so as I await the arrival of my XPS 1340 which should finally show up today. That said, I had a question for you experts out there. There's been some talk about Dell updating some of the parts to eliminate the overheating issues...are there any definitive things to look for within the laptop to tell if mine has the updated parts?

Secondly, I'm assuming that there are at least a few of you running Windows 7 RTM by now. Are there any caveats that you have found as far as drivers that weren't picked up, or any other issues? I ordered mine with the 9500M and I'm reading that Windows 7 doesn't support Hybrid SLI...is this correct? I don't care too much one way or another as this laptop will primarily be used for photo editing and video editing while on the go. I just want to make sure that I'm setting my expectations appropriately.

And just for the heck of it, here is the basic config I ordered:

Core2 P8700
4GB DDR3
13.3" WXGA WLED
9500M
500GB 7200 RPM HD
Soundblaster X-Fi (Software Enabled)

Thanks guys.

Zerin Dube

 

Check to see if the airvent in the top left corner(under the studio XPS logo) has 3 horizontal rows of 4 slit tall grills... well here's a picture of what mine is like.
So your airvent may be different than the one in the picture.

I am running windows 7 and I have hybrid sli, I installed nvidia's drivers instead of dells drivers so I could manually change from hybrid sli to single.

Also it is recommended that you replace the thermal paste so the notebook will run much cooler.
If you're interested- http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=412389

 

I'm running Windows 7 with hybrid SLI.. the hybrid SLI is a joke. When it's enabled the entire system runs slower and the graphics system experiences minor delays. It's terrible. It's not Win7 either because it was worse in Vista. Running in power saver mode is much more efficient. I've never had temp issues with this machine in over 6 months.

 

As elijahRW said, just look at the ventilation cap. IMO there probably won't be a replacement soon.

I'm still on the RC here but IIRC everything save for Hybrid SLI seems to work fine (though I haven't tested the webcam on W7 yet). Windows 7 won't support Hybrid SLI natively though I don't really see the benefit in it even if it did as it is almost always best to simply use the lastest drivers from GPU manufactures anyways. As far as drivers go, I suggest either using 186.81 from Nvidia's site or 186.12 from Dell's M17x site. The prior seem to give a slight performance increase whereas the latter seem to provide increased stability (ironic as they are beta drivers).

Nice, your configuration is similar to mind (sound option being the only listed variant).

 

I'd like to thank you guys for this thread, it's nice to see there's a support system out there to brainstorm and trouble shoot!

I just order my Studio XPS 13 in White which is new to Canadian buyers. I'm stoked. i've been looking around for the right laptop for months and am glad i was so picky because Dell finally released the white Studio XPS. I'm hoping I will be very happy.

4GB Memory
320GB HardDrive
LED Screen

and a whole bunch of other goodies.

Also ordered the MS Laser Bluetooth Mouse and a Acme Made Kate Bag.

I will post pics as soon as I get it. Hoping to film an unboxing as well.

Order confirmed September 9th - est ship date is Sept 24.

Thanks again guys. I'll keep reading and post again soon.

 

Yeah be sure to film it or take pictures I wanna see the Artic White ! Personally I really don't know how its gonna look like ... since the picture on the Dell site is a little bit over the top white IMO. I have the Marlot Red btw lol.

 

Yes pictures of the white Must see them

 

Question: How loud is your dvd drive when viewing a dvd?

For some reason it is as loud as my 1720 when it burns a disc.

 

I have the same problem, I was trying to ignore it but it's impossible to drag a box around something the first few tries.

Here's what mine is doing:

Left-Click and hold
Start to drag
hard pressure on the left touchpad button but the drag lets go after 1-3 seconds.

Dell 1340 XPS Studio 13
Vista x64 SP2
P9500 4GB dell memory
only upgrade is a verizon wireless card

 

So my initial impressions of the 1340 are great. Installed Win7 Ultimate RTM and my apps on it last night and it simply smokes my Latitude D630 in performance (If only it ran like my i7 desktop!).

Had it in my lap on the couch yesterday while doing most of this work and excessive heat was never an issue. The laptop doesn't get any hotter under load from applications like Photoshop than any other laptop I've ever used. Granted, I'm not using this for gaming at all, but I don't think heat will be of a concern for me.

Dislikes...I *HATE* glossy screens, but what can I do. I like everything else about the laptop so I'll learn to live with it. The gorgeous finish is more form over function as every single spec of dust, fingerprints, oils, etc shows up. Optical drive can get a little loud when spinning feverishly, but not that big of a deal. One thing I really am annoyed about is that the power plug placement is on the side of the laptop rather than the rear. I don't know why but it really irritates the hell out of me that it sticks out the side.

That said, I'm happy with my purchase! First real test of it will be out in the field when I'm photographing Petit Le Mans in a couple of weeks!

 

Is there an easy way to tell between the WLED and CCFL screens? I'm looking at the build sheet and it shows it with a 2.0MP Webcam when my order sheet clearly shows the WLED screen has a 1.3 vs. the CCFL's 2.0. I just want to make sure I'm getting what I paid for.

Edit: Confirmed they sent me a laptop with the wrong screen. They are sending a replacement.

 

guys any news on the esata thing? im trying to read all the pages but theres just too many. my esata froze when i tried to plug it into my friends drive. now they are saying " dells suck" .

 

A thread where I asked the same question: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=377497

For some reason, many Dell reps don't seem to know the difference between the terms "LED", "LCD", and "CCFL".

 

Lets hope they get this one right, I'm just frustrated that I spent hours configuring the OS from scratch and installing all the apps I needed...only for them to have to send a new one. Oh well, such is life. As long as they make it right in a reasonable amount of time I don't care. I'm just glad I caught the mistake the first day!

 

Right now I can drag icons just fine maybe it's something about pun

When I bought my 1340, the first month I noticed it did something like that. I thought I just wasn't pressing the button hard enough, so I think i automatically got used to pressing the left mouse button a little harder.
If I were you I'd use the notebook for a few weeks and if it doesn't seem to go away, call dell and get the mouse replaced.

Take a look at the rear side of your 1340 and tell me how a power plug could go back there XD

If they are sending you a full replacement laptop, just swap the hard drives and you shouldn't have to do the configuring all over again

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=348270

 

how do you activate the hybrid sli manually? only way i know how is to put full performance mode rather than power saving and even then sometimes it doesnt activate.

 

Update your GPU drivers to those of either Dell's beta M17x (186.12) release or Nvidia's official release (186.81). This will cause the GPUs to act independent of other power management settings by default.

 

Hello everyone, I've been offered a replacement XPS 13 by Dell since mine was riddled with issues which they seemingly couldn't be arsed fixing. One niggle I had with mine was the constant fingerprints/grease (I am blessed with rather sweaty palms) dust rapidly accumulating etc.; I was wondering if the white finish is any better in this regard i.e. not glossy or less noticeably dirty? Particularly whether the palmrest component is still black and glossy, if this laptop could come with the same finish used on the rim and underside I'd be all over that...

I'm not even sure whether they'll give me the option to be honest since the tech support were pretty vague as to whether I'd just get the same model (mine was an original, shipped in Feb) or whether I could pick and choose different components at my discretion. Anyone had the same experience as me?

 

You can ask for the studio as they are considered the same by Dell... I have both. If you thought the m1330 held fingerprints, get ready for it. The high gloss plastic cover, regardless of clour, picks up the skins oil....no way around it...gorgeous machine though.

 

As you can see here, the palm rest is still black and the lid is still very glossy. However, logically the Alpine White lid should display fewer prints (or atleast make the less noticeable) due to the color. If you truly hate them, you can ask a few other who planned on waxing their SXPS's to see how it turned out (there are a few threads regarding that somewhere on this board).

 

I finally got around to testing the Ethernet problem after hearing it all the time.

If I've read correctly, it's that the Ethernet port doesn't work after waking up from sleep?

I just tested it and I don't seem to have any problems.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DELL-XPS-13-1340-Series-Laptop-SGP-Wrist-Rest_W0QQitemZ370203739661QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5631dcc60d&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1262&_trkparms=|301:0|293:1|294:30
Try that.

I'm currently waiting on a good special to get the 1340. I was deciding between this and 14z, which has many of the same specs(p8600 and 9400), but with a non-protruding battery (8 cell, long battery life compared the the 1340) and a higher res screen. Anyone else thinking between the two?

 

I'd say go with the 14z if you will get it for less (and don't mind the 0.7" larger screen). The only upside the SXPS has right now are aesthetics. The only annoyance with the 14z is the RAM preset amounts (i.e. 3GB or an overpriced 5GB of RAM as opposed to a normal 4GB option). I'd expect Dell to make something about the SXPS more "attractive" (probably in specifications though possibly in price) though sometime in the future.

 

Thanks for the reply. I was really leaning towards the 14z until recently. The RAM may be an issue because I will be upgrading. I'm planning on keeping whatever I purchase for atleast 2-3 years. I want to get a good deal on the Studio XPS 13, it looks much nicer, but I'm still pretty unsure between the two. Battery life isn't too important for me, it's just a nice addition. I could always pick up the 9cell for on the go.

 

How is the performence of the 9-cell battery....how many hours you get from your Studio XPS 13?
greetz

 

I am thinking about getting the 1340. I have tried to read through all the pages but it's just too much and I might have missed something. But anyways I have some questions:

1. Do the touch media keys freeze frequently? Has it been fixed yet? If not what would be the best way to get around it?
2. Between the 7200rpm and 5400rpm hard drives, which one would be a better choice for this notebook? (assuming same capacity)
3. Is it necessary to open up the case and apply new thermal grease? I'm not technical enough to do that myself

Again sorry if I missed anything. Thanks!