===> The Official Studio XPS 1640 Owner's Thread<===

New XPS 16 owner here. Got mine off the outlet for about 1100 + a 15% off coupon. Very good deal in my opinion.

I am now going to install a SSD. I have a friend who can sell me a Kingston even cheaper than Newegg. I told him to hold onto it for a couple more days. I know its not the fastest SSD out there, but it shouldn't have any compatibility issues should it?

Also, is there a way to make my 500GB 5400RPM drive in the machine already worth anything? As in, can I use it for external storage? Or do I need to pick up an external bay for this? I just dont want a perfectly good 500GB's sitting around with nothing to do...

 

I actually have 6...My main system is a Dell XPS 730X and I also have another Mini 9 that has Windows 7 on it.

I use some more than others. Variety is the spice of life.

 

wats the point in it? they all seem to be montevina centrino 2 laptops so once nehlem(cant spell it) comes out, your going to have a lot of out of date laptops.

 

according to the rep that called me up, dell are stocking new 128gb and 256gb ssds which are very fast. dell also has very cheap ssd prices which are way cheaper then anything you buy seperately.
i dont know how considering they charge £190 from a p8600>t9400 which sony charge £30 for.

get a enclosure for the 500gb hdd.

 

Okaaaaay..... would someone please like to tell me what's going on, I now apparently have 369gb left when just yesterday it was 377, I haven't put anything or or taken anything off the hard drive. If this keeps hapening I will have no space left in a few months

 

Really? So when Nahalem (I can spell it) comes out, you mean all my current laptops will stop working? I wasn't aware of that!

My HP HDX "Dragon" 20" is already (as you call it) "out of date" and it's still the best one of the bunch.

There is this place on the interweb called ebay...

 

Yes, I've been waiting for a "percent off" sale on a Studio XPS or something that Dell offers the 256GB SSD in...I'll pickup a base model with the 256GB SSD, and with the discount, it'll be a steal! Then, just remove the SSD and implant a nice 320 or 500GB HDD, and resell it. SOLD!!!!

 

well i didnt say they will stop working, and yes they will be out of date as when new processors come out, there is usually a refresh by most companies and they usually stop selling the old models which makes it out of date.
by out of date i mean not the newest and usually not the fastest.

the jump from santa monica centrino to montevina centrino 2 wasent much but the jump from montevina to nehalam will be quite big as intel are releasing core i3 and i7 mobile cpu's and the cpu jump from quad core to i7 was quite big so im guessing this will too.
thats why your hp isnt so out of date.

also, if you sell them near or after the release date, you wont get as much money for them on ebay, plus they will have dropped in price a lot because they are used and when you try to sell 3-4, you lose out on quite a lot. considering people are things like macbook pros(late 08) on ebay from around £850-£900 new/used which were £1350 (£1000+ on ebay) before the update its a big drop. and apple didnt even add newer gpus or a newer design in that, just a small processor upgrade and internal battery.

 

Actually, you're preaching to the pope. Selling computers is my business, and given what I buy these for in the first place, I am almost always able to sell off a used computer for the same and usually MORE than I paid for it originally. I keep all my computers in MINT condition, so their resale value stays high. Not everyone wants or needs the newest, bestest PC on the market (except me, of course!).

I know they won't stop working when the new CPU's are introduced, I was just being a bit sarcastic. I guess I just didn't understand your point since there is no such thing as having a computer that doesn't go out of date. If I lived by your logic, I'd never own anything! It'd be like those who don't ever buy anything because they're always waiting for the next best thing, which is always right around the corner!

 

have you ever thought of the os being installed and the programs using space? the other seperate partion i thought is for recover....also dell could have put a lot of crap on your computer you can always try a clean restore.

 

I wouldn't waste your money on the Kingston. Anything but an OCZ (Vertex or Summit), G.SKILL (Falcon) or the newer Samsung SSD's are going to have the older, first gen controllers in them, which means bad pauses and studdering. Stick to the newer models for now.

 

That doesn't explain it going down 8gb in one day, even so the programs and os don't take up that much much space and the recovery partition is a separate partition, I'm not even talking about it. According to windows explorer, I have 369gb free now.

Last night I installed the first ever version of splinter cell which took up 1.5gb, that doesn't explain the 8gb gone especially seeing as I uninstalled it after a few hours because it looked like crap and the jaggies were hurting my eyes (I couldn't force AA)

 

old samsung and corsair are fine, they both use the old gen samsung controller which doesnt have any problems but is slow (90mb/70mb)

 

Nehalem...

 

I swear that's what I typed! Who changed my post?

 

Windows vista has a built in recovery feature when you install a program it backs its self up and this is called shadow copies. I beleive it is set to 80gb or so. To resize this partion follow this : http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html and then it should not go over the set amount you set it to. It is reccomended to keep it at atleast 6gb. This is how to delete the shadowcopies to get your space back : http://www.vistax64.com/vista-file-...-can-i-delete-volume-shadow-copy-c-drive.html Hope this helps

 

THANK YOU SIR!!

I just got back 40GB!!

+1

 

Well the Kingston is 100 bucks cheaper. I read the NBR for it and the didn't encounter any studdering or pauses from what I saw. Hasn't Kingston claimed to have fixed these issues?

 

Also, will I need to update BIOS and drivers when my SXPS 16 gets here? Where would any updated BIOS be found?

 

Hi guys,

my studio xps 16 has the dell 1397 wireless card so it doesn't have the centrino sticker on it

so I'm wondering :

can I upgrade to intel 5300 ?

if I already have a new mini card of 5300
can I install it myself ? how easy is the job ?

does it need to replace the antennas, so I have to disassemble the screen lid too?


I think it is so silly to get that old 1397 b/g with a high-end machine like sxps16

also i noticed that the dell 1397 is not an option in dell's website !!
looks strange ! isn't it !



I'm not in USA, so I can't call dell
please help me

 

I'm pretty sure its possible to upgrade. I have no idea how simple or complex it is though. Maybe try the hardware forums as well?

 

just go to the dell's website, then click support then enter your service tag and go to the drivers page, under the operating system select BIOS

and download the latest release .

remember that you must have the battery plugged as well as the ac source in order for the program to start flashing your bios. follow the instructions, then reboot and you are finished !

 

changing the wireless card is so easy. if you have one already then its a 5 minute job.
Download the service guide and follow the instructions.

But to sum up, remove the access panel at the bottom, remove the antennas from the existing card, remove a screw from the corner of the cards and remove. Now plug your new card in and replace the screw. Now pop on the antennas (there is three in needed for the 5300 card but they are clearly marked so you shouldnt get confused).
Boot into windows and install drivers. Its that easy.

 

Guys,lot many of us shifting to win 7 on sxps 16,thought of letting you guys know about the "Morro" free antivirus by MS,am currently using the same,its very good and very low on resources.This antivirus is still in beta stage,I think microsoft is planning to release it,at par with win 7.

Has anyone tried mouse gestures on win 7 ? am not getting it,though I wont be using it,just curious to check once.

 

Hi! I´m from Argentina and i am thinking on buying the Dell Studio XPS 16, Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600,4GB DDR3 RAM Memory, 500 GB Hard Drive, ATI Mobility Radeon M86XT 512 Mb. I am an architect and i need it to run programs like AutoCad, 3dmax, Sketchup, Vray. I´ld like you to tell me if you´ve ever had any problems with this laptop, and if it´s performance is so great as i think it is. Are Dell laptops really good laptops? Can I Install Windows xp in it? And the last one: Is BestBuy a reliable Web Site to buy this laptop with my Credit Card?

Thank you very much. Looking forward to your response.

Ps: Sorry for my english..

 

how come dell has no 1640s at the outlet?

 

You have to refresh and refresh often. As fast as they add them, they go. If you're serious about getting one from there, try early in the morning. I find if I look around 5 a.m. EST there are almost always multiple pages of them. Early bird gets the worm!

 

ohh really .. i am trying since 3 days i dont see any ...

 

Don't know what to tell you. I find them daily, you just have to be persistent.

 

age of conan ss: this game is very poorly made, i tried it out with a free 7 days trial account, not recomeended.

one of the pix has nudity, idk if its allowed on this forum

 

ill try tonight ... r prices any good when u find them?

 

what the heck is that game about? looks lame lol.

 

ok first this computer does get warm, but with all the power it has i would be surprised if it didn't. I currently don't have any problems with the laptop but i only had this computer a week or 2. Best buy i would say is reilable since hearing from others but i haven't ordered one from them at all. Dell laptops are good built with good quailty. Also the screen does block some of the exhasut vent on the back so you will a have some heat going up the screen and some going out the back. I enjoy it especially gaming just wish i could play full rgbl screen without the game slowing down..


I don't know about Cadd and that but i believe this computer would do ok, but if you could get the better graphics card that dell made available since its 1 gb and higher than the 512 mb. Also take a look at hp 16t i beilve that has similar specs.

 

The new HD 4670 card isn't better than the 3670 because it is 1GB vs 512 mb.

The difference is that the card itself is better.

Maycoinnet:

The laptop will handle CAD with the Radeon M86XT 512 MB graphics, and the RGB 1920x1080 screen is fantastic for design/engineering applications.

BestBuy is a very well known retailer here in the USA. They are like Walmart for electronics. However, you will probably have a cheaper deal if you buy straight from www.dell.com

Good luck.

 

I know i was using the size to tell the diffrence between the two i didn't know the number for the 4670 one...

 

Np i had the same problem when i first moved to vista. Pissed me off multiple times untill i found out about shadowcopies

 

I assume, since you haven't given any details about model, that it's the V-Series by Kingston, as the M-Series is a relabled Intel SSD and is expensive, and the E-Series is wickedly expensive.

I quickly looked over a couple of reviews of the V-Series SSD's. You are correct in that they seem to (according to the testers) not have any studdering issues. One of the reviews (Futurelooks.com) seemed a little too pleased and enthusiastic about it, almost to the point of seeming a bit biased about the drive.

Performance of the V-series is mediocre at 130MB/s read and 80MB/s write, and good OCZ Summit will get you 220MB/s read and 200MB/s write. Price difference seems to be about $100 (Kingston is the cheaper one).

OCZ has an awesome support forum and great tech support and are constantly improving their product via firmware upgrades. They (and the community) know all about their drive and the internal components, whereas I don't see Kingston saying all too much about their drives or firmware updates, etc.

The choice is yours, of course, but for $100, I'd still go for OCZ. G.SKILL Falcon is pretty much a clone of the OCZ Vertex, but cheaper.

 

What about the M-class SSD's? If I'm already paying that much for the OCZ, would an Intel M-class be worth looking into?

 

I wouldn't say so. It seems the Kingstom M-Series (a relabled Intel X-25M) costs MORE than an Intel X-25M (at least using Newegg.com as an example). That seems odd...

Plus, competition is really heating up and Intel, IMHO, isn't the end all, be all that it once was. Now that controllers are working properly, we're seeing some awesome read and write speeds that are well over 200MB/s. The Intel writes are still <100MB/s, but the drives (only an 80GB!) is still over $300. Some tests still show the Intel X-25M to be superior, but only under particular tests with particular file sizes and operations.


Maybe others can chime in with their opinions, but for me, OCZ is a great drive. They now have a SUMMIT line, and an AGILITY line that are less expensive than the VERTEX, but still excel. The SUMMIT line (using SAMSUNG controller) is great in that it does auto garbage cleanup without needing TRIM support by the OS or a manually run application. This keeps the drive running like new throughout it's life. I just got a 120GB SUMMIT and can report the speeds are great!

 

For average users, the Samsung 256GB SSD option that Dell offers on the SXPS16 is a killer deal and a significant upgrade from the HDD options (provided that you dont need more than 256GB on board). I know im lovnig mine

 

That is for sure, true! I'm waiting for the golden opportunity of a "percent off" deal on a notebook with the 256GB SSD option, then just resell the notebook with a 320 or 500GB drive, and keep the 256GB SSD!

 

I thought it was easily worth the extra cost, which wasn't all that much considering what other makers charge. I'm not worried about space, external drives are so cheap and a good place for disk gobbling non-system data.

 

Im new to this particular thread but I have a couple questions. Ive just bought the Dell XPS 1460 from Bestbuy.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 512MB
2.4 Ghz
500gb
4 gigs of RAM DDR3

My question is can I over clock my ATI card and whats the max amount of RAM that I can add to this laptop.

 

I too have an extra 40gb back from my hard drive, thanks

 

how did you get 40gb back to your harddrive?

 

deleting shadow copies made by vista, i believe.

 

whats the average time a studio xps 16 is in the production stage?
I re- pulled the trigger and brought it on 7/6/09

T9500 chip, 1080 P screen, blue ray burner, 256 SSD 3 year warrenty plus accidental/lo jack

 

Looks like about 2 weeks before you will have it

 

Ordered mine 29th June, still waiting. EDD of 15th.

 

where do i do that?

Also i did the Vista rating and got a 5.5 is that a good score? and how come the processor, the 2.66 one got a 5.5 i thought it would be like a 5.9 or something.