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

@Jamal,

Too bad they wouldn't send somebody out to your place and replace it onsite. I guess when it's a subwoofer it's a bit too difficult, but it may be worth asking them if you haven't.

There's so much demand at factory outlets like this it's impossible to habnd test each machine, they run a software suite on multiple machines, so stuff like that gets missed. Not making excuses, it's just a bummer.

 

No it was a special in their February catalog. But the $150 Dell Promo Gift Card is use able for ALL Dell purchases.

Basically it has a scratch off on the back, which has, I assume, Alpha-Numerical code which can be entered at the Shopping Cart.

 

im interested.. what happens if its expired?

 

I have written up what exactly my issues were. I shall keep my post up to date with what the local Dell here in India is doing. If you need help, please feel free to contact me.
My post can be found here.

I know its long but that's what happened to me. I hope you guys (the ones who have this machine) can check it out and let me know if you have similar problems. May the answer be Yes or No, I hope you reply there with your answer (detailed would be great) along with which country you're from (so that I can tell the Dell representatives here of the status in other countries).

Thanks a lot

 

@JAnderton,

After reading your post I looked back over my order and the item description on my in production laptop said "Integrated 10/100 Network Card".

I was fuming, I called them and they told me the description was wrong and it's a 10/100/1000.
So I should be ok, I am in the U.S. BTW.

These typos Dell has are killing me.

 

They advise to come to my house and try to repair it but i leave my house at 7am and don't return untill 9pm (work then school evenings) and since i dont have special tech uspport they wont come on weekends for me ..also they said i could send it to one of their depost but it will take over a week to send repair and send back SCREW THAT! i had enough with waiting almost a month on my first build then a week to get a replacement..im hurting without a laptop dude.

 

Well I checked my NIC and it says Broadcom NetLink Gigabit Ethernet but when I go into Link Speed 1000mpbs isn't available. I'll have to connect it to a gigabit switch next week to see whether it connects at 1gbps.

As for my hinge cover. I have the same issue. My left hinge cover is slightly open. I'm thinking of using some superglue to fix it. I don't want some contractor open my LCD and letting dust in between the LCD and glass cover when he tries to fix it.

 

What is the average wait time for the "In Production" phase?

 

I ordered mine on April 3rd and mine is till in the production/building stage

 

lol, I'm not trying to BS anyone here. NBR has helped me greatly in selecting a great laptop so I figure I help someone else out here.

I can provide you the card # so you can verify the balance on the card. You will however need the Scratch-off code to actually use the card, which I haven't scratched-off.

Besides, it has an expiration date of June 16th, 2009. Approximately two months from now.

 

ur not trying to help. u aint going to use the card so you thought might aswell make some cash off it

 

Have you ever used it on a 1000MBit network? Cause the guys over here have kinda ended up telling me the same thing but it doesn't work at 1000MBit for me.
Dell India has been, for the past few weeks I believe, testing out this config over at their Office trying to fix this issue.

MadBoris: If you could get hold of another 1000MBit machine (like I have my desktop), connect them with crossover CAT-5 cables, set both of them to 1000MBit and try the transfer, you should find out.
Assuming your other machine isn't slow or anything (RAM should have the ability to do 40 odd MB/s transfer), try copying a 5 odd GB file over ethernet to your laptop (or vice versa). If it goes at 40-60MB/s constant, that's great
If its lingering around 10-12.5MB/s then you are working on a 100MBit network and you need to call Dell up again.
----------------------------
Update: @owais
Are you referring to my prior post or are you talking to namlas15?

 

@janderton,

I haven't rec'd it yet. Laptop is still in production, that is why when I looked at build list and saw 10/100 I was miffed.

I'll have to wait till I get and then I will test it and know for sure.

 

Well I think this 100Mbit card thing is the last straw for me. My backlit keybaord flicker, the left hinge cover opening and not the NIC issue has made me wonder what Dell is playing at. I'm going to call customer care on Tuesday and ask fora replacement. Maybe even a refund. But what other laptop can I buy with the same kind of specs?

 

Please tell me if this works. It would save me a lot of hassle.

 

how much did urs cost? £1500?

 

I don't know if it's different in the UK, but when I had my issues I was about done. I finally got a hold of the "Sales Resolution" team and they fixed everything for me. My HDD crashed 3 days in and after a week of waiting for a tech to come fix it, I was sent to them. I had a replacement laptop in 3 days and everything was great after.

 

I'll speak to them on Tuesday and post an update here. The problem is there is no NIC on my order details. Which I find just a little fishy.

 

No kidding. I am not going to use the card so I am giving it for $125, which saves you money, and me as well.

 

I am getting very, very slow shutdown times whenever the current Windows session I have had been resumed from Standby mode. (Shutdown time when I don't do any standby at all is very fast.)

Anyone else having this issue?

 

Have you done a clean install or is this with the factory image?

 

Also what software have you installed (office, security, etc.) Alot of programs have caused shutdown problems with windows. Also, since it's a resume issue maybe some driver isn't reinitializing just right and is hanging on shutdown.

 

My plan is (once the unit arrives) to image each partition before I do anything, then I can decide how and when I want to reinstall from scratch. That way I can familiarize myself with the different Dell software to see if there is anything I want to put back on after a clean install.

Just thinking out loud here. I've read many who have opted for the clean install and others who have gone with the default setup, and except for uninistalling McAfee, they seem to be happy.

 

Mine shuts down in about 5 seconds; although, im running the 256SSD. I did not do a clean install, but, just removed some of the bloatwate (which isnt THAT bad, imo).

On another note, im doing some video conversions and finding my sxps16 (P8600) to be 6-9x faster than my old laptop (1.2 GHz C2D7600 ULV, 533FSB).

 

What are people getting for battery life with the 6 cell? I have the RGB screen, 7200k rmp hard drive, and c2d 2.66 GHz, on a full charge the icon only says about 1 hr 45 min on power saver, keyboard backlight on 1, brightness in the middle. seems low to me.

 

That's what I've been hearing. I don't think that can be extended, but you might want to check out the " Undervolting" guide

 

I was getting about 2:30-2:50 with it.

 

Mine shuts down that fast too IF I it didn't go to standby mode prior to the shutdown since a fresh restart. But if the laptop goes to standby mode, then resumes, then shuts down later, the shutdown process will take a couple of minutes of more.

 

I took my 1640 (P8600, 7200RPM) on a flight, and just watched non-HD videos with it. It lasted me just 1 hour and 50 minutes too. (Lowest brightness, no keyboard backlight, CPU undervolted and underclocked to 1866MHz (7x max down from original 9x max multiplier), Powerplay mode on GPU)

 

The backlight thing might be incorrect fitting. Call tech support and they'll send a guy over to fix it immediately. I had a slight problem with my hinge ( http://karunab.com/2009/04/10/dell-studio-xps-1640-issues/ has details and snaps) and they actually sent me a new monitor (I thought it would need refitting or something).
It seems Dell sends replacement parts immediately if they think a new laptop is faulty. I got the package on the second day and had an engineer over the day after (my timings and their timings on the same day didn't match else it'd have been the same day).

I assume that they'll do a replacement for your keyboard too depending on what's wrong. Shouldn't be an issue.

As for a replacement and getting a new machine, I don't know of any other machines which give you Penryn cores (which was on my requirements list tbh) and everything else that this machine does at this price (or lower)

 

What's the option under in the bios to turn the esata USB on when computer is off?

 

does the SXPS have a HDMI output?

 

The USB power setting is on by default. I can't exactly remember the setting in the BIOS but its on the Advanced page.

 

Yes it has HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.

 

HDMI is old, it has DisplayPort, and it has HDMI for legacy support.

 

http://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/dell-studio-xps-16

The XPS 16 features a down-firing subwoofer as well as stereo speakers that flank the keyboard. Audio fidelity is very good but not best-in-class. At moderate volumes, music, movies, and games sound rich, with plenty of bass, but push the volume past halfway, and you soon reach the limits of the speakers—we noticed lots of clipping and distortion. Dell noted that production units will employ a different (and better) subwoofer than the one on our preproduction unit, but that won’t clean up the sound of the midrange. All told, the HP HDX and Toshiba Qosmio G55 deliver better sound.

is this true? i bought a hp dv7t last august, the speakers sound horrendous with a so called subwoofer. i have some doubts about putting a subwoofer in a 1" thin chassis. anyone here can tell me the true sound quality of studio 16 or is there any video/sound clip available? thx

 

To be honest, I think the sound is quite good. I tried to listen to HPs at BB when making comparisons by using YouTube videos (specifically, a DMB video of Halloween from last year's tour, which to me was a very good test). The HPs were *horrible*.

The sound here is very rich, and usually only at 50. I had expectations, and, at the very least, they were met...if not surpassed a bit.

 

You could get a HDX16 for same or better specs cheaper . I was looking at the XPS16 but once I compared what you can get specs wise, I went with the HP. I maxed out mine with 2.93Ghz processor, 8GB ram, 320G 7200rpm HDD, 130M 1GB GPU, Blu-ray, Blutooth, backlit keyboard, Vista Untimate 64bit, and 6 and 9 cell batteries for $3200. But There was a a 25% off coupon so I got it for $2500. I priced the dell with same specs and it was over $3000 and Dell almost never has big coupons.

Not saying the XPS16 is bad, but its just too expensive compared to what you get with the HDX16.

 

i am so mad right now!! i'm still waiting for my SXPS16 and its been forever!! i ordered april 6th and they started building it on the next day. it has been 5 days since they started building my laptop and seems like its been forever.. it still has to deliver also.. what! is! taking! them! so! god! dam! long! to! build! this! thing!! my estimated dilivery is the week after next week..

 

thx, but my studio 1737 has a sound quality can better apple iphone, i wouldnt settle for anything less. "good" is not good enough for me.
have any of you tried uninstall dell sound driver and using vista default instead? it works wonder on studio 1737, night and day diference its that much better with vista default.

 

If you look back through this thread their are several enhancements that can be made beyond how it comes out of the box, 2 in particular that are potentially tangible, I just don't remember them well enough to share more. Their's likely an audiophile or two in this thread. You'll see a guy asking about 5.1 playback for several pages and after that I think some conclusions are reached about a driver and adjusting certain settings that prevent the sound from blowing out.

 

What, did you think they pop out of a toaster?

It's because of you and the thousands of others like you that are buying this laptop.
All of you please call Dell and cancel your order so that they can produce them faster and my order can move up quicker. Thx ahead.

 

LOL...I personally think we could all use more patience.

 

That will move up. You have to remember, this is a holiday weekend. Yesterday was a holiday. I doubt much, if any, work was done yesterday.

But, for frame of reference, I ordered mine on March 22nd. Got it on April 2nd.

 

I believe this depends on the definition or scale of "good" being used here. How do you know what I rate to be good? That's the problem of a subjective question.

Why ask something if no answer is going to be good enough for you?

Pardon the pun in the previous sentence. It was unintended.






Oh, and for the record, I am a *massive* understater. "Good" for me is "amazing" for most. "Fairly decent" would generally rate as "good", I suppose. That piece of information about someone's, you know, opinion, might come in handy when *asking* for someone's, you know, opinion.

 

I had that 25% coupon, and was leaning towards the HDX16 too. But then I went hands on with HPs, and then I came across a config with a SSD (something not configurable with the HDX16), and it became a no-brainer.

To be honest, the TV Tuner and 130M really had me. And I'm sure it's a great machine. But it ended up not being for me, and I have absolutely zero regret about this purchase.

 

apple iphone/ipod is extremely popular, i think most ppl can understand what i meant when i used it as a standard or benchmark.

 

It is extremely popular. I'm not debating its use as a benchmark. What I'm debating is you asking for opinions, and THEN either not accepting them or not stating what the benchmark is.

Without the information of your benchmark, your response is rather...not irrational, but definitely not-in-line with what you asked. Even then, it's weak at best, given the response to the response of the subjective question you posed to the SXPS owners here.

 

hmmm the iphone/ipod is very popular but its not a notebook, its very hard to compare the sound of one against the other as they are completely different things, im amazed but the sound of the sxps16 it blows away my previous notebooks sound, my friends also said the sound is fantastic on this notebook.
the subwoofer isnt to much and seems to give the sound some substance and bite, not the thumping sound some subwoofers give just a nice compliment to the speakers, enrichening the sound nicely.
Anyway hope this helps

 

guess i just have to settle for this 8.4lbs 2.5" thich behemoth.
anyway i saw some youtube video showed on dell 1640, gpu is in the center of chassis and far away from fan, while cpu is directly connected to fan and vent. this design flaw could well be the reason of 1640 overheats.