Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Review & Owner's Thread

First off, don't talk to me like like I am five years old. You do not know me. You do not own these forums.

I never said this wasn't a "great machine," I merely was lamenting at the trackpad and buzzing noise as I stated in my earlier post.

You say that this forum is a place for constructive support but you call me derogatory names, don't actually offer any kind of advice I haven't already tried, and tell me to like this product because so many other people (including yourself) love it?

Yes, I am having issues with this computer. Yes, other people are experiencing the same issues as me. And no, updating to bios A04 and the new tackpad drivers didn't fix them.

I am not trying to bash this product at all, but for $1000+ I expect a laptop that doesn't buzz at me while I am trying work. I expect a trackpad that works without skipping around. Granted it is Dell's first ultrabook and there are bound to be problems, I understand that (again, previous post) -- I even empathize -- and gave them a second chance by replacing my problematic one for the same model which consequently had the same exact problems. I am neither rich nor do I have oodles of free time messing around with drivers, and after spending such a large amount of my hard-earned money, I don't feel like sitting around waiting for Dell to come up with a fix -- one that may never even happen.

I am genuinely happy for those of you who are not experiencing these problems that I have had, I really am; but to circle back to my original point, it is easy to point fingers when you're on the other side of the fence. Ironically, you are the troll in this case and I'm not quite sure that you fully understand the meaning of the term.

 

Oh, and I have owned many things that I have been extremely satisfied with. My recently retired laptop that served me well for over 4 years with no issues comes to mind. It was a Dell, by the way.

 

I have been using this driver without issue until yesterday. Had my MS Arc Touch mouse plugged in (RF USB nub) and I keep the cypress set to disable when USB mouse present. When i unplugged the mouse, I had no trackpad. The tray icon was dead too. Going into mouse properties, i could open cypress, but if i tried to make a change it would hang when hitting "apply" - only option was to reboot.

They did fix the hidden window issue, but maybe added a different problem.

 

Yeah it's still not ready for prime time, but I think they are on the right track.
All gestures work and that makes using the trackpad a joy.

 

As I said, I was being too harsh and I admitted that. I do empathize with your situation having received two bad units which are not working as one would expect after spending a grand, I would be disappointed as well.

My apologies to you and and russhw, my comments were out of line. Please, no hard feelings.

 

LOL. I love this stuff. There is nothing wrong with my L321x. Not one thing. It's literally flawless. It is as good as my Macbook Air in every way. Better in many ways. To those on the fence about this machine, do your research but don't discount it because of a few negative experiences on this forum. Dell has sold many thousands of them. There are only a very, very few opinions on forums.
-joe-

 

I was 99% happy with mine, both of them.. but the noise sounds like a failing component that will no doubt die a few months after the warrenty runs out. The noise irritates me too but that I could probably get over. The fact that Dell can't guarentee that a new machine will resolve the issues speaks volumes to me. I'm disappointed because the unit was everything I wanted it to be, it's just that it would be a constant worry to me that I had a £1300 brick at some point - maybe it wouldnt fail but I'm not willing to take that risk. If I could be guarenteed one that didn't buzz I'd have it!

 

Even one that doesn't buzz isn't necessarily still going to be working one month outside the warranty. That's what concerns me with these sealed unit devices with most components soldered to the system board.

I suggest you order another if you like them and take out an extended 3 year warranty.


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I bought a Toshiba Dynabook U3 but can't get the video to work with Firefox. The problem may be broader but I gave up once Firefox was having a problem loading. Any suggestions? I have the latest software from Toshiba. According to DriverMax I have all of the latest USB drivers for the machine.

 

You need to install codecs. Google "k-lite codec pack", download, install.

 

Help me understand. Video works fine in Firefox not through the Dynabook so why do I now need to install codecs for the video?

 

Dell have released four new drivers on the 18-05-12,these include new touchpad drivers,quickset,network and soundcard drivers. The touchpad and sound card drivers probably are the ones most people are interested in and both are working fine,the volume issue has been sorted and is back to a decent level without using the old driver which is good to see. Touchpad drivers seem fine,i had to increase the speed of the pointer though.

 

I downloaded the 5/18 track pad drivers and have lost 3 finger back/forward. It is definitely enabled. Any advice?

 

I am constantly losing wifi & BT connection. My wifi signal is fine as I don't lose it on any other device, and I constantly have to remove & re-pair my Dell BT mouse. I'm reaching out here to see if anyone else has had this issue before I call Dell!

 

How do you guys clean the screen and keyboard deck?

 

the screen is gorilla glass. clean it however you like

 

If you install some software to check wi-fi signal strength (e.g., inSSIDer) you'll see that the wi-fi signal the XPS13 ultrabook receives is significantly lower than it will be from many other laptops. I suspect this is all to do with the aluminum shell around the monitor which is where the wi-fi aerial is located (the same issue plagued wi-fi and GPS reception for the Asus Transformer Prime tablet). This means that in some areas where wif-fi reception used to be fine, you'll now notice it is marginal and leads to connection dropping. This plagues me at home and unfortunately I have no option for moving the wi-fi router any closer to me preferred laptop usage area. There is a slim hope that a driver update might magically increase reception, but I suspect we're stuck with this. The price you pay for a snazzy looking laptop (coupled with poor engineering).

 

Has anyone here gotten the intel Rapid Start to work on a fresh install of Windows? I've been trying to get it to work after wiping the factory image and installing Win7 Enterprise. It will go into the no-power deep sleep/hibernate mode but when trying to resume it locks up and has to be rebooted.

There hasn't been too much info about rapid start out there. It works fine on another machine with the factory install still on it, but that's not an option. I have to get it working on a fresh install.

 

I, too, installed this driver and am seeing the same loss of multi finger gestures. However, I am very happy with the improved movement of the pointer with the new driver.

I also deleted the old driver and reinstalled the new driver just to be sure and it still has the same issues.

I'm on Win8 CP.

 

The beta driver bill provided me a few weeks ago works much better; none of the gestures are working for me with the new one released last week. I'm also on the Win8 CTP. Will uninstall and roll back - I was completely happy with that driver.

 

I've tested the XPS 13 with a few different routers using several WiFi monitoring tools, and the signal is comparable to other 13" notebooks in terms of signal strength in -db at various distances from the router. I wonder if this isn't an issue with the XPS13's compatibility with certain routers or router firmware versions?

 

I guess you mean an external monitor? I have the Dynadock and tested with HDMI, VGA, DVI and all work fine.

Do you see "Display link USB Graphics adapter" under devices and printers?

 

Yes, I am using an Dell U2412Mb monitor and the issue is that that Firefox takes a really long time to load and is extremely sluggish to the point of uselessness. I tried installing K-Lite codec but nothing changed. Outlook/Exchange seems to be working fine.

I do see the Displaylink USB Graphics adapter under devices and printers.

 

I am a bit confused by your description - "Firefox takes long to load" is this on your extended display? Does it behave normally when on the laptop display? Are you plugged into the USB 3 port - the right hand side of the laptop? Are you duplicating your desktop or extending it?

If the visual is slow - either the CPU is cranking away, or the screen is not redrawing - if CPU use is low, it sounds like you are not in the USB 3 port. I don't even know if would run this way...

I downloaded the drivers from Toshiba and installed those to start with, and mine works fine with an older Dell monitor.

 

This is odd. It appears that the problem is related to a Firefox extension or plug in. I tried Chrome no performance issue, Firefox started in safe mode works fine. It's definitely plugged into the USB 3.0 port on the right hand side of the machine (next to the battery indicator button). I'll play have to play with loading the extensions one at a time and see which one is causing the problem.

 

very odd that an extension would only do that with a hardware dock. At least you found it. Weird thing is, I Plugged mine into the left USB port and DVI video worked fine.

 

I use the Airport Extreme Base Station (dual band) router which is upstairs, and I have two Airport Express units downstairs, one for each band, and when I am getting a dropped connection the computer says my network is excellent, but it just up and drops the connection. I updated the WLAN driver yesterday and have only experienced one drop so far. I'm hoping the issue will not become common again!

 

If you are on the 2.4 ghz frequency then anything from microwave ovens to cordless phones could be the cause of your dropped connection.

 

Dell-Bill - if you get a chance find out why the Wireless driver doesn't have the option to "disable upon wired connect" as other Dell wireless drivers have done in the past. With the Dynadock or an Ethernet dongle it would be great if it worked this way - I have to manually disable wireless (just wifi) or it wants to be the primary connection and then RDP is slow.

 

I realize that, which is why only my computers are on the 5 ghz network

 

Is there a public link to the beta driver?

 

It seems like dell has a specific driver for the U2312M. Have you tried installing it (or perhaps uninstalling it)?

 

Intel Rapid Start - this is the tech that uses the hibernate partition and is faster then the old resume from Hibernate.

Our laptops have a timer to change when our machines go from sleep to hibernate but it is in the BIOS which makes changing it to suit needs difficult.

Intel has a GUI for this with more features. Samsung series 9 has it as do some MB manufacturers along with some newer revs of Rapid Start.

Has anyone tried any other versions or the GUI?

 

Just got off a chat with Dell online representative. According to Dell rep, there is no Dell or 3rd party Auto/Air adapter for the XPS13 Ultrabook. I find this unbelievable in that Dell markets this device as a tool for the mobile exec. Do they not understand what "mobile" means? It should not be that difficult to develop one. This is not rocket science - 45W output with the correct adapter tip should be relatively straightforward for some engineer to design and manufacture. Had I known this, I probably would have bought something else. While I really like this laptop, lack of mobile power is problematic.

 

APC will release one soon, I'm sure. Out of question, won't an inverter solve your problem such as this one from belkin?

Nice thing about an inverter over an adapter is that new equipment doesn't require a new adapter -- but on the other hand, you still have to carry the power cable.

 

So the woes I've found with Rapid Start appear to be an incompatiblity between iRST and having an active TPM. Rapid start began behaving normally once I turned off the TPM on the machine I was testing with. This would mean Rapid Start is a no go if you need to have your machine encrypted. There needs to be a bit more documentation from Dell on iRST

 

From what I've read, I should not update to the latest touchpad driver just yet?

 

I have a blog post up on the Dell blog with a downloadable white paper on iRST. It may help.

My guess is the "disable upon wired connect" feature is coded to detect the presence of an RJ45 insertion in a physical RJ45 port on the motherboard. Since the dock or dongle connection runs over USB, they may not have baked in code to detect a network connection over USB. Just a guess.

Anyone still playing around trying to "crack the code" on the ambient light sensor? This looks promising. http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19446623/20097405.aspx#20097405

 

Bill! Welcome back! Good holiday?


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Bill - welcome back and hope you are well rested... OK, i see they didn't we may dock these since they didn't make a dock - so add the ethernet detection as nice to have.

Also, nice to have would be the GUI manager for Intel Rapid Start. It would be nice to adjust the hibernate time on the fly - sometimes i close the lid and I don't want it to hibernate in 2 hours. I know I am using it all day, but it may go longer then 2 hours between uses so just sleep. I have to reboot into BIOS to make any changes to the iRST.

 

Ditto. We really missed you! It might take a while to catch up on all of the questions (and ignore the whining by those who whine professionally).

I have two issues that I would like to bring towards the top of the heap:

1. I lost 3 finger swipe and miss it. I have tried the 5/18 drivers and the previous drivers as well. Some have suggested that the beta drivers you sent before your vacation work very well. I would appreciate a link to those if possible.

2. I have a very nagging "accidental click" problem across all programs when a hover will act as a click with both track pad and mouse. It is intermittent and persistent. I have tried all suggestions I can find including scouring through and messing with several "accessibility" settings. Other XPS 13 users have chimed in that they have this issue as well.

Welcome back!

 

I tried downloading the driver and installing it but it won't install. When I looked at the folder that it creates on install there's only an XML and a .cat file. No .inf file and if I try to update the driver through the device tab W7 tells me it already has a better driver, but that driver is a generic pnp driver from Microsoft dated 2006.

Did I do something wrong?

One other quirky thing. Firefox runs fine in safe mode but I disable all extensions and plugins and try to run it normally it doesn't run.

 

why on earth were those new trackpad drivers released? Nothing works but the very basics! I thought dell would have some fairly stringent process before drivers are allowed to get released but maybe not...

I have been using the beta drivers, and have been happy with them except that two finger right click doesn't work. Is this ever going to be fixed? It's a pretty basic feature and I (and I'm sure everyone else) really miss it.

 

True the latest trackpad drivers do not work correctly.
I have erratic behaviour when trying to scroll or use multitouch gestures.

Beta drivers Dell_Spyder_120417_NON-WHQL_2_3_7_33_53, are the best drivers I've tested.
Hope Dell improves them as they are still not perfect.

By the way to anyone interested, this is the driver I'm using atm.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75757520/Dell_Spyder_120417_NON-WHQL_2_3_7_33_53.zip

 

I disagree - i was using the beta driver to fix the hidden window display issue, but i had issues with sensitivity of the palm rejection. The "new" driver 2.3.6.34 seems to finally have fixed that. And so far the palm rejection is flawless and 2 finger scroll works perfect. I don't use 3 finger gestures so I am finally satisfied.

 

Am I the only one that that misses two fingers right click?

 

Yikes! My track pad had stopped working all together!

 

No, you are not.

 

Does anyone have any more information on the (new) XPS 14?

Mystery Dell XPS 14 Laptop Packs High-End Features in Ultrabook Form | PCWorld

 

I do, but I ain't sayin' anything just yet. There's an XPS speculation thread. Once PR takes the muzzle off, I'll post some stuff there. Couple weeks maybe.