Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Review & Owner's Thread

I love mine too, but still having issues with the screen being dim after sleep, till I adjust the brightness manually. Hopefully a fix for it soon.

 

So far I think it's just what I wanted in a notebook. Light, feels sturdy, speedy, good screen. I could go on.

I'm very happy with how comfortable this palm rest is. It's very smooth and my hands glide across. I've had no issues so far with mistyping words or with the touch pad. The fan seems quiet too.

It seems like the dell auto-dimming deal starts back up maybe?

 

ao2 fixed the fan issue for me. it still comes on occasionally, but nothing like before. i also changed the power setting to passive and processor to 0% and 99%. i am interested in the larger heat sink. would it be easy to get one? seems like that might solve most of the fan issues.

the track pad takes some getting used to. how are most of you setting it up as far as sensitivity etc? i cant get scrolling to work very well and when it does work it is spotty at best. those are the only issues i have had with machine. i am very happy other than that.

thinking about blowing away the 18 gig partition and reinstalling windows. anyone else do this?

 

I am, but I've never done this before..... so how would I restore windows later if I needed to? Do I back it up on an sd card first for example?

 

Not yet, I received my XPS13 and hot spot on March 1st. I am looking forward to testing out the hotspot. Hopefully the email will come soon.

 

I will be. Windows 7 40gb. Windows 8 40gb. Rest for personal files (2nd computer, not storing any media on it).

What are your concerns?

 

Easiest way would probably be with an external usb dvd drive. I think the box came with recovery dvds (which is kind of lame since there isn't a dvd drive. apple at least gave a usb stick with their macbook airs).

I wouldn't use an SD card, as those aren't bootable, and I assume the recovery has to be booted (ie: you can't do it from within Windows). USB stick perhaps?

 

This is absolutely false. I bought a MacBook Air in October of 2011 and it didn't come with squat. Reinstallation could only be performed across the Internet. You could buy Lion from Apple for $70 on a USB stick, but it and Leopard WOULD NOT work with the June 2011 MBA because they didn't have the drivers baked into the OS and installation. They may have corrected it by now, but that wasn't the case as of December 2011 (the last time I checked).

 

I've got windows 8 installed on a separate partition. Boots and resumes even quicker. I've noticed a couple things:

Touchpad tap to click and scrolling didn't work at all. Installed cypress drivers from the 15z and it works now.

Also, fan is constantly running. Fairly low/quiet, but constantly. I had no fan problems in windows 7. I wonder if its because I am missing dell software/drivers?

 

"Absolutely" is sort of harsh. Haha. I bought a Macbook Air 11 (Core 2 Duo) back in February of 2011 and it came with a usb recovery stick. I guess apple went the other way and no longer supplies usb sticks.

 

Thanks for the tip on the 15z driver! +rep

Strange, I actually get less (loud) fan action in Windows 8 than Windows 7.

 

Messed around with power settings and did a full shutdown... seems fine now. *shrugs* edit: nevermind, fan was back on pretty quickly. Now is still pretty much on all the time on win8.

Jeeze, windows 8 boot and resume time is soooooo quick.

 

Question to you owners:

Does the vertical wheel scrolling sometimes is unchangeable? What I meant by this is, when you're switching back and forth between using a USB mouse and the trackpad, occasionally the vertical scrolling value resets to 1. When you changed it to your preferred value, click Apply and OK, somehow the value remains as 1 when you check it again.

 

Engadget posts a nice review. Dell XPS 13 review -- Engadget

They didn't mention anything about the fan.

For those wondering about the recovery media "There is also a solid complement of Dell applications for controlling the webcam, creating recovery media and backing up the laptop. That too throws up an annoying pop-up after you boot, but it's only suggesting you create our recovery media, something that is a good idea. The only slight complication is that, by default, the DataSafe app wants to write that stuff to disc, something the XPS is ill-equipped to do out of the box. Thankfully it can also write to USB drives, should you have one big enough."

 

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. I brought the XPS 13 to work with me today and just let it sit idle long enough for the screensaver to kick in and start working. After several minutes the fan kicked in (as I expected; the screensaver I've installed puts a load on the system). I then turned off the screensaver and monitored the temps, waiting for the fan to cycle off... no such luck. 5 minutes later, long after the temps dropped below 50c, the fan was still running.

Putting the computer to sleep and immediately bringing it back shuts off the fan and it doesn't turn on again until another load is placed on the system.

It's as if the BIOS/system doesn't want to let go of the fan for some reason, but putting the computer to sleep "resets" the fan trigger.

I've been able to replicate the pattern now twice this morning.


UPDATE OF THE UPDATE:

GAH!!! SONAFABEOTCH! Now the fan is back to not shutting off at all, regardless of load. I've disabled the screensaver. It's sitting here doing nothing, with a CPU load between 3% and 5%, CPU temp reads 50 and motherboard temp reads 54, and the fan absolutely will not turn off. It's been 15 minutes in that state now.

Are the cooling trigger points set too high somehow?

 

I ordered the i5 version of the XPS 13 last night. I'm really looking forward to Monday's Fed Ex delivery!

The only disappointment in the whole process was Dell not accepting the $50 coupon that the kiosk manager said was good on 'any laptop'. The Dell employee tried entering several different coupons before giving up.

 

Just wondering...... How can a person do an online search for a Dell kiosk?

Before I spend the $$$ for one of these I would like to find a local kiosk that has one and look it over first.

Thanks

 

What country are you in?

For the U.S.:

Dell Store | Dell

 

@ heavyharmonies -

Thanks for the link but all of those kiosk's are so far away from Minnesota.

 

Sorry. I'll ring Michael and see what we can do...

 

Here's a link to Dell's Store Locator - look on the blue bar for the link to their kiosk locations.

Experience Dell at a retail store near you | Dell


oops - sorry for the duplicate information.

 

I installed 2 kiosks in Minneapolis, which have been since shut down. I hope it wasn't because of my installation skills.

 

@Dell-Bill_B

Will you be in Minneapolis anytime soon so I might be able to take a look at yours? I will buy you lunch....

Anyone in Minneapolis have one I could take a look at?

Thanks

 

BTW those who are looking for the ability to hook up monitors, projectors, or Tvs I found these two for good price...

to VGA (~$10)...
Amazon.com: Mini Display Port to VGA Adapter for MacBook iMac or any Display Ports: Electronics

to HDMI w/sound (~$5.40)...
Amazon.com: Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Female Adapter Cable for Apple Macbook, Macbook Pro...: Electronics

I have tested both and have been quite happy with them. They also have a DVI version. The VGA works well and the HDMI works great with sound. These are obviously much cheaper than what Dell sells them for so take that for what it's work. These seem to be be built well and they have good reviews on Amazon.

 

Mine arrived yesterday. The new bois seems to have fixed the fan issue but my biggest issue is the touch pad. Even after playing with the settings for quite a while, it is really funky and frustrating. I'm hoping that Cypress has a fix soon. I haven't found a "back" gesture for browsing yet. Am I just missing something?
Overall feel and speed is wonderful.
Any update info on the touch pad would be appreciated.

 

Yeah it is not the best setup with the Cypress drivers. There are supposedly some new drivers being tested in house. Don't know if it will be better on the config side though.

Have you tried the .26 drivers that you can download under the XPS 15z support area? It is much improved over the ones they released with the 13.

 

Did anyone actually but an XPS 13 from a kiosk (stock on hand) AND get the T-Mobile hotspot? My kiosk guys are totally clueless about the hotspot deal and insist it doesn't come with one.

 

Must be a Dell.com deal? I think it said the first 10,000 buyers received one. I'd imagine there is no way for the kiosks to keep track of this...

 

Lisa, great job on the video review. When do you expect the "full review" to come out? Also, do you plan on reviewing the Samsung Series 9?

Thanks.

 

Thanks The full review will likely be up tomorrow. Samsung hasn't been able to get us a review unit of the Series 9, so we probably won't cover it- can't buy everything or we'd go broke .

 

Don't buy everything. Just buy the Samsung so you can compare it to this Dell.

 

First time poster. Great information here! I've been following it for a while now.

I got my XPS13 yesterday and have been fiddling with it ever since. Fust for the record I'm extremely happy with it, even if the fan does get loud once in a while. I've revouninstalled almost all of the bloatware (as much as I can anyway) and set up autohotkey for that nice dedicated home and end key functionality over the right alt and ctrl, as mentioned earlier. With the A02 bios and power settings set to 0%-99%, I've only gotten really heavy fan usage when I start up something more intense like a game or a video. And with the xps 15z cypress driver .26, the scrolling is definitely smoother (though I've also noticed that it loses the ability to click a browser tab with both left and right keys at the same time to kill it or open a new tab by doing the same to a link).

On another note, I just wanted to share some ssd partition info with the community. I called Dell tech support and asked a bunch of questions and an hour and a half later I found out that the hibernation partition is completely pointless and there's nothing keeping us XPS 13 owners from just assimilating it into the main partition. At first they insisted that it was for system restore points, hibernation, and sleep purposes, at which I kinda looked incredulous cause the XPS 13 out of the box doesn't even allow hibernate. After I let them remote desktop me, they asked some more supervisors and said it pretty much does nothing and it's safe to delete. I assimilated that 8gigs in 5 minutes with these directions: How to delete OEM Partition | Jared Heinrichs

As for the 18gb restoration partition is all the restoration stuff and drivers to make your system factory restored in the event you crash it or something. However, by calling and asking nicely, they're sending me a dvd and usb of the OS restore so I'm sure if you do the same you could get that too, in case you're like me and don't want to get rid of that partition to reclaim 18gigs until you have some backup means of restoring.

Regarding the tmobile hotspot: has anyone tried to sell theirs? I'm definitely not going to use it, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing selling it. Ebay? Are you including the 3 30day codes when they get emailed to you?

 

The 8GB is required for Intel Rapid Start Technology. If you're going to delete it, you may want to disable Rapid Start in the Bios.

 

I read this on another post too... But, I deleted my 8gb partition and I have noticed no difference in boot or resume times. Thoughts?

 

With Rapid Start, it kicks in after 2 hours of the laptop going to sleep. It's a special type of Hibernation that overrides the Windows Hibernation. It totally shuts down the laptop, but boots without going through the Bios or Windows Startup screen, so from Hibernate my PC wakes up as if it where sleeping, in around 2 seconds.

 

For those who want to error on the side of caution, don't use hibernate on an SSD.

 

Nice job! And way to follow the forum and figuring out exactly what to do!

+rep

 

I never understood this mentality. You pay for a SSD but refuse to use it to the full potential over some unscientific data regarding number of writes? Everything wears out, you can either spend the time stressing or just use it and enjoy it.

 

Thanks for the info! I spent a lot of time Googling and asking Dell techs and no one seems to know anything. This is what Intel's site has to say: "Intel® Rapid Start Technology™ gets your device up and running faster from even the deepest sleep, saving time and battery life." - How detailed! However, considering I got the 128gb model, I'd rather salvage any gigabytes I can and suffer a 15 second ssd cold boot (which is about the speed my old laptop resumed from sleep!) than spend 8gb on "hibernating" and waking up in 5.

To each his/her own, I suppose. Personally I like to take care of my things because it does last longer and better - while other people crack their phone screens and dent their laptops and let software crust build up all over their OS's, mine still looks new, years later (after ordering the XPS13 I had some buyer's remorse because my m1330 still looks and works great). To each his/her own.

 

Agreed

Even if you write constantly on an SSD drive you are far more likely to be on your next if not your next one after that before the SSD actually wears out. The newer SSDs have wear leveling and ECC technology to prolong the life of SSD.

Considering they are now using SSDs in SANs and for database applications the level of wear that we could possibly put on an SSD is miniscule compared to what happens there, especially in raided configurations.

Debunking Misconceptions in SSD Longevity

 

I early updated to the A02 BIOS and it helped some along with changes to the power settings (0-99% CPU load, passive cooling). This seemed to work. I then started testing the machine yesterday at full tilt by installing Prime95 to see what happens to the fan after 100% load etc. Let Prime95 run and the fan kicked on immediately, which you would expect. Let it run for 5-10 minutes temps in 65C range. Shut down the program to see how long the fan took to shut off. About 2 minutes later it shut off. Tried the same process again, this time the fan would not shut off for about 10 minutes at a load of less than 3% and it was hotter than hell. Could not leave it on my lap for too long...Finally I tested my Alienware M11x for comparison and it was so much quieter and cooler than the XPS 13. Can't believe the difference. At that point I decided I am going to send it back and wait until they get all of bugs worked out. Great build to the machine, but the fan noise is really loud and inconsistent not to mention the trackpad is not adequate. Love Dell machines, but this one was not ready for me.

 

Time for a Samsung Series 9, perhaps?

 

That link referred to Enterprise SSDs, while we're using Consumer SSDs. Also most of the tests are done using the entire hard drive, not with a small distinct partition for hibernate.

True, I do consider the risk small, but considering how little I'm giving up:
2 seconds - Resume from sleep
8 seconds - Resume from hibernate
15 seconds - Boot
ie: Sleep is more efficient unless you're worried that the battery will give out, and turning off and on doesn't take much longer.

Plus gaining about 7% of the available harddrive back on a small drive.

 

I do use and enjoy the full potential of an ssd - ridiculously quick resume from sleep and boot up times

I put that information out there for the regular consumer, who's not prone to living on the bleeding edge. I'd hate for some SSDs to fail (we're just approaching the 4 or 5 year mark of SSDs being relatively available on consumer laptop) and have regular consumers get up in arms / upset that their SSDs aren't reliable.

 

I know Im new here... but I see all of these people getting repped for recommending the .26 XPS 15z cypress drivers....

can a guy get a bit of credit where credit is due?.....

 

Never consider the Samsung. I like the Asus too.

 

Tizi, do you have to pay for shipping when sending it back or does dell cover that ?. I might be sending mine back too. Thanks.

 

Not that I am returning mine as I am very happy with it now.

For those who have returned are they hitting you with the 15% restocking fee? Just curious for those asking about returns.

For those looking at the Asus and Samsung Series 9, make sure you check out the forums on those as well. I obviously did not have a series 9, but did try out the series 5 and just did not really like the thing for various reasons. About burned my legs when I sat down with it.

The Asus has absolutely the worst track pad I have ever used on any laptop and make the one on the XPS 13 seem like the best ever. Then there was the wireless. I returned that bad boy as fast as I could. Beautiful machine though.

 

Yup I got mine with our test unit. We actually converted a mac guy to using the machine as he wanted an air and we gave him this instead.

 

Also when disconnecting from an external monitor is anyone having the issue with the primary screen not going back to the LCD on the laptop??