Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

If you install the Synaptics touchpad drivers then the hotkey to disable it will work

 

I chatted with dell,and I asked the guy for a deal on the 6230N ($50 add on) so he threw the 6230N in for free . The 6GB was a deal on so that came free too.

You shouldn't void your warranty replacing the HD, Dell is usually really good with letting you take it apart. I've also heard that it's easier than it looks to take the palm rests off. I'm going to put my Momentus XT in there when it comes.

 

Replacing anything in the consumer access panel will not void the warranty unless you manage to cause damage or physically altered it like drilling holes .

Also, be prepared to compete with the worst of the worst with dell tech support, for anything that goes foul.

 

Should not affect the warranty, but I am keeping the drive that came with it in case there is any monumental meltdown and they want to blame the HDD. I'll just put it back in before any warranty work.

 

thanks. Appreciate it, I assume you mean the drivers from the dell site?

 

You tried contacting the person that put the order through what's going on? Be specific and ask what stage it's at or if they're waiting for parts etc. I'm gonna be keeping an eye on the price too as if it goes cheaper I'll be asking for a partial refund!!

 

it was an online order mate ,i,m going to ring them tommorow if no change

 

Cool, let us know how you get on!

 

I just did a cpu and gpu repaste on my L501x and replced my HD with an SSD in the past week.
Removing the palm rest is very easy .. Take the battery out and 5 or 6 screws under the battery . Two tabs that you need to clip off and push to get it starting to un pop, the screen needs to be open of course . You then just have to work your way around the palm rest/keyboard to unclip it . It can be tough to un clip but you can use something to pry around that won't hurt the plastic.
Putting it back on is easy as aligning it and pushing all around the edges.

M

 

will do ,although i dont expect to get much sense out of them !! ,why did you pick the i7 cpu ?

 

Doing the hard drive is more than under the consumer access panel.

I deal with Dell support on a daily basis for work , and have a few times for personal and haven't had any issue with them . I'm in Canada thou , so that may be the difference.

M

 

Was part of the deal that was on. I was tempted by the 2720QM but I wanted to keep it under £1k with 3yr warranty...

 

Ordered mine yesterday...... have asked for it to be delivered by 29/4..... Just cant wait to get my hands on this beast....hoping its worth every penny it has cost me

config in the sig.

 

Lol cheers for copying/pasting my sig what's your EDD??

 

Now both of you have the same mistake in your sigs - the screen is either HD (1366x768) WLED or FHD (1920x1080) B+RGLED. So what screens are you guys getting?

 

Updated thanks

 

worked, I guess I missed these drivers when I did the clean install.

 

thanks for the replies! I just ordered my L502x just now I was actually waiting for an HP Envy refresh but then I just thought that if they made a refresh Im sure there wont be any discount except for my EPP. Plus, HP Canada doesn't give options for CTO and high end laptops. That's why I went to buy the XPS 15 with the 12 month no interest + Signature Event + EPP discount even though I don't like it's design(which I'll judge when I see it first hand).

@loaded12 I was just wondering how much you got your laptop? I just want to make sure I get the most deals before paying for it. (I actually told them about your 6230 case, that's why they gave me a free upgrade for it.) Haha!

One question though: This just dawned on me just now. I took the 9-cell battery, now will the extra bulk be a bother since I'll be carrying it mostly in a laptop bag. What are your experiences? Thanks.

 

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I received my system today and could not run BioShock 2 due to Optimus problems. It would not recognize the 540M despite specifically telling the application to run using it. I had encountered such a problem before on an Alienware M11x, and installing an archived driver solved the issue. However, there is only one (beta) driver on NVIDIA's website for the 540M, and it didn't work. But the driver that Dell currently has listed on their drivers list did the trick. Don't remember the exact driver number, I think it was 267.nn.

 

Optimus seems like kind of a nightmare, jmeyer. I've heard stories from several people having a *really* hard time getting their laptops to actually use the dedicated graphics card. It's a pretty new technology, right? Maybe there are just some weird programming quirks that are getting in the way. I'm sure there's some way around that headache.

Glad you finally got your system in, though. Sounded like you'd been waiting quite some time for it!

 

Aye, ordered it 3/23 with an original EDD of 4/13. Long story short, I was being told that everything was fine up until 4/8 when I was told it was delayed until 5/4 for bizarre reasons. But I did receive it on 4/13.

As for Optimus, it's certainly not problem-free by any means, but I've used it for about 8 months now (previously with the M11x), and there's never been a problem that I couldn't get around. And, more often than not, a problem does not arise at all. So, considering what it does for battery life, I think I prefer to have it, even if it does require some manual tinkering and troubleshooting once in a while.

 

called dell up ,as i thought ,might as well have talked to my dog !!,just noticed that my cpu is unavailable on the sony site at the moment,every other sandybridge cpu is !!

 

My Dell xps 15 l502x order status-
11-Apr-2011 Order Received
11-Apr-2011 Order released to manufacturing
14-Apr-2011 Manufacturing Build Complete
So approx how many more days will it take for shipping?


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XPS 15 - i7-2720QM - 8GB,DDR3 - B+RGLED - GT540M 2GB - 750GB 7200 - Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo - 9-cell - 6230 and Bluetooth 3.0 - Tarus Meridian Backpack(free)

 

Optimus is hit and miss. I would rather give up one of the 6 hrs my L502X has on battery to not have to deal with it. Actually, I did just that. I installed a non-dell driver that bypasses Optimus so the lappy uses the 525M all the time. Battery life went from 6 hrs to 5hrs.

 

What did you install? I agree that Optimus and its headaches are not worth the incremental increase in battery time.

 

I also agree Optimus is a somewhat pain of use, then again the AMD Switch with Intel's is the worst in my experience.

Create a default profile for each application that gets missed are annoying to do.

 

Just got my L502X this morning! It's better than I even imagined, and the screen is eye meltingly gorgeous. :O It came with the A04 BIOS already installed (When will they switch to UEFI? ). And if anyone is interested, there IS an option in the bios for virtualization, so just to confirm that vt-x is implemented in the BIOS. There wasn't as much crap on it as other laptop's I've seen but there's still a bunch of junk (cozi Calendar?!) and that stage software is pretty useless. I was worried about the new keyboard because I hate island keyboards, but less than 10 minutes using it I'm typing more fluently than on my lenovo! Really nice feel. Idk what else to say about it other than I love it.

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

I surprised they don't have UEFI on these new model yet the dell inspiron 1545 have it.

Then again they don't really offer much use beside a pretty gui with a mouse control.
The hardware advantages are pretty moot for now.


I do like the island style keyboards. Too bad, I'm now absolutely horrible to every normal keyboard.

 

I am glad to hear you say that. I returned an Inspiron 15R b/c the keyboard sucks. I was all set to buy a Lenovo Ideapad (I ordered and cancelled), but some of the other specs and the absence of customization options turned me off. It looked like the XPS keyboard would be ok, but I've been slightly concerned.

 

Called up dell again tonight, spoke to a much more helpfull guy, who told me that told me that the holdup on my xps is the keyboard and graphics card!! He to me he was going to expedite it , probably tells everyone that !!

 

I can't find the article but the last maximum pc did a BIOS vs UEFI article. Here's a video about it anyways.
YouTube - Maximum PC First Look: The Future of BIOS is Here!

The biggest thing for me is improved post times. But there's lots of things that are great about it. Anyways, this isn't a UEFI thread. The POST for the L502X is only about 3 seconds anyways.

 

Can anyone comment on how borderlands runs on this ?just bought the pack for 7.50 will try it out tonight but im scare 1080p with the 540 may not be enough.

 

Hehe.. looked at ur sig and thought if borrowing it ... my EDD is around 5th May... but i have asked Dell to give me the delivery before 29th April.

 

Better than mine! 13/5 here

I'll start pestering them towards the end of next week if it's not budged off "Work in progress" though...

Weird considering we ordered the same system on the same day!

 

So do you guys recommend putting on some new fresh paste onto the dell xps 15 chips? i had my new dell less then a month now with no problems at all.

 

I think it's just for the hardcore fanatics that want to save a degree or so in heat, not necessary in the slightest.

Certainly not something to do unless your 100% confident of stripping down a very expensive piece of kit. Certainly not one of those things you want extra bits left over or losing a screw etc

I might give it a go if/when overclocks start coming out for it.

 

This laptop is sweet!!! (just rubbing it in)

I ordered with the Soundblaster X-Fi. After tinkering I believe it sounds a little better without it. There's a lot of tweaking that can be done, so if someone else has theirs set up and thinks it sounds better with the X-Fi please post you settings.

 

Called up dell again tonight, spoke to a much more helpfull guy, who told me that told me that the holdup on my xps is the keyboard and graphics card!! He to me he was going to expedite it , probably tells everyone that !!

 

That is probably the hard drive accelerometer. You do not need it with an SSD, but if you want everything to be fully installed on your PC, you can install it.

 

I have the same issue, where is the driver for this?

 

That does not sound good. I was planning to hook up a Matrox Triplehead2Go to the displayport - put if I can't get the Nvidia GPU to output on the port, then it wont support it.

Is this a limitation in the Dell HW or the Nvidia/Intel Optimus combo? If no way to fix, then I can return it without even unpacking it...

 

NVIDIA GPU is routed through IGPU to the internal screen, so while IGPU can't output to HDMI, both cards can output to DisplayPort.

 

I just want to let you know also, that it is quite easy to change out the hard drives in this machine. You pop out the battery, remove two screws from within the battery compartment, then the entire top cover of the laptop (the aluminum/plastic part) comes off with a little assistance from a small flat-blade screwdriver. If you are not comfortable with doing it, I would recommend taking it to either a Fry's or Compusa or a local computer store to have them install the hard drive. I would recommend that you install the software and drivers yourself or it will cost an arm and leg for them to do it.

Here is the site, I PM'd you with it also:
Drivers and Downloads

 

Morning,
I just took delivery of my XPS 15 yesterday afternoon and love it but I have an issue with the CD Tray and I just need to know if this is a fault or whether it is supposed to work this way.
When I push the eject button the tray does not eject out. All I here is a click and then I have to pull the tray out. It doesn't eject at all.
I really don't want to send it back and wait 10 days for repair so if this is a fault any ideas what to fix?

Anyone else had this?

Thanks,
Karl

 

Mine ejects about 2" when i hit the button, yours sounds like something's binding it from fully ejecting. Does it pull out very easy after you hit the button?

 

I wish you were right - however, Dell tech support confirmed that "by design" the Nvidia GPU only works on the HDMI-port whereas the Intel GPU works only on the Displayport.

 

The Intel GPU's frame buffer is connected to the internal display and DisplayPort. The NVIDIA card shunts anything it is rendering to the IGP frame buffer so it can be displayed on your screen or the DisplayPort, unless I'm quite mistaken.

The NVIDIA card is hooked up to the HDMI port directly so that you can do 3D output to a 3D TV which the IGP can't do (just like how the 3D XPS 17 doesn't have Optimus for this reason).

 

Will that pass sound as well? or no.

 

Yes, it can pass sound too

 

Wait so im curious! As for the optimus, is there a way to completely disable the intel gpu on board, and just let it run off nvidia? Or do i have to just set every app i want to use nvidia in control panel for nvidia software?