Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

You only have 2 options if you did not get either the intel 1030 or the 6230. You can either swap the card or use an external adapter. The problem is that the XPS15 only has 2 PCIexpress card bays, 1 full height (used either by the TV-tuner or the HSDPA card) and 1 half height (used by the WLAN card, which can be either a Intel 1000 or a WLAN, BT combo card, like the 1030 or the 6230)

 

I got the Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000. Do u know where i can pick up a new card?

 

ebay, probably?

 

Great and it is it a quick unplug and pluggin/driver install like ram?

 

Just turned on my old Inspiron 9300 - I now have a new found appreciation of just how good the 1080p screen is on the XPS!

 

Fellas, i decided to purchase a Dell L502x laptop for home/office and got a question: did any of you tried to switch the screen panels on this unit? I've read about B156HW01 V4 a few really good reviews on Sager/Clevo forums and think to replace my 15.6 (1366x768)... That was the only screen option available in my country. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance

 

yes, me, what do you wanna know?

 

I got a Intel 6230 from Amazon for $35. Installation is pretty easy however I needed to delete old driver (Dell 1030) before it would work.

 

Hello. XPS 15 B+RG LED 1080p screen. Is that the same 95% gamut screens found on some Clevo resellers but in glossy?

 

Yes. The matte one is the AUO B156HW01 V4. The one used in the XPS 15 is the AUO B156HW01 V7.

 

I wanted a XPS 502 so bad, but when I compare it to a 17 model with almost the same specs, for +$50 I change a 256 GB SSD, 540 M 2 GB 15" for a dual drive 640 GB + 256 GB SSD, 555 M 3 GB 17". The 502 is overpriced in my opinion.

 

Have had the xps 15 for 3 weeks now. Love it.

Only one thing. How hot do your chargers go? Mine is so hot that you can barely hold it in a hand. Is it normal?

 

I need help on a L502x. I have been given a L502x to reinstall windows 7 from scratch. I have my USB key that I've used to install win7 64-bit to many computers, and with the L502x, I can't install it. It says "a required cd/dvd device driver is missing" and it won't go any further. Anyone experience this issue, and how do you fix it. I don't want to burn any DVD's if possible. DVD, eSATA, and displayport are useless technologies that should be obsolete.

It's also extremely disappointing that there are only 2 USB ports in this machine.

 

No, there are 3 USB ports. One of them is combined with the eSATA port. A LOT of people don't realize this from what I'm seeing. The combined port is USB 2.0 whereas the other 2 (blue connector) are USB 3.0

 

I think I have a problem. I've tried using this calibrated profile from the original post, but it looks to me like for some reason I can't really use it for the Windows 7 itself. In Photoshop the profile seems to change, in Firefox too (since I installed an add-on for color management in it). But I think the color of my taskbar and icons on it always stay the same. When I change the clor profile, I can notice it change in Firefox with color management on because orange Firefox menu at the top becomes less "red" and not so vivid, also everything in Firefox appears with different colors (profile is changed). The thing is that the Firefox icon in the taskbar *doesn't* change its color at all. When I swich back to default sRBP profile, I can see that the firefox menu thing becomes more orange/red vivid again, but the taskbar icon remains the same. So the color profile of windows just doesn't change???

How I change the profile. In Windows Color System defaults I choose spyder2express profile and then check the "Use Windows Display Calibration" checkbox. I tried to do in in different ways but no luck. Somewhere I've seen the topic where one person said that he can't change the color profile on his Dell XPS (for design work), or the profile seems to be constantly switching off, there's some kind of real bug and he returned it. I can't find that topic again.

Anyone knows anything about it? Have you tried using different color profiles? Please help.

 

What will happen if I will disable nVidia card in device manager?

 

Does anyone know why there are different prices for same spec systems in Dell Outlet ?

 

They just have a lot of systems available...people add to their cart to see the total. Then they get removed...and put back on sale.
I know that exactly the same spec'd systems have varied prices...I guess they're just seeing who will buy what at what price with a range.

I got my XPS 15 when they had the 20% off refurbished systems coupon.
I had gone like 4 or 5 days constantly refreshing looking for a good system at the right price ($710 after tax and free shipping). Bought my system at like 5:30am while checking the outlet.

Dell XPS 15 L502X|CPU: Intel Core i7-2630QM|RAM: 6GB DDR3 1333MHz|GPU: NVIDIA GT 525M 1GB|HDD: Seagate 500GB 7200RPM|DISPLAY:15.6" HD+ WLED (720p)|ODD: DVD+/-RW

 

Oh Ok, figures. I got mine for 599$ before taxes with 100$ off coupon. Do they usually ship next business day though ? Damn I got unlucky with the saturday.

Dell XPS 15 L502X|CPU: Intel Core i5-2410M|RAM: 4GB DDR3 1333MHz|GPU: NVIDIA GT 525M 1GB|HDD: Seagate 640GB 7200RPM|DISPLAY:15.6" HD+ WLED (720p)

 

I got lucky with mine...I ordered early morning on a Friday (4/22) and they shipped it that afternoon. Got it the next Tuesday with free shipping. I know for other people...theirs were delayed for shipping until May for some reason. I guess it depends how ready the system is or whatever.

 

Thank you for the info...I put the USB to that port and I was able to install windows 7. Rep sent

 

I don't think the color profile works for the OS itself, only certain programs will utilize the aRGB profile. Windows uses sRGB, as do most programs aside from Photoshop and Firefox in your example. But that's just what I've read. I have the same experience too, so maybe I installed to color profile incorrectly

Going back to a totally different subject, I installed the newest drivers from Nvidia's site and the Witcher plays great, no more optimus issues.

 

The color profile *does* affect the general OS colors, but only rebalances them, doesn't fully calibrate them. That is, they will still be more saturated than they should be, but they should be in the right proportions.

You also need to prevent igfxpers.exe from running at startup. Then it should work as intended.

 

I think it should work for OS itself. What's so hard about calibrating OS colors? Maybe Dell thinks that XPS owners are a bunch of "gamers" who wouldn't even want to calibrate their screen and won't notice that OS calibration doesn't work?

I don't understand what rebalancing means. I don't think it's such big of a deal for Windows to change the color profile as Firefox does it.

I did prevent igfxpers.exe from running. Doesn't seem to help. I won't be surprised if I found out that the color profile just can't be changed right because of Dell, Optimus maybe, because when I'm in color profile changing options the window often pops up and says that the hardware changed and something happened (don't remember what exactly, but I guess the setting were dropped or something?). How can the hardware change so often? I'm angry.

 

You mean it happens that way with XPS or with any computer?

 

So can I get OS colors fully calibrated as they look in Photoshop, bridge and Firefox?

I'll explain one more time how I change the color profile:

In Windows Color System defaults I choose spyder2express profile (I didn't sopy anything into system folder I just added that profile through "add" dialog in "All profiles" tab), and then checked the "Use Windows Display Calibration" checkbox. I also added the profile in "Profiles associated with this device" in both system and user defaults (for the heck of it) and made it default.

When I load my profile "Profiles associated with this device" the colors of everything change (including the icons on the taskbar), but not much, it just gives me more like red tint instead of the blue for everything, but it's not giving me the colors I like. Only when doing this and then picking that L502x-B_RGLED profile in "Windows Color System defaults" and then restarting, then I get the colors that I like in Photoshop, Bridge and Firefox (with calibration on).

Now I like this color profile, in Firefox it looks great — colors are not that bluish and too much red problem is gettiing fixed, and gray color is actually gray, not blue like in default profile. But in Windows itself or in Skype it seems like nothing is changed. I get the same oversaturated screaming orange, reds.

 

I found this article, which explains a problem of wide-gamut monitors and browsers. Basically after switching to custom color profile I now get the same red tone problem (which I tried to fix by using a color profile) in every browser except the Firefox, which supports color management (I use add-on as I wrote). Is there any way to enable color management in Chrome and Safari?

WIDE GAMUT ADOBE RGB LCD Monitors Screens Troubleshooting Over Saturated sRGB Color Reviews on the Web Tutorial

So this Dell XPS 15 B+RG display is wide gamut?

I still don't know if I'll be able to make Windows 7 show calibrated colors.

 

I figured this out, it appears that this is normal thing and Windows 7 doesn't support monitor calibration for itself. This guy is questioning the reasonability of wide gamut monitors when you can't use it normally in OS, in other applications and video players don't support color management too.

I don't understand it too, really. What's the point? By the way, does anybody know if new Macbook Pro displays have the same problem? When I saw them in store they seemed to have very saturated colors too (I just noticed that blue links are very blue). I want to know if this Dell XPS display stands out with this problem among others.

 

Does anybody know why my Disk Activity light is always blinking? I checked Resource Monitor, and under the "Disk" tab, it looks like the "System" process is the one that is constantly writing to the disk, even when the computer has been idle for a while.

I'm getting an OCZ Vertex 3 soon, and I don't think constant writing to the disk will be a good thing.

Other than that, I don't have any fan, USB, or any other issues that others have been writing about.

 

This is what I was able to find about the color management issue in Windows and wide gamut monitors. Maybe somebody will find it useful. I didn't know anything about this wide gamut thing before buying XPS 15, I don't know if that was a good decision. I think everyone who thinks avout buying this notebook should know about it. The most I really don't understand how can they market this notebook for movies, games, if colors are oversaturated/not accurate? I think without the OS supporting color management properly wide gamut displays have a really questionable usefulness as a multimedia displays. What do you think? Are you OK with your XPS 15 l502x 1080p screen colors?

Color saturation on XPS 15 1080p display?

The Wide Gamut boondoggle -- how do you deal in non color managed apps? - Ars Technica OpenForum

"I'm no expert on this, but did you realize that this laptop has a wide gamut screen, so the behaviour you are complaining about is probably as expected? Most software including the desktop is not color-aware and expects sRGB color space. So yes - when you calibrate for Lightroom, almost everything else will look oversaturated. Are you aware that there are many issues with 'color-aware' browsers, e.g. in some recent firefox versions it does not work either?

I don't think your complaint is related to the laptop but to widegamut screens in general; in that case I don't think you should blame Sony. Working with widegamut screens is a problem that is discussed frequently on this and other forums. "
A warning & request for help-Sony VAIO AW: serious color probs, dreadful Sony support: PC Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review | A warning & request for help-Sony VAIO AW: serious color probs, dreadful Sony support: PC Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

"What gets overwritten in the LUT (and this affects all applications) is the gamma calibration (correct me if I'm wrong here), and that has nothing to do with gamut. Thus you will still benefit from a color profile in all applications - but the wide-gamut issues are still there. What color-aware applications do is to take into account what gamut your monitor(/profile?) has and translate everything into that color space."
Wide Gamut and Windows 7 - [H]ard|Forum

"The colour change when you apply your monitors profile in the Colour Management screen in Windows 7 is the result of the adjusted gamma curves and colour gradients. That is it applies corrections to ensure a smooth response over the range of colours. What it doesn't do is apply gamut correction which is required for wide-gamut monitors. So your colours are now "calibrated" but they are still oversaturated.

It's actually really easy to notice if you've got dual monitors like I do. My shiny Dell 2408WFP is wide-gamut and my Viewsonic VX2025 is a perfect sRGB monitor. When I apply my monitor profiles both screens change colour slightly, but the Dell is still clearly oversaturated. "
A Guide to Wide-Gamut Displays (v1.2) - Page 3 - Overclockers Australia Forums

A Guide to Wide-Gamut Displays (v1.2) - Overclockers Australia Forums

 

Beyond One:

Not everyone falls into the same category.

I actually increased the saturation on my B+RG. The bright, vivid colors are the reason I bought this laptop and purchased this screen.

Not good for multimedia? Are you high? I'd rather watch a movie on a vivid display with oversaturated colors a thousand times over the lame, washed out WLED crap screens that 95% of other laptops have.

 

If you need super accurate color representation for photography or something else, more power to you. But IMO it boggles my mind how the average person doesn't love how vivid the colors are on this screen.

Close second to the RGB LED on my m17x R2.

 

Just got off the phone with Dell tech support. They are sending a tech out to replace my hard drive. I have only had my systems since April.

 

YouTube: Dell XPS 15 L502x Gameplay Crysis 2 (720p)(HD)

YouTube: Dell XPS 15 L502x Gameplay Crysis 2 part 2 (full HD)

 

I'm not an average person I guess, just because I'm able to understand why those vivid colors are NOT good for anything other than color managed applications like Photoshop (because only in these applications the monitor can show normal colors), and even they one could argue about their usefulness. Of course, if an average person used only crappy monitors all his life, he may be impressed by this, but I think those are not good colors, those are overly saturated colors, it's a big difference. Wanting to have colors like this for me is like wanting to have more vivid colors in real life. In real life there's enough of vividness, I think if someone thinks otherwise, THEN that's the display for those people.

I'm switching to this not from very crappy monitor, but from E-IPS (or something) Nec, it's 5 years old but still has better viewing angles than this Dell and doesn't have oversaturated colors, it has normal colors.

I think it's stupid to sell wide gamut displays to average people who do gaming and web browsing, movies on their notebooks, before OS supports full color management and enforces those colors on every program that's not color management enabled. I do all of it and graphics, and now if I want normal colors I will have to use one browser only and Win 7 will always show me the wrong colors. Some technologies are just useless. If I was a professional print designer or photographer in need of wide gamut monitor, maybe it would be a display for me, but I'm just a web designer, I don't need that wide gamut. I want to be able to have same colors in Win 7 everywhere. Basically I get something I'm not really sure I wanted, and I didn't see any info about it on Dell's site or anywhere. No word about wide gamut and its limitations. If I will find out that most of other notebooks have the same thing, then I would probably be more happy about it. But somehow I find it hard to believe that Apple is selling something like this to average people. Just a guess. I want to know if Mac OS can't use color profile on itself too.

> Are you high? I'd rather watch a movie on a vivid display with oversaturated colors a thousand times over the lame, washed out WLED crap screens that 95% of other laptops have.

You shouldn't compare this to crappy screens. Sure it's better than WLED but this is not why I bought it for.

 

Of course it's not useless at all if Windows supported color profiles itself, so technically it's OSs fault. When can we expect this to happen?

 

The quality of the screen is not only in vivid colors. We still have so many cheaper screens with awful viewing angles, awful black, and then we have a stupid glossy thing to make our colors supposedly more vivid, when in reality it only makes our eyes hurt and covers the fact that under this gloss there's no black color at all, there's gray. I think this is why glossy displays were first invented, they hide this. I see absolutely nothing good in them. My Nec was glossy also, and now this. If they want to make colors more vivid, how about making better brightness/contrast characteristics? Same thing with colors.

I really like how this notebook sounds and looks by the way. Photos never show it as it is. It's actually a very nice looking notebook. With this display thing I'm still waiting for better solution or more experienced views on this.

Upd: I really hate to see every element in OS that is uncalibrated after Firefox or Photoshop. I hate those colors.

 

Selling Wide-gamut displays is no more a problem than restricted-gamut displays when universal color management isn't available. Neither will give you 'accurate' colors.

I have more of a problem with the brightness of the backlight at the lowest setting than the color saturation.

 

YES, I found the screen too bright at the lowest setting, it was seriously hurting my eyes and giving me headaches so I searched and found the fix!!

***ATTENTION*** Follow Instructions below to lower brightness and other settings

Right click on desktop and select graphics properties
Select Advanced Mode
Click "Color Enhancement" on the left side

On this screen you can further adjust brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma. You can also create and save profiles on this screen for various setting combinations.

I turned the brightness ALL the way down. Eye strain is gone now, it's like my eyes breathed a massive sigh of relief, and I have awesome vision! I suggest people to first go to the lowest brightness setting using the keyboard and then adjust these menu settings accordingly. Play around with the settings till you find what you like best - hit default to reset to original settings if needed so theirs nothing to worry about.

I think this info will make a lot of people very happy and I hope this helps!!

 

Great it worked, Thanks!

 

when I lift up my xps i notice that the left bottom part get creaky when its warm.

if it is cool i get no creak at all.

im guessing the heat from the fan area expands the plastic or something, pretty annoying.

 

I honestly cannot stand Optimus. Give me manual switchable graphics, and get rid of this buggy, unreliable, and annoying software.

I, for the life of me, cannot get Optimus to stop using the Nvidia card on Firefox. I get no battery life, because if I just open Firefox, the Nvidia card is loaded. Naturally, the Optimus configure thing isn't recognizing if I try to add Firefox so I can make it select the integrated GPU automatically.

I'm getting about ~2 hours of battery life surfing the web, because Optimus won't turn off the damn Nvidia GPU while using Firefox. Can anyone help me out?

 

right click on the firefox launcher icon on your desktop
Click "run with graphics processor"
Click "change default graphics processor"
Click "Add"
Select the firefox launcher icon on your desktop
Change default GPU to Intel Integrated (not auto)
Hit ok
DONE

I've had no issues personally with Optimus and I use Google Chrome which does appear in the control panel using the above method.

 

I have no problems with Optimus.

It just that I gotten really tired of reloading my apps every time I switch on the other switchable tech with intel.

 

So anyone with a 1080p have theirs apart and can tell me the part number of the LCD ribbon cable? Dell has been refusing to tell me the part number or sell it to me.

 

Hey just ordered mine from the outlet. Can you please confirm if it has a BT, and the Manufacturer for the Wifi and HDD .. or anyother detail


1 WY4K8 Base,Notebook,Configure To Order,Extreme Performance System,L502X
1 0MMWG Module,Processor,SNB,I5-2410M,2.3,L502X
1 0VJFK Module,Label,Dell Energy Offering,ESTAR 5.0
1 0WPP1 Module,Hard Drive,640,7.2,P11,#1,TSHBA-CC
1 23T8J Module,Battery,Primary,56WHR,Vmware 6 Core Processor,SIMPLO
1 28HH6 Service Install Module,Software,1030,WLAN/BT,L502X
1 3C4JR Module,Assembly,Base,Discrete Video,1G,L502X
1 9R578 Module,Information,DHS,High, Value
1 61YKY Module,Software,DSO,2GB-FREE,2.0
1 7FHH7 Service Install Module,Software,Extreme Performance System,L502X
1 88PVP Module,Label,Intel,Notebook,CI52
1 8X15M Module,DIMM,4GB,1333MHZ,DDR3,2X2G
1 8YXNV Module,Card,Network,1000,Consumer Notebook,World Wide
1 99RFP Module,Software,DSPRT-CTR,3.0
1 CP1VF Module,Software,W7HP64 Consumer Desktop,English Dao/bcc
1 D9KVP Module,Software,Quick Fix Engineering,W7HB32,Consumer Notebook
1 DW8YJ Service Install Module,Software,WIDI,Unified Memory Architecture,L502X
1 F71M6 Module,Shipping Material,SXPS15,Color,Expanded Polyethylene
1 GRJ9V Module,Keyboard,86,United States,English,C12SB
1 GV0CP Module,Software,WINDOWS-LIVE,WAVE4,Consumer
1 J6XND Module,Software,W7HP64,Digital Video Disk Drive,Multiple User Interface,NO-E
1 JVKGP Module,Label,FCG09,Dell Americas Organization,L502X
1 KWHN4 Module,Documentation,English,Extreme Performance System,L502X,Dao/Bcc
1 M239M Module,Software,LTG DELL-DOWNLOAD-FLAG
1 MX962 Module,Information,NO MEDIA
1 N96VP Module,Software,OFC-2010,Factory Install
1 P5XP1 Module,Liquid Crystal Display,15.6HDF,True Life,Lg Philips Lcd,NIMOY
1 R609C Module,Cord,Power,125V,1M,C5,United States
1 T7VMF Module,Dvd+/-Rw,8X,Hitachi Lg Data Storage,BARE,Inspiron
1 U451C Module,Adapter,Alternating Current,Flexible,130W,3P,WorldWide
1 V5H6X Module,Cover,Liquid Crystal Display,Aluminum,Silver,Wireless Local Area Network Card,L502X
1 VR08H Module,Software,Certificate Of Authenticity,W7HP32/64
1 VWX72 Module,Bracket,With Out,Television Tuner,Plastic,L501X
1 W3HMK Module,Label,Microsoft,Notebook,Windows7
1 W871N Module,Software,WINDOWS-LIVE Consumer
1 WGXV5 Module,Software,Creative,Camera,Consumer,2.X,Factory Install
1 XM544 Module,Software,PC-RESTORE Transactional Line Of Business
1 YTPW1 Module,Software,Roxio,Creator,Start,Factory Install
1 939-4860 Dell Hardware Limited Warranty, Initial Year
1 939-4870 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus In-Home Service After Remote Diagnosis, Initial Year
1 950-3337 1 Year Limited Warranty
1 950-9797 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
1 420-8878 Soft Contracts Dell In-Home Hardware Agreement
1 933-0410 Warranty Support, Initial Year
1 3E476 Information,Equipment
1 375-6061 Thank you, Dell Outlet

 

Here's the part number for the wireless with BT.
M7F7R Module,Card,Network,1030,Consumer Notebook,Worldwide

Your HDD manufacturer is Toshiba.

 

Hey, Thankyou ... So is this without bt ? :S
1 28HH6 Service Install Module,Software,1030,WLAN/BT,L502X

Also are Toshiba drives good or mediocre ? I just want something reliable. Any other info, if any one can extract, would be nice ...

 

How is the durability and quality on this laptop from anyone who has it? I've gotten over the weight issue but i'm wondering if this thing would survive a small fall (like a couch or a bed).

 

For anyone that has an XPS 15 - is the 1366 x 720 resolution screen really that bad? I really want an XPS 15 but I've heard horror stories over the 1366 x 720 screen but I can't really afford the 1925 x 1080. Any thoughts?