Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

Just got my XPS 15 L502x, and it's incredible. I tested it out before I added the 300gb Intel SSD, and that was fast, but with the SSD its BLAZING. No pausing or anything, and my fresh install of Windows 7 took 15-20mins from start to finish.

One thing that is bothering me, is since I did a fresh install, I had to install all the initial drivers by hand (from the included Dell drivers CD). Anyway, I installed every driver that was check marked on the CD, yet when I go into Device Manager, I see 1 "Unknown Device." I don't know what this is, and so I can't find which driver I should install. Has anyone experienced this or have any advice? Everything seems to be working, so I'm not sure what it is.

 

Hey, anyone else order an XPS 15 with i7 around March 23?

I was told last week that my order was in the boxing stage, then I was told by a case manager that everything was going fine, and I'd receive it by the EDD of April 13, then I was told it would ship on the 8th (today) and arrive by the 13th. It still hasn't shipped, so now I'm told that it's been delayed until the 29th due to "parts backordered." Parts backordered? Then why would it enter production, and why would I be told that everything was fine multiple times if there were parts backordered? Called again, told EDD is bloody May 4 due to defective Core i7 processors from a while ago, so they are taking extra precautions and intentionally taking a long time to assemble computers. Even less sense is made. My order status page still shows an EDD of April 13, so I plan to call again tomorrow and get to the bottom of this.

But, since the customer service reps so far have been contradictory and made little sense, who should I ask to speak with to get some answers? Do I just ask for a supervisor? I don't know who would know.

Also, I was just generally wondering if anyone else is currently experiencing anything similar.

 

I don't have my system yet, but, based on my experience with other computers, the resource disc isn't nearly as useful or inclusive as Dell's tech support website. You go there and enter your service tag, and it will find most, if not all, of updated drivers appropriate for your specific machine. They will probably have something that the resource disc doesn't.

 

Well, im not a big laptop user so i cant compare to much, im listening to variable bit rate of around 230kbit at lowish volume atm and i think the quality is amazing. maybe you are used to high end stuff? eitherway i love this thing, the only faults from my own perspective is the size and weight probably mainly due to the 9 cell and the fan flat out during gaming. I'm still very happy with it.

 

Does any body know when the 2nd gen SB chips will be available in the UK? The i7's are online, but that's a little overkill for me. Was thinking middle of the road i5-2xxx.

 

got mine friday, excellent computer. not sure if anyone else is having this problem, but my intel wireless centrino n1030 keeps intermittently kicking me off the internet and giving me a "default gateway is not available" message when i troubleshoot. i can not go more than 10 minutes without this happening. my router is a netgear n600 dual band. i updated the drivers, flashed the bios, uninstalled and re-installed the card.......nothing. i'm online now because i disabled the card and installed a medialink usb n adapter. been online for 3 hours straight so far.

anyone else running into this problem?

 

Can someone let me know what parts of the laptop is metal?

And can someone confirm it has a Synaptics touchpad?

 

Just to help someone out, I found out the missing device was the accelerometer driver, which is probably useless considering I have an ssd installed.

 

I don't have my laptop yet either but some have mentioned to use the 5ghz band on the router since the 2.4ghz is interrupted by cordless phones ect.

 

Lid and palm rests are metal, bottom is plastic. Yes it's a Synaptics touchpad.

 

Thanks for following up on that, I just did a clean wipe and ended up with the same unknown device

 

was delivered to my workplace Friday morning but did not get to start playing with it until I got home. So far loving it, have not wiped the drive yet. It seem to have the battery charged 100% but I still plugged it in to the charger.

Encountered a problem using the wifi, it can see it but cannot authenticate. I will continue tinkering with it. Also the wimpy OTA antena is not picking up any TV stations, I will try the building aerial to see if it can find any tv stations.

The backlit keyboard is great, never had it before. Have not tried playing a blue ray disc yet.

Still waiting for my 120GB Vertex 3 order to be fulfilled and also the drive caddy which I presume will be shipped from China also but I have received the 8GB memory I ordered from Crucial.

 

Palm rest is plastic too...

 

I'm sure they were there last week, as I was looking at them! But you're right, I can only see the 2nd gen i7's at the moment. How odd.

 

The palm rest is thin aluminum over a plastic skeleton. So it is not all plastic, and it is not all aluminum.

 

I received my L502x on April 7th. When I got home from work that day, I tore it apart and did a repaste with Arctic Silver 5. Afterwards I verified it booted, and that I could install Windows 7 Ultimate on the SSD that I had installed during the repaste.

Just for reference I did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate, so I had to manually install all of the drivers.

At work on Friday, I installed Furmark and Prime95. I ran both simultaneously for 1.5 hours, and the video card peaked at 96C. That seems quite warm, but no bluescreens or any adverse effects so I guess the repaste was a success Also no leftover screws!

Apparently there is a burn-in period of 200 hours for AS5 to take the full effect. I don't care about temps so much as long as it is completely stable.

My initial impression is it is extremely fast, and the screen is so bright it makes my desktop monitor appear to be dimmed after looking at the laptop. My desktop ia a 20" Dell IPS, but is from 2007ish. The laptop screen has a clear advantage in contrast and brightness.
The control over the screen brightness is good IMO. When you have a screen that only can go to a specific brightness, it stops there. This screen can go brighter than I need to, which allows me to choose what level of brightness I want.

The palm rest gets in the way when I am typing as I am not used to it's width yet. Using the fn + F3 turns the orange light on, but does disable it, maybe it requires a special driver to actually disable it? (The other orange fn hotkeys seem to work just fine)

The white hard drive LED is behind the screen, so you can't see it during normal use. Of all the LED indicators I'd want to see durong normal use, that would be among the top 3 easily. I'm not sure how that got chosen to be there, but I am a bit disappointed at the lack of thought put into that. This seems like a huge oversight.
Also I'm still not sure what the touch buttons to the right of the gears are for.

The island keys will take some getting used to as I have never used a keyboard like this before.
The END key is not directly below the HOME key, which I find awkward. Also the DELETE key is above the HOME key, which I also find awkward (I use HOME and END a lot). I will probably get used to it in time though, I hope.

Overall I like this laptop a lot. The screen was a nice upgrade from my old 1680x1050 CCFL laptop screen, in all ways. Being able to go from 32bit to 64bit is very nice to get past 32bit Windows 7's 3.25gb arbitrary memory limitation.

I went this this config:
Intel 2720QM CPU
Nvidia 525m GPU
6gb RAM
Backlit keyboard
6 cell battery

 

I have to ask... why? The only times I ever find myself looking at it is if the computer seems to be frozen, or to see if it has finished going into hibernation.

 

i have the same specs as you ^ but i'm only get an 1 hr and 40 minutes on battery, is something wrong with it? how long are you guys getting on a 6 cell or are there any settings i need to turn on? im hearing people getting like 7 hrs on a 9 cell so shouldnt i be getting like 3 hours on a 6 cell?

Intel 2720QM CPU
Nvidia 525m GPU
6gb RAM
Backlit keyboard
6 cell battery

 

Depends on what you are doing for that time. I can get right around 4 hrs on the 6 cell doing nothing but simple web browsing (no videos or flash), word processing and/or email, and I've got the display all the way down and the backlit keyboard turned off. Same activity level nets me about 6.5 hours on the 9 cell.

If you're watching movies, installing/uninstalling apps or anything with a lot of hdd activity, expect the lower numbers.

 

Is anyone else in the US experiencing a delay of their XPS 15 order due to "parts backordered?" If so, do you know exactly which part is the culprit?

 

jus simple web browsing.

 

It lets me know when the database is being hit hard, and can be an indicator of poor performance in some cases when I am doing programming.

If I'm loading something in the background it lets me know it is finished. I can tell when a file transfer to or from the pc is finished.

I'm used to using it often I guess.

 

Thanks, that helps. The new version will supposedly work with brightness as well.

 

Hi - my receipt had $175 in additional warranty services that I didn't select. I specifically was careful to check the warranty option screen and there was no lower option to choose for warranties. If there was a way to go lower, it must have been hidden pretty good. I'm just saying check your receipt if you purchase one.

The need for the warranty is debatable, but if you are comfortable with spending extra on it, no problem at all.

 

Some credit cards has some extra benefits like additional year of warranty at no additional cost. Some companies does it automatically with brought with a specific credit card.

Get A Free Extended Warranty By Purchasing With A Credit Card | Money Blue Book

 

In the nvidia control panel Make the apps that you are using use the intel gpu. I do that for my media player and it makes a decent difference.

 

Yep bought it w/an Amex so i'm good. $1050 for that laptop I'm pretty happy about

 

Curious, is the TV tuner an additional board? Wondering about maybe picking it up someday. Its not a huge loss, I live in a hilly area with no line of sight to the Mountain Antenna's, but might be good for travel boredom.

 

I agree that the hard drive indicator is in a weird place and should be visible during normal use, but it's better than not having one (like the Studio). I've been using Taskbar Meters for Windows 7. Once you start using it you'll wonder how you ever got along without them. They take up a spot on your Windows 7 taskbar and show you %CPU usage, %Ram Usage, and hard drive usage. It's fairly lightweight and only uses about 18MB of ram. Check it out... really.

Taskbar Meters

 

Excellent review from page 1. Rep +1

Originally wanted a Dell XPS 15, ordered an HP DV6Tqe-6XXX series due to price difference, still haven't received it yet and have 21 days after receipt to return (+1 rep for HP for that ) . Just started reading this thread. Anyone have an unbiased pros/cons vs. the two, or if already done, the thread name/page number? Here is what I have so far:

HP pros/cons:
Price as of April '11 time frame
21 Day return policy.
ATI 6770 Video card w/manual switchable graphics (vs optimus=auto)
with confirmed OC of approx 20% increase in benchmarks
SB B3 chipset installed.
Slim design vs dell (approx .5lbs lighter)
/Display quality
/Currently own HP DV7 laptop-my opinion, so so
/Keyboard flex

Dell pros/cons:
Nvidia Graphics (except for optimus-prefer manual switching)
OC capable?
Better display quality (although not going BR initially)
Backlit Keyboard
Sound quality.
Well, dude, it's a dell. I own 2 dell PCs and previous dell laptop-loved it.
/No returns
/Cheap and slow RAM

My HP ordered specs are listed in my signature below.
How does the 550M fair against the 6770M?
Also are benchmarks posted and if so what page could I find them?
Thanks for your time and help!
Information ascertained from hp thread
HP dv6t, dv7t Select Edition / Quad Edition (6XXX series) Owners Lounge

 

Open the back cover and check and connect the disconnected antenna connector. Mine and many others units arrived with one or both antennas disconnected from the mini WLAN card.

Let us know...

 

Thanks for that link, It will come in handy, about to install the stuff. And yeah it's pretty stupid that they would put HDD activity light in the back, I personally use it a lot as a reference.

 

L502x has GT540m.

6770M has about 40-45% more performance. It's even faster than 555gt from L702x.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavilion-notebooks/568150-gaming-dv6tqe-dv7tqe.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/FAQ-Tips-Technics.123.0.html

 

Notebookcheck place 6770m under GT550m and just above the GT540m.

Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

I thought DELL has a 21 day return policy

 

They do. 21% restock fee waived if defective.

 

Yeah 550m placed above 6770 is misunderstanding. But you can check scores there.

 

Hi,

Just received my L502x with the 1080p screen and very pleased with it so far.

Only problem is the screen calibration is way off straight out of the box and I can't seem to configure it 100% to my satisfaction.

Anyone got any suggestions?

 

One of the things that bothers me a *little* bit about notebookcheck is that at the moment it's a little useless for comparing the scores of the 525m and the 540m. They only have two benchmarks up for the 525m, and the system used to make them is very much inferior to the system that it compares them to on the 540m.

It just makes me feel bad, because I see a lot of people who paid the extra $100 for the 540m, and in truth there is very little real-world performance difference between that and the 525m. In actuality they are identical pieces of hardware, physically there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the two of them. The only difference is that the 540m is configured with a 12% core clock increase. Now, that variance in core clock speed in and of itself is relatively negligible - you will hardly notice any real-world difference in gaming performance, but it could equate to maybe a 2-3 FPS increase in some games. Even if you are worried about that 12%, you can make a very mild overlock on the 525m and make up that core clock speed with no risk whatsoever to your machine - because the 540m is already the exact same piece of hardware, just already pre-configured with the higher clock speed. And if you really get into OCing either chip above the speed of the 540m, they both have about the same ceiling in terms of safety - i.e. the 540m isn't going to be able to OC more than the 525m because, obviously, they're the same piece of hardware.

It honestly makes me a little mad, because it's really deceptive on the part of Dell and nVIDIA to charge so much money for an upgrade which, in reality, is barely an upgrade at all. It's certainly not worth an additional $100. It just bothers me to see such deceptively priced upgrades, because I would imagine that a ton of people are paying for the 540m and won't even be aware that the 525m would have performed equally well. Oh well.

 

Buying a 540m is a guarantee that it will run at the 540m clocks, and possibly overclock to EVEN HIGHER speeds. If you buy a 525m there is no guarantee that it will even get close to 540m speeds while overclocking, yes some users have been able to overclock their 525m to 540m speeds but you may not be able to. People seem to forget that you can also overclock the 540m. I paid the $100 for the 540m because of this and that this part is impossible to ever change in the laptop, most over parts can be changed later (CPU, RAM, Wireless card, HDD, keyboard, etc.).

 

Oh, I'm very much aware. And if I had paid $100 extra for the 540m I'd be finding all possible reasons to justify doing so, give that it *isn't* something you can change. But even without overclocking the 525m, there's just very little actual difference in performance. And based on all available information, the max-amount that you can overclock both the 540m and the 525m is the same because they're identical pieces of hardware.

 

See Product binning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They are the *based* on the same chip. They *ARE NOT* the same hardware. If the 525m was a very popular chip then it may get binned as a 540m but sold as a 525m to meet demands, it is not very popular (That's why notebookcheck doesn't have many benchs) so it will mostly be binned as 525m. Products aren't always binned at lower products because they weren't stable, they may not meet power, heat, or stability requirements. Secondly, the $100 includes a higher clocked chip, 2GB ram, and a 130W power adapter instead of the 90W ($110 on it's own and $40 more than the 90W).

 

Wow I just played DeadSpace 2 on 1080p with very high settings, and guess what? NO LAG, it played surprisingly very smoothly, on the other hand, I played Crysis 2 and it was laggy even with the lowest settings possible, that confused me a bit, also played Metro 2033 and it worked fine with medium settings, overall I'm satisfied, my temps were around 78 C, but I only played for about 30 min.

 

Hey that's not too bad! I'm excited to get mine! Are you in Canada by any chance? My EDD is April 21 and it's still in production

 

No I'm in Michigan, but my EDD was April 20th and it arrived outside my door on April 5th, so yours will prolly ship earlier.

 

Notebook Check just posted a very good review. For all those considering whether or not to get this, this might convince you.

Review Dell XPS 15 Notebook (i5-2410M & GT 540M) - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

The notebookcheck review mentioned that optimus sometimes wouldn't change to the dedicated video card on some games, so they'd have to set it manually. Did you make sure Crysis 2 was using the 540m and not the HD 3000? It should be able to run Crysis 2 on medium at least.

 

Hey guys,

So I ordered my XPS 15 on the 28th of March and it got delivered on the 6th of April to my cousin's address as I'm out of the country. The concierge/front desk usually signs for packages and stores them until collected. I have done this many times before without issues. I told my cousin it had been delivered by fedex. Went and they have nothing stored for me. They can't find it and don't know where it is.

The guy's signature, according to fedex, is the same person who has accepted previous packages of mine so I know it got delivered. I even double checked with fedex and it did get delivered. Should I contact the police? Somebody who works in the building must have taken it if they can't find it. I'm so upset!

EDIT: I was told to contact the building manager to see what he knows but he's not picking up his cell phone. Very frustrating.

 

Hi there, where about's are you from? How hard was it to get the rep to add the backlit keyboard? I'm from the UK and tried 2-3 different reps via the online chat thing and they've all point blank said the backlit keyboard isn't available.

Also, has anyone successfully got Dell to ship this with no OS? Or FreeDOS? It says on the spec pages that FreeDOS is an option but it isn't available to pick when customising it. Also, the dell reps on the online chat say it's not an option either and the website info is a "typo". Just wanted to save some extra pennies on an OS I won't use.

If I *have* to get it with Windows, what do you think the chances are claiming a partial refund for the OS afterwards are? As I won't be accepting the initial EULA agreement I would think I'm entitled to a refund.

Hopefully ordering in the next couple of days, can't wait

 

With a 9 cell battery, is this notebook still comfortable to have on your lap?