New XPS 15z

hi, can you take a screenshot of the nvidia control panel "manage 3d settings" tab.

 

so here you can see that I cant choose between two graphic cards, there only one option INTEGRATED VIDEO CARD...

 

one more question, does your XPS 15z dvd drive makes odd crackling noise when inserting disc and when you eject disc same odd noise appears...local dell dealer says thats normal. I got new laptop cause my laptop screen made sound when I opened and closed it. new machine dvd drive made same crackling noise when i was inserting disc...

 

just one quick question, how's the build quality right now? Any improvements, or is it the same as when they first came out?

 

Mine was perfect

 

My battery is acting up. I was charging it, and it was 80%, and all of sudden, jumps to 100%.

Already calibrated the battery a few days ago, and it happened again last night.

According to Dell Support Center, my battery capacity is 96%.

Is this normal? I've only bought this laptop in August.

 

Were you or others able to resolve this issue?

Same issue here... but strangely, it does not happen all the time.. one common thing I noticed to this issue is.. it happens when running on battery!

 

I followed this method

windows 7 (x64 pro) window focus issues:when i open a - Microsoft Answers

 

Removing QuickSet has fixed it for me for now. So a few of the multimedia keys don't work including eject and the little display doesn't show up. Slightly annoying but much better than the stupid losing focus problem. That was driving me insane. When I removed QuickSet I noted my version was 11.0.21 but the latest on the drivers page is 11.0.11. Maybe the old one might work better?

My bigger concern is the audio issues I'm having. Anyone?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ckling-audio-network-traffic.html#post8074723

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/580742-new-xps-15z-75.html#post7933226

check out the posts @ Page 76 regarding replacing the DVD drive with a second HDD / SSD.

 

I think I'll go with the 14z.
I find the 15z big-ish

 

I wish I could get the 14z... and even the low resolution screen isn't my true dealbreaker... it's the AWFUL graphics card.

 

I'm still kinda not sure which one to get

 

IMHO 14z looks ugly with all that staff situated on rear side. And difference between 14 and 15 is not real deal breaker. 14z is not much lighter than 15z.

 

Well more than pound lighter - it's not a small difference

 

Guys I have few question :

Q1- Where is the best place to install the SSD (by replacing DVD ROM or with primary Hard disk)

Q2- What type of issue currently is occurring (with driver or any heating issue)?

Q3- Which games you have tried ?

Q4- From where I can buy the caddy and it will shipped to India.

 

It doesn't make a difference.

No over heating issues. The system gets hot if you're gaming (95 C MAX)

Some games I played on it:
Blackops - 40-50 fps in MAX settings with 2x anti aliasing 1366x768 res.
Crysis 2 - 30 fps high settings native res
Battlefield 3: 27 fps (stable) on low settings, some things I put on high like Textures (I'm talking about campaign for all games mentioned here btw)

IDK

 

Buddy, If I install the SSD in the place of primary Hard disk and shift the primary hard disk into DVD ROM space, as you know primary hard disk emitted at least 40 to 45 C, So it will good idea to install the primary hard disk into DVD ROM shell.

Sorry I don't understand, Please can you provide me a link ?

 

IDK = I don't know

I do know that you can buy a compatible caddy from here, and they do ship internationally. It's a bit pricey, but pretty much guaranteed to work. I've bought cheaper caddies on eBay, and they've been just that. They either fit poorly in the machines I was using them in or didn't fit at all because the drive connectors didn't line up properly.

 

Hi Guys,

I've recently added a second hard drive to my 15z. I have SSD as primary and a Segate Momentus in the Optical Bay both are connected at SATA 3GB speeds. I used a standard 9.5mm caddy, don't pay the extra for the newmodus model its nothing but a standard caddy. The one I used is can be found here

Temps are about the same, I've not used it long enough to see the affect on battery life but it doesn't seem to be drastic.

 

[ Screen lines on 1080p panel ]

Has anyone else with the 1080p panel noticed graininess in the text , and images?

I can see prominent horizontal/vertical lines between the pixels when looking from about a foot away. I am running at native resolution , and tried with the Standard Color/Splendid color saturation options in Win 7 Mobility center.

I checked out the Vaio CB15/35 which also has a 15.6" FHD screen, but could not make out individual pixels / pixel boundaries.

Is this a problem with all units? You can make out the lines when looking at white / coloured areas of the screen, in menu's and images.

A few others have reported this @ dell community forums as well.
en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19389253/19988429.aspx#19988429

Can you folks confirm if you can see the lines between pixels during normal use?

 

Some 15z's have a more visible "graininess" than others. I've worked on many 15z's and some are perfect and others have that "grain". According to device manager, the properties of the panel shows they are the same model LCD panel, so who knows.

But, to answer your question, it's not all 15z's.

 

Started a thread/poll to get more info .

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/628142-poll-xps-15z-1080p-screen-issues.html

What is a good way to get the screen model / batch info? ( Aida32 / ... ? )

 

Might be tomorrow laptop is coming to India, I will inform you guys what type of model are distributing in the all over the world. Mine is coming from Malaysia.

 

Hi, all. My first post on this thread. I wanted to update you on a couple of issues and fixes.

Dell has received a great deal of customer feedback on the WLAN, Bluetooth module and touch pad for XPS 15z. We recommend you update your drivers for each respectively here, here and here. Please post back and let us know how it goes for you.

You may notice that the drivers are not posted in the usual product pages on our Drivers and Downloads site. We are working to get the files posted on the appropriate pages, but wanted to get the files posted for download as quickly as possible in the meantime. Thank you very much for the feedback and your patience.

 

hi Bill,

What issues do these drivers fix?

Also, can you comment on the Screen issues ? How are there LCD panels with visible mesh patterns .. ?

 

The BT driver corrects a specific issue that was affecting WLAN performance. My unqualified and wild guess is this may have had something to do with the BT and WLAN modules being on the same Intel combo card.
The WLAN driver corrects dropped connections on routers with older firmware, and overall connectivity issues like drops and throughput.
The touchpad driver addresses the failure to retain settings after reboot. One specific example is the setting to disable the touchpad when a mouse is present.

I am not familiar with the specifics of the grainy screen feedback from customers, but I have seen the comments. I need to do a deep dive to figure out what's going on there. Do we have a thread on NBR dedicated to the LCD complaints? Please start one or link me to the existing thread, and I will get the ball rolling on our end. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Started : http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/628142-poll-xps-15z-1080p-screen-issues.html

The current thread has instances of LCD complaints, though doesn't let me search through.

 

So far I'm seeing a 50/50 split with 6 votes. I'll keep digging. In the meantime, perhaps more will weigh in on the poll.

 

Bill,

I received my 15z today. Would I still need to update my drivers or does the recent build correct the issues?

 

Good question. Not entirely sure. I would install them anyway just in case. I did not see the factory cut in date for the new drivers, but since we just posted them a few days ago I tend to believe they were not at the factory when your system was built.

 

Bill - when I try to download the updated drivers it tells me "File not found". Could you post another link to them? I've logged into the site etc with no joy, and the Dell Euro support page doesn't seem to have them...

Just thought I'd post my 15z story as well. I got the laptop a few weeks ago and was having a lot of problems with the touchpad. It was like after about 30 mins of use it thought that I had more fingers on the touchpad than I did, then eventually it would just lock up completely. I assumed that this was a driver issue as others had reported issues (although none like this!). I tried all drivers, new BIOS etc but then one day I turned the computer fully off, then back on again and the touchpad still didn't work. Phoned Dell and told them all that I'd tried and they were out the next day to repair it - it's perfect now.

Love the machine, no issues with it at all. I use it for digital DJing using Traktor Pro and it works flawwlessly at 0.5ms latency!

Spec: i7 with 8gb RAM, 750GB HD, Windows 7 Professional, 1080p screen.

 

At the moment, you have to select the multiple download option, and use Internet Explorer when doing so.

 

Thanks for that. I've installed the drivers - I can confirm that the Cypress touchpad driver fixes the issue of around 7% of the CPU being used when the trackpad is touched. Great news! The software also retains the last used settings and multitouch scrolling feels a lot smoother (maybe just quicker?).

Seems good so far!

 

I don't know why Dell provides India to handle the service centers.

 

Problem with the mouse driver: in the previous version, a registry edit was required to enable the touchpad + keyboard simultaneously. Now that method no longer works. I rolled my touchpad driver back which fixes that for me, but its ridiculous and hugely impractical not to be able to use the mouse and keyboard at the same time. can this be resolved?

 

As of now, I'm not entirely sure. My guess is the functionality will be restored in the next driver rev. I have seen a couple of posts on the Dell forums where customers installed the latest driver over the top of the previous version, and they had the registry key present. The problem they found with setting the key to "on" was it was not working as before.

I have asked for an answer to your question from engineering and will post back what I hear. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

 

Thanks for responding so quickly, good to see you guys are working hard. looking forward to see what the engineers offer up.

 

whenever I'm trying to download it's shows file not found and when I go through normal "Drivers and downloads" links I can't find these version.

 

I think it was stated these drivers were NOT up yet on the normal Dell drivers pages.

I just tried all three links and they all seem to work fine.

 

@Bill_B, I'm still well within my warranty period for the 15z - should I send in my laptop if I have the aforementioned screen vertical band/fuzziness issues?

I'd appreciate any advice on the matter.

 

I guess it would depend on whether you have an issue or the hardware is functioning as designed. When you say, "vertical band," that sounds like defective hardware. With nothing more than that to go with, I'd say if you have issues out of box with any computer from any manufacturer, request an exchange. It is your right per the Dell warranty, and I'd take advantage if I felt uncomfortable with any issues I have out of box.

 

I was just curious, does the XPS 15z have a loud fan like the XPS 15?

 

I got the answer. The wording was a little unclear, but I think it means with the next driver rev if you set the palm check sensitivity setting to lower (or is that off?), it will restore simultaneous keyboard and touch pad functionality. Here is the verbatim of what I received:

"the next release will have a palm rejection sensitivity adjustment and by changing this lower, it will be able to have keyboard and Trackpad work at the same time by turn-off the palm rejection option"

As far as dates go, I can't commit to a final release date, because it will have to go through Dell validation and test after we get it from Cypress. We will post it ASAP, however. My guess would be some time around the middle to end of this month. Just a guess.

 

Awesome, Thank you so much!
While i was tooling around in the registry I actually saw settings for palm sensitivity, didn't even think to change their values. Might be able to get this working pre update.

Thanks!

 

Still I have a issue in scrolling after updating the drivers provide by Bill. Some times its goes up and down and most of time stuck or work in pausing way

 

All credit to bill for giving the tip about the palm rest but:


For anybody holding out on version 4(instead of 5) as a result of the mouse + keyboard not working.
I just went back to 5 after being on four, and I changed a few things so I'm not entirely sure what fixed it, but i'll list everything just in case.
Firstly, i reset the value of "DisableTrackpadWhenKeyboardActive" then I installed the version 5 driver.
(after rebooting) I set "DisableTrackpadWhenKeyboardActive" back to 0
*NEW*
->HKEY_LOCAL_Machine_Software_Cypress TrackPadDriver_Physical_PalmReject (as apposed to "cypress keyboard filter driver)
->"KeyboardTapGuardEnable" to 0 and "KeystrokeDesensitivityEnable" to 0

Again, not sure what of the above made it work, if anybody wants to break it down (I'm fairly confident it was one of the *new* changes

Goodluck, and hope this helped!

 

Hi, Can you please provide 5th version of cypress driver because which I'm using is A04.

Guys which DPI settings you are using, all my application and firefox text are very tiny and if I changed the the DPI 125 to 150 then all the text are overlapping, what should I do ?

Can anyone confirm this if I put caddy in place of DVD-ROM, so it will avoid my warranty ?

 

Linked A05: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

I use 100% (96 dpi/inch).
If you're having that hard of a time reading text, I'd suggest lowering your resolution? then everything would remain proportional (as long as you use the correct resolutions)

noooo comment on the caddy

 

Thanks buddy.