Ordered my Dell XPS M1530 and NVIDIA CARD FIX

I spoke with a Dell rep today and inquired about the faulty NVIDIA cards. I had inquired about my concern with the faulty cards and they had assured me that Dell had taken action and understood the consumers concerns and rightfully so. The rep went on to explain that the driver update was indeed a band-aid solution however, Dell had begun replacing all faulty cards and all new laptops will now be produced with properly manufactured cards (rep stated this begun 2-3 weeks ago). Rep assured me that any new laptops manufactured recently will not have any faulty cards and in fact be the cards with the new manufacturing process.

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5750 (2.0GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
  Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1
  2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms)
  High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch LED LCD (1440x900) & 2.0 M
  Tuxedo Black
  128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
  Size: 160GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
  High Definition Audio 2.0
  Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write)
  Finger Print Reader XPS M1530
  56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
  Adobe Photoshop + Premiere Elements
  Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0+Enhanced Data Rate)
  Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card

Total: $879

 

Congrat's on your order! Whewww..finally ordered!

Spec's look nice!

I think you will be very happy once you receive it, and it's *your own*

And, I don't think you will have any troubles with the Nvidia...I have the 8600 and have had *no prob's whatsover*

Do you have the standard 1 year warranty???


Congrat's to you again!

Cin

 

Dude That's a nice build and cheap!

i PERSONALLY would try to upgrade the CPU (to mine )

and the ram but the ram you can get them off ebay fairly cheap so I wouldn't pay the super dell premiun

Looks nice


Don't know if they are REALLY changing everything... I haven't read anything regarding that. But regardless I like this comp and I recommend it

 

i wanted to keep the cost low...and i was originally going to just purchase a Asus EEE 1000H...but, then I added the costs and looked on the military AAFES website and configured some laptops and came away mostly impressed with the Dell XPS M1530 and for the price would have been on par with the Asus EEE 1000H with a usb powered LG disk drive. I was aiming below 900...and I met it.

The CPU and GPU will be adequate for me...I will mostly be doing:
Microsoft Office (College / Military work)
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
World of Warcraft / WarCraft 3 / StarCraft 2 (pending release)

This laptop will last me for roughly four years. I didn't need a heavy duty laptop simply because my desktop is top notch. I custom built it and it can easily run Crysis (only bought it to test the performance) at maxed settings without much of a hiccup.

The Del rep even sent me documentation on the changed production models on all the NVIDIA cards that were affected. I think the change is pretty legit.

 

Yes...sounds good...I plan on keeping mine for at least 3 years.
Looks like you got your bases covered with your order & the rep.

 

whats that about an actual document stating NVIDIA changes in all produced units? could you send it over PM?

 

hi RiCEADDiCTBOY

can you send us the document which specifies the production has been changed on those NVIDIA cards?

or can you state here in what exactly the documentation says about NVIDIA cards?

 

The sales guy was making a sale. Seriously, if Dell was in fact using confirmed unaffected cards does it not make sense from a business perspective to publicly state this to regain customer confidence considering how much negative publicity this issue has had?

 

I hope that's true. My M1330 was just built last week. If it's true my 8400 should be alright.

 

Just a while back, there were people saying that the reps / support personnel they spoke with told them about the cards being replaced some times during June/July.. Also there was some date also mentioned to one member here... So there, I think they are just trying to sell.. As batboy said, if it was true, by now it would have been in public, or at least in the famed direct2dell blog... Well I hope its being set right as we speak, but still, the official word is not out yet... though I believe / hope Dell isn't stupid enough to keep shipping units with defective GPU.... Hmmmm, its a hard life.

Of course, if the OP manages top get a proper system with rectified / new GPU, I am happy for you Enjoy your XPS, its a lovely system

 

How do you tell if the GPU is bad? I have yet to recieve mine, but would like to test it once received so I can send it back if it is no good.

Thanks

 

You can check the manufacturing date on it, but that would void your warranty since you'd have to remove the heatsink. It's possible that they'd allow you to do that if you'd be on the phone with tech support, since you can do lots of things to your computer if they're on the phone to instruct you and you'll keep your warranty even if you break something.

What you'd have to do is to open the computer, remove the heatsink and then probably clean the GPU in order to read the date on it, which should be August 01 or later. nVidia has stated that cards manufactured from that date are non faulty.

This is the information as I know it. Don't take anything for granted.

 

i do have the link to the document link that the dell rep sent me on the corrected bios and card update. it is on my ipod touch and i can't access wifi here at the hospital.

however, the tech DID say that there was an actual way to know - by checking the card number...so that would be a form of PHYSICAL proof. i highly doubt they would be lying with that said. anyone can give Dell a call and inquire about it.

most people that post about their laptops or computer generally are asking questions or complaining about a problem. most people that have nothing wrong really don't have any true incentive to post. so i encourage everyone to take all the "wrong" with issues with a grain of salt. there will always be 1 out of 10 (est) that will have a potential issue. same like cars or anything manufactured. the other issues can just simply be the end user doing something and trying to fix it...thus creating a problem over another problem.

i am optimistic about receiving my dell laptop. apples will have issues....lenovos...sonys...etc etc. just buy - enjoy. if you are always worried about what could possibly go wrong...you will be miserable. you may in fact have a perfect laptop but be so parinoid you may actually think something may be wrong and over react when its just the end user mistake.