Taken the plunge!

Ok for anyone whos even remotely interested in which I went for out of the Dell Studio XPS 13 and 16 as I have been trying to decide which one to get for a while now I went with the Dell Studio XPS 1340

Ok well what made my mind up was when I had a look in an apple store between the 13.3" macbook, the macbook pro 15.4 and macbook pro 17. The macbook pro 17 is simply just huge and anything that kind of size certainly is a desktop replacement. I think if it's going to sit on my desk I would be much happier with my 24" wide screen Dell XPS desktop which has very good high specs, Blue-ray the whole lot but with a laptop it is performance and portability I'm looking for and I quite liked the macbook size for portability. A few people on this forum pointed this out to me that the 16 is a desktop replacement and I agree.

Well I'll see how it goes, delivery is due by the 5th May, hopefully before. I'm actually going abroad on the 7th May so heres a good chance to put it to a little test when it comes to things such as WiFi, battery life under portable normal usage etc and see how it fairs. Who knows I may go for a 16 later but that seems a bit more of a desktop replacement at the end of the day and I have found it hard to find a good protective bag for a 16" over here in the UK, smaller ones seem much easier to find.

Ok so the spec on the Dell Studio XPS 1340 I went for is

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40Ghz, 1066MHz, 3MB)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) - English
13.3" WXGA (1280x800) White-LED Display with TrueLife (thinner & brighter)
4096MB 1067MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive
256MB nVidia® 9500m graphics card
Internal DVD+/-RW (DVD & CD read and write) Slot Load Drive including Software
Primary 6-cell 56 WHr Lithium Ion battery
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
Dell Wireless 1515 Half Mini Card (802.11n)
2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera with Facial Recognition Software

 

Sweet... you won't regret the purchase. Wifi is generally good, battery life is something to be desired.

Enjoy the purchase.

 

I hope I won't regret it seriously though reading this forum with all the problems with these two new ones from Dell its been hard to decide. I'll give the WiFi a good testing I've got 50mb broadband at home and I'll see what the WiFi is like around hotspots away from home.

I think with battery life most laptops don't last too long and it depends whats running on the laptop, we'll see though.

 

how much did that cost?
i managed to get my at £920 but its a studio xps 16"

 

How much did you get it for? I've had my 1340 3 days now and am loving it!

Mine is the same spec as yours, except for a 320GB Harddrive. Got it for £600 from the outlet.

 

There good prices mine was £880 including everything and that was after a 10% discount I applied myself. I did't go for a 2.66Ghz as that was £150 more on top and I couldn't justify it.

Nikolic seeing as you have just got yours did you find it came already with that latest bios update? Thats something I'm wondering if it will come up to date or will I have to download some updates for it.

I hope it isn't as bad as the kind of things I have read about it on here otherwise it will go back

 

Mine came with A02 - the latest available is A05. I updated mine almost immediately.

 

Yeah I was looking at the downloads and comparing to what people were saying on here. So is that right that the bios update addresses heat issues or what exactly does it do if anyone knows?

 

Congrats on your purchase, l hope you get a good one.

Nice price as well.

 

Hey! Congrat's on your purchase! Nice!

The ESD, is usually overestimated...so keep those fingers crossed!


Cin

 

I didn't use A02 long enough to notice if there were any heat issues. I haven't experienced any problems with mine, touch wood. Haven't reformatted yet either, waiting for my 64bit disc to come in the post.

 

I hope so because it's cutting it fine as I'm flying abroad on the 7th and their telling me on or before the 5th May.

Cin would you know any American webstores that ship to the UK that is good for all pc stuff in general but what I'm looking for at the moment is case logic and targus laptop bags. The Targus American website has an excellent range, probably about 50% more than the Targus UK website. I like case logic as well, and they over in America there seem to also have a 50% wider range, it appears only to be distirbutors over here in the UK for case logic and places like play.com, pc world even amazon.co.uk are pretty limited with range.

I've asked amazon.com over there in the USA if they would ship to the UK but had a reply saying due to import legislation things like laptop bags they wouldn't be able to, its only things like books, CD's that kind of stuff that they do ship to the UK.

 

Hey there!

I can do a check around for you..but I have a feeling it would be extremely *limited*...and e-bay, maybe be your best bet.

Let me check around and get back to you!


Cin

 

Hi thanks, the only American places I know are places like new egg, amazon.com, best buy but of coarse none ship over here. I should of asked a colleague to get me one he was over in the states a month ago.

I know some of these stores do ship over here but I'm not sure which, I'd only use it if it was reputable. Ebay I think is a bit dodgy I know so many people who have had problems.

 

You were right Cin, the delivery date is now this Friday coming.

I've already decided If it's a pile of junk I will be sending it back, thanks to this forum I know what issues to look out for

 

This looks alright for portability, traveling and less than half the price and 10 hours of battery life as well!

http://videos.cnet.co.uk/39041968.htm

 

Ok I took delivery of the Dell Studio XPS 1340 today and I'm typing on it this very minute. It does run very hot, I installed all the latest drivers/bios update and it's still hot I'm just seeing what the battery life is like as I'm "cordless" now after a full charge.

Can someone tell me whats the easiest way of switching between graphics modes? is there any nvidia gadgets available to make that option easy? I think there is a gadget to do this but I can't find it just yet.

Also another thing, not only is this notebook hot I find the charger is extremley hot, burning to almost the point where the plastic on the charger is sweating! is this the same for you guys? it is very very hot.

Also any pointers or tips people found on first getting this system I would be interested about.

 

Your charger shouldn't be hot in the slightest. Mine is pretty cool to touch.

People suggest reinstalling windows via the restore CD. It's what I've done and I'm yet to suffer a crash, having said that I never had any crashes when I had the latest nVidia Drivers intalled on the pre-set OS.

You can change the graphics cards by switching the power options (look in the system tray) to power saver mode (1 card) or balanced and high performance (2 cards). If you look under advanced power settings under control panel and edit the profiles, you can change this (so you can have it set so balanced is only 1 graphics card too).

 

my charger gets pretty hot, but not as hot as your describing.

As for the graphics mode, the way I do it is using dell quickset. I have it set up to where if the computer is unplugged it automatically goes to power save, and high preformance when plugged in. As for toggling it manually, I haven't found a way to only toggle the graphics card, just if I switch to power saver or high preformance from the power options.

 

I swear there is a nvida vista gadget for messing about with graphics cards or pehaps it tells you the temp.

As for my charger, it seems to of got very hot when I fisrt plugged it into this notebook and was almost to the point of the plastic sweating but the temp seems to of evened out but it sure is warm.

I must say as for the laptop heat, I was in a Sony Center shop the other day and the sales guy was showing me a few vaio's that were in the store and were on since morning, the temps were really the same as this Studio XPS 13, this XPS 13 is warmer on the surface of the keyboard and deafo warmer around the top left of the screen where the vent is and the air is warm thats coming out.

I'll see how this goes but so far I'm finding the keyboard a joy to type on, very nice square big buttons with a nice feel.

How long do you find the 6 cell takes to fully charge up? I'm yet to give this a few drains and see roughly how long the battery is lasting on average but that I will do.

Also another thing I notice when I unplug the graphics do go into the lower mode.

As for the backlit keyboard is this a case of where if not in use the light turns off and which some "activity" the keyboard turns on again? I'm just trying to make sure I know how this works, it seems to be the case or is there any off and on option for the keyboard anywhere like a hot key pardon the pun on this notebook?

 

I did manage to find a rather convoluted method of switching the graphics cards from the nVidia tray icon, but the easiest way is via the power profiles.

You can change the backlight keyboard options from C:\Program Files\Dell\Quickset\BacklitKB.exe

You can set how long before it turns off after inactivity (mine is set to never turn off)

 

I see thanks!

About build quality, theres nothing that I can find wrong with this one. Leather is tight on the back, no gaps anywhere or anything wrony aroind the chassis or screen. And mine was made in Poland

As for sound quality, not very impressive with the speakers but very good with headphones, I'm using these

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/3271905/Sony-MDR-EX90LP-Stereo-Headphones/Product.html

 

Something else after the amount of installing I have done so far and restarts and everything NO BSOD's so far! Something that was reported by a few, I haven't experienced any of that yet, everythings pretty much on the quick side no errors or anything.

About the finger prints, a micro fiber cloth you do need with this system

I personally don't think a Zagg invisible shield is a good idea on this system as it is on the warm side, you may find it starts peeling off!

 

Which charger did you get? The 90W gets hotter than the 65W. I have one of each and they both get pretty hot, its hotter if its charging the battery or if I'm playing a game, because it uses more power.

 

They sent me the 90W looking at it here, your right it does get hot charging. Hey looks like you almost have the same system as me spec wise.

I wanted to ask whats the easiest way to try windows 7 on here on the XPS 13? I already downloaded the windows 7 file and have a serial from it when microsoft opened the download availability up to everyone.

I'd like to dual boot this but a little unsure of how to do that (never done it before). Whats the easiest way?

 

Well I just formatted everything and reinstalled Windows 7 (I deleted the recovery partition since I have no need for it, but you may want to keep it). The best way to dual boot is do this in Vista:
1) Rightclick Computer in the Start Menu and click Manage
2) Goto Disk Management and rightclick the Disc 0 (or the main HDD of your system) and click 'Shrink Volume'
3) Decide the size you want to shrink your 2nd partition to, this will be the one you add Windows 7 on
4) Boot from Windows 7 DVD and click the newly created partition to install to.
5) Use all of Dell's drivers for Vista and you are good to go. Everything is working fine for me.

 

Thanks! and when you want to uninstall 7 (as everyone will have to) this is easy to ?

 

I keep getting "Access denied" when I try and shrink the partition.

I thought it might have something to do with user account control so I switched that off but still the same....