**The Official Studio XPS 1647 Intel Core i5/i7 "Owners' Lounge"**

You should be able to perfectly install any kind of Windows. And no, if you install a recent OS, like Vista or 7 you shouldnt have any kind of problems with drivers, just remember to download them from Dell.com, under the section Drivers & Dowloads.

 

One annoying thing is the fan periodically keeps going on and off...goes 5 minutes on and then 5 minutes off and repeats. Gets a tad annoying after a while. This happens when I'm just browsing the internet and not doing anything heavy.

 

thanks guys for the replies on reinstalling. I know general common sense tells you that the questions about dell being different than EVERY OTHER system is "idiotic" but sometimes its better to be safe than sorry

btw, thats what i been missing...quickset drivers, and delldock in the past, i remmeber doing one dell system, and i installed individual drivers of things that actually NEEEDED them (things that show up with a question mark in device manager) rather than installing the "dell" version of certain drivers thus not allowing me to get the onscreen notifications of the buttons.

so i guess the drivers i never actually installed in the past was the quickset application drivers

EDIT: sorry for the awkwardly outlined post, basically, i typed a bit, researched, typed a bit, researched more. cant be bothered to edit the layout of the post

 

Your not alone lol. I am hoping A04 bios resolves this.

 

Another cosmetic question, does the left corner of your Dell Studio XPS 1647 doesn't align well with the base. Like there's a little overlap of the palm rest and the base by the audio ports?

Also, does anyone if the i5 a LGA based CPU or BGA?

 

YES!! Wow, I thought that was just my defective laptop, its great to know that I am not alone, lol.

LGA.

 

Not on mine

 

Interesting. I mean, the quality everywhere else is awesome, but except for that one part. I would at least expect that everything is aligned and working properly. My model is from Best Buy and that might be the caused since it is mass produced.

But my friend's Studio XPS 1640 also has the issue and he got his brand new a year ago from Dell Direct.

Thanks. It's good to know that I'm not the only one with the issue. Even the ASUS laptops have better quality...

 

Mine is from BestBuy too, but I dont think that has anything to do with this..

Beside this little issue and some design mistakes, I think it has a much better than average build quality

 

Bluetooth wouldn't work with the newest driver from the dell website, it just unzipped didn't do anything, fixed it when I remembered I had a driver disk XD.

About the quality, I feel kinda special now, cuz I seem to be one of few having no missalignements or anything pointing towards poor buildquality. The fan is never on for long for me, and if it is, it's in the lowest setting (while surfing ofcourse). Just for 2 minutes every quarter of an hour (maybe 3 )

The strange thing I did notice is that my RAM has a miner 5.9 in the windows index! My desktop supports 6GB (tripple channel) @1067Mhz and it get's 7.1!

You can't be telling me that the dual channel vs tripple channel makes that much of a differents! (it would however point out that it is actually only using the 1067Mhz of the 1333Mhz, so that question is probably aswered by now).

still love the sound, still love the buildquality, now next thing on the list, indoor skydiving ^^.

 

Welcome to the real world!

 

It does but you have to manually start the install. Unlike other Dell drivers it only unzips automagically.

 

There might be some shortage on the CPU or something. Dell raised their price again.

This time, you can only get i5-520m is your only i5 choice. Starting price $1599! If you use EPPBUY, it is $10 buck cheaper ($1589). One unfortunate piece is EPPBUY doesn't offer BluRay as a slot drive option. However EPPBUY does offer i5-540 and i7-620m as an option, where the retail side does not. Wierd.

Genuine Windows 7® Home Premium Edition
NEW 2010 Intel® Core™ i5-520M (2.40GHz, 4Threads, turbo boost up to 2.93Ghz, 3M cache)
Microsoft Works
2 yr In-home Service after remote diagnosis + Your Tech Team
McAfee SecurityCenter , 24-Months
Edge-to-Edge FHD Widescreen 15.6 inch WLED LCD (1920x1080) W/2.0 MP
6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3
500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write)
6-cell Battery
High Definition Audio 2.0 with SRS Premium Sound
Obsidian Black High Gloss Finish
My Accessories
Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year
My Software & Accessories
Also Includes
Studio XPS 16 Notebook
ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 4670 – 1GB
Intel© Centrino© Advanced-N 6200
Integrated 10/100/1000 Network Card
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9, Multiple Languages
1Yr LoJack for Laptops Theft Protection

 

Epp Also give you 2 yrs of your tech team which is nice because when you call for support you get someone in round rock and whats cool is if you own any other dell products your tech team automaticly falls to them products. no more calls to India for you lol

 

Looks like the 500GB 7200 rpm hard drives are low, or out, of stock. Selecting one "may delay your shipment date." Great news.

 

Well,.. Got my laptop yesterday.. replaced the 500GB 7200 rpm HDD with a 60GB SSD.. and did a clean install of win 7 ... The entire win 7 install with updates.... etc took around 15 mins.

All drivers installed -- all works fine........... EXCEPT.............Firewire..

I tried capturing some HD Videos over the firewire.. and there is lot of noise/lines in the video captured. In other words, the captured HD video looks crappy. (works fine on other laptop).

Is it because of the firewire driver ? Its currently using the default driver provided by the windows. I could not find a RIOCH IEEE 1934 driver on dell's website (even could not find a decent download elsewhere after googling).

Any pointers would help.

Other the above issue.. All works perfectly fine..

 

I noticed the 1647 is no longer being offered on the US Home site. The 1645 also has massive delays pushing delivery back to April at the earliest. Looks like the only thing they can get out the door in a somewhat reasonable timeframe is the 1640. Not sure who would want those anymore! Glad we were all able to get our 1647's before this latest sanfu took place.

 

Wrong. You are. I have been through this before with Dell actually and let it sit for a month in the closet not even opening it. They found out, and charged my card TWICE for two machines. I had to return it to get a refund.

So yes you are obligated. It is considered stealing.

 

I just checked and it's still on there. http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/note...d.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-xps-16&s=dhs&cs=19 all the way on the right.

Got mine yesterday from BB (can't really beat that price, plus got a $100 printer for $10). So far I am loving it, got a stuck pixel (red) but it's not a big deal and I haven't attempted to fix it yet. Even with the 430m this thing is fast and it can always be upgraded later on.

 

Yeah you're right...they must've been shuffling it around when I looked.

 

Pics?

You're going to have to remove the plastic sheet off the front of the screen before you can unstick the pixel. See here for instructions.

 

Here you have.
Its not a big deal for me, but thats not how its supposed to go.

 

Federal Trade Commission website says different. Your not obligated to pay for anything that you didn't order. If it ships to your home with your name, its yours. Should have disputed it with your card company. Google "unordered merchandise". This is getting off topic, so lets kill this subject.

 

yep, mine looks similar, cept your pictures seem to exaggerate it a bit.

like, mine doesnt seem that much of a problem, however, it looks like it could be fixed with a quick squeeze or a slight hammer lol.

i probably wont be bothering to do anything, i can look on the brightside...an extra place for it to breathe during those intense gaming sessions lol.


who knows, maybe this was one of their intelligent fixes from the 1645 model, lolol

 

Must be a random thing, I got mine from BB yest. and it doesn't have that at all. Sturdy laptop, very good build quality.

 

If I were to take a guess, they probably offload any chassis that displays any sort of defect to BB.

 

Well I just got my 1647 yesterday and just completed moving my data and settings over to it. My first impressions are, Wow! This is very sleek and sexy laptop, very well built and quite light for its size. It is about an inch and quarter wider than my old Dell E1505. The keyboard action is very smooth and backlighting is awesome.

The RGBLED screen when I first turned it on was nice but the reds and greens were way too saturated for my tastes and the whites had a pink hue. After fiddling around with it I noticed that the ATI CCC was not controlling the color Windows7 was. After reactivating the ATI color controls and tweaking the settings I can tell you I am very glad I got (and waited a month for), the RGBLED option. Now the view from this screen is nothing short of spectacular! The one thing I wish it had is a screen latch, but no biggie, but it may become an issue after the hinges wear in and loosen up over time.
Also a note on Intel turbo boost, a few had mentioned it was already installed on theirs when it arrived at their door, I had to install it myself as it was not installed, once again no biggie.

Note that the BOIS that it shipped was A01 with a 90watt slim adapter which ran pretty cool to touch. Today I upgrade to the A03 BIOS and there is a definite increase in heat coming from the 90watt adapter when just doing normal work. I guess I will be contacting Dell support for the 130watt adapter soon.

After tweaking the RGB settings I will say this is a great laptop from Dell; the best I’ve ever bought from them quite frankly, and I highly recommend it to those looking to buy one.
(Thanks DW for encouraging me to wait for it)

EDIT: I assume that Dell still wants the old 90watt shipped back to them if you request the 130w?

 

Yep. Just sent mine back today.

 

Thanks, that's a bummer I was hoping to keep it my mobile bag rather than carry the slightly heavier 130w around for work.

 

Yup ya gotta send it back or they'll chrage you $66 which is what the 90w costs. Do what I did, got one brand new off eBay for $33 simply because I don't like the 130w.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250584447570&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

its still beneficial to have 2 adapters

 

Thanks! Half price too compared to Dell, what a deal.

 

What don't you like about the 130w?

Also, I can't find the post now, but doesn't the 130w adapter have a longer Power Cord vs the 90w?

 

Your right, it does. I just don't prefer it, the cord is much thicker and the brick is larger also. Still glad I got it though. The 90w was much easier to wrap up the cord.

 

How did you check? Did you go to Device Manger from the Control Panel?

I looked under "System devices" and see:

Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology Driver​

[Driver Date: 10/12/2009 Driver Version: 1.0.0.1030]

 

I looked under Control Panel\Programs and Features and did not see the software installed so I downloaded it from Dell.

 

I am sure people have already realized that the 1647 models attracts a lot of dust...I see my finger prints all over my palm rest and also the speaker area is a big pain to clean...does anyone have any good ways to clean this laptop??

 

I keep a micofiber cloth handy and a bottle Monster ScreenClean. I works well on all the surfaces of this laptop.

 

I wipe it down every night with a soft cloth and some rubbing alcohol. It works wonders

 

Alcohol is not the best idea for plastics; especially plastic with a shiny coating.

I don't mind the finger prints, but I have been wearing long sleeves (cold here) so the palm rest stays pretty clean. However, I would recommend a microfiber towel and compressed air for keeping this clean.

With a microfiber towel, you shouldn't need any kind of liquid for cleaning. If you do find yourself in need, any kind of screen cleaner should be fine.

 

Do you see it now that you downloaded and did the install (under Control Panel / Programs and Features)? I don't but do see it as I posted above.

It's a driver, so you would want to look under System devices (Device Manager).

 

Matt, Umm, just my 2c's, but I'd stick to drinking alcohol rather than using it on the surfaces of this laptop. in time you may dull the finish.

 

Dust:

The Pledge Dusters (without the spray) and Swifter Dusters work well. The ones with the throw-away duster end.

 

Device manager actually shows hardware with associated drivers. Windoze may have installed with a generic driver. I see it in both programs and devices after the install. DW has the link to Intel turbo boost (Dell) on page one of this thread.

 

It also shows the associated specific chipset and cpu drivers

Yes, I saw it (linked in Post 1 in this Thread / on Dell's site), it's the same version I have by default. I wouldn't doubt that is is installed in all the 1647's (i5's / i7-620m) by default but users are not looking under System devices, If you use the installer it will be listed under Programs and Features (Windows Setup listing).

I knew it was installed by default when I was testing with Throttlestop Log and some benchmark apps.

 

Yes it shows that too.

All I know is that mine was not installed as DW's wasn't either (As page one indicates) for some reason. When I installed it never asked if I wanted to update or remove the old driver, it just installed.

 

Perhaps the next person to get a i7-620m based one can check System devices once they receive their 1647 (and before downloading it from Dell).

Anyone have one OTW?

 

I did say just a little lol. A little windex could work too.

 

I just use some extra microfiber towels I got for my car to keep it clean along with some water, if needed. Windex only if I find tough stains. For they keyboard, I have some Lysol wipes and use as needed.

 

How do you get rid of the crap that gets suck in-between the speaker grates