XPS 12 Owners Lounge

I fixed my touchpad woes by turning off palm rejection in the touchpad settings and in device manager I unchecked the option to enable the computer to put the touchpad to sleep. Only drawback with the palm rejection being off is you have to be more careful when you type.

 

Just discovered a new issue with my XPS. Anyone else have speaker audio cut out when pressure is placed around the headphone jack and volume rocker? I'm gonna contact support tomorrow and ask for a replacement machine or motherboard dispatch. Three issues within almost two months of owning the machine.

 

Mine has just gone into production

 

Mine still there (ordered jan 22)

 

So dell delivered my laptop yesterday, it went from China to Korea to kazakstan(!) to Germany to stanstead UK to barking to central london in 3 days! And arrived here yesterday before midday. I was a bit suprised it wasn't in a shipper carton, the UPS man just handed me to black dell box.

I'm pleased to say I don't have any of the problems I was absolutely dreading like loose touchpad, dead pixels/screen, faulty speakers/headphone jack, constant dropped wireless connection, scratches etc etc as many people have complained about here. My system seems perfect in those respects.

I have however been driven slightly mad by the responsiveness of the touchpad, 30-40% of the time it doesn't respond to my taps/clicks which became agonisingly apparent yesterday when I had to do some excel data entry, thank god for the tab/arrow keys is all I can say! But I guess that's a driver issue so I'm not overly concerned and will attempt to sort it out today. Also at one point the touch screen stopped responding all I could do was power off and back on then it worked fine again. Other than those 2 issues I have no complaints.

It's amazingly light, I expected it to weigh a ton after reading reviews, but I think it's light even holding it as a tablet and I'm not extra strong or anything! It's very thin and light, can barely feel it's there when carrying in my bag. It's also very very fast, boot time is a revelation for me being an impatient person. I have no coil whine and can't hear the fan at all, in fact I don't even know what the fan sounds like or if it actually works!

Contrary to most people's opinions I'm loving windows 8, it's new exciting and I like a challenge, I love how I can switch between the desktop for work and the start menu for more streamlined apps. I've found that windows is intuitive once u get the hang of it and definantly makes things faster but maybe that's because I never bothered with many short cuts in windows 7 and with 8 you can't avoid them. I can see though how it might be frustrating for the novice or technology challenged user!

The touch screen is amazing with great colours/resolution and I find using it natural and easy ( however it did become unresponsive a few minutes ago which makes twice in 2 days now).

The keyboard is great, feels great - for me the keys seem like they are slightly too far apart from each other but then I'm female, small hands and I've grown used to the latitude d420 and iPad mini both with teeny keyboards. The arrow keys are slightly too small but other than that it's great. The charger is very small and light which is brilliant - who wants to carry a brick round with them?

I have yet to REALLY test this laptop out as I've been quite busy so will be interesting to see how it handles photoshop etc.

All in all a good experience apart from a few driver teething problems and dells horrendous customer service/wait times!

I hope you guys still waiting get yours soon - let me know what you think when they arrive.

Oh and btw the packing slip/invoice states the slower older version CPU but in the machine when I look at system info is the newer one.

Edited to add: OMG I forgot to mention how terrible this thing is for picking up finger prints, the rubber coating/Matt finish looks great but obviously doesn't have real people in mind! My hands were very clean but after using for a few hours yesterday it looked as if a total grease monkey had pawed all over it!!!

 

I got mine last week, I checked the drivers and noticed that there was a driver update for the touchpad which mine needed so it would be worth checking this on yours. I agree with most of the things you say especially on the finger print issue. I had the touch screen go unresponsive once in just over a week but a restart sorted it and it hasn't happened again since. I'm using it more in tablet mode now that I have loaded most of the stuff on there and its great to be close up to the incredible screen. I've used skype a lot and it has worked really well. Overall a great looking, well built very fast machine...

 

Thanks for your views!
This is my first laptop in about 15 years. One of the things I detest about laptops is the mice, so this worries me a bit. But hey ho, life goes on!
Still waiting here

 

Thanks for the advice Dino, I shall try this today.

Currys I'm with you on that. I've been through a LOT of PC's and laptops including building my own but I've just realised that this is the first thing that I've actually bought ready built from brand new! I guess that's why my expectations are that much higher.

With regards to laptop mice I'm also with you there, HATE those stupid nib type things and dodgy track pads, they can really make life miserable, I was used to my latitude touch pad it was really good, smooth, responsive, sturdy with 2 sturdy click buttons I didn't even think about it, with this one it's always in the back of my mind thinking when's it going to stop working next - it's really distracting but to be fair I haven't tried to fix it yet but then when u pay that much money you don't expect to - you just expect it to work right out of the box.

 

Edited to add: does anyone actually have any cleaning tips? I just tried to wipe it over with a dampish kitchen roll and it did nothing I even tried a tiny bit of mr muscle glass cleaner which also did nothing. I'm not talking about the screen, just the rubbery bits. Eeww it looks gross!!

 

Everyone is still saying they have touch pad issues. I keep saying for the time being DISABLE PALM REJECTION in the touchpad setup utility! All issues with it will be gone. You can enable it again once the drivers are improved.

 

So I got an email that my order has shipped but the dell order page still says in production with EDD of 5 March but my shipping method is 2nd business day. It shows my order number in the email and says product description XPS 12. I hope it's true and just needs to update!

 

how long was yours in production before you got the email?

 

Mine is behaving perfectly now.

Had to wipe it, something about Dell's small business software image was causing connection problems.

Had to do it twice as I forgot to use a UEFI version of Windows.: rolleyes:

But its much quieter now and the WiFi works great.

 

Did a clean install on my XPS 12. Have an exclamation point in device manager next to "HID Sensor Collection". Says the device cannot start. Anyone know how to correct this?

 

Everything should be ok, Id stil Live Chat Dell to check

 

Someone posted a while back about a driver checker they use.
Just google 'driver checker', there are some free ones out there. They scan your system and find any drivers for you.

 

Ive always used Muc-Off combined with some screen wipes
Muc-Off Optix Device & Screen cleaner 35ml | eBay

 

Do you hear your fan at all? I can't say I've heard mine come on since I've had the laptop! I've done nothing major to be honest but I would expect it to come on a few times in the day. It feels ever so slightly hot on the bottom right where the vents are. Am I just being paranoid? is there anyway to check the fan is actually functioning? if it is working and its this quiet then I will be very happy!

Currys - thanks! I will buy that.

PS since updating today to the touchscreen driver on the Dell website that came out a few days ago I haven't had any unresponsive taps.

 

The laptop will shut itself off if the fans aren't working, so don't worry.

 

Yeah it was slimdrivers. It updated a lot of the Intel stuff to newer versions than dell had listed. Just unchecked the option to install the avast stuff during the installer.

 

Ok

So the UK site has all three Dell XPS 12 options showing for shipping on the 1st of March.

My order still says the 10th of sodding April. WHY oh WHY am I having to wait from the 26th of November to get a working system, even taking into account I owned a XPS 12 for 2 or 3 days before the new Year and had to get a replacement ordered, why is mine being fulfilled later than others.

I've emailed, phoned, live chatted, sent email complaint (been a week now and no answer) and every single sodding time the best they can do is say "we'll track it on our end" which is pointless, because I can track it quite easily on my end by just doing nothing.

Premium support included in the XPS 12? thank god, I'd hate to see what the poor suckers who buy Inspiron laptops get if this is how they treat their XPS customers.


I just can't understand why others get theirs before mine, and why Dell seem so apathetic to my situation and inconvenience they've caused to myself. Ignoring the fact they've lied to me about vouchers for delays and "priority queue" (surely a joke as such a thing doesn't exist by my standards if I've been in a priority queue all this time) but this has got to be by far the worst company I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with, their incompetence knows no bounds and I truly believe theres a little customer support agent somewhere in Dell that has my details on file and is screwing with me "Oh, it's been a while, lets send a Shipping notification for McAfee, yet not tell him it's for McAfee so he spends hours trying to track where it is, and I'll eventually tell him it's a digital download LOL". If I ever find that umpa lumpa that did that I'll break his legs.

Also, Dell's support site was a joke, in hunting down my McAfee software I went through to a live agent, and now I'm not sure why but it redirected me to the American live chat who was apologetic and said he couldn't help but gave me a phone number, well the phone number went straight to answer machine and continued throughout the day (didn't even say who the company was for, just "Please leave a message after the tone".
When I phoned Dell from the number here, I got a sales person who said "Oh thats Technical, let me transfer you" after listening to some peaceful music I explained and gave him my order ID and the Dell Technical guy said "Oh thats a XPS related order, I can't do anything let me transfer you" and proceeded to pass me on to corporate global XPS support who said "Yep, not us" and I either got through to someone after they transfered me again, or it was the agent after them.

And after hours finding out where it was as it said shipped, they said, so you can download the McAfee any time from XXX. No words, except "Thanks" were uttered as I believe I may of created some brand new swearwords if I stayed on the line. Oh and to top the XPS McAfee hunt off, I received a email (yes I emailed them also to ask where it was) 3 days later say the McAfee download is read, thanks for your enquiry.


For me, Dell are Shambolic. I'm half expecting my replacement to turn up and be either the wrong laptop, damaged, missing stuff, a refurbished or faulty IF I ever receive it.

 

They said in the chat that the email was sent in error. BUT they also said it IS built and ready to ship. Said it will be shipped in less than 48 hours. Also said they will call me to notify me it has shipped

 

Wow, I really feel for you mate. I spoke to Dell yesterday and they assured me that the Estimated Shipping dates on the website were an error and they will get them corrected.
I would love to have another 1300 to spare to order one now, and see just exactly when it gets to me compared to the one i ordered on the 19th.
I also think that there is no such thing as a priority queue. I wish people would just tell you the truth rather than trying to placate.
But time will tell. Looking at the purchase and delivery dates that fellow users have given here, I estimate that i will get my order around 25th March, if I get it any earlier than then, it will prove that I was on some sort of priority queue

 

Just shipped via UPS! Ordered Jan 22 (i7, 8GB, 256GB)

 

Happy for you! I ordered it in UK on Feb 22nd and still hoping it will arrive by the end of March

 

You ordered on the 19th of February? and your EDD is the 5th of April?
HOW the hell is that fair, Dell canceled my order and placed a new "priority" order on the 6th of February for a EDD of the 10th of April.... Howcome (ignoring the 3 months before February when I originally ordered) your order will be fulfilled before mine, when the order was created a full 15 sodding days before yours.

.................................... Unbelievable.

 

They're thinking about how many people they can get the system out to first. Fixing the problems and taking care of the customers come second. I bet that's how they have their automated system set up. New machines will get a higher priority in the order than a dispatch or RMA.

 

WHAT! How did they come up with the 10th April? It begs belief, it really does.
I hope my system arrives without any problems I really do.

 

Like I said, theres a little Dell Umpa Lumpa who has my account details and is deliberatly F.ing with me.

 

US Order Delay

I ordered an i7/8/128 on 2/16 and had an EDD of today, 2/27. It's been "in production" for about a week, and is shipping next day, so I had hoped I would get a tracking number overnight. Instead I got an email saying "Your recent Dell Order has been delayed" and I have a REDD (Revised EDD) of 3/6. So they're saying they need another week. Interesting because the US consumer website says the current est ship date is 3/8. We'll see what happens!

 

What are you guys doing for Ethernet? USB to ethernet adapter the only option? Also, anyone else having wifi problems? Mine drops constanstly and when it does work it is very slow. Thanks!

 

I'm planning to get a USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter
USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet Network LAN Adapter for PC Laptop & Apple Macbook Air | eBay

 

I chatted with order support and complained about my order being delayed a week.

I'm sure both of those are going to help a lot!

They offered a $75 refund and I said that wasn't enough and countered with 10%.

Not bad! My original cost was just under $1300 (after coupon, tax & free overnight shipping) minus $100 refund minus $75 Fatwallet cash back so it's down to $1125 for i7/8gb/128gb config.

Let's see if they can get it together and delivered in another week...

 

My WiFi Issue is back.

Looking on the Intel site it seems to a problem with the card and it affects multiple manufacturers and not just Dell.
Sporadic but recurring connection dropouts on an Intel 6235 wireless adapter

Looks like it was reported to Intel in August and still no fix.

Can’t decide if I should:
1) Open and replace the card with something non Intel
2) Or get Dell to sort it,
3) Or wait for drivers.

 

See my last post above. Its an Intel issue and they don't have a fix.

 

Good luck with opening that thing! I read on a techy website that rates ease of repair/upgrade of laptops that the XPS 12 received a 1 out of 10 score, even lower than an iPad. Apparently it has TONS of GLUE holding down the parts you need to open in order to upgrade anything - I will try to find the link for you (it's quite worrying tbh as I'm used to opening/upgrading/building PC's but this thing seems to be welded shut! - ill try to find the link for you.

If I were you I would get onto Dell, I've had no problem at all with wifi and I assume it's the same hardware as yours. For the amount we have paid we should expect something that works out of the box and we shouldn't have to replace parts at our own expense, plus it will probably void the warranty and you might have something else go wrong after.

 

I feel for you I really do. Like someone else said on here repairs/replacements are obviously not a priority in dells books. I also don't believe that priority queues exist, it's just something they say to calm angry customers - when will they learn that being given the truth in a timely manner without us having to call up and search for who we need to be speaking to makes for a much happier customer?

If I were you I would write a letter of complaint directly to Micheal Dell, because he is the organ grinder and everyone else is a useless monkey who has no power to do anything. I've heard of people writing to him before so it's not impossible and who knows he may just take pity on a customer who's been given the runaround.

 

Are you sure you're not thinking about the Surface Pro? That got a 1/10 for repairability.

 

I've checked and asides from needing a Torx #5 (T5) screwdriver its straight forward to access either the Mini PCI card or the SSD.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-prod..._laptop/xps-12-l221x_Owner's Manual_en-us.pdf

Dell never mind you opening their machines.

The problem I have is its an Intel problem and its with the card itself, I'm not confident that a replacement card will fix this issue, or if Dell will believe me.

It might just not like my router, but this is no excuse, when I go away I want to use any WiFi hotspot.

If yours is working is the speed and range as good as other devices on your network? Mine is alot slower.

 

I'm considering the Toshiba Dynadock u3.0. Anybody have experience with this in combination with xps12?

 

My order has just changed to "Shipped", so excited

 

My still stuck in origin scan, no estimated delivery date and no delivery address displayed... UPS told me "don't worry, it's in transit" but I'n not sure about that

 

Mine was like that for days, then day before due date it had jumped through a few countries. Did not show as out for delivery until it arrived.

I think you can trust UPS most of the time to meet their delivery target date.

 

Let's hope so the problem is that they didn't give me a delivery date (do this happened to you to?), they asked me for my address (they don't have it) and estimated that my XPS will be here on March 4th.

 

Hmmm yeah actually I think ur right cos I can't find the link now and I was researching the surface pro before I decided on the XPS so I may be confusing the tear down with the surface one! Let us know how it is chris if you decide to go ahead with the upgrade.

 

My range is great, full 5 bars the whole time but I'm practically on top of my router where I'm using the laptop. My speed seems really fast aswell, I have noticed a few times its been a bit slow which has mostly been when loading the App Store but then other people in the house have been on Skype at that time and that usually slows me down anyway. I've not had the connection drop once.

As you mentioned it's probably just not liking your router, hopefully further driver updates will fix that. Which router do you have? Mines net gear.

 

He most be. I don't think there's an ounce of glue on this thing. Most parts are held in by screws and everything is located under the bottom cover as soon as you open it up. The technician that came to my house said the XPS 12 was one of the easiest machines he's ever had to work on.

 

Edited to add: btw Dell emailed me a few days ago .....'Good morning.

Since I have made a follow up, I am pleased to inform the successful delivery of your XPS DUO 12'

Informing me of my delivery which he knows I had already received even went on to give my own name and address, incase I'd forgotten it. Honestly what do they want a medal or something??

 

This is the link to the surface pro teardown

Microsoft Surface Pro Teardown - iFixit

How does UPS contact me to arrange a deliver date? Do they email me the time or call me?

 

Yeah I must have got them confused - that's a relief!

I got a link on my status page saying shipped but the link was blank, the next day dell emailed me a UPS link that updated regularly to show me where my system was and when it would be delivered, it only took 3 days to arrive.

However I was already in contact with the dell rep that emailed me The link, I don't know if I would have been emailed the link otherwise because I didn't get an official UPS email or anything.