XPS 12 Owners Lounge

I am not really hardcore, but I used to be...not enough time in life anymore. However, my desktop is a beast. Got a GTX670 in there. 3dmark Fire Striked scored well in the 5K range compared to 5 hundred range on the XPS12!

1080P will be a stretch for some of those games you mention. I posted vidoes of Diablo 3 at 1080P, which might be playable at 30FPS with lower settings. I think expecting Dragon Age to run at 1080P will just not happen either, but I have DA1 and want to test it out eventually, it's the massive 25GB install that has me holding back. Wonder if I can run it from an external USB3 drive?

 

Just read this, and it is a great synopsis.

I agree, it is possible to work with the Dell for most productivity work without the fan ever kicking on. Mine stays completely silent unless it is doing heavy downloading or other demanding tasks. While I don't know what the previous Dell got in terms of gaming battery life, I've been impressed. Yesterday on my flight back, I had maybe 4 hours of use, where 2 hours was heavy gaming, 1 hour was heavy web surfing, and 1 hour movie watching (1080P). The batter was at 38% as I was closing up shop on my flight descent into landing.

I've found a laptop that can last well through my long flights coast to coast with enough to spare - it rocks!

 

The Duo 13 actually uses Configurable TDP.

Tablet mode: cTDPdown 9W
Notebook mode Battery: Nominal 15W
Notebook mode Plugged-in: cTDPup 25W

 

Hi there my laptop arrived today and well I am happy I got it I had some huge issues with Dell and how they deliver versus how they try and sell lol.

Anyway I am configuring now but want to share some initial thoughts.

1. It's beautiful and like how it feels. I dunno why when I played with my brothers it just felt like I should have it this feeling persists.

2. It seems like it's going to last a while by how it feels, etc.

3. I got the 128GB version which seems to have been a cheapskate mistake. I am in the process of doing some updates and removing some stuff however it seems that when shipped the thing comes maxed out at 98.6 for a 128GB drive ? OMG is there 30 gigs worth of crap on partitions in the background ? Anything I can do to improve that.

4. Also with having nothing loaded and having removed mcaffee I am at 62 GB free out of 98.6. What is taking up like 36 gigs of space in windows 8 and bloatware ?

5. The touchpad is WAY nicer than my asus... I didn't use the other one but I am very comfortable using this one so far and I like the touchscreen aspects already.

6. I took the tutorials and found out how to do a lot of things however one thing is when in tablet mode... how do you "kill" an app ? I can switch back and forth and go through them... but was wondering how to get rid of something outright

Overall happy but a bit pissed that the guy from Dell lied through his teeth to me about that said I would have like 110+ gigs leftover when windows installed even with the bloatware.

Any input here would be great

 

You're saying that under "Computer," when it shows your disk drives, the main drive reads 98.6GB large? That is indeed low.

Well, you can go look at the partitions yourself and see what's there. But, there's definitely a recovery partition for probably 4GB or so, which you can offload to a usb stick to get that space back. Also, if you have hibernation enabled, you're losing another 4GB immediately for the hibernation cache. You'll get that back instantly if you disable hibernation (but that should come out of used space, not the max space).

It's also possible that the SSD defaults to setting aside another chunk of the drive for rotating SSD maintenance. It should be possible to turn that off as well.

 

Any recommendations for a good bluetooth mouse? I have used and loved my Logitech AnywhereMouse MX for years now, but want to free up one of the precious USB ports on this thing! I've done some quick searching, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of choices for a good mobile bluetooth mouse - and I'm shocked that Logitech doesn't have many! Is it because Bluetooth sucked for Mice? Will BT4.0 solve this?

 

Yep I am on it now. I am not rich but probably should have just bought the bigger one but I don't want to deal with Dell at this point if this machine is not a lemon so I will deal with it and offload some crap onto a USB if I need too.

Ill go do what you said here and of course.. and see

thanks

 

I am dumb at the moment and a bit drunk.... is there an easy way to connect a projector to this ? I think I might need an adapter just hope it's possible lol since I faciliate quite often ..

 

I'm not pleased with the trackpad but I'm coming from a MBP. My gripe is 2 finger scrolling doesn't work reliably. While I'm scrolling down it will "pop" back to the top of the window. Highly agitating.

 

Use a mini-displayport adapter to connect to whatever interface you need (display port, HDMI, DVI, etc.)

 

If you bought it through standard methods, you have a 30-day return window, and returns are free. Switch it if you want. The next SSD size up is $500 more, though. It voids the warranty, but you could replace it with a 256 yourself for $160 (and then sell the original for $50).

Have you actually looked at your partitions? That will tell you exactly what's happening and what you can do about it. A 128 drive should have an actual maximum size of either 119 or 111GB, so there are either 13 or 21GB of partitions in there. Perhaps the recovery partition is just unexpectedly giant or something. No large partitions are required for the machine to work properly, so there should be at least 12GB of drive space for you to get back.

 

It says it's a LITEONIT LMT -128M6M mSATA 128GB and yer right... says capacity of 119 total ill try and figure out how to go into the partitions haven't done that on windows 8

 

Seems like there is 4 other partitions that are showing up... one is 40/40 MB free, the other is 490/490 MB free, the other is 11.14GB/11.14 GB free and the other is 8.00 GB / GB free.

why would they have that many partitions there doing nothing but wasting my drive space ?

Is it ok to go in and reuse that for my own don't want to brick the laptop.

Lemme know won't do much till you say its ok.

 

I've noticed this too, but it is pretty limited to CHROME browsing, not IE10 Desktop or IE10 App. Are you using Chrome? I wonder if there is some gesture to "go to the top" hidden.

 

Ah, well, there's 20GB you can get back. One of those is your recovery partition (probably the smaller one). There's a really easy way to get rid of that. If you go to the backup and recovery manager (through the control panel), there's a specific option to copy that partition to a usb drive. After doing that, you get the option of killing the partition. You'd want to copy that to a thumb drive anyway, since keeping your recovery info on the same drive that you'd be recovering in case of accident is just not clever. Just don't lose that thumb drive (and if you're paranoid, copy it again to an external hard drive or something).

I... don't even know what that other partition is. What's it called? I wonder if that's space set aside for the hibernate cache? That could be the one that's exactly 8GB, but that'd be silly since a model with 4GB of RAM can only use half of it. Or did you get the i7 8GB model? If you did, that's probably for hibernation. Anybody with more knowledge than me (which should be almost everyone here) want to weigh in on that?

 

Dragon Age Origins Dell XPS 12 Haswell HD4400 Intel IGP Gameplay at 720P - YouTube

Confirmed, Dragon Age Origins running on the XPS 12, 720P with settings on HIGH.

1080P was playable on low-medium and got 20-24FPS.

Extended cut at Hard Reset

Hard Reset Extended Gameplay Video Dell XPS 12 Intel Haswell Core i7 with HD4400 Graphics - YouTube

 

Eric - None of those drives have any names or any space used at this point. Just wanna make sure before I wipe em.

And yeah I got the I7 8GB version.. so leave the 8GB alone ? Anywhere to confirm all that ?

Lemme know

THanks a lot for the help so far...

I have issues with returning as if i did would probably jsut refund since I have to leave the country soon lol

 

Here is a link to what I see for partitions atm

http://i44.tinypic.com/w83tpj.jpg

 

If you offload the recovery data to a usb stick, what's left will be what's probably be the hibernation partition. If it's exactly 8GB, though, that's almost certainly it. You might want to just call Dell and ask about that, it no one else can confirm a way to be sure. That said, if it IS for hibernation, and if you like hibernation, then you're stuck with it. I was under the impression that hibernation space usually just came out of the regular drive space, but maybe it's an "Intel Rapid Start" thing?

I'd personally much rather have 8GB of space that the ability to hibernate. If that's what that partition is, I'll be killing it on my machine even to get back 4GB.

I definitely wouldn't touch it without knowing more about it, though. I could be totally wrong about what it is. Google it, or call Dell, or just wait for someone more knowledgeable than me to chime in.

 

well the 8gb partition is for the rapid start technology, if you don't want it then you can remove it.

also run com from admin and type "powercfg -h off" to verify the 8gb hibernate file is not enabled mine was.

 

I thought would post the sis Sandra comparison for my 9q23 and 9q33. in many ways the haswell smokes the ivy bridge. in a few ways they match each other.

 

Well, there you go -- more Rapid Start junk :hi2:

I'll definitely be removing those partitions on my own machine when it comes, but up to you on yours.

 

Yes, it is Chrome but IE is doing it too.

 

I will call del but i have 8, 11, and then 500 in two other partitions as per my pic. LOL. Anyway so safe to get rid of the 11 ?

 

Oh, hey, right here, a thread discussing which partitions can be removed on the Ivy Bridge XPS 12 -- seems to have stayed the same with the newer model. Looks like good stuff.

*edit* Looks like one big and one small partition is for Rapid Start, and one big and one small is for recovery. As per the Dell CSR in that thread, "If you already created a copy of the Factory Image using the back up feature on your pen drive, then yes you can remove all the partitons and use them as storage space. You can use disk management to do this." Looks like none of those partitions is necessary if you've made a backup and don't care about extra power saving in sleep mode. That should bring back a fairly giant chunk of SSD space on the 128 models.

 

I read it and I got it. So the 8gb and the 40 GB (39 or so) is for the hiberation.

does this mean i can safely get rid of the 500 and the 11 gig other ones since they are for recovery if I make my own recovery on a USB ?

I think thats what i get it's just that the sizes arn't quite the same as in what I read.

Thanks

 

I am testing out warcraft seems to run around (world of warcraft) at around 30-60 FPS at medium settings. I do notice something of a bit of a whiny almost "drill like" sound that seems to happen when I switch around the windows and wow but it's not persistent. Anyone know what it is ? Almost sounds like a low sounding "air escaping from a tire" I would say its a fan but I am not sure if it is or if it's that hot and it seems to be happening around window switching to the game and it being in the foreground moreso than "action"

I guess it could be a fan seems only to happen when I am in the game really other than that it just fades out....

 

This is what I'm understanding from that thread. A quick call to Dell to confirm wouldn't be a bad idea, but it seems pretty straightforward. It sure seems like after you copy the recovery utility to a flash drive and turn off IRST and hibernation, you can nuke everything except the primary partition. Combine that with killing the bloatware, and suddenly the SSD is a bunch larger.

That's the previous model of the laptop, so it makes sense that the sizes wouldn't be quite the same.

 

When the app you want to kill/close is on the screen, swipe your finger from the top (near the camera) down to the bottom of the screen.

 

Any reference for this? Not for the cTDP values&mechanics, but for Sony using cTDP up when the Vaio Duo 13 is plugged in.

EDIT: nevermind, found a clear reference in a review.

 

Ok this is going to have to wait then cuz I bought a 32 GB for storage and now I am reading that if I use that one it will be "wasted" on the recovery crap and can't use anything else. HAHA no way jose. I have an 8 / 16 I can use in my other country of residence that I will use.

Now gotta test out this whiney noise lol

 

Inability to scroll is killing me with this trackpad. Any ideas? I've played with enabling/disabling mouse settings but can't find what is making the scroll "jump". I'll probably have to call Dell b/c I'm returning it if this can't be resolved.


ETA:
I adjusted the touch pressure setting all the way to min and I think the jumping has stopped. I'll update again if that changes but consider it fixed for now.

 

Anyone recommend a headset for light gaming / talking to my mom on gmail I see it's a combo jack and I can't use a USB since the machine only has 2 USB I use both one for mouse and one for my N52te. (I guess I could get a hub if it came down to it)

What's something cheap but decent that I can use in a pinch ? I guess would be cool if I could interchange it with my samsung s3

Lemme know what your thoughts are on that

PS - Apologies for being a but I can't find it if the jack is 3.5 or 2.5 for XPS 12. I assume 3.5 ? Can someone explain how if i plug just the "headphones" into here it's going to hear my voice through the mic ?

Or am I wrong in that this will only let me do one or the other (i can use the port as a mic or as a speaker on my ear and thats it)

Sorry just want to make sure I understand before I go out and be stupid t some idiot at walmart or something

 

its a standard 3.5mm combo jack look for headphones that are compatible with the iphone.

 

I got mine this morning.... but theres a soft patch on the lid about 20mm across. It seems like the carbon fibre epoxy isn't set properly so when you wipe a cloth on it the fibres stick. It feels like sticker gunk but its actually the lid itself thats soft and sticky.

Argh.

 

So I just ordered the top of the line model from Dell for less than what I paid for this model. Only effective difference is the 512GB SSD...but that's double the capacity for less money (significantly less). I finally got an MPP discount coupon and I noticed Dell has taken $200 off the top of the line model anyways online. I don't know if anyone else noticed this.

Guess I'll be exercising the easy return policy - I hope it truly is! Despite some initial complaints on fan noise under load, this is one my favorite laptops of all time and I'm sticking with it. The only competition in this class is the Sony Duo and the upcoming Ativ Q. The Duo's "slider" format is less and the Ativ Q, while tiny and likely a really excellent option, has no trackpad. I also honestly think it's going to be thermally constrained moreso than the Dell because there is no way they put adequate cooling in for more stressful uses like games in that thin shell. So to me the Dell stands out big time.

Anyways...anyone have any tips of the return process?

 

Tell them you want to return it, they'll e-mail you a shipping label, slap the label on the box and drop it off for UPS. Easy peasy.

They made the top model cheaper? Ooh, I'm gonna check that, although I only paid $1100 for my cheapy model, so I doubt I'll want to upgrade. What's an "MPP discount coupon"?

*edit* Huh, yeah, a flat $200 off the 512 SSD upgrade. Now it's $300 for 256, and only another $100 for 512. It'd be kinda silly not to do that. Admittedly, you could still buy a 512 on Amazon for $100 less than that (and then sell the 128 for $50), but it's a lot more reasonable now. I'd do that in a heartbeat if the $200 for an i7 I don't care about weren't still required.

I thought it was odd that Dell hid the 256 model (it's not one of the main three choices), and now they're discounting only the 512. I wonder if they have excess SSD inventory or something? Seems like an odd push to get rid of only that particular SSD size.

Still not worth it to me for $600 more than the base model, but definitely more reasonable than $800 more.

 

smugpanda- how did you get speedfan to read fan speeds? It's not seeing my fans, only cpu.

 

So while trying to fix my whining fan or whatever issue with warcraft I am trying to download about a 200 meg file or so and all night now it seems to stop in the middle of it with 2 mins left and then my wifi drops.. but it doesn't go yellow it just "stops" and says no internet access...and as soon as my connection is reset its fine again and I am on the other computer, it's also fine again.

Any idea what would cause the wifi to drop like that only only my xps12 ?

 

Wifi issue seems ok now after removing / reinstalling a driver for that.

I tried to run this Heaven dx11 diagnostic thingy to see if I can reproduce the balloon hiss sound but so far it only seems to happen inside world of warcraft... And that heaven thing is way more graphically demanding so its not a fan thing...

Any thoughts ?

 

Typing on my new machine right now! I already had the problem waking from sleep; thanks for posting the fix here! Still trying to get used to Windows 8, but I am learning.

I have a few very general questions: 1) what to people prefer for energy-saving settings--are there particular recommendations? and 2) do most of you shut down completely at night, or do you just allow your computer to go into a sleep mode?

Thanks; I'm sure I will have more questions soon!

 

Hey owners,

I've never heard of the previously mentioned site:
Dell XPS 12 (Haswell) Battery Life Tests « Ultrabook News and the Ultrabook Database

so do your experiences match (or hopefully exceed) these numbers?

Thanks!

 

Another question: do you all remove apps that you don't use? Any free apps that you would recommend?

 

This avoids the restocking fee? Or do I need to say something is faulty?

Mpp=member plan or something. For me it was a military discount!

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

You have to select dell computers somewhere in the configuration menu.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

If you say something is faulty, you'll have to go through "remote assistance" and a tech coming to your house to change parts. When that doesn't work several times in a row, they will send you a replacement machine of the same kind. Do not say that something is faulty.

"I don't like it" should be enough, although in your case "I like it so much I bought the better model" should be fine. I asked point-blank on the phone if I could return it just because I didn't like it, and the response was "Yes, within 30 days." And, frankly, this is Dell customer service -- you can almost always bully your way to what you want. I get the feeling that the restocking fee is just to prevent abuse (you could get indefinite free 30-day rentals if there weren't something to stop it).

Anyway, my sense from that phone call and the experience of returning my Ivy Bridge XPS 12 is that returns are no problem at all.

 

I guess I've been lucky: I haven't had any issues with loud fan noise OR with dropped wireless. Other than the waking from sleep issue, I really haven't had any problems; I'm just trying to familiarize myself with the new machine, especially Windows 8, which is totally new to me.

Another question for anyone willing to help: does it makes sense to delete apps I'm never going to use?

 

My wifi has dropped a few times.

 

Dear lord, yes. It's called bloatware for a reason -- no one wants it, and Dell just puts it there because they're being paid to. Deleting all the extra crap you don't want is a standard part of getting a new laptop. You should be able to download it all again from Dell if you ever actually want it (but no one ever does).

 

Thanks for the response, Epic. This is my first device of any kind with Apps, so it's a bit new to me still.