XPS 12 Owners Lounge

Sooooo I've deducted that my Laptop simply will not put itself to sleep, regardless of what power settings I've selected. I can use the switch on the left hand side to put it to sleep, but if I just walk away and let it "timeout" it will never sleep. The screen will shutoff, but my dell will not suspend after the set timeout (15, 20, whatever minutes). This is why my unit will drain the battery to ZERO.

Anyone know why...I've used the cmd prompt to see if anything is preventing it from sleeping, and nothing is showing up - this behavior occurs after a fresh start with NO apps running whatsoever. This is a big time nuisance and I want it solved, I did not have this problem before I upgraded to Win 8.1!

 

Feedback on a Clean Install of Windows 8.1 on a XPS 12

I'm just about to bite the bullet on a Haswell XPS 12 and am looking for some feedback from any users who either recently purchased a XPS 12 with Windows 8.1 installed direct from Dell or who did a clean install of Windows 8.1 themselves. The reason for asking is that I have read a few posts about people experiencing some technical problems of varying level of annoyance after upgrading to Windows 8.1 but I wanted to know specifically about a new installation.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

 

Maybe you can try your luck in the Outlet if you don't mind refurbished. I saw a few in there earlier today.

Does anyone find their power cable being slightly loose in its plug?

 

I couldn't find an OEM version of 8.1 to do a clean install, so I got the OEM 8.0 USB key from Dell, installed that, then before installing anything else (except network, had to do that), I did the 8.1 upgrade. After that I installed the Dell 8.1 drivers, and so far everything has been fine. I am going to contact Dell though and see if I can get an 8.1 OEM USB key.

 

Thanks. Hopefully my soon (today) to be order XPS 12 will come with Windows 8.1.

 

Try this link: New XPS 12 2-in-1 Ultrabook

 

Finally upgraded to 8.1. While I like some of the new features MS has made, my Dell XPS 12 experience has taken a turn for the worse. My Bluetooth mouse drops out after a few minutes in desktop mode. I get it back once I switch back to Metro, but then back in desktop mode it drops. The touchpad still racks up un-paged memory like crazy, but now I don't have any of the multi-finger gestures available to it, even after reloading the touchpad drivers numerous times.

The Dell driver site recognizes that I have the upgraded i4650 with intel 5000 HD graphics, but only allows me to select Intel 4400 HD graphics.

C'mon Dell, you're making me think this is the last XPS I will ever buy with this kind of experience...

 

Hi, has anyone fixed the trackpad jumpiness when scrolling issue? I've tried different drivers and playing with all the settings but haven't found a silver bullet, just slight improvements. I will return the machine to Best Buy if I can't find a solution within the return period. It is very frustrating when browsing to have the webpage constant jump to the top or bottom.

Is this something I can expect to be fixed with drivers, or this rooted in flawed hardware that will never be fully fixed?

Other than the trackpad, loving this little wonder of a machine.

 

I went into Dell Touchpad settings and turned Touch Pressure all the way down, and Palm Sensitivity to the second-to-lowest level, and I get virtually no jumpy scrolling.

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On the other hand, I've been experiencing another problem lately - when I'm charging my laptop there'll be a faint crackling/whirring sound near the P key. The sound becomes louder while I'm using multi-finger gestures, or if the laptop is fully charged and connected to the charger.

This was discussed on the previous page as being due to "coil whine". Is this something I should be concerned about or simply an annoyance?

 

DoubleA, I've been experiencing a weird noise as well. I don't know if it's coil whine, but It's a high pitched noise that kicks in when the fan is on and the notebook is plugged in (particularly frequent when battery levels are low).

I've also been on the Dell forums, and Dell Terry B was quite helpful. Mine kicks in when the fan is on. If you need help, you can try PMing Terry there. He's helpful. He's offered to tell Tech Support to switch out my motherboard, fan, and heatsink in one fell swoop to see if that eliminates the problem if they don't get back to me soon.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they're still having a shortage of 4500U motherboards!

 

What part of the laptop is this noise centered on? Is it around the P-key?

EDIT: I just saw a video on Coil Whine and I think this is an entirely different noise.

 

Hello everyone!... I recently bought this laptop, and I have to say that I'm pretty satisfied with this machine (The only problem I found so far is the image retention issue). However some days ago i updated the bios to the A03 version, which caused problems with my ubuntu install (wifi does work only after suspend). Does anyone know a way to downgrade the BIOS to the A02. Simply installing the older version gives an error telling that the current version is newer so the procedure is discouraged, but gives me no way to continue. Do you know a way to force the downgrade?

Thank you very much for you help...

 

I'm not sure if mine is coil whine, but it definitely seems to come from the general top right area of the laptop chassis.

I'm getting my motherboard, fan assembly and heat sink replaced today to see if it helps.

 

So, after experiencing hard drive disconnects, bluetooth dropouts, wifi dropouts and severe screen ghosting in my first month of ownership ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/693432-xps-12-owners-lounge-213.html#post9426719) , I requested a replacement XPS12 which I received at the beginning of this week.

Have been testing it since then, and basically it's better but not much. I haven't experienced the hard drive disconnect BSOD, but that didn't happen on the first machine until 2 weeks in. Bluetooth connectivity seemed better at first, but today I haven't been able to connect my Dell BT mouse even after removing the device and restarting the machine. Wifi is more reliable on my work network but still unable to receive my home wireless tv signal (Kaiser Baas tv dual tuner) at anywhere near watchable level, while my android devices have no problem with it. Screen ghosting is still there but much less obvious.

Currently trying to decide if I should continue to put up with this quality or just get a refund.

[edit] tip for anyone else unable to connect a bt mouse, a full shutdown and bootup fixed it for me this time.

 

Just a heads up, Atmel has released a firmware update for the Touch Screens on the Ivy Bridge models. I'm not sure if the Haswells have/need it. It claims to fix a loss of touch functionality.

 

Why has nobody yet mentioned that the memory leak issues are gone after an upgrade to 8.1?
Or am I the only one experiencing this?^^

The only thing that drives me crazy are wifi connectivity issues. Right now it's working best without any installed drivers at all. I always had to enter my user name and password for a certain wifi that I'm regularly using. It never reconnected automatically and needed forever to connect. Even now while I'm at home Windows says I had limited access to the wireless network...
Am I the only one with these issues?

 

Because my memory's still leaking. It's as slow as ever, but it's still there.

As for the WiFi, I got the flipside of things: it seems to be fine for me 95% of the time (for the other 5% I just put it to sleep and then wake it up again). Someone mentioned something a few pages ago about how people with connectivity issues (WiFi and bluetooth) should go into the appropriate driver settings and disable "allow computer to turn off this device to save power" or something like that.

 

Consistent WiFi disconnect issues here, even after getting a full replacement XPS12. Been averaging about 1 disconnect an hour on my work wireless, but not at home from what I could tell. Work wireless seemed to stay connected longer until I plugged in a 2nd monitor, hoping I can have some time with a single monitor today to test that theory. Have updated my WiFi drivers and turned off the device power setting without any improvement, haven't tried removing the drivers however.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Costco has the 256GB version on sale for $1199.99: Dell XPS 12 Touchscreen Convertible Ultrabook | Intel Core i7 | 1080p

 

I've only had memory leak since 8.1 and not prior. Mostly it seems harmless and annoyance i.e. alert pops up, but can just carry on. Just once it completely died and needed rebooting (at least I assume that it was memory leak that time).

I've got the i7-3517U version.

 

Alright, I've taken a screenshot with all the relevant information:



As you can see, after almost 3 days (with lots of usage) the non-paged pool still sits at 259MB. It doesn't increase over time anymore.
You can also see the driver I'm using: 17.0.15.3

Hopefully you guys can also fix this problem on your machines. If you have the same driver as me and also Windows 8.1, we can start comparing the driver settings.

 

Thanks for that heads-up Furion; I just installed the 17.0.15.3 driver for Windows 8.1 and it appears that the memory leak is fixed!

 

My XPS 12 arrives (supposedly) tomorrow and I am preparing to do a clean install of Windows 8.1. I have a copy of Windows 8.1 Professional ISO and product key and downloaded all of the latest drivers and software from the Dell support site.

My question to the collective wisdom of the group is: Are there any of the Dell drivers and / or utility applications that you recommend that I should NOT install? For example, I read in earlier posts that the Dell (Realtek) audio driver was causing hiss and distortion in the headphone output and that the generic Windows driver worked better. Is that still the case with the latest (i.e. Windows 8.1 driver set from Dell) driver?

Thanks in advance to all who reply.

 

Update on this, I've been testing the wifi with no 2nd monitor connected via DisplayPort and have found it to be MUCH more stable. Have only been testing for 2 hours, but yesterday in a 2 hour span I'd average 4 disconnects (selecting troubleshoot would give result "Default gateway not available" ) and in 2 hours today I've had no noticeable disconnect.

I'm using the Dell factory displayport to VGA adaptor (NXP PT3392) which I purchased with the laptop, connected to a Samsung 24" monitor.

This is on my 2nd XPS12, the first one had the same issue. Seems like a pretty clear hardware or driver defect. Gonna continue testing through the day and if the result continues to be obvious, log another support call with Dell and see what they can do about it.

Anyone else here using a 2nd monitor with their XPS12 and wifi?

 

Oh that's odd. For some reason, the new Synaptics touchpad driver (version 17.0.15.3) doesn't show up in the page that appears when I go to My Dell and click "Drivers and Downloads". I had to google it, which brought me to the this page ( http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/xps-12-9q33?driverId=09P23 ). Is this a location thing? Should I be concerned about installing this if I don't have an American machine?

EDIT: I've downloaded the thing and tried to install it. It tells me that there's an older version of the Synaptics driver on the machine, that I should go to Add or Remove programs and uninstall the existing one, but the only touchpad driver there is the Dell Touchpad one. Should I remove that one?

EDIT2: Damnit, they made it so that Google Chrome doesn't change tabs with an up/down three finger swipe anymore

EDIT3: But hey, the memory leak seems to be gone!

 

The Synaptics touchpad driver (version 17.0.15.3) is only for the newer XPS12 (XPS 9Q33) and not XPS 9Q23 right?

Anyone with the older 9Q23 work out the solution to memory leak?

 

IIRC, the Ivy Bridge XPS 12 had a touchpad made by Cypress instead of Synaptics, so the Synaptics drivers shouldn't work for them, I'm afraid. Are there no new touchpad drivers for your machine?

Also, I'm here to confirm that the leak is in fact gone. My non-paged memory has grown by about 10MB in the last 4 hours of use.

EDIT: ... 5 hours later, it hasn't grown at all.

 

I have not noticed any memory leak on the Ivy Bridge model I have (9Q23).
I use the newest driver available (for Win 8.1) and the pad is much more responsive.

 

When you're on the driver update page, be sure to select Windows 8.1 in the first dropdown. The new driver is only available for 8.1 from what I can see. I also got the message to remove the existing one first, I ignored it and the new version installed just fine.

Thank goodness the memory leak is gone!

 

Oh wow you're right. Windows 8.1 IS an option in that dropdown menu.

Are there any other recommended drivers?

 

Updated the Cypress touchpad driver for Win 8.1 on my 9Q23. Unfortunately still got memory issues (note never had this issue with Win8, only since 8.1 upgrade).

Bizarrely ... it's only a problem when I've left it running and gone away e.g. for 15-30 minutes. MS Outlook and Word open and not much else. Once back at the desk, I find a memory error and the Resource Monitor has memory maxed out, but memory use drops away to baseline once I start moving the mouse etc.

 

So I bought myself an iPhone, and the accompanying Earpods have higher impedance than the earphones I was using earlier. The "hissing" sound that came from the headphone jack is now nonexistent.

Speaking of audio, what is a good setting for Dell Audio if I'm mostly watching Youtube videos and listening to music?

 

I was all set to buy a new haswell unit, but a couple reviews mention low contrast ratio (400:1) and "flat" movie experience, yet there are other reviews that give it a better recomendation. It's pretty important to me not to get a dark greys posing as blacks type display. Hows the movie experience for those that have experience?

 

I don't remember the exact number, but when I calibrated my display a few months ago using the i1Pro my effective contrast ratio was around 700:1. I use my Ivy Bridge model to watch movies and find it great. My only problem with the display is the image retention issue around the edges. I've had my display replaced once back in July and the problem is starting to creep up again.

 

Is the IR issue widespread/to be expected? I always think issues like this are small, but I've heard this particular issue mentioned a couple times while going though this thread. I don't like the idea of buying guaranteed defective tech.

It seems there was a display change between IB and haswell, according to notebookcheck. They claim a reduced contrast ratio of 400:1. Problem is I've read every review for the haswell version I can find and the numbers are all over the place. I've seen 500, 690, and 850:1 claimed after testing. I emailed Dell to get their word, but somehow I doubt I'm going to get anything from them, or honest. True 400:1 just seems to a little too low for me to enjoy with all the dark movies I tend to watch, without being able to see it in person.

 

I also have it on an IvyBridge model purchased in march 2013. I haven't noticed it until sometime in late summer (after switching to a black wallpaper) and I am pretty sure it wasn't there from the beginning. It seems to get worse over time, so I'm considering having the display replaced before my 1-year pickup warranty expires.

 

Evening guys. Just picked one of these up (i7 haswell model) as an exchange and wanted to join the fray. Didn't really plan on getting one but it was a great offer as an exchange so I couldn't resist. Is there anything I should look out for?

I noticed that the screen orientation driver has issues sometimes (my boss has one of these and mentioned that to me). Is there any quick fix or workaround for that? Anything else I should know ahead of time (haven't even unboxed it yet)?

 

Has anyone successfully connected the Dell XPS 12 9Q23 to a WIDI device in Windows 8.1?
It says "connection failed" after trying for a long time...

I've successfully connected both my Surface 2 RT and my Android phone to my Netgear PTV3000 WIDI device, so I'm pretty sure the error lies with the XPS.

I've updated to the latest HD4000 graphics drivers for WIn 8.1 on the dell website.

 

Hey guys, I ordered a XPS 12 before reading your comments here. Now I am really worried if I did a good buy.
And I am specially concerned cause in my country (brazil) this computer costs much more than in yours. It hasnt arrived yet, so I'm planning on cancelling this buy and order a cheaper one.
Are you guys happy with your XPS 12? Do you usually use it as a tablet or is it a not so good feature?
I'd really apreciate your comments here, cause those will be the returning to the seller or not point.
Thanks,

 

So I just received by XPS 12 with Haswell (the 9Q33 model number) yesterday. I really like it, but only after making a few hours of adjustments. When I first turned it on, the fan was roaring like a jet. I loaded up CPUZ and the task manager, and saw that the i7-4500U was hanging out at 2.8 GHz without any load. The bloatware MacAfee antivirus was also pounding the SSD with reads. Once I uninstalled that, it was better, but the fan would kick on seemingly at random. The sound of it really needs tuning; its particularly annoying.

So late last night, I was tinkering with the power options. If you click on the battery icon in the system tray, and then on "More power options", you'll find a submenu of the control panel. Within each of the power plans, you can go to "Change plan settings", and then to "Change advanced power settings". From the resulting pop-up window, if yo go to "Processor power management", you can adjust the CPU's minimum and maximum states as a percentage. For everything but the High Performance plan, I set the minimum and maximum to zero. For all of today, the CPU has just been hugging 800 MHz, and I can't discern any differences in system responsiveness. My usage is mostly excel, powerpoint, video hangouts on Google Plus, a dozen or so Chrome tabs across 2-3 windows, and Pandora. I even used a lego 3D modeler for a hour, and didn't have any sluggishness.

While this is far from conclusive, the fan didn't turn on at all today. The way I've configured the power settings, I can manually toggle the system back to High Performance mode if I ever needed it. On battery life, I'd estimate 5 hours of screen-on time brought me from 75% to 15%. The next step for me would be to log the CPU states over a day, and overlay that with the screen state and the battery level. I'd recommend what I've outlined above if you are having fan or battery problems.

If anyone has a question for a new owner, just ask.

 

Is it possible/worth it to upgrade the processor to a haswell one? After seeing the battery life the newer models are getting, I began thinking about maybe trying that.

Also, I haven't visited this thread in a while, but after browsing 15 pages, I only saw a few posts about the wifi issues that plagued the laptop during initial launch. Does this mean the issue is gone (is there a new driver out that solves this)? Or are people just not talking about it anymore.

 

Unless you've had the thing for a substantial amount of time, I think your best bet is to return the Ivy Bridge machine and get a Haswell one.

As for the WiFi issues, in my experience either the Windows 8.1 update or some new drivers fixed them for me. I can't speak for others in this thread though.

 

Double A, is your system completely updated? BIOS, drivers and 8.1?
Are you having any troubles with your computer now? Like image retention, touch problems...whatever..
Thanks,

 

Another question, is it possible to use apps for tablet/phones, like whataspp, facebook in tablet mode?
Thanks again,

 

From a few days of working with the device on a home 2.4GHz N network, and another enterprise network with WPA2 (AES) encryption, I haven't found any faults.

 

Hey guys,

Just got my Haswell XPS 12 two days ago and I've been putting it through its paces (installing Win 8.1, games, etc).

I got the i7, 8GB, 512GB SSD version and it's been running smoothly ever since (skyped last night for 2 hours, battery went to to about 60% so, 5 hours of batt life even with skype on, not bad).

However, I do have a gripe and it's the touchpad. It's not responsive at all. Dell somehow screwed up a Synaptics touchpad, and screwed it up enough that even the generic synaptics drivers don't work with it (wth dell?). I've had 3 laptops with Synaptics touchpads (and wouldn't touch another laptop without one) and this one is the worst (the other three are a Vaio Z1 2010, Clevo P151EM, MacBook Pro 13 - from work).

I also have an issue where when i press the touchpad button down, the mouse cursor jumps about 2mm about 33% of the time. Which causes me to miss input boxes, prompt buttons, etc. Does anyone else have this issue?

I'm just really bummed that they could screw up something so fundamental to the use of a laptop...

Otherwise it's a very fast and quiet machine. I've not seem many complaints about the touchpad, so maybe I'll get it replaced by Dell and see if anything else comes up.

 

My touchpad is also just not very good. I got one through the Dell refurb deal. It's alright, but seems like it could be a lot better.

 

I've had the same issue with the touchpad. It's kinda meh. When I two finger scroll to the top or bottom of the pad sometimes the pad will register input wrong and jump way up or down the page. Really damn annoying. Other than that it's been pretty awesome. The battery life is second to none, the power and speed are great. The boot times and ssd speed are fantastic and overall the computer is really well engineered.

 

I am a touchpad fanatic and the one biggest consideration in buying this laptop (received 2 days ago) for me was because it has a synaptics touchpad. Truthfully, the buttonless touchpad these days are no comparison to the touchpads with physical buttons, from several years back, such as the one on the Dell Vostro V131. Either way, being a touchpad fanatic. I tried to hack the drivers. I succeeded in getting the OEM driver to install, only it does not control the Dell Touchpad. Not because Dell's is proprietary or anything, because it's still a synaptics touchpad; but because the Dell touchpad is connected through the i2c interface and the OEM software has no idea how to access that port. If you look at the Device Manager, under Mouse, you'll see that there's one labeled Dell Touchpad and one that's labeled PS/2 Compatible Mouse or Synaptics Touchpad. The Dell Touchpad is the actual device that's connected through i2c HID, and the PS/2 Compatible Mouse is the virtual PS/2 and is being used as a pass-through for the i2c HID. When you install the OEM driver, the driver tries to use the PS/2 device which is virtual and does nothing. I'm confident that once i2c is more widely used, and the OEM drivers are updated to support this, we can easily install the OEM drivers to show all the settings.

For the most part, I've made the most of the touchpad by carefully playing with the settings. Here is a PDF I put together for the settings that works best for me:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55148962/XPS 12 Haswell Synaptics Settings v01 11222013.pdf

I've done the Yoga 13 touchpad hack and even with all the features added, I actually like this XPS 12's touchpad much more. It is responsive and doesn't jitter when you try to do certain clicks.

Only thing I would ask Dell to add to this touchpad to make it a whole lot more useable, is the Coasting feature. Inertia works but the scrolling stops way too soon. With Coasting, it will keep going until you put a finger on the touchpad again to stop it. Scrolling through a long page takes quite a bit of exercise without this feature.