XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

Installed Win 8 upgrade last night - went super smooth - installed all the Dell win 8 drivers - now got an even speedier XPS 14x Very Happy - The Metro will take a little getting used to but the backend looks similar enough when you have to fiddle - the ctrl-shift-esc short cut give you a nicer WTM - took me a while to fins restart LOL

 

Hello everyone!
I'm new here and also owning xps 14x (l421x).

I'll like to replace my HDD to SSD, witch kind of SSD sould i buy? and where can i find a video guild for replacing the HDD to SSD?

thanks!

 

Haven't seen a video on it. It's a bit tedious b/c of the slim case design...but not impossible by any means. Dell's support site has the owners manual which includes a step-by-step on how to take it apart and upgrade memory, ram, wireless, etc.

I personally would recommend a Samsung or Intel SSD. Always have preferred the Intel b/c of warranty and overall performance, but the Samsung 830 series are my new favs after this thread and the upgrade to SATA 3 in this laptop. Price is better, performance is better (on paper, unlikely you'll notice much diff in reality), and now w/ Intel using controllers from elsewhere and some kind of a hybrid firmware, not sure I'm all that keen on Intel...at least Samsung is still in control end-to-end on their product.

Keep in mind, with this laptop, you need to make sure you get a 7mm drive, not a 9.5mm. The 9.5mm ones usually are 7mm drives w/ a spacer on them, but with some manuf, if you remove the spacer, you void the warranty (like Intel).

 

Really? 5 seconds starting when? The XPS 14 has an annoyingly long delay during Windows 7/8 startup that no one has yet to figure out and plenty of owners here report having (including myself).

Are you saying from the moment you press the power button until the Windows "welcome" graphic is only 5 seconds?

 

Call it 5, call it 7, either way it's fast. I think questioning the 5 second number is nitpicking on your part, unless of course you are using an atomically calibrated stopwatch for your boot testing. To use your phrase...plenty of owners that have paved their XPS 14/15 ultrabooks with UEFI + Windows 8 are claiming <7 second boot times (including myself). All because you aren't, doesn't make it acceptable to question (with ridicule) the rest of us.

 

Keep the hard drive and get a mSATA drive. I have a 128 GB SSD in my mSATA slot and then the regular 512gb drive.

 

Apparently you just have it out for me. First off, I was sincere in my question about 5 seconds. My XPS 14 with Core i7, Windows 8, UEFI boot and SSD takes approximately 22 seconds to boot to the Windows 8 graphic from the moment the Dell logo appears, so I think it was interesting that you were claiming 5 (or 7) seconds.

To me there is a huge difference between 5 (or 7) and 22 seconds. And just for the record, by wristwatch is a plain old analog watch with a second hand.

Maybe you read earlier in this thread, many were complaining of a lengthy hesitation during the boot processes and some have said it didn't go away with Windows 8. Mine fallls into that category. If yours was booting that quickly, I thought it would be interesting to figure out what the differences were and maybe help others out.

I wasn't nitpicking, or ridiculing you or calling you a liar. But I am sorry I asked.

Enjoy your XPS.

 

No, I don't have it in for you. Just thought I'd return the attitude from the prior post you made about Win 8 where I believe it was you that didn't go back and read this thread very thoroughly and then commented (in what came across a bit snotty) about my experience level w/ Win 8. Even after someone pointed it out to you, no clarification on your end, that in fact 'oops' you misspoke. No harm, no foul.

As for a 22 second boot time. That's a pure cold boot time. Mine does that too, from a truly cold boot in Win 8. Have you disabled hibernate? If so, you'll never get the fast boot others are reporting b/c disabling hibernate disables Win 8's smoke-n-mirrors where it's basically doing a logoff+hibernate when you tell it to shut-down, which with an SSD or even the hybrid drive setup, allows it to come back up super quick and basically prevents windows from having to reload drivers that are going to be the same every single time you boot. I posted a little on how this works early in my Win 8 posts regarding the XPS a couple weeks back.

Basically, Win 8 'redefines' what shutdown means...when hibernate is enabled.

If you are running UEFI + Win 8 + SSD + hibernate enabled and you are still seeing 20+ boot, I'm at a loss at this point, but would be glad to help trace it down if you like...but would have to think something else going on at that point. Only thing off-hand I would ask, did you upgrade from Win 7 rather than clean install, where maybe Win 7 didn't have hibernate enabled and it carried over?

There are a couple of 'options' in the BIOS once you put the it into UEFI mode, but for me, they don't seem to make much (if any) difference in my boot time. Which, for the record, is no longer <7 seconds because of all my startup stuff that doesn't wait for login to start. I've got a number of services that seem to actually eat a couple more seconds on even the fast booting (SQL Server, Acronis, etc). So I'm getting something like 8.5 to 9 seconds. But my stock UEFI + Win 8 install was around a 6.5-7 seconds from the moment I saw light on the front LED to the welcome screen (clock).

So now, under my current config, if I hold down shift and then shutdown, it REALLY shuts down. Next boot takes probably 20+ seconds. In Win 8, shift+shutdown actually does an old fashion shutdown. Win 8 standard shutdown, with hibernate on, logs you off, hibernates...so it SEEMS like a shutdown, but it's kinda fake. There is no real hibernate in Win 8 anymore that I'm aware of. You either shutdown (logoff+hibernate), shift+shutdown (real shutdown), sleep, or restart (logoff+hibernate+boot, or something similar). Disabling hibernate produces old familiar behavior for the same choices.

Hope that helps.

 

@lancorp and anyone else with longer startup times than what's being reported. I think I may know what's going on. I think because I was using the Windows 8 betas all the way up to the release I may have disabled hibernate at some point. Either way I was having long boot times and I just checked and hibernate wasn't enabled. I enabled it and I'll report if I see any difference the next time I cold boot. Oh, dell outlet coupon: SC1NP?80L4H6CG. 48 Hour sale going on right now.

 

Thanks for the info, but I did a fresh install of Windows 8 on a brand new SSD in my XPS 14. Not an upgrade. I don't know how to check if hibernate is enabled, but I haven't turned it off purposefully.
I did have the same hesitation during the Windows 7 startup animation. Even demoing an XPS 14 to a prospective client he commented on how slow it was to boot (from an SSD, at that).

This does come from a vast amount of experience on my part with Windows 7, SSD's (I bought into the first ones years ago) and having used literally every model of Dell laptop. Typically, on a fast notebook with an good SSD,
the Windows 7 animation doesn't even finish before I'm at the login screen. On this XPS 14, it sits there on the animation for an uncomfortable amount of time, before continuing to the login screen.

The suggestion of a 5-second boot time on the same model XPS as mine was intriguing.

 

Remember it wouldn't matter. Well it didn't for me. I had signed in with a Microsoft account (outlook, xbox live, etc) and once you do that it will sync your pc settings from installation to installation. Run through this real quick and see if it's enabled. How to Enable Hibernate Option in Windows 8 | Tech Support Guy

 

Thank you for replay!

Is that SSD brand good too?

512GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive, upgrades for Dell XPS L421X Laptop/Notebook, CT3359859 from Crucial.com

 

The Crucial that you reference says it's 9.5mm in the specs. That won't fit in the XPS 14 as others have said, you need a 7mm drive.

Samsung or a Crucial. If Crucial, then this is what you want. 7mm Crucial drives part numbers end in "D1". "D2" is for 9.5mm.

I think all Samsungs are 7mm already.

 

Does anybody have a good recommendation of a screen protector?

 

Gorilla Glass, you really don't need it. I clean mine with a lightly water sprinkled paper towel.

 

Sorry if this has been asked, I did a search on the thread and didn't come up with much. I had the XPS 15 and returned it mainly due to the WiFi issues, but I had some other problems too. I really like the look and feel of the new XPSes but am wondering does the 14 have the same issues the 15" model is having?

 

Both the 14 and the 15 should have the wifi problems resolved. I can say w/ confidence that under Win 8, which all drivers have been released now, that it's rock solid w/ regard to wifi. Still some needling issues that seem to always plague wireless cards (sometimes slightly longer reconnect times coming out of sleep/hibernate). But, all in all, the connection, speed, stability problems are now gone.

With Windows 7, the story could be different...dunno. I was relatively happy w/ the wireless performance and stability under Windows 7 after the late Sept timeframe when a new batch of wireless+video drivers came out. My final problem after that was one of range, thru walls and floors. Again, I expect this has been resolved with newer drivers SINCE late September, but someone still running Win 7 will need to confirm that.

If you start from this point and go back to late Sept + early Oct and read this thread, you'll find a wealth of information on what's been going on with wireless.

The XPS 14 and 15 are exactly the same in this respect. Same hardware, same drivers, etc.

 

If that's true that the windows 8 models are fixed, it hasn't been reported in the xps15 forum yet. I'll keep an eye out for it.

 

Hey guys I am considering purchasing the XPS 14 due to having the discreet graphics, long battery life and the styling.

Are there any major issues still plaguing the laptop?

I am looking at getting it off newegg:
Newegg.com - DELL XPS XPS14-9092sLV 14-inch Ultrabook – Silver

Would you guys say go for it or hold off?
I'm probably going to purchase in December/January if not sooner.

 

If you are in the states, Dell has a 25% off coupon for their outlet for the remainder of the day. If you want brand new, then there are talks of a refresh with a touchscreen (there is a guy on ebay claiming to sell one with a touchscreen).

Either way, I joined the xps14 crew with this recent purchase:

-- Dell outlet XPS 14 Ultrabook
-- 500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
-- 32GB SSDR mSATA Card
-- 14.0 HD+ 900p True Life Infinity Display with Skype-Certified Hi-DefWebcam
-- NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M with 1GB GDDR5 VRAM
-- Processor: Intel Core 3rd Generation i7-3517U Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.0 GHz - TPM)
-- 8GB Memory DDR3, 1333MHz
-- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Operating System DVD
-- Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 and Bluetooth 4.0
-- PWA Daughterboard
-- Software
-- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit Service Pack 1

FIrst thing I'm doing when it gets in is running the Windows 8 Update process

 

Hi all,

Can anyone answer the following regarding their XPS 14 ultrabook?

• Is it possible to easily replace the mSATA drive without voiding the warranty?
• Is it possible to boot from the mSATA?

I got a space 256GB mSATA and would be ideal to install the OS on it and have the mechanical drive for storage.

Thanks for answers in advance!

 

You can replace it and boot from it. No, it won't void your warranty.

 

Unfortunately, I'm still having sporadic truly miserable wifi performance under Win7. I've updated all the drivers posted, and tried several unposted. Sometimes performance is acceptable. Right now, I had to find a wire, because my browser wouldn't even load google.com. It's have a worse than normal day, and I've tried it on 3 different networks/routers.

The task manager network performance graph is really strange. It shows clear periodic complete lack of any data transfer for about 1-2 seconds, about every 10 seconds...this really messes up the experience. Routers do not make any difference...at home, tethered to my phone 2ft away, in an airport, or using my company's enterprise class wifi routers, it is just plain is awful.

I haven't called Dell back yet...been lurking in the forums and trying things on my own, however that is what I am now down to...this is still by far the worst electronic device of any type beyond a Walmart calculator I've ever spent any money on....I can't recommend it to anybody at this point.

-NP

 

Good to know, thanks for confirming. I wasn't sure how to answer that since I moved to Win 8 w/in a day or two of getting the last batch of Win 7 drivers back in late Sept. I decided it was worth trying since Win 7 still had the needling range issue (for me). It's entirely possible that my last day or two w/ Win 7 semi-working that I was just getting lucky w/ the stability and thru-put. So I wasn't willing to truly claim victory over the Win 7 issues.

Unless there is really some kind of hardware difference (structural, antenna placement, etc), then I would think upgrading to Win 8, if you can stand the adjustment to get used to it, would be worth considering.

Didn't all of the new XPS ultrabooks come w/ an option/ability to upgrade to Win 8 for $15?

Even if they didn't, I think I'd call Dell and push the issue, since it seems clear that what has been released for Win 8 is way better, if not perfect, on these units.

NullPronto, you might also want to press hard on the support side. When I called, first time out, I was pretty adamant that I had tried everything they had in their 1st level script and I was even more persistent that I need to be bumped to 2nd level. They bumped me straight to engineering, bypassing 2nd and 3rd level support. I ended up w/ the people that said if need-be they would fly a Dell employee/engineer to deal w/ my issue. Whether that was sunshine up my rear or the truth, I'm glad that wasn't necessary. I don't have that kind of time or patience.

Anyway...hope that helps.

 

Sure is, I replaced my 32GB SSD with a 128GB Crucial mSATA and use that for my boot drive. 512GB drive is for storage now.

 

Hello,

I am new on this forum and a new user of XPS 14. I would like to learn if we can turn off the light in front of the ultrabook? I looked the BIOS menus but I couldnt find anything about that. How can I turn of this light? It annoys me while watching movies

 

If you're running Windows 8 - DO NOT INSTALL BIOS Version 12.
I've been installing it and the touchpad didn't work afterwards anymore, it worked when on logon Screen but after logging in and after a few seconds it stopped responding, i.e. no cursor movement, click etc.
I have reproduced it twice, not sure what it is but most probably a Software incompatibility.
Got it back working with moving back to Bios Version 11 and doing a System restore.

(upgraded to Win8 from Win7 on a XPS 14 delivered in June)

 

It has worked OK for me, and I had a very similar upgrade process, if I've read you correctly. I have upgraded to W8 - not a clean install, and no UEFI - I updated to A12 and the trackpad is still working fine.

If you're having trouble, you could navigate to the 'Program files/Synaptics/SynTP' folder and run the application 'DellTpad', from which you can definitely re-enable the trackpad. You might also try re-installing the W8 synaptics driver.

 

I 100% agree. Do not install this BIOS. Did Dell even test this???? A12 screwed up my trackpad as well. Got back to A11, but now my inverse scrolling doesn't work.

 

Not to upset anyone, but on the other hand I don't have any issues with the new BIOS. A12, currently using the touchpad w/o any issues (except for the problem with OneNote two finger scrolling, but Dell said they will contact me again on Monday...but essentially this is a separate issue). YMMV, but I should not that I installed BIOS A12, then did a clean install of Win8 (not because of the BIOS...it was just part of my weekend plans).

On the other hand...

Has anyone been able to get the UEIF boot + mSATA cache drive (32GB) + 500 GB HDD work with the Intel RST? I did my own kind of search, and after going through a lot of mess I was finally able to get UEIF boot work and have windows 8 recognize both the mSATA and the HDD, but then whenever I try to turn on the Intel RST I get an error message. If anyone has made this work, I would really appreciate advice + share the settings.

 

I need some help choosing between i5 vs i7. Is it really worth the extra $200 if I'm only using my laptop for web browsing, watching movie, office documents, coding, developing apps, visual studio, photoshop etc? Would I notice the difference in performance?

 

Nope, save your money, go w/ the i5. I'm using it for all of those things, it's like lightening with the i5. Put your $ into the factory SSD, or a cheaper route is replace it w/ your own SSD after you get it. That's a bigger bottleneck than i5 vs i7.

 

hey,

I just bought a mSata 128gb crucial and I tried to install it. But when I boot the laptop it says something with the RAID and that I have to make some changes. My question now is, when I change the RAID settings und disable the acceleration, what happens to the HDD? Will the data and the partions be lost?

 

Well mine came in yesterday and I have messed around with it a little. I put on Win8 and updated all of the drivers (that I could) and it seems to be running pretty well. I only updated to bios A11 instead of 12 (due to what others have said), seems pretty stable.

As for the HDD... Its been a long time since I used a spinning drive and wow, this one seems to be pretty darn slow. Is that normal? I don't know if it messed up the 32gb ssd drive to help speed things up. Is there something I need to do to have that help do things? I did install rapidstart (Even though I thought that was for SSD's only). Any suggestions?

 

You need to make sure the BIOS is set to AHCI. I have the same Crucial drive and it works great.

 

I know, but I like to activate the UEFI Mode. When I replace the old mSata with the new one and delete RAID, will I lose the data from the HDD?

 

Cool, thanks for your reply. One more question though, which SSD should I purchase? I was searching online and came across this one

Crucial 256 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2

Is it compatible with this laptop? and how many Ram slot does XPS 14 has?

Thanks in advance

 

Not 100% sure about the SSD, but there is only 1 ram slot and 8gb is the max

 

alrighty, thanks. I read your posts and noticed you said you purchased a refurbished xps 14. I was gonna do the same but afraid of scratches and minor hardware issues. Have you noticed anything?

 

The stock drive is really, really slow - 5400 rpm and not a strong performer at that. Best investment you could make is an SSD.

Rapidstart won't have any impact on performance - it's Intel's hibernation technique. Rapid storage will make a difference with the mSATA but it's a bit of a PITA to set up (had a lot to do with why I made the jump to SSD instead of screwing around with the partitions). I *believe* Rapid storage creates a RAID 0 partition (stripe) between the HDD and the mSATA and then keeps a cache of common files there to improve performance. While this is better than straight SATA it's worth noting that the mSATA isn't nearly as fast as a straight SSD (about 60% on the read side). I just switched my rapid start hibernation partition to my SSD instead of the mSATA and cut the restart time down to +/- 5 seconds from +/- 10.

 

Pretty sure that's a 9.5mm drive not a 7mm (which is what fits in the XPS 14). SOmebody noted above that Crucials that fit end in D1.

 

Monitor Calibration Tests: Black Point

Can someone just quickly tell me at which point they see the grey box?

 

I would say that it changes enough to be called gray at level 20.

 

Thanks for the tip on the HDD, Looks like I'll invest in an SSD around black friday.

As for the refurbished, The computer is not perfect. There were scuffs on the top lid. There were no "dings" but quite a few scuffs. To me, thats fine because I intend on just tossing it in a bag most of the time anyway. As for the screen though, there is one tiny area in the bottom left where it looks like dust got stuck under the screen. That is not great, but its in a place that I don't mind too much. I am going to call them anyway and see if they will replace it under warranty. As for the overall build, this is one of the more solid computers I have ever felt. Its not quite as thick and to call it an ultrabook is a stretch, but in my opinion the sacrifice of thin-ness over battery life is fine by me.

I agree with the above poster, that it does not turn "grey" until about 20 but you can originally see the box at 8.

 

1 ram slot (as someone else confirmed), 8gb max.

I have historically been an Intel SSD guy, was on my 3rd when I moved to the XPS 14. But with this one, I opted to get the Samsung 830 and couldn't be happier. Intel is still a good choice, as is Crucial. Good warranty on all 3, good support, as issues are found they all 3 seem to address them quickly and successfully. But with Samsung now being the last end-to-end OEM (they control the memory, the drive controller, and the firmware) and Intel moving away from that model w/ their latest drives using 3rd party controllers and a hybrid developed firmware, I decided I'd give Samsung a try. Too much flakiness reported out there w/ the Intel and Crucial. I think Intel and Crucial have LESS flakiness reported than any of the other players, but Samsung has nearly none that I could find. Many here recommended it. I am extremely happy w/ the results.

 

Not compatible. You need a 7mm version here. 9.5mm won't fit. Crucial drives whose part numbers end in D1 are 7mm. D2 is 9.5mm.

 

I see it at Step 5

 

Anyone looking for a good deal on an mSATA 256GB SSD for $165? This just hit slickdeals:

Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD3 mSATA 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $165 - Slickdeals.net

 

lets say I got my 256G SSD, now what do i need to do in term of having 2 SSD, one that come with the laptop (32G). Sure I will install windows 8 and other programs on the big SSD but do I need to do anything with the 32G? Whats your suggestion?

 

Pull 32GB mSATA SSD and replace with this Crucial one. That way you also keep the 512GB drive for storage (music, pictures, movies, etc). Boot off the Crucial drive.