XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

I'm away from this laptop for two days but wanted to respond. I'm not sure the mode it is in, but I can tell you that is is fresh from the factory (the 500gb model)

 

got my samsung ssd today, kinda a stupid question but do I have to set the bios or something to ahci? do I need to do that before transferring files from my HDD to SSD?

If so what do i need to do?

 

You shouldn't change ahci option in the bios as it will most probably not boot if you change the mode. It isn't the end of the world as you can go back to the bios and undo the change but still no need this option is not relevant to hdd vs ssd.

 

Well, after having a base model refurb unit for about a month and attempting lots of tweaking I am not too happy with the wifi performance. I am running a complete clean install of W7 with a samsung SSD upgrade. Overall the machine performs well. The issue with wifi seems to be the configuration of the antenna in the screen cover. For speed test I run a test directly to my ISP. When I am within 15 feet of the router I get a full 10 Mb/s and overall decent performance. Moving to 30 feet away there is rapid degradation of signal quality.Reconnecting from standby is spotty and sometimes requires disable/enable of the adapter.

HERE IS THE WEIRD THING; If I hold the laptop in a reverse orientation with the screen down and the keyboard up then the speed goes almost back to normal. Go Figure. Also, if I put it next to another laptop, it degrades the signal for that laptop as well!

My advice is to buy it and return it within the window if the performance is not acceptable.

 

I also bought a refurb base model. I was debating purchasing this machine for a few months before I finally bought one, I was aware of all the stated problems, but there was no real alternative to the XPS 14 that I took a liking to, especially at refurb prices. So I took the plunge and decided to risk it.

I've had it for a few days now and I've updated all the drivers under Windows 7. I have experienced the wifi problem under these circumstances; being around 30~ feet away from the router, with several walls and a ceiling in the way, windows shows me a 3 bar connection. If I tilt my screen all the way back the wifi performance is terrible; ~1Mbps. However, If I tilt the screen to a 'normal' angle, I'd say around 50 degrees, the speed is vastly improved and on par with my old XPS M1530 in the same location. If I tilt the screen back more than 50 degrees, then I do start to experience a worse connection. There's rarely occasions when I need my screen tilted further back than my approximate 50 degrees, so I'm not considering it a deal breaker.

I also experience the slow reconnection to wifi after sleep, although I've seen many Win 7 laptops have this problem including my M1530, so I suspect it's an inherent problem with the Windows software and not a hardware fault. I did have problems reconnecting at all to start with, but after installing all the Windows updates and installing the latest drivers from Dell, I've yet to experience that same issue.

I read lots about the screen problems too. I'm quite fussy and overall I feel the screen is 'acceptable'. The viewing angles aren't the best, this is highlighted most when there's lots of dark areas on the screen; blacks are most noticeable with small changes in angle, however on a screen with plenty of other colours the horizontal angles are okay, vertical is still so so. Colours are good though, much better than my M1530 screen, and I'd say the viewing angles are on par with the screen on that machine.

Pressing Win+X and changing the colour scheme from the default 'splendid' back to 'generic' looks much better too. I recommend everyone does this.

I read plenty about people feeling the screen is 'grainy' looking. Now I have the machine I see what they mean, It's hard to explain, I can only liken it to looking at a glossy screen that is damp, almost like it's ever so slightly magnifying the screen. I do think it's the Gorilla Glass that causes this, and I only find it noticeable when there's lots of very light colours and white on the screen, and when I'm very close to the screen. If I'm sitting at a normal distance from the screen then my eyes do adjust and I tend to forget about it.

The only other issue at the moment it the overly sensitive touchpad, the palm rejection software doesn't seem to work amazingly well. Often find myself cursing at Google when typing in a phrase to search. Other than that, I'm reasonably happy.

 

Has anyone figured out how to disable the dynamic contrast backlight setting? It's driving me crazy and no matter what I do it doesn't stop. I already tried different power plans and disabling various settings in the Intel control panel including "adaptive contrast enhancement" but nothing works.

 

Right click the battery icon in the taskbar, select 'Dell Extended Bettery Life Options', then uncheck 'Enable Dell Intelligent Display in Battery Mode'.

This stopped the dynamic contrast for me.


Does anyone know if I install Windows 8, will I be still be able to restore to factory settings and go back to Windows 7 from the recovery partition, through the Dell Datasafe Backup utility?

 

I have a solution to certain WiFi issues I thought I would share. Hopefully this will help some of you out and please feel free to share your thoughts should you have any...

My problem was that when first powering on the computer or when waking from sleep, the wifi connection would go from connected to limited, hang there for up to a minute, then go back to connected. This would happen when I had either Windows 7 or 8 installed. I've seen a few other people mention having this problem as well.

My solution was the following...

1. Open Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center.

2. Under "View your active networks" select your Wi-Fi connection and at the bottom of the Wi-Fi Status box click Properties.

3. On the Networking tab un-check Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and click OK

4. Your connection should reload on its own but you may need to select your wireless network again.

I understand it may not be desirable to have IPv6 turned off but I haven't experienced any issues since doing so. My computer now solidly connects to the internet within seconds of booting up, and it even fixed issues I was having opening and streaming with my Windows 8 Netflix app.

I must say I haven't had the signal strength issues that many of you are having, but I only use my XPS 14 in the same room as the router so I can't say whether this will also fix that issue. I also can't say if the IPv6 limitation is with the XPS 14 or my Arris router, so I'd be interested in knowing if this helps anyone using a different router.

 

This doesn't do anything for me under Windows 7. I have noticed though, if I disable Wireless N in the adapter settings, I get a more reliable and stable connection if I'm far from the router with a poor signal.

Also, despite messing around with all the settings related to the wifi antenna I can find, I think there is definitely some kind of Dell power saving software interfering with the wireless card. I've found many times when launching games through Steam, the wifi connection is suddenly lost, and I have to switch back to the desktop for it to reconnect.

 

Just to fully clarify:

- with Windows 8, Wifi issues are resolved?

Thanks.

PS: normally XPS 14 Wifi should work like XPS 15z Wifi?

 

New guy here. Made a thread and nothing got answered, as well the 14z thread is Dead.

I currently have a 14z and a 15z in front of me and I received both as replacements for a previous. I have to return One of the two tomorrow and have decided I want to return the 15z and keep the 14z as my replacement. But before I do so, I have to ask:

Is the 14 Ultrabook worth fighting for through dell? I can keep arguing about the 14z they sent me until they finally give me a new 14 but I'm not sure if it's better of not the way everyone here speaks of it.

The 15z bothered me because of the Cypres trackpad and how annoying it was with the sensitivity while typing. I added the palm rejection software and it worked great but the size of a 15" was over kill. The 14z is awesome, except for the keyboard missing the dedicated up/down page buttons I like it a lot.

But is the wifi issue on the 14z the same as the 14? I know everyone here is going through hell with that and I don't want to push for a new laptop if it would be more problematic.

Would you stay with the 14z or push until you got a 14 ultrabook?

 

It's definitely a step up in build quality. Long term durability - Who knows? If the trackpad on the the 15z bothered you, you might not like the 14 because its touchpad is unnecessarily large and even with palm rejection it can get in the way. I also dislike the lack of physically separate buttons as I sometimes get a right click when I want a left

As far as WiFi, A few days a go l removed the adapter (and bluetooth radio) from the device manager and after the automatic reinstall after rebooting everything works as it should - except for range and sensitivity to orientation - without tweaking the adapter configuration at all. I now get instant reconnects after waking and fairly stable connections. However I don't get the performance I get side by side with my older XPS 15 when placed beyond a certain distance from the router. In most situations this isn't a problem for me.

 

The palm rejection never worked for me, but I am now using "Touchfreeze." Works on win8. It simply disables the entire touchpad when the keyboard is active, so I do think it's worth a try.

 

That sounds like a possible fix to the issues the 14 has. Would you know if it shares the same issues the 14z is reported to have? I can't seem to get any dropped connections with the 14z I am using now but I do know the speeds are always slower than the 15z(with the same wireless card). But it's something I can deal with, just wasn't sure if it was the same with the 14.

the touchpad being buttonless is an annoyance but I think the Touchfreeze I used on the 15z should make it better. I can only imagine how massive that pad has to be with the keyboard, did they make it smal

That's what I used and it worked great.

 

the refreshed unit come with new keyboard, less shiny and feel much better.

 

That's another gripe with the 14z. Who designs a Silver Keyboard with Back Lighting? Might as well remove all of the numbers and letters and let me guess what button each one it. Not ideal for daytime use when the back lighting is always on.

I assume there is a setting for the light sensor but have yet to find it.

 

btw anyone knows how to reset the laptop to factory setting? Mine comes with windows 8.

 

I think "Refresh My PC" is what you're looking for. Go to the start screen and type "refresh", then select the "Settings" category to find it.

 

So after upgrading to Windows 8, I was having real trouble getting the Intel Rapid Storage and Intel Rapid Start systems working. It's taken me two days to figure out, but I've finally done it, so I'll list the steps (some were borrowed from a previous poster a while back in this thread) in case anyone else doesn't feel like pulling their hair out while attempting to get this working.

1. Download Windows 8 to a bootable USB (I used the Windows 8 upgrade assistant program to do it).
2. Download the Intel Smart response Sata drivers from the Dell website, make sure you get the driver for Windows 8 64bit. extract the contents to a usb drive.
3. Boot into BIOS, make sure that Sata mode is set to Intel Smart Response Technology and that UEFI is enabled. Disable the legacy boot option.
3. Boot to USB in UEFI mode. Begin setup of Windows 8. I used the advanced option for a clean install here.
4. Setup can't locate a drive to install on, this is where you need the USB drive with the Intel Smart Response Sata drivers that you downloaded and extracted. Browse to the f6flpy-x64 folder and load the drivers. Windows should now show you all the existing partitions on both the HDD and the mSATA drive.
5. Delete all existing partitions on system drive (480ish GB) and any partitions that exist on SSD (30 GB).
6. Select the system drive and let Windows install.
7. Install the Dell Windows 8 drivers that you need from the dell site.
8. Reboot.
9. Install Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver software from the Dell site.
10. Reboot.
11. After the computer starts, switch to the desktop view, after a while you should see the Intel Rapid Storage Technology icon appear in the taskbar. You can enable drive acceleration at this point, and if you want to make use of the Intel Rapid Start system, make sure you choose the 18.6GB option instead of the full disk capacity one.

This is where I started getting problems. The mSATA drive created the partitions and all seemed well there, but the drive wouldn't accelerate. I would either get an error, or Windows would crash. now to solve this problem:

11. Type DISKMGMT.MSC in the Windows 8 apps search and run.
12. You should see the main system drive split into 3 partitions. Right click the (C) partition and shrink the volume. I just used the settings it generated for me.
13. Go back into the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program and you should now be able to accelerate the drive.
14. In DISKMGMT.MSC right click the (C) volume and unshrink back to its normal size. It should generate the right settings for you.

Voila, this should have the drive accelerated and working correctly.

Now, If you want to use the Intel Rapid Start system:

1. Type DISKPART into the Windows 8 app search and run the program, the command prompt should pop up.
2. Type "LIST DISK" without quotations. It should show you present disks, the main HDD, the mSATA and any USB drives if you have them inserted. The drive we are interested in is the mSATA which should be the one showing 11GB in size.
3. Type "SELECT DISK #", where # is the number of the disk corresponding to the mSATA drive 11GB in available size.
4. Type "CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=8192"
5. Type "SET ID=84", if if doesn't accept that command try "SET ID=D3BFE2DE-3DAF-11DF-BA40-E3A556D89593". Which command it accepts is based on how the mSATA card is formatted. Both commands perform the same function, which is to mark the 8GB as a hibernation partition.
6. Type "EXIT".
7. Reboot into bios and you should now see the Intel Rapid Start option is no longer greyed out and the settings should be enabled.
8. Boot back into Windows and install the Intel Rapid Start driver software from the dell drivers page.

Everything should now be set up and working correctly. Hope this helps anyone having a problem.

 

I am currently trying to reinstall Windows 8 from scratch so I can enable UEFI, but when windows asks me for a drive to install to and I load the Intel SATA driver, it still cannot find my hard drives. Any ideas?

Update: after a few hours of wildly flailing with settings, I think I got it working. I enabled UEFI and legacy boot, then booted to my USB install disk with UEFI. This time it recognized the disks and I followed vebs07's instructions. Somewhere near the end, my computer forgot how to boot, so I booted from the install disk, loaded the storage driver again, and told it to repair windows. It failed to do anything, but gave me the option to boot back into Windows 8, which fixed the booting problem. I then went back into the UEFI settings and disabled legacy boot.

 

Look back to my posts about a month or two, I documented this. You need to copy an extra file to your Windows 8 source files.

 

I had this problem to start with. It turns out I wasn't using the correct Sata driver. I thought I had downloaded the right ones from the Dell drivers page, but the website had a bad habit of reverting back to the Windows 7 drivers without me realising when I was downloading. Also, the drivers listed somewhere earlier in this thread directly from Intel didn't work for me, it was only the ones from Dell which enabled the drives to show up.

 

I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on this tomorrow. I'm a college student who wants a ultrabook for html/css, photoshop, sql, and various development. I don't really play newer games just emulators or the occasional mid range title that doesn't need crazy specs. I understand this is 1600x900 and I've been currently coding at 1024 at school and 720p at home. This is no doubt an increase and I should see some benefit from it. If I buy before friday I can get the upgraded i7 model with 8gb for $1199, is that a good deal? I am trying to launch my own freelance web dev business so I may need to take this around with me. Are there anyone in this thread who uses this ultrabook for web design/development and has a positive review on it ?

 

I have been using mine for programming and web development and I have few complaints. I had random audio glitches after upgrading to Windows 8, but after doing a clean install and installing Dell's drivers, they seem to be fixed.

You will certainly enjoy the extra screen space, and though the screen is far from perfect, it is good enough for me. If you need accurate color reproduction though, you'll need another monitor or a different computer. The keyboard took me a while to get used to since the keys have very little travel, but they provide enough resistance that I don't find myself making many mistakes. It's no mechanical keyboard, but you could do far worse. The lack of dedicated home/end keys is problematic (they are mapped to Fn + left/right, which requires two hands), but I used AutoHotkey to map them to right-ctrl + left/right.

Also, I have the i5 model with dedicated graphics and it is plenty fast. You might be able to save a bit of money by upgrading the memory to 8GB yourself if you're comfortable opening your computer. Dell tightens the outside screws a bit too tight, but the memory is easily accessible once you remove the back panel.

 

They only stores in my area have the i7 model with 8gb. They are $1399 at each store but if they price match dell.ca at $1199, I can get it for that and maybe 10% of the difference if Bestbuy matches dell's online prices. I would get the i5 model if I could find it. The i5 and i7 are $1199 at Dell's Canadian site but that is only $200 off the price until Jan 3rd.

 

14z or 14 ultrabook?

I spoke to dell today and they will be sending me a refurbished L421x, but haven't told me the specs on it. When they sent me the 14z it was a HUGE upgrade with the i7, 8gigs ram, GT 520M, 750 gig HD.

My old studio had 4gigs of ram, a stock video card, 500 gig HD and an i5.

I worry now that they would LIKELY send me an i5 14 with nothing special.

should i swap the 8gigs when I get the new pc if they send me just 4 or what? No clue on what to do and hoping I would get the email already regarding what they're sending me.

 

I just wanted to share an update on the wifi performance of the XPS 14.

I've absolutely nailed down my problems with the connection to the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Bluetooth driver.

My machine came with Windows 7 and I did experience a spotty wifi connection when operating with 3 or less bars of signal strength. I upgraded to a clean install of Windows 8 and was surprised when my internet connection was much more stable. I spent a few days only having loaded a couple of the basic drivers from Dell. When I got round to installing all of the available drivers, I found that my connection problems had returned. For example, when using speedtest.net, the connection would randomly spike and drop during the test.

I've tested this out over the last few days, and I've done 6 clean installs of Windows 8 to make sure this is indeed the problem. As soon as the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Bluetooth driver is installed, the connection problems begin. Even if you uninstall the driver and the bluetooth quickset software that gets installed, the problem continues. The only way to rectify the issue is a clean OS install and not installing the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Bluetooth driver.

 

So, you suggest to not install ONLY the BLuetooth driver? Should we install the Dell Intel WiFi driver or do we stay with the Windows 8 Wifi Install Driver? If there is no trouble with the Dell Intel Wifi Driver, which is more stable, better range comparing to Windows 8 Driver?

I did a clean Windows 8 install, and did NOT install Dell Intel WiFi. Connection has been pretty much the same I had with my XPS 15z. A little less connection "bars" sometimes, but may be me trying to spot any problem.

Thanks for your input.

UPDATE: Of course I spoke too soon. I thought that after 4 days I was safe to say what I said. Today, pitiful performance. Next to the 15z, which would get the full 1MB/s or so for downloads it was getting 100Kbp/s...

 

I suggest you're safe to install everything apart from the bluetooth driver, that's the only one that's having a visible impact on my wifi performance, and the impact is quite dramatic. The Intel wifi driver seems fine, I didn't notice any difference in performance after installing that one.

 

So I went ahead and ordered it today from Dell as Bestbuy was apparently online only and they would not pricematch. Got the i7 with 8gb for $1199 with tax was $1359. I went to apple and tried to configure something similar in a MBP 15" that wasn't retina and I came in at $1999. I would get maybe $200 off with student discount but even then it's kinda steep. Has anyone tried upgrading the screen in the xps 14? Perhaps a higher res screen if the cables are compatible? I've seen some HP's that have a 40 pin connector and have been upgraded to a 1080 panel even with Hp not offering a 1080 upgrade option on several models. Crazy how laptops are so much more than a custom built pc. My quad core phenom 9550 black edition with 4gb of ddr2 ram and HIS AMD 6770 GPU is still fairly fast and works great to this day and I built my desktop about 5-6 years ago.

 

The difference between a laptop and a desktop is, with a laptop—and especially an ultrabook—you have a much smaller box to fit all your parts into. You're not only paying for the hardware, but all the work that goes into fitting said hardware into a tiny box while keeping it from burning up. Making things smaller is harder, and therefore more expensive. It often requires lots of custom parts as well, which will always be more expensive than generic desktop components.

As for the screen in the XPS 14, the Gorilla Glass limits your options. Even if you manage to find a screen that is electrically compatible, it likely won't be physically compatible.

 

I am looking at purchasing a XPS 14 and have a few questions on the specs after reading the entire thread: :thumbsup:

1. I found a few systems that have a 500 HD/128 SSD hybrid - is this OEM?
2. Is the upgrade to the 512 SSD worth the additional price charged?
3. Any difference in the performance of 1333 memory vs. 1600?

Thanks

 

Has anyone tried to put 16gb of ram in this? I know they say 8gb is the max but sometimes if it's a 64 bit OS, it will accept more ram. I've heard of a few desktops/laptops out that they did take more ram than what was listed and the OS used all of it.

 

Can you find 16GB of single channel DDR3 RAM? I can't.

Also, is there anyone running Windows 8 who isn't getting audio glitches? I thought my problem had disappeared, but it just returned and I hadn't updated any drivers from Dell's version.

 

I've seen only 2 (1x16gb) sticks of ram. One is made by hp for servers and is around $360 bucks. Another one is made by Kingston and is called Kingston ValueRAM and can be found for $159 online. Both are 240 pin, but I'm not sure how many pin the ram in the dell is. $159 is not bad if you really wanted another 8gb, provided it works of course. I'm sure you could find the Kingston stick for less if you looked around online.

 

Anyone?
Thanks

 

1 - OEM can be 500GB HDD and mSata 128GB, not one hybrid Disc, I believe.
2- I bought without the SSD and am upgrading myself. I prefer much more SSD performance plus once I had a dead HDD using a notebook in a car doing some work and this does not happen to SSDs.
3- I don't know for sure, but coming from a 166, I don't believe this should be the bottleneck for performance. SSD seems more relevant. But that's for my use. Not much encoding etc.

Hope this helps, but this is a very uninformed, personal opinion.

 

Fine I'll bump too

tl;dr

1.) Think I'll get a base model?
2.) Can I swap the memory without them being mad?

 

I'm not getting any audio glitches, I'm running Windows 8.

Base model is good (with the Nvidia graphics chip right?). For most normal people I doubt it would be worth spending the extra on the higher spec models. You can replace the RAM without voiding the warranty.

I thought Dell only offered this machine with either full SSD or 32GB mSATA options.

If you want the large sized SSD then it's only you that can decide if it's worth it, I find the mSATA and regular HDD combo increases the system speed dramatically so I'm in no need of a full SSD. I'm not sure if you get an mSATA connection point if you opt for a full SSD machine from Dell, so that's also something to look into and weigh up, with only one point of storage to replace/upgrade if needed.

There will be practically zero difference between 1333 and 1600MHz ram, the 1333 sticks usually have lower latency which means the performance is near as dammit identical to the same #GB module of 1600MHz. Something like a stick of Corsair Vengeance RAM will be 1600MHz and offer similar latency as a 1333MHz stick, so technically it will be the best performance option, but you will be paying a bit more for it, and I doubt you'll ever see any noticeable benefit in this machine.

 

I hate the "randomness" of these audio glitches, but after re-installing windows 8 I did NOT bother to install the sound card drivers from the Dell website, and since then I don't have the audio glitch problem. I hate the randomness of this, but maybe it might work (clean install, not audio driver install - sound works perfectly w/o the drivers).

 

Well, after uninstalling the audio drivers, music playback seems to be glitch-free so far, but the glitches are far more frequent when I play Mass Effect, so I can't tell if the problem is really solved or not yet.

Edit: Nope. That didn't fix it.

 

What I mean to ask is, should I give up the 14z for whatever they give me if the 14z has an i7?

And, the memory in the 14z I have to return, can I swap it with the replacement?

 

Anyone know a place to get skins for this specific model? I've seen some sites with 14z skins but I'm not sure if they are actually compatible. I missed out 2.5 years ago when Gelaskins had made marvel decals. I emailed the company and they said they had to destroy all old stock and don't have the rights to make anymore Marvel products.

 

in dell website there is new drivers and new bios A13
anyone try them?

 

From what I read, replacing the WiFi internal card does NOT solve the Wifi problem, right? Could someone please confirm?

Thanks

 

So I just received a brand new base model today. I was a bit worried about the wifi issue, so the first thing I did was run speedtest. I am sorry to report that it looks like I'm seeing problems on windows 8. Sitting a bit away from my ASUS router (pretty new, running Tomato), I'm getting like 3 mpbs on speedtest. In the exact same spot, my freaking iphone 4 is getting like 12 mpbs. Not what I expect from a brand new laptop. I tried installing new drivers from intel, no difference. Seriously debating returning this for a latitude or something more business class.

 

Has anyone tried that bigfoot wifi card yet to see if things improved? I should be getting my laptop in the mail if I am here to sign for it on Monday. I've read even more scary reviews since I've ordered it and It's preying on my mind.

 

Ok, so I think I fixed it somewhat using the recommended settings here - Wireless Networking — What are the recommended settings for 802.11n connectivity?

Not sure which setting did it, but crossing my fingers.

Edit - actually it's still dirt slow when I get one room away from the router. Ughhh....

 

Is the wifi that bad on this thing?

I almost want to consider keeping the 14z instead.

 

Links are not working