XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

It sounds like a regular/design issue. I had the same thing with Samsung a while ago. The tech guy said it was simply a bad design and even if he did exchange the part, the result would be the same.
You won't get a perfeclty lit screen for this device, just like you won't find one that has good viewing angles or anything alike.

 

You are probably right, however when I bought this almost a year ago for a grand, I would expect the screen to not have any flaws. My old screen had 6 of these spots, 3 of them very noticeable. The new screen has only one, but its dead center toward the center/bottom of screen. This is Dell's issue, not mine. My warranty is up in a couple months, I am going to make sure they fix it. If Dell is going to sell a premium product, it better have premium parts.

 

there is good nvidia drivers for the dell xps 14?
i cant find any, and cant play starcraft 2
please help

 

Why don't you just download the drivers from the nVidia website?

 

dont work with 8.1

 

Oh, well it's beta software. No complaints allowed.

 

All the reviews say the screen has flaws. Each TN display has its flaws and all edge-lit screens have their flaws. Here's the combination. What did you expect? Screens that cost almost the same as this machine (without all the crazy discounts) do have these flaws.

 

Anyone updated the BIOS to A14 ?

 

Hi guys, need a "little" help here.

I guess I installed W7 and W8 from scratch couple of times, and in all of them I got in kind of "stubborn" problem, raid + hdd + msata.. after many fails, I got it working..

However, the scenario is different now, I replaced the hdd and put a samsung´s ssd 840 250gb..

While I was replacing the hdd I smoked a joint, closed the back of the ultrabook, powered on and VOILÁ, a line did pop out asking me to press crtl + I, and I got into raid bios! and by mistake (I was too high)I broke the raid array, dunno what i did, just remember I pressed some key and appeared on my screen that the raid array has been deleted, or smt like that.... well, after that I could not get into it anymore!

Tried MANY ways, MANY tutorials, removed the volume, made de "disk 0 offline", installed W7 in the 840ssd @ ahci mode, installed all drivers, installed w7 @ ata mode, @ irst mode, and nothing worked..

oh, I also switched back to the hdd to see if the control i would appear again, and nothing..

so, can anyone help me to do the raid array again?

also, I read that the acceleration between a msata n a ssd drive would not make much difference, is that true?

p.s.: i was installig all the dell drivers 10 minuts ago, and at every restart prompt from the driver was being instaled that time, i did.. many was VERY fast.. but after a installation of a particular pack (dont remember witch one) de reboot took at least 6 seconds more, and stills like this..

 

If you have a both the mSata and SSD in the system then a RAID doesn't make much sense. Just use the mSata to store data,

 

I wont get any performance increase doing raid?

 

Negligible increase if any, I don't have hard numbers for you though.

 

Has anyone tried to add an mSATA drive into a system that doesn't come with it? My Dell outlet system came with a 512GB SSD and no mSATA drive. I bought a 128GB mSATA card to add in for extra storage and for some reason the laptop doesn't recognize it, is there a setting I need to enable in BIOS that needs to be enabled? I've tested the drive on my PC with a SATA to mSATA adapter and the drive does work. I'm hoping it's not an issue with the laptop .

 

Alright. Even assuming the SSD is a Samsung 840, that is not REALLY fast?

Also, I wanted do to go into Raid´s Bios, is cause I never could when I wanted. So I thought it could be a bug.

Well, so does matter what I did set on bios? Intel RST, AHCI or ATA? There is difference of performance between IRST x AHCI?

In case I use the mSata as a "C:", will I be able to somehow change the patch do the large SSD on D:? I think I did this on the past and did not go well with some software.

Thanks!

 

An 840 is a good drive to have.
If you're going to have two SSDs in system, the BIOS mode should be set to AHCI.
IRST is the RAID mode.
I'm not sure what you're asking with the last question.

 

What I meant was if I install W7 on the mSata, all the programs will me installed on it. But it has only 32GB is gonna get without space in couple of weeds.. So, its possible to change the patch the apps will be installed to "D:" (the Samsung 840) instead of "C:" without any problems?

 

Yea, you should be able to install applications anywhere. There may be applications that don't work fully if they're not installed to the C drive, I'm not sure.

 

Well, dunno what to do so. Just W7 + Patchs + Office = 42GB! LOL..

Gonna sell the mSata, there is no use for 32GB..

 

I have a 128GB crucial msata in mine and it works great. However, tech that was replacing my screen on Friday broke where the msata cable plugs in, so now I have to send my whole laptop back. Check cables, might be loose. If BIOS doesn't see drive, something aint right.

 

I want to purchase this but the only thing that really bothers me is the wifi thing. How concerned should I be or should i wait for Dell to release a newer better version? Please help asap because I want to buy today to take advantage of the tax free weekend here in NC. Thanks

 

I would not buy.. There are many other better options around.. Might not be eye candy as a XPS Ultrabook, but can be cheaper and faster..

 

Tried using FreeDOS to get A14 BIOS going yesterday.

Running L421XA14.EXE just spits out a one-liner "Test.", and does nothing more.

Anyone else given it a shot here?

 

I've had that happen on quite a few new Dell machines, I just flashed them in windows (which I don't like doing, but if their dos flash is broken...)

 

Oh so this is a generic flasher codebase problem for them. I'm in the middle of Ownership Transfer so their support doesn't file my requests yet. Have you reported this upstream, support or whoever? Maybe it would actually reach the guy writing the code... you never know (<-- problem in itself, of course).

 

just adding my experience,

bought a xps 14 ultrabook in july had nothing but problems with the wifi.

my spec: i7, nvidia 630 500gb hdd (now 240gb ssd) killer wireless card. tried it both with windows 8 and 7.

so my issue is that sometimes it sees both 2,4ghz and 5ghz, other times it only sees one of the other. but the worst issue is that the connection keeps dropping out, so i have 100% strength then it will drop to 0% and disconnect, but it does this every min or so, sometimes as often as every 5 seconds, this effects any streaming or online gameing and its just unusable. currently im using a cisco wireless n usb dongle and i get a strong steady connection.

I work in a large hospital and have 5000 Dell devices so im friendly with the dell engineer. he came to replace the wireless card at first which didnt improve at all, then the antenna was replace which is part of the lcd screen so the whole lid was replaced, still the same issue, he then thought the wireless card wasnt getting enough power so the motherboard and daughter board were both replaced, and that was today. so ive been running a test on it today and it seemed much more stable for about 3 hours, had good 5ghz connection and only a handful of drop outs over an hour. just got home and started running the test again and its back to its old tricks, dropping connection every few seconds and only sometimes sees the 5ghz range. dell said they will replace the laptop, lets hope that sorts it out.

 

Very nice. Part of the reason why I got this XPS as a Haswell-hold-me-over was the mini-DP, so I can run the 27" at 2560x.

I wonder if Ivy Bridge can do triple-monitor also with DP 1440p, HDMI 1080p, LVDS 900p simultaneously?

 

Thanks for the advice. I decided not to go for it since it didn't feel right.

 

Dear all,
I bought a XPS 14 (L421X) laptop and I realized that the screen is one of the worst I've ever seen in a laptop monitor. Do you know if there is any way to replace this grainy/awful screen with any other descent LCD screen?
Thank you in advance.

 

If you just bought it, and are unhappy with the screen, then return it. Not only would you void the warranty changing out screen (major surgery) but if it's even possible, the cost just isn't worth it.

The problem is, Dell seems unwilling to source decent screens for their flagship laptops. I've seen it all too often. The XPS line should have only the best panels (and they know which ones those are...check any Apple, Sony, or Samsung notebook).
Somehow, Dell managed a decent screen in the 1080p version of the XPS 13, and their Alienware M18xR2 usually has good screens. I have an M14xR2 and it sucks. (well, it doesn't suck bad, but it's not great either).

It's a shame because the built in screen is what you look at!! All the time!! It should be eye candy. It shouldn't fade out when you're 2 degrees off axis, it shouldn't be grainy, dark, etc. Stick the junk in the $499 laptops. That's expected, but not a $1599 laptop.

Sometimes it's not so hard to understand why Dell is losing market share and money.

 

Amen, brother @lancorp

My question: this XPS14 screen brightness automatically adjusts itself lower when large dark areas are shown on screen, then again higher when you switch back to a light background window. This is annoying as hell, but is this a Linux driver "feature" or is this built into screen firmware or what causes this?

 

I think it's a firmware thing of the panel or whatever: I found this very anoying too, and after disabling it in Windows it was fine under Linux too.. so you need windows to disable it. I searched a lot on how to disable it under Linux but couldn't find how to do it.. and I think it's just not possible.

 

Dell is so slow with refreshes it is insane.

 

So recently I noticed a few times when the machine would spontaneously wake up one front light blink after suspend. No matter how many times I tried to suspend, it would wake up again.

I wonder if it's this https://bugs.launchpad.net/dell-sputnik/+bug/1161962

Loading intel-smartconnect module seems to have no effect, and on top of that I already have SmartConnect disabled in BIOS.

 

12.04 - Why does my laptop resume immediately after suspend? - Ask Ubuntu

take a peek at /proc/acpi/wakeup, in my case it was either the EHCI or XHCI controller. disabled both, now we sleep tight.

 

Hi guys,

I'd like to replace my HDD with a 256gb Samsung 840 ssd. I was wondering what the procedure is?

I was thinking:
1. mirror my current hard drive to the new ssd.
2. disable acceleration in the SRT program.
3. open up back, and swap the current hdd for the new ssd.
4. replace back and boot up normally.

Could someone tell me if this will work? I do not want to encounter any issues.

For example do I need to change any settings in the BIOS? And is it necessary to remove the battery before changing the hdd for ssd?

Thanks a lot.

 

Which version did you get?

I bought the 500GB model, without the caching SSD, so the swap was very easy. As I wanted to make sure the alignment was right I bought a program to do the job for me -> Acronis Backup. Put the SSD into an external USB case, plugged it in, cloned the drive and adjusted the partition sizes.
Opened the machine, exchanged the drives, booted up. No issues.

 

The 500gb model with the 32gb caching drive.

Oh ok, it is that easy then is it? Did you bother removing the speakers and battery like the guide says to do?

Yes the samsung ssd I've bought comes with a program that should do a similar thing

 

I got the "naked" model so I had to buy the software. I don't actually remember taking the main battery out but speakers would be possible, yes. I think there was a site that explained what needed to be done first to exchange the drive.

Here it is! Dell XPS 14 (L421x) Repair Manuals | DIY Installation Videos & Service Guides

 

Hi, I would like to know if I can upgrade the intel centrino 6235 to an intel centrino 6300? Will it be compatible with the Dell XPS 14? Will it recognise it? Will it fit?

 

I noticed the same thing, but when I disabled the Dell Mobility Centre screen options (I forget the exact details now, but it was described elsewhere in this thread), the screen is SO much better.

From what I can remember, you press Win + X (Windows 8) and choose Mobility Center and change the Dell Display option. I *think* it's the colour option - "Splendid Colour" does horrible things to the sharpness and colour. "Generic Colour" switches back to the normal mode.

Hope that helps!

 

so lets rehash a problem. In a few months, I'll be taking the bar exam and plan on using my 14. but I have a fear that it will somehow crash on me during my exam. it usually crashed while using it with wifi streaming apps (Skype, or any video streams).

has this ever been resolved, or are we just supposed to deal with it? I might end up buying an extra laptop just for the exam if this one deems unreliable.

 

The webcam doesnt work, whenever i open skype or the camera app it says no camera detected.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I think either the driver isnt installed, or my computer isnt detecting the webcam.

Thanks

 

I am having WiFi issues yet again. It seems to happen every time the xps goes to sleep. It wakes up but shows I have a connection but I clearly don't. I have to disable the WiFi adapter then re-enable it and wait about a minute or so before getting internet connection back. Any ideas on how to fix this? An update perhaps or a new WiFi adapter by a diff company?

 

I am trying to install RHEL 6 on DELL XPS 14, but I am getting an error
"unable to find any devices of the type needed for this installation type"

Requesting you to please help me solve this problem

 

Just got my refurbished 14. Such a nice looking machine! Super happy with my purchase. As others have mentioned though, wireless speeds are mediocre compared to my desktop which is sitting right next to it. The laptop gets half of the download speeds. Whatever, for $435 after tax, I'm not complaining.

 

This doesn't apply directly to redhat, but I think the last step, you can put fedora on where I did LinuxMint 15.

I just installed LinuxMint on my returb I just got from the 30% off sale at dell. Everything works, I didn't need a special kernel to make the keyboard backlight controls working, or screen dimmer. I downloaded the Ubuntu secure remix from here onto a usb stick.

items needed: 2 usb sticks, one with secure ubuntu remix, and the other with the linux flavor of your choice

Steps I did:
1 Disable secure boot in bios, disable intel rapid start and caching. (My system has the 500gb + 32gb msata ssd)
2 boot into windows 8. Shrink partition down as low as it will go (it let me drop it down by 230gb or so). while holding down shift, click restart, keep holding it down until boot options appear, pick other/usb stick
3 ubuntu remix boots - click install, format 32gb ssd as target install, set boot loader to /dev/sda (it will default to that) to 500gb. It will make a grub partition there out of a small piece of free space
4 after reboot, ubuntu should boot. Go to boot repair icon it has, it pick auto-fix options. next reboot will give you a grub menu and let you choose UEFI loader or linux
5 both OSs should boot. At this point you can boot off another USB of your choice and replace the ubuntu install (I did linux mint) on the 32gb ssd. After install, you'll have to manually add or download the boot repair tool again, it will fix grub so you can get both linux and windows.

After that I installed bumblebee to get my power consumption down to 15 watts or less. Before that its higher, as the nvidia 630 is always running. Everything works, battery life is good. suspend/resume for me has not caused any issues yet, I've done it about 5 times today and wifi comes back and all. So far I am digging the machine!

 

About the linux stuff: you have to disable dmraid, after that the installer will see different hdds. Of course before you have to disable this intel rapid storage thing. This may be helpful: [ubuntu] Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook Compatbility

 

Does anybody know which is the maximum resolution for external monitors?? I have tried 1920x1200 monitors (connected at the same time, using MiniDP to DVI and HDMI to DVI converters) and they work fine. What about 1440p monitors?? Are those resolutions supported? Has anybody tried?

Thanks!

 

Mine is 1440p and works quite well.

 

HDMI, Mini Displayport or doesn't matter? Do both support 1440p?

Thanks!