XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

I've never been able to upload pics here, it just asks for a web URL rather than letting me browse to the file. Do I need to change a setting somewhere?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Hmmm... I ordered an i5 4gb model on dell.com yesterday. It's not shipping until 7/12 and delivery could be 7 days later.

Now I see that best buy has an i7 8gb model for only $100 more than I paid, and it will ship to store in 5-7 days.

Is that worth trying to cancel or send back the model I ordered from dell.com?

 

do it ASAP

 

I ordered mine from bb.com and got 2 day shipping for only $15 extra and i ordered it yesterday and it arrives Friday.

Do it

 

I use a free ImageShack.com account to upload pics and get a URL to use here.

 

Review of the XPS14 in french.
Reviewer very unhappy with the Gorilla screen too glossy and very bad viewing angle...Maybe people can confirm this ?

Too bad i really wanted to purchase one unit in the future. I guess 15z is a better computer though.

[PCi Labs] XPS 14 : nos premières impressions sur l'Ultrabook de Dell - Actualité PC INpact

 

Good idea. Not just me then. Thought my browser wasn't set right or something. 24-hours to delivery of my XPS :-D


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

What do the French know? They just elected a Socialist President...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

OT: Who is not a socialist these days?

I am more worried about the fan noises. Still waiting for trustful review or at least opinion.

 

Bill says it ain't noisy and that's good enough for me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I agree. Bill is pretty honest about telling us which Dell products he's not thrilled with. Not sure how he gets away with it

 

I use the manage attachments button. It gives you the ability to browse locally for the pics you want then upload them. Each pic needs to be at or below 585k in size and no larger than 2000x2000. After you browse for and select five pics (one by one), click the upload button.

When you post the thread or replay, it will add thumbnails for each pic. Easy.

 

Taken the plunge myself but not despatched yet - I got the SSD 17 8GB version which should improve performance and battery life. There is now another mid-level spec (i7 with HDD) review here from PCWorld.au Dell XPS 14 (L421X) Ultrabook review - Ivy Bridge, ultrabooks, dell - PC World Australia

 

That review was kind of silly. If you happen to have torx screwdrivers? Seriously, who doesn't have a set of proper tools?

 

Well, pulled the trigger. Went with the i7/8GB/32GB+500GB model. Rep says I should receive it by the 10th.

I've read earlier in this thread that it's easy to configure the BIOS so the mSATA SSD is your boot drive, I plan on swapping in a Mushkin Atlas 120GB Drive Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

What kind of speeds should I expect from the mSATA in this machine? Will it operate at SATA III speeds?

 

I don't get a 'Manage Attachments' button. All I get is...

Insert Link: which only provides a text box to enter an http address
Insert Image: which provides the same, to enter an http url to the image
Quote icon: to insert a quote

 

See my picture which I have attached CowboyCoder

 

Guys who have seen them,

is the VIEWING ANGLES honestly THAT BAD? its being reported as a con by just about every single review put out.

 

Nobody's perfect ;-)

Anyway IMHO, viewing angles and not so fast HD are big disapointments of those 2 models.

>i don't understand why not putting together at least 7,200 HD instead of slow ones with SSD....somebody could explain to the french?

 

This review is awful. I'd say that guy probably hasn't used Windows 8 very much.

 

Based on the reviews it looks like this one is "so-so." Not bad, not great.

 

Then get off the owners forum....

 

Fair enough.

 

Not sure if this was posted as it only came out today.

Tom's Hardware (German site) review for the XPS 14. May want to use Chrome Translation unless you speak German.

Dell XPS 14 im Test: 14-Zoll-Ultrabook mit Ivy Bridge und GeForce : Ultrabook, jetzt auch in größer: Dells XPS 14

 

I think the jury's still out on the 14 until someone posts pics, but the 15 doesn't look so bad, IMO.

At least that reviewer in Muffin Man's link says the angles and brightness are good. He didn't like the blacks much. I wonder if he could have tweaked the colors with the provided Dell color management software and got the blacks looking better.

 

Hello Everyone, longtime lurker, first time poster. I bought the laptop a few days ago and estimated ship date is 7/9. Very excited.

Got a question if anyone knows about it. I plan on upgrading the laptop with an ssd. Does anyone know if the drive bay is 7.5mm or 9mm in height?

 

If it can hold a 5400RPM drive, it's gonna be a 9mm form factor. You should be able to use any 2.5" SSD on the market.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I only ask, because a review linked earlier stated it was a Hitachi HTS545050A7E380(in simpler, non googled terms, a 7mm 2.5 inch drive.). It may have been something different in a review model, but it's good to know.

 

I didn't catch that in the review, nor did I know of that drive's existence. I may have to rethink my plans for this laptop if that's the case. I wanted to add a 128GB mSATA boot drive and replace the 500GB hard drive with a 7200RPM drive for data. If it's only 7mm, I may have to stick with the 5400RPM stock drive.

Thank you for the info!

I'll find out for sure when I receive my unit!

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. If this is indeed a 7mm form factor drive, here's the 7200RPM upgrade: Newegg.com - HGST Travelstar Z7K500 HTS725050A7E630 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

That'll make upgrading to a full ssd a bit painful. got ~280 in giftcards back, so i figured i'd buy an ssd from the dell store. They don't list the drive height. And alot of their prices are sadly a few months out of date D:

Also, here's the review if you missed it.

Dell XPS 14 (L421X) Ultrabook review - reviews - Notebooks - Performance - PC World Australia

 

the viewing angles dont seem to be as bad as i was starting to think, based off these pics. my fingers are crossed the 14 inch comes out like these!

 

Just in case you need proof of how stunning the screen look, Sorry if the picture is quite big, I didnt wanna edit it

 

If Google's translating was working well, it seems this display has a really high black level and therefore really bad contrast.

 

Thanks for the link to that review, I had read 3 or 4 reviews so far, but not that one, so I had missed the hard drive model they used. It does look like we're limited to 7mm drives, and I know Intel (remove the spacers) and OCZ, among with a couple of others have 7mm SSDs available.

Also looks good for the people that want 7200RPM drives, since Hitachi and Seagate manufacture them from 160GB up to 500GB in 7mm.

I'd love to do a thorough review when I receive mine.

That's the one thing I'm fearful of. The screen is a big deal for me and I love bright screens, so not worried there, but we'll see how the angles are..

Psst.. If possible, could you take a picture instead of a screenshot? A screenshot only looks as good as the monitor it's being viewed on, we don't get the full effect. Thank you for your time!

EDIT: Never mind, that screenshot is from the German review posted. Thanks....

 

Totally forgot about that lol Yeah i got it from the German site not sure if it helps

 

I bought a Crucial M4 256GB SSD and was going to replace the HDD with it. Does this mean I won't be able to use it?

I got a message this morning tell me my XPS 14 will arrive on Wednesday, can't wait!

 

I believe you can by external enclosure for your HDD and use it as an external hard drive. Thats what I'm going to do too.

Newegg.com - External Enclosures, External Hard Drive Enclosures

http://youtu.be/i1S3XfRn8fk

Here is the video of how to install the HDD into new case. Fast forward to 3:10.

 

I was actually refering to the above posts about how it may only be able to fit a 7mm SSD. The M4 that I purchased it 9.5mm so I was wondering if I will still be able to use it. I have very little technical knowledge about computers apart from what I read on these forums over the last couple of months so excuse my ignorance.

Although thank you for your post as that was going to be my next question as I intend on using the HDD as an external.

 

If your stuck with the 9mm it might fit still. Many users take the 9mm out of its casing and use them.

 

Get a samsung PM830 / 830 The 2.5" versions of these drives are all 7 mm, and its the best drive out there (reliability wise and almost the top speed wise).

If you look hard enough, it can be found for 200 dollars on sale from various vendors at different times.

 

I got the 830.

XPS 14 arrived a few hours ago. No power brick in the box FFS!

Hope the battery is fully charged, then I can cope till Monday.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Initial Thoughts
-Really nice packaging and everything seems really top quality.
-Power lead is a bit shorter than I'd have liked.
-Heavier than it looks

Keyboard
Keyboard is really nice to type on and the backlight is always a great feature. It does seem a little cramped but I'm sure it won't take long to get used to. Funny enough there is an eject key even though there is no optical drive? I presume its just there for if you are using an external one.

Track Pad
I understand there were a few complaints about the trackpad. It works as well as I would've expected and everything is very smooth. If your fingers are just a little greasy though it is just a little too resistant to drag your finger across. I really like the way you can press down on the touchpad anywhere to left click similar to the Macs and the multi finger gestures work better than any other computer I've used also. One issue I have to report though is that right-clicking, and every sort of gesture stopped working for me after 15 minutes of use. The only thing I could do was move the mouse and left click. I put the system in stand-by then started it again and it worked perfectly.

Screen
Screen quality is better than average anyway and I'm pretty happy with it. Side-ways viewing angles are pretty good but vertically things go a little off. Not a big deal for me though and I cant complain. The Gorilla glass is reflective and when you're typing you can always see the reflection of your fingers below the screen. It doesn't have much of an effect on the normal usage though because the 400 NITs of brightness takes care of that.

Speakers
I wasn't expecting much from the speakers in such a small profile but they definitely impressed me. Bass is nowhere near as bad as I thought it'd be. The laptop is fairly loud and sitting on a table doesn't really muffle the sound at all seen as speakers are on the bottom. I actually think the sound is sort of amplified when its sitting on the table. Sound is very full and I'm definitely surprised.

Fan
I was particularly nervous about fan noise as I read it in a few reviews but after an hour of playing 1080p youtube videos I can confidently say that this is not an issue. The laptop is the closest to silent I've heard. The only time the fan picked up was running a benchmark but even then it was barely noticeable.

I've only had it for about 2 hours so they are just a few of my initial opinions. No real cons as of yet except for the minor issue with the trackpad. I would definitely rate this better than the reviews that have been published. I'm not a gamer though so it suits me. It is definitely a high quality premium laptop and I'm very happy with it. If it wasn't for the large price tag I'd give it a 4.5/5 easily.

I payed €1100 for:
i5-3317U Processor
8GB RAM
500GB+32GB mSATA
NVIDIA GT630m

EDIT: When playing youtube videos if I click on a link in another tab, the sound distorts for roughly a second.

 

Great thanks for that update - sort of what I had read from other reviews reading between the lines

 

Found the power. Half was in the side box but the block was under the laptop. Didn't see it, as I'm at work and can't really play yet. Will sort it all out later this eve



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I received mine today I am at work so I could only take a quick look but so far I really like it, the screen is nice, the speakers are crisp and clear, keyboard has small arrow keys some people may not like that but the keyboard to type on is nice, I am doing windows updates right now the fan is really quiet which I like the only con I have with it is that it is heavy alot heavier then I thought it would be.

 

videos and pictures guys really appreciated it

 

John BDL, cowboycoder, jabbok, Please post pics of viewing angles

 

I took a few photos but don't think they give a true indication so I don't want to upload them. They really aren't very bad.. Blacks just fade a bit with vertical movement but sideways its okay

 

Engadget's comment on the 'hollow' sounding 'Y' key appears correct, but that's being picky.

Keyboard is nice to type on. Fan is silent. I replaced the HDD with a Samsung 830 SSD and it screams along now. The SSD is indeed the slimmer 7mm but there are numerous ones on the market although I highly recommend the Sammy 830 for sheer speed, reliability and bang for buck.

Upgrading isn't for the feint-hearted! No less than 16 screws to remove, including the battery, battery LED cable, sound cable, speakers and an I/O cable.

Some wires are quite delicate and you'll need a Torx T5 screwdriver to remove the base. Be extra careful here, the screws are quite tight and it's easy to mash the head on them if you apply too much force.

I'm just installing the OS, Windows 7 SP1 and all the drivers. Once I get Google Chrome installed I'll upload some pics.

Happy to answer any other questions anyone has. I'm the fussiest person alive when it comes to laptops, just take a look at my posts in the Samsung Series 9 15" thread! Really happy with this puppy though

The screen is pretty good. Nice, sharp image. Viewing angles are good on the horizontal but quite narrow on the vertical.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the details, much appreciated!