XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

I'm pretty sure it has been said before on here that there is only 1 DIMM

 

Yes, there is only 1 dimm slot. You can do 8gb, but that it. Crucial's 8gb is around 80us on the Crucial sight, but I got it from TigerDirect for around 65.

 

The restore partition has nothing to do with it as it is not stored in the SSD. It is in the HDD.

In any case, I deleted absolutely everything that came with the machine and installed my own OS from scratch. It still takes slightly above 30 seconds to boot from off.

It does come up from sleep almost instantly so I've been just closing the lid instead of shutting it down.

After 2 hours (you can modify this time) IRST will put the computer to hibernate.

I tried doing this and it took about 3% of my battery for the whole night.

Good enough for me although I get what you are saying. It should be faster, I'm almost sure this is due to the fact that the HDD is not even 7200rpm...

 

Quick Review after having it for 24 hours:

Bulid: excellent quality - very solid and yes a bit heavy for an "Ultrabook" but if I wanted an ultrabook then I would have gone for an Asus/Acer - but no heavier than my XPS 1330 with the extended battery - battery about 7-8 hours looks like which is fab.

Looks: Great, sleek and the alu casing is lovely. Keyboard is pretty good - although a chicklet style is surprisingly easy to type on (springy enough). Track pad is huge compared to my old XPS 1330 - keep resting my little finger on the trackpad which means it wont move the cursor coz it thinks I am going to do a gesture. This is my fault. need to retrain for a larger trackpad

Screen - last night when I was tired I was too close and noticed the gridding more. In the light of day, sitting back a bit and having fiddled with the display settings as suggested it really not noticeable. This for me is sorted.

The system on normal running is silent. I have updated my OS with Microsofts updates and the fan kicks in. This is a little noisy but not too bad. I think the system is sooooo quiet that when the fan does kick in you notice it more? Considering I am not a gamer and considering my old XPS M1330 fan noise (on all the time and really quite annoying) It is also not going to be an issue for me I guess the fan only really kicks in when You are using the dedicated Nvidia card for GPU hungry stuff.

Sound - as other have said surprisingly very good - surround / spacial features (Via Dell audio interface) is very good and you even get a bit of bass (although maxing out the setting starts to distort) - for a 14" "Ultrabook" is ace

Runs cool on normal use (haven't video compiled or done any heavy image editing yet) but warm underneath but very little heat noticeable on the top surfaces.

Haven't timed the boot time with the 830 512GB SSD yet - seems slightly slow compared with my Intel 160GB SSD in my M1330 - however I think most of this is the free McAfee bloatware which I tempted to remove and install MSE and and additional firewall.

Overall very pleased

 

I fitted a Samsung 830 SSD which scores 7.9 in the Windows index and much higher ratings in CrytalDisk than the Intel X-25 SSD in my 3 year old Latitude E6400.

The Latitude boots in 14 seconds. The XPS takes 23. I think it's the BIOS as the disk is obviously quicker. It's a shame Dell didn't use a EUFI BIOS like Samsung with the Series 9. I briefly had one of those before returning it. Although it had a relatively poor SanDisk SSD, that thing booted in 8 (yes eight!) seconds dead, from fully off.

I can't understand why the XPS which has the fastest disk of the three takes the longest to boot. Perhaps Bill has some insight into this one?


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Are you talking about resume from suspend? Maybe the others model have less RAM. The faster SSD you can find has about 500Gb/s of sequential read speed, so it needs 16 seconds to fill 8GB of ram, assuming that "resume from susped" fills the whole ram.

I agree that with a system that fast, the BIOS takes too much time at boot (4-5 seconds)

 

As I already said, the Series 9 booted in 8 seconds dead from being fully off - not suspended or hibernated and I have a video on my phone to prove it.

It had 8 GB of vs 4 GB in my Dell(s).

Although it had EUFI BIOS with some kind of technology which stopped the Windows logo from showing at boot. I think that's where it squeezed an extra 5-6 seconds and whereas the Dells show an animated bar when first powered up, the S9 gives you literally 0.5 seconds to press the F key for the BIOS thus saving another 4-5 seconds.


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Going to order one of these in the next two weeks.. I think i'll get the i7 w/4GB RAM build and then put my own SSD and RAM in... seems crazy to pay $900 more for a 512GB SSD and 4GB extra ram.

I've also got an XPS13, so not sure at this stage what to do with that, but may give it to the mrs.

 

Yeah, it seems like 5400RPM plus an mSATA cache = 7200rpm drive performance. At only 150% of the price!

 

Agree with you Cowboycoder, some improvement might be done with the bios. I have the same SSD as yours (Rated 7.9 from Windows) , and it's booting with XPS15z in less than 10 seconds...
Except this, i hope you are happy with your laptop.
Do you like the screen for coding ?

 

New dell xps 14 here in Italy was from 1099€ at day one. I checked out it today and they just raised it up of 100€: now it's from 1199. Why has this happened?

 

Very happy, the screen is fine for coding and GUI design.


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I know that Dell has the tear down guides, but has anyone else posted a video or guide to remove the HDD and replace it with an SSD?

 

Not in this threat.

 

Definitely still some flaky behavior for Dell still to work out. Ahh. The joys of early adoption of new products. Just brought the XPS out of sleep, which has been working fine, but not this time.

1. Wireless dead, FN F2 seemed to bring it back.
2. FN + display brightness dead, nothing seems to bring it back

All other FN Fx keys seem to be working.

Had to reboot to get my FN brightness working again.

FWIW, I'm not getting great boot times either (various times posted above). Also in the range of 20-25 seconds posted by CowboyCoder (we are running pretty much the same config now). Yea, it should be faster, but it is what it is. Still the best and just about only game in town for 14"1600x900.

Looking fwd to additional updates from Dell.

 

I noticed brightness not working after resume from sleep too. Interestingly, it works fine resuming from hibernation.

My Latitude's key repeat rate (which I always set to full because I'm impatient!) used to go back to the default 3/4 rate after resuming from sleep.


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For those who own the 14, How is the Wireless antennae? Some people are having problems with theirs in the 15 thread.
Usually they are not picking up a wifi signal, or have a very weak signal in places where they should have a strong signal.

 

No problems with mine, seems fine.


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I have noticed weaker signals in areas that were fine with other laptops. Dunno if its antenna placement in the xps 14 or the card compared to my other notebooks.

I have actually discovered one area of my home that is almost unusable now compared to the coverage i had with my e6510.

EDIT: I imagine the biggest difference for me, now that I think about it, is the 2x2 config of the Intel 6235 vs the 3x3 Intel 6300 in my E6510. No way the 6235 is going to perform like a 6300. I'd swap them out, but the 6235 is bluetooth also and I doubt there is room or even a slot to run another bt chip of any kind in the XPS 14.

 

Haven't had any issues so far.

 

All fine my end too. I have had an issue with sleep and wifi dropout after waking.

Also slow boot maybe this? Dunno time will tell : Windows 7 Self Optimizing Boot Process - AutoIt Consulting

 

Would also be interested to hear about wireless. I will return my XPS15 predominantly due to bad WiFi signal (to give perspective, 5 meters from the router in the same room I get download speed of abou 2 mbyte/sec from my NAS whereas my Lati 6320 gets 12 mbyte/sec and if I move another 5 meters signal almost gets lost where Lati still has full speed - the connection looking at the bars still seems good. i even tried a different router but still same prob). Card and antennas (whole screen) have been replaced so no hardware issue...

I'm now looking into bying a 14 instead predominantly because of size/ weight, but WiFi is a deal breaker if not working...

 

Am personally getting very good connection - 5GHz - 270 to 300Mbps in the same area as my old M1330 so very happy - as I said the only issues I have had (once) is waking after sleep it has a few issues reconnecting

 

My XPS 14 arrived this week and I put in my Samsung 830 256GB SSD. My first ever attempt at opening up a laptop went very smoothly. Also clean installed W7 and formatted the PM830 so now I have a C and D drive showing.

I am somewhat disappointed with the fairly slow start up. It seems to take about 25-30 seconds even with the 830 SSD. This isn't a huge issue for me though.

The bigger issue I am having at the moment is with the screen doing something weird. When I watch a HD youtube video everything is fine. When I make the video fullscreen though the colours go all funny. They seem to go really bright and over saturated. When I exit out of full screen the colours go back to normal. Is anyone else having this issue? Can anyone recommend any fixes?
I will try to post photos to show as an example.

 

The 830 SSD is rapid. The slow boot, as mentioned above is something to do with the XPS 14 / BIOS.

Hopefully this will be addressed by Dell. Although I like it, I do feel I've spent £1000 on the aesthetics because the performance is no different to the Latitude E6400 + SSD which is disappointing considering the 3 year age gap.

That said, I knew the score with Ultrabooks and if performance was key, I'd have gone with another Lat.


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Just reinstalled the intel HD graphics drivers (via the dell site) and the display griding/grainy seems to have got much better? Or is it me?

 

I mentioned this a couple of pages back. Although on reflection, I'm not so sure. Hopefully it can be addressed with a better driver but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Yes thanks you did suggest that Cowboy - Although it still a bit gridy I think the improvement it pretty noticeable esp on the solid greys Cheers - makes me believe most of it is the Intel HD driver - anyhow the next update should show

 

The prob on the 15 is actually not the connection speed that the system is showing it being connected with - even with 300 mbit/s connection the actual download speed is terrible, upload seems to be ok.
So intrigued to see if the 14 has this prob, otherwise i order tomorrow

 

Currently then my connection speed to the router is 240mbps - I am only on ADSL @ 8gbps - with speednet my download and upload speeds are as expected (comparable with my old M1330) of 6.5mbps down and .37mbp up All seems to be fine to me ( I have a Netgear DGND3700 Dual band N on 5Ghz).

 

Thanks...

I have posted some test results for my XPS 15 that I unfortunately have to return - in the L521x owners thread...
In a nutshell I've tried down/uploading a file to my NAS and there is a significant drop in download rate but upload is actually fine and comparable to 2 other Dell systems I own. Not sure what that is on the 15...

I'll order a XPS 14 tomorrow and return the 15 then we'll see

 

Hmm - perhaps its a driver issue? But as you say pretty frustrating? Can you compare it to another laptop/phone to make sure its not your router?

 

I've compared with a Lati 6320 and a Studio 15 that I own and neither had any problem...yeah its frustrating...

 

How does it compare to the M1330?

I have a feeling mine could die soon as the screw that keeps retention on the GPU seems to be loose/taken a part of the mobo with it, so my temps have been climbing up recently (which is a bit of a shame since it's gone 3 1/2 years without any major hardware faults) and while I could probably get a new mobo myself, I'd rather use the cost to chip in towards a new laptop, maybe.

 

Quite comparable actually - Trackpad and keyboard obviously need a while to get used to (although I'm nearly there). Screen much bigger and brighter than the M1330 - if I could get rid of the screen texture griding I would be 100% although this isn't a deal breaker after updating the Intel drivers. Wifi is much better than the M1330 as it was not dual band (although I did use a dongle sometimes). Also My SD card reader was busted on the M1330 so its lovely not to have to plug a USB reader in TBH. Its about the same weight as i had the 9 cell in the M1330. The battery is huge in the XPS 14 and goes on for ages (only had an average of 2.5 to 3 hours left in my M1330). No screen or body flex at all - yes its a bit heavy but built like a brick privy! Also the footprint is nearly the same - about 1/2 inch bigger width but that about it for a 14" rather than a 13.3 " makes a big difference (bit less squinting).

The other thing thats a huge improvement over the M1330 is the noise - I only hear the fan when I have plugged it into my TV to watch videos and TV whereas the M1330 's fan was on almost permanently! The boot time is slow however and as previously suggested its prob a driver or bios issue - I had and X25 160 GB SATA 2 drive in and that booted to log in in about 10 seconds - this takes about 32 seconds so interesting to see if that can sort that out

Chuffed to bits

 

Agreed, I started noticing the same problems with the WIFI this weekend. Hoping a new wireless-N router will help. Time for an upgrade anyway.

 

Couple of questions:
Anybody find any coupons that work with the XPS 14?

And has anyone found a sleeve that fits well? Got the neoprene sleeve for my m11x I like to use before putting it in my bag with my work laptop.

 

Hi Boggy98,

I checked on your order # and as posted on Fed'Ex website, it's out for delivery today, estimated by 3pm.

Thanks for choosing Dell,
Dell-LornaM

 

Amazon has a new $100 off deal (free $100 gift card with the XPS 14). And, no tax. Nice configuration that I didn't see on the Dell site, everything but the SSD for $1300. I just ordered one, will put in my own SSD ....

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-XPS14-10909sLV-14-Inch-Ultrabook-Laptop/dp/B0081YPXOU

 

Considering the same. New router.

I'm running a DLINK DIR625 as my main router, w/ DLINK MOCA to the basement and another DLINK DIR601 as an additional access point in the basement. So it's not like I don't have coverage, but both are pretty old N technology. With the drivers set to Auto vs 20mhz only, I never test out all that fast. Plenty for 1080p HD video streaming w/in a couple rooms of either of the wireless units, but otherwise not.

I'm thinking about one of the new DLINKs that does SmartBeam. Reviews seem to be positive and if it delivers, I don't mind the propietary bolt on to the N protocol. Not like everybody out there has SOMETHING proprietary in the hardward/firmward capabilities of their router products.

 

It's a bit more than a swap file. It's like Swap File 2000. I'd like to see Intel publish a whitepaper about their algorithm, because in the lead up to launch we heard a lot from our Intel marketing guys here at Dell about it. I won't attempt to butcher the technical description, but essentially it learns what files you access the most from session to session and puts them there ready to use on the next boot/resume.

I looked at the charts on Verge or somewhere where they compared boot times. We were the slowest at like 34 seconds, but the majority were around 20-25 seconds. Like I said elsewhere (maybe on this thread?), Intel never intended Ultrabooks to be shut down that often. Their vision of the usage scenario is the user relies a lot more on S2/S3/S4 than a cold boot. Hence, we never focused much on cold boot times and stuck to optimizing resume.

 

Hi Weymaster,

Thanks for bringing your concerns to our attention. Please PM your order # and email address. I am happy to look into this matter.

Thanks for choosing Dell,
Dell-LornaM

 

That's a good point/clarification to make. Intel has basically done 'superfetch' at a different level. Same goes for now cache works on hybrid drives. The algorithms watch what you do and put apps and files on the cache so that they start faster. Over time, it begins to behave like (but not quite) like an SSD, only slowing down when it has to go back to the spinner.

I've got a buddy w/ a Samsung Series 7 that has a hybrid drive (all internal to the drive, not a seperate mSATA/SSD). It's pretty quick, but still doesn't do what my old Intel 320 drive does as far as speed. Hybrids are an interesting technology, good inexpensive way to eek a bit more performance. But I'll stick to my SSDs, they are like crack once you start down that path...

 

Wonder how much dell charges for an extension on the warranty for these? I assume it's the same as when you add after purchase as opposed to the discount you get when getting at time of purchase.

I'm not seeing what warranty comes with the Amazon version. It it the standard XPS 1 year "Best Protection" you get when directly buying from Dell?

 

Unless I am missing something in the specs isn't the Amazon laptop this one from the Dell (US) site?

The Dell Online Store: Build Your System

If so that Amazon price is about 200 dollars cheaper. I suppose if it doesn't have the 1 year "Best Protection" Dell warranty that could be where the price difference comes in.

 

wont it just be better to buy 2 128gb msata ssd and install windows on it would be a faster boot and faster program launch overall ...... aka faster system and you should still get the instant resume times

 

No because it's got one mSata port and one standard Sata port.


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Anyone had luck installing Intel Smart Connect after they upgraded SSD?

 

amazons the best deal so far, should be same model

 

Yeah I went and got the Amazon one. Hope I don't get hosed on the warranty. for just over 1200 shipped next day it was too good to pass up.