XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

My touchpad info is the exact same, FYI. By comparison, using the touchscreen to scroll in FF is a bit smoother, but it's definitely still not as good as it should be.


I noticed a couple other minor issues. First, I'm getting a small, high-pitched whine from the speakers. I notice it if the room is quiet, or if I put my ear up by the base. I happens constantly whenever the laptop is on. I tried turning my cell phone off to see if it was because the speaker wires were picking up the cell signal, but that didn't fix anything. Anyone else have this?

Second, I noticed a small bit of dust (a little larger than a period/full stop) underneath the glass on my screen. I might not care, except that it's right near the middle. It might be small, but I'm still considering asking Dell to swap the screen. Does anyone know if they'd be willing to swap the screen for something this minor? I just feel like it would bug me knowing it's there.

 

I had a small'ish dust spot underneath the screen on my old Studio XPS 16 right in the middle of the display. I chatted with Dell and they sent someone out to replace the screen. I'd say go for it if it's that annoying.

 

depends......if you looking on a BLuRay movie.......big difference.

also, photos you see a lot of difference

 

any new yorkers get theirs yet? i even called fedex this am....not like i had a tracking #, i just wanted to talk to someone

 

Waiting for an unboxing video :

 

By default, XPS15 comes with 200% scaling -- basically, softwares with proper scaling support will have UI in the same size as 1600x900 screen; I believe this works well for may people. You can reduce scaling to get the UI equivalent of 1920x1080, which some people prefer. Note that using the native 3200x1800 resolution does not work well on some softwares; softwares without proper UI scaling will have tiny UI, and it is even worse for software that do not even allow altering font size. Of software I use, MS Office, Firefox, Foobar2k, Steam and RStudio work perfectly fine, but I have other softwares that do not work that well.

Because of this, some people prefer to change the resolution of the screen itself (usually to 1920x1080) -- personally, I don't recommend this, as you will lose the main advantage of QHD+ this way. With 3200x1800, texts and pictures look stunning. Videos look great too, but only when you have good enough source, which is not too common with streaming videos. IMO, it is worth the tradeoff of several difficult-to-use applications (and YouTube, ugh -- Vimeo works perfectly fine though).

My Synaptic OEM driver is version 16.3. As I said, my right clock is working fine as long as I don't clock too close to the center line -- as far as two-button clickpad goes, this one is okay (of course, one-button clickpad (in Mac) would work much better, as (IMO) two-button clickpad is a poor idea to begin with....).

By the way, synaptic driver enables "tap to click" on default; have you tried disabling it? This feature is redundant with clickpad, and may interfere with right clicking.

 

With the Dell driver, at least, you can set the "right button" (remember, it's not actually a different button, just a trackpad area) to do a normal left click. This basically gives a single button trackpad with two-finger right click, just like the MacBooks. I only tested it briefly, but it seems to work fine. "Left clicking" works fine across the entire bottom of the trackpad, including right on that little divider line. I can even leave my thumb on the "right button" while mousing around.

 

So what is the safest or easiest way to replace the 32GB mSata?

I have a 256GB just sitting here and my plan is to use it. It sounds like the options are
a) use something like Paragon (for $40) to clone and reimage the device
or
b) unraid, the install from a torrent'ed image from scratch. Then reinstall all the drivers.

About right?

 

B is probably your best bet. Cloning the image might do wacky things, but I don't know enough about Intel's caching system. Reinstalling always works. Just make sure you extract your Windows key before futzing with stuff.

 

Hello,

Is it possible to disable optimus via bios? Someone please check

Because this has Intel and Nvidia GPU, so what if you just want to use Nvidia only for everything.

 

^

It's probably easier to just format and reinstall. That being said, shouldn't there be a recovery partition? Should allow you to restore the recovery to the new SSD (the recovery partition is basically the base image delivered on the laptop).

I migrated my old Studio 1555 install to an SSD (either using Paragon or Acronis, can't remember). It was fairly easy, handled all the bit alignment and everything fine, but I dunno how it would go when you've got IRST running and being annoying haha. Plus windows does it's own tweaks when it detects its installing to an SSD (ie disables defrag and other utilities that run in the background that could kill an SSD).

 

You can also call Dell and ask them for a Windows 8 reinstallation disc. They will ship you one.

 

Except the XPS15 doesn't have a DVD drive? Either way it should be the same as the partitioned recovery image. I'm not sure if Microsoft has changed it in Windows 8.1, though, but it should be there.

 

Oh yeah whoops. Used to the L521X model.

 

I'd think you could still request one, for anybody with an external drive.

 

usually not free, is it free for you North Americans?

 

Is it possible? Maybe. But you don't want to. There is no reason to disable Optimus at all.

 

It was free for me (USA). Even shipped it overnight.

 

That's great. I'm taking this option. I want the recovery disk anyhow.

 

Guys I have a big problem, I think.

With the brand new laptop I drained its battery and recharged to full, let it rest blah blah (calibrating). Now when I switch it on again, it shows me 3 hours + battery life? I'm not even running any apps, the wifi is on. This is from hibernation. I shut down and switched on again, no change,

Is there something wrong with the big battery here?

Also another issue, when I first resumed from hibernation mouse left and right clicks wouldnt work (not on the touchpad, not on the external mouse), only moving. Restarting fixed this.

Edit: After a few minutes the battery shows 6 hours 50, then jumps back to 3hr 20

 

Same thing happened to me! I could ALT-TAB around to different programs and things but it wasn't registering any clicks at all. I had to reboot to fix the issue as well.

 

Wondering if someone can help me out.

I am trying to run MYOB (accounting software in Australia). If i leave the scaling set to 166% none of the menus line up.

I went into their support and something read it doesn't read DPI or something and to set to 100% scaling.

The menus then look fine but everything is so tiny I can't see what I am doing.

Is there a solution I am missing? I read some mac forums with people running it via VM but as they are only running one program in VM it would be easy to scale to 100% just for that?

 

This happens to me even without hibernating, just out of the blue. The issue is only in the desktop though. If I switch to Metro, I can click on stuff and it works, but if I switch back to the desktop, I can't click on anything. A reboot always fixes it and sometimes if I wait a while, it seems to fix itself.

 

Our room temperature right now is 8C, HWM shows the laptop's i7 is running at 55C idle. Could expect a bit more when I return to 30C room temperature.

Can anyone report on unusual large battery activity? I've only used this for a few hours, have had it calibrated, it's showing a wear level of 2%, and showing me 2 hours or 3 hours life on a full charge (sometimes bouncing to 4 hours) that is quickly draining (in a few minutes it went from 97% to 87%)!

Enough for a replacement battery? Problem is I'm going overseas and Dell doesn't sell the large battery version where I'm going.

 

Sounds like there is something running in the background? 55C is pretty high for an idle temp, it should be mid 30s.

 

if you talk about "background" there's the Nvidia thing, the Intel stuff that's tucked away, the McAfee etc

I'm not doing calculations or downloading in the background

30C CPU sounds a bit low, but given the weather I guess that's a possibility. Still, it just raises concerns for when the outside temperature is normal or 30C.

 

Hrm, very strange. Might be an internal windows thing or something? Dunno. Keep in mind that the Windows estimation of battery life has traditionally been not great. It's better than it was under XP/7, but yea, it's still not that accurate. Depends on what you're doing at the time etc.

To put it into context, my 4930k is currently idling at ~38-40 degrees (depending on the core, with my abysmal CPU cooler), and it's ~28 degrees in here. Mobile CPUs are lower power, but have less cooling potential, so they should run about the same. 55 Degrees idle is well above what i'd class as normal, hence my suggestion that there is something running in the background.

 

that's pretty amazing

what about past experience with quad core or even dual core laptops? best i could get in a laptop was (on 28C weather) 40+C core temp for a single core, and for dual/quad it hasn't been great, high 40s to mid 50s is reasonable for idle

 

Yea, and this is overclocked too (4.1ghz, 1.28v), so it runs a bit hotter than stock. My old i7 920 was about the same, ~38-42 degrees idle, ~60+ degrees load. The 4930k being a hexcore, my cooler is pretty inadequate now, waiting until exams are over before I switch over to a full custom watercooling loop

Just turned on my mums Vaio Pro 13, i5 4200U, idles at ~36-40 degrees according to realtemp (both cores about the same). Same deal though, it's a ULV CPU, so it has a lower TDP, but less cooling capacity (since its so thin), so it should run about the same.

 

yeah I'd expect a ULV to be like that, but for a 35W dual or quad, it's not likely. but I'm more hung up about the stupid battery issue because when the indicator says 2 hours it will shut off in 2 hours unless it switches... when i was at 7% life it seemed to stay at 7% in near perpetuity despite my efforts to open apps and try to make it move, while from 97% it whooshed down 10% really fast

 

I set my scaling to 166% and every works perfectly except for chrome. The text on chrome look fuzzy and don't look like QHD+. I now switched to Firefox and it works awesomely and the text is so sharp !

 

Cold temperatures kill battery life. 8c isn't hugely cold, but its definitely below the average operating temperature these things are supposed to work at. Would that drop it to 1/3rd or less of normal capacity? It seems doubtful. Certainly very cold temperatures (freezing and below) could do that (photographers shooting outside in the winter can see that kind of a drop). 8c is not so cold that I would expect it to make that dramatic of a difference, plus I'm sure it's warmer than that inside your laptop.

Double check everything (brightness, bluetooth, any applications running consistently above 0% CPU in task manager).. 55C at idle for the CPU seems high, that's 47 degrees above room temperature! Imagine if the room was 30 degrees instead.

Do all your homework, and if you still can't figure it out, call Dell. That's definitely not acceptable for the large battery.

 

I have a few questions for all of you experts. I'm really liking the idea of swapping out the 32Gb mSATA for a bigger drive to boot from. I would like to install Windows 8.1 and the Adobe CC suite (and other smaller software).

My questions :

1. What is a reasonable size for doing this? (Price/capacity)
2. Which brand would you recommend?
3. Can I install some software on the other HDD? (I am waiting for the mid-tier model with the 1TB drive)

 

You're best going with as big a drive as your budget can afford. You can get MSATA SSDs from 32gb -> 512gb. To be honest, 120/128gb is the probably the smallest i'd go. ~250/256gb is probably the best bang for buck at the moment. For SSDs to perform at peak function they need to have at least 20% free (for TRIM and other garbage collection technologies to work properly.... roughly). I can tell you now, the 256GB SSD I have in my PC right now, is using 70gb. That is W8.1+PhotoshopCC/Lightroom5/PremiereCC/IllustratorCC/IndesignCC/AuditionCC/AcrobatPro+Office2010+iTunes/Browsers/etc+AutoCADInventor. I have Steam and all my games installed on a 2nd SSD (~120gb out of 256gb, I'm not running them in RAID0 because they're different brands etc), and I have my documents/photos/everything else stored on a 2x2tb RAID0 array.

So that being said, you could go with a 120gb and be able to have most stuff installed, but you'd be pushing it.

You can install programs on whatever drive you want. It just requires a bit more management etc. You can run some trickery to get windows to use a secondary drive as the users drive.

In terms of brands, Intel, Samsung, Crucial make MSATA SSDs.

 

I'm doing this. I'd recommend at least 200 gigs. 128 might be fine if you know you won't install much software (like, you're not a gamer, engineer, or programmer).

You can install stuff on a second drive, however, some things just have to be on the OS disk (usually the installer will take care of that itself, though it's not unheard of for software to malfunction when installed on a different drive.. but that should be rare enough not to worry about until it happens).

One thing that you can do is move My Documents, My Pictures, etc to the 1TB drive. There's a setting for it, don't just manually move it. I forget where, but Google will tell you.

As for what to buy, the Mushkin Atlas series gets good reviews. Here's a link to newegg, one of the best places to buy computer parts (you can use their prices as a benchmark of "best price you're likely to get" if nothing else): Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, SSDs, Internal SSDs, mSATA

Quick rundown on SSDs: 4k random read speed is what makes booting and starting applications fast. Sequential read & write speed is what makes copying huge files fast. Generally 90,000 IOPS is the top of the line for 4k read, and 550MB/s is the top sequential read. 70,000 and 400 for those values is totally fine and normal.

 

well yeah, 10C outside isn't 10C internally. and the battery was crap before it got cold, it's just worse now after actually charging.

wasn't too caught up about the cpu temp because it is a quad, but yeah maybe a little high for such cold room temp.

 

I've gone for the mid-tier so it'll have the 6 cell battery, 32GB msata, 1TB hd.

I'm thinking of just unplugging the msata and putting in a 1TB SSD. Any advantage to going with a large msata instead ? I know I'd potentially be able to swap to the 9cell at some stage but I'm not too bothered about that.

 

Thanks for the advice Nate and Moda. I just ordered the Mushkin Atlas Deluxe 240Gb mSATA from NCIX. It's on sale for 175$ CAN. I will receive it way before my XPS15, since it's still "in production".

 

For any users that owns the XPS 15 (3200x1800) right now, is your pixel orientation "alternating" like -.-.-.-. or uses the same LCD pixel orientation that is just tightly packed.

I hope you know what I mean, thanks.

 

To those lucky owners who have the privilege to use the XPS 15, does the battery life live up to Dell's estimations? If not, how long can I expect it to last unplugged? Thanks.

 

Apparently not well. 4 hours for the small battery, 6 for the large
But this isn't definitive, only a few people have the laptop so far, so once more people have it the consensus may change.

 

Wait, wasn't the 6 hours under heavy use? I find that very impressive.

 

I ordered the Mid-tier xps 15 , and i would like to change the 32 gb mSATA for a 240 gb and boot from that ,on physically changing the drives i find it simple enough, but as i read i don't know which is better, either a fresh install or clone the os from the HDD to the SSD? and i've never done it, could anyone help me with any how-to's or a quick guide on how to do either.

Cheers

 

I just calibrated the display on the XPS 15. Average delta-e is 0.88. This is the most color-accurate display I have ever worked with. About 120cd/m2 at 30% brightness. Seems like there is a minor amount of view-angle gamma shift, but nothing bothersome, at all. Colors stay true at all angles. This panel continues to blow me away, My photos have never looked better. Image detail at 1800p is intoxicating. 16gb of ram and quadcore Haswell cut through large image files like butter. You can even paint edits directly on the image with touch. This thing is a killer photo rig.

Only real issue is scaling in Adobe CS6. Lightroom 5 scales beautifully at 200%. The cursors are small, but everything else is perfect. However everything in Photoshop CS6 is tiny. It doesn't slow me down too much, but it really needs to be fixed. Dreamweaver is a total mess. I'm not sure it is usable at all, even with scaling. I suppose you could change screen resolution and scaling every time you use it. I haven't worked in Premiere, yet. It seems tiny but usable. Some of the smaller icons might be difficult to see and click. I really hope Adobe gives CS6 users an update for high-dpi.

 

That's great to hear! I can't wait to receive mine to see my photos and maybe try to rework some extreme HDR panoramas that my old computer can't handle.

What do you use for calibration?

How precise is the touchscreen for painting edits? (I'm not expecting a 15 inch Cintiq, but am very excited to be able to "touch" my photos for editing).

As for scaling, as you say, let's hope Adobe gets it's act together and releases an update very soon.

*im*patiently waiting for my XPS to get here. (Still "in production")

 

Would you happen to know what % NTSC Color Gamut it is? How about its contrast ratio? And in bright environment, how reflective is the screen?
Thanks!

 

I'm waiting to receive my order.

In the mean time, had anyone try to get notebook fancontrol to help with fan run and temperature? It could help to lessen fan run thus reduce power consumption.

Another is to get XTU and undervolt to -99.x to save more power without sacrifice performance. It works well for me in the same cpu with asus.

Lastly, anyone knows the brand for the 1TB drive? I'm thinking to replace with ssd and keep the msata. Hopefully this would shed power consumption even more.

Any thought?

 

I use an i1Display Pro for calibration. I'm not sure if x-rite software gives % of NTSC. Bokeh has been testing this panel on the M3800 and reported that sRGB was 100% covered and contrast ratio was 800:1 in a dark room. I'm unsure how to test this myself.

Reflections have not been a problem for me, but I've been working in low ambient light, mostly. The display is definitely somewhat of a mirror, but the screen is bright. I'd say it is the same or maybe a little better than other glossy laptop displays I have worked on. I like matte displays, but, personally, I wouldn't trade the contrast and pop of this gorgeous display for matte. Clear glass just looks too good here.

I've only experimented a little with touch photo editing, but 'rubbing in' contrast, etc, in Lightroom with your fingertip is pretty darn cool. It adds another level of engagement with the image. I don't know if it will prove to be as useful as regular pointing devices, but the 'gee whiz' factor is high. Pretty fun.

 

Hi everyone!
I'm considering buying an XPS 15, but having read this thread and others on the Adobe forums, I'm a little aprehensive. You see I want to run Adobe CC, but from what I can gather, the scaling doesn't work properly and makes Photoshop et al unusable.

Can anyone tell me how Photoshop looks if the screen is set to 1600x900? What about other applications, like Firefox, Chrome, Office etc? I don't mind not using the full reslolution while we wait for Adobe to sort out the scaling, but I dont want to be stuck with looking at a fuzzy screen while i wait.

Alternatively, has anyone tried Creative Suite applications at the native resolution and how usable/unusable is it?

 

1600x900 will look like 1600x900 on any other screen as 4px becomes 1 large pixel. The issue is when you have to have fractional pixels if you try to use 1080p for example, but people have been saying it doesn't look that bad as there are so many pixels.