XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

And the network dongle, not includet with the XPS as far as I have read in this tread

 

It's arrived! Will post more pics as requested.

 

The top model is now back for sale on the site.

 

Correct. No network dongle is included.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk Pro

 

When'd you order and what spec?
And when was your original ETA for shipping? When did your status switch to shipped?
Sorry if you've already said all of this, there're so many pages to go through!

edit
Just found all of your posts from before, so everything's answered except when your original ETA was?
Congrats!

 

I would be in complete agreement, except for one thing. It never makes noise when on battery power.

I suspect its one of the video cards as mentioned earlier. I'm looking for a tool to monitor which GPU is in use. Any suggestions? I found one for Win7 but its never shown the GT750 as enabled in the past several hours. Regardless of the app in use.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk Pro

 

With the larger battery I get an honest 6 hours of use watching video, browsing, emailing, running office tasks. If I run a CPU intensive app like fsx, I get 2 or 3 hours of battery life. If I use the laptop for a normal day of work which includes time away from the laptop, it easily goes 8 or 9 hours on a single charge. Your mileage will vary. I think its fair to say its a 6 hour battery.


-bv

 

Ok the noise is back... I haven't changed anything since the last post. Its also not coming from the video card(s). I set Access 2013 to use the Nvidia card and Chrome to use the Intel. I'm using the Nvidia GPU State Viewer tool to see which card is in use.

It doesn't matter which card is in use, the noise is the same. (the search continues)

 

There's a setting in the Nvidia configuration tool that puts a status icon in the taskbar notification area:

Determining which graphics card is used with NVIDIA Optimus

 

Yeah and the updated warranty.. one sec.. The XPS 15 on the business site is already 100 more than consumer.. so figure in the dongle.. 35 bucks on top of that.. I'd say its going to be 250-400 more at similar tier levels.

 

So I noticed there's a bios up on the dell support page that says version A01. My xps had A00 on it, so I decided to flash it, worked fine. Any ideas about what it adds/fixes? The page ( Driver Details | Dell US) doesn't have much in the way of a changelog.

 

Interesting.. see if you get better battery life or anything.. Notice any new features? Can you disable Optimus now in bios?

 

Anyone know if dell does a extended return policy - thinking of buying myself the xps 15 or m3800 as a Christmas present - which means I won't know if I want to keep it or not until the 25th of December.... Any chance of extended returns? I know apple offers it........

 

So I know the M3800 was a pre-prod model, but anyone else notice the other differences between the M3800 layout and the XPS15 by looking at the photos of the motherboards??
There's an extra heatsink on some chips at the top-middle that's missing on the XPS15, and an additional ribbon cable (two to the left from the big blue cable in the middle above the battery) missing from the XPS 15 (plus the missing SATA cable).

Plus some of the capacitors are slightly different (although I'd expect that).

Anyone else see any other differences?

Also re. BIOS - I remember getting an unlocked BIOS for my XPS 1640 (can't remember where from).
No doubt unlocked BIOSs will become available for this that will give us access to all the BIOS features, not just the ones that Dell wants us to have access to - I suspect the ability to control Optimus will become available in an unlocked BIOS.

 

Anyone tried adding external displays? I would like to know, if it can have two external displays with just the Intel graphics card or if it only works, if you activate the Nvidia card. Did someone try this on a Linux system or did get the Nvidia drivers to work with such a configuration? I would prefer to stay with just Intel, because it's much more flexible on Linux and has the advantage of much lower power usage.

 

There is also a shield missing right next to the Memory module on the left, You can see the screw but nothing is attached there.

Actually The ribbon cables you are thinking are missing are covered up by the Massive orange one on the left. The diminished heat sinks worry me a hair.

 

We can't forget that the m3800 Bokeh has is a pre-production unit. So things were/are bound to change between that one and the production XPS model. The missing heatsinks don't actually worry me that much. If the computer starts overheating, then I'll complain, but until then I'll assume the Dell engineers had a good reason for changing it.

 

Random but my laptop isn't making that noise today when plugged in or not. I did notice my transformer cable was loose this morning so don't know if fixing that fixed it. Maybe it wasn't getting the proper power draw it needed.

 

sorry spoke too soon wonder if the bios fixes it. I definitely thing it has to do something with the battery.

my noise seems to come from under to QW keys. The only thing there is the fan and battery according to support

 

Mine noise is definitely coming and going... I love everything else about this machine so far, and I would consider myself "picky" about hardware.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 8.0

 

I know for the past 2 years they offered an extended return period to account for Christmas gifts. From what I remember anything purchased between Black Friday and Christmas would have the return period extended to either January 15 or 30 days from the invoice date, whichever is longer.

That is how it was in the US, at least. No guarantee they'll do the same this year, but I would be surprised if they didn't.

 

On the noise I noticed it only happens for me when the battery is fully charged. That is why I couldn't hear it before as my battery was still charging. Also doesn't happen when running on battery.

Will let you know how I go with the dell tech

 

i am surprised to see no furmark + prime stress tests yet. please someone help us out and show us that this puppy can take the heat in the kitchen....

 

So mine is on its way from Mt Joliet Tennessee, does Dell Manufacture there?

 

I'm not sure if this is the same sound that others are hearing, but I'm pretty positive I found the main source of my noise. It's the USB ports! Super weird, I know, but I took a lot of time figuring it out. It sounded like it was coming from the corner with the wifi card, so I started with removing that, which didn't fix it. Removing the coin cell battery didn't change anything. I unscrewed the I/O board and pulled it up while still attached to confirm the sound was coming from there, and even removed the I/O entirely just to be super sure. I got this kinda crappy recording with my phone:

Audiour - Share Audio, Simply

Sorry it's so quiet. For those of you with noises coming from your laptop; does it sound like that? Even when the laptop is all put back together, and on battery, I can still hear it if I put my ear up to the USB ports (and from farther if the room is quiet). The ports on the right side (looking down at the keyboard) are louder, though oddly enough, that's the side with only one USB 3.0 port, and both ports are shielded, unlike the other side.

 

I know that sound... my desktop i7 has been doing that for years. It varies depending on the cpu usage so it's probably coming from the circuits powering the cpu. I don't think a bios update can fix that! I hope they will fix it!

 

That's the noise mine makes, and only when plugged in. Appears to be coming from the left USB ports.

I'm wondering if it is related to the poor battery life, I'm currently seeing 2h54min at 96% remaining web browsing (91Wh model).

 

Just wondering which number you dialed for support?

 

Yes! Finally someone agreeing with the battery I am getting.

 

It's definitely the USB ports. There's a small hole in the shielding on the bottom side of the right two USB ports (for a support post), I had the phone's mic pointed directly into it. The only things under that shield are the USB ports, and they're on a separate I/O board that attaches to the motherboard with a ribbon cable. I don't think it has anything to do with the CPU.

I don't see why it would be related to poor battery life. I got 6 hours out of my first charge, and I have that USB noise. Also, don't trust Window's battery life estimation. It's often inaccurate, and will change wildly depending on what you're doing. Try actually running the battery all the way down and timing it. If you only get 3 hours, then something's wrong.

 

Hi all
I am new to this forum. I got my XPS 15 yesterday (ordered on 30 Oct). I noticed that the battery when fully charged only has 56WH capacity although the design capacity of the battery is 61WH. (Can't get it charge to full 61WH). Anyone got such battery symptom? Is the battery bad? Thank you.

 

US orders can you please check, on your order sheet/invoice for the 91WHr battery, is it 6 cell or 9 cell? Mine's 6 cell over here (australia).

US site now says 6 cell for 91WHr but I don't remember what it was previously.

 

I'll give it a proper timing tonight. Last night I didn't let it run to the point where it actually shut down, only to the 7% warning, but the Windows estimate seemed accurate throughout.

I've just installed BatteryBar, it sees 9.4% wear (82Wh) after yesterday's single discharge. It believes my full runtime will be 4hr13min with a discharge rate of ~19W with screen on minimum brightness (far too dim for me). Will be interesting to see if my battery "unwears" after a few charge/discharge cycles. EDIT: After longer left unplugged, 17W, 3h44min full runtime.

Also.. I've been having quite a few problems with the WiFi, where it stops loading web pages and/or corrupts them. I've managed to improve things by limiting it to 20MHz channel widths, but it still seems a bit intermittent. Seems worse when plugged in, although could just be my imagination. Could well be a router issue, although neither home nor work has been reliable. Both Belkin routers though, different makes.

So.. a few teething issues so far. On the plus side, the screen looks gorgeous in Lightroom. Chrome's problematic when not at 200% scaling though, think I'll switch to Firefox until Google gets their act together. Have enabled HiDPI through chrome://flags.

EDIT: For reference my old L702x with 17" screen sees 10W draw at min brightness, 6hr 52min battery life from a 67Wh battery (after wear).

 

In Germany it always has been the 6cell 91W with the top model (since i am following).
Same infos in my order information.
I was wondering about this myself, since i heard of a 9cell version in the specs on internet pages and hands on videos.

 

Here you go guys, some quick videos I made today.

Unboxing:
XPS 15 9530 - Unboxing - YouTube

Quick compare with my rMBP:
XPS 15 9530 - Quick Compare with Retina MBP - YouTube

Backlit keyboard brightness:
XPS 15 9530 - Backlit Keyboard - YouTube

Edit: Anyone know the touchscreen tech Dell used here? I used the word 'digitizer' but I don't know if that's correct. I don't know a lot about touch screens honestly.

 

Any chance we could get a comparison of the trackpad of the macbook vs. the xps when running windows?? Thanks a million for the videos so far!!!

 

I can tell you that the XPS trackpad isn't as good as the macbook, at least in my opinion. The XPS trackpad isn't bad, it's probably one of the best pc trackpads I've used, but the macbook's just feels better and is more responsive. I did remove the Dell trackpad driver and install the one from Synaptics because I was having the corner click issue that someone else reported earlier in the thread.

 

Thank you for very good videos. It seems like you are running win 8.1 on your mac, does it work fine in comparison with the Dell XPS 15? What about the scaling on the mac in win 8.1 ?

 

THANK YOU!!!! The first *useful* video comparison vs. rMBP15 I have seen!!
Is it me or do the colors on the rMBP15 look better on this vid?
Is the XPS screen more reflective? It looks so to me.

 

Have you tried unplugging the USB board to see if the noise goes away?

 

Dell XPS 15 Touchscreen Laptop | Intel Core i7 | 2GB Graphics | Quad HD+ Display | Backlit Keyboard
Costco is sellign the top specs for $2000. They use last year model pictures but the specs are obviously this year.

 

After seeing this wireless comparison just posted on youtube I'm having second thoughts about buying one:
Dell XPS 15 Wireless test - NEW VERSION - 4th Gen Haswell - YouTube

Could that be a driver problem or is it the hardware?

 

The better test would have been to run the test on the Sony and shut it down. Then run the test on the Dell.

 

Looks odd but im going with driver, firstly he says Windows 8 but doesnt say if the Sony has 8.1 like the Dell. Also in my experience the Dell gets way better wifi than any PC in my house on N.

 

Hi Bokeh,

what's your experience with the wireless?
Do you have a second device for comparison?

A slow/faulty wireless card would really be a dealbreaker.

 

The Yellow Ribbon bridges across the mSata. I took it off for the pic of the M3800.

 

When I pull a game down from Steam, I get 10.8Mb/s constantly.

Give me specifics and I will test for you.

 

I received my top spec'd XPS 15 last night and I really don't know if I'm going to keep this machine. I was switching back to PC (from Mac) mostly b/c Excel on the Mac is brutally terrible and it's the most important application I use for work on a daily basis. I was very excited to get this computer but so far my experience hasn't been great. I would classify myself as somewhat of an expert using Windows 3.1 through Windows 7 but Windows 8 seems to be a huge adjustment.

First off, my unit has the same whining noise that others have mentioned on this thread. I probably wouldn't have noticed it had I not read earlier posts but now that I know it's there, it drives me crazy (and also makes me somewhat nervous since I know it shouldn't be there)! It sounds somewhat like a spinning hard drive but being that this has a 512 GB SSD, I don't know where it's coming from. As for the trackpad...what a disaster! Coming from a Macbook air & pro, this thing is nowhere CLOSE to the trackpads on my macs. Corner clicks don't register, the pointer seems to jump all over the screen, and the feel just isn't the same. I'm hoping some of this can be attributed to adjusting how I use it but day one was truly a struggle to say the least.

To make matters worse, the Windows Store was completely broken on my brand new machine. When I would try and download an application it would simply get stuck on "pending." I left it alone for an hour and nothing changed. I tried updating the preinstalled apps and they had the same issue...pending, pending, pending. I googled the issue and saw lots of others who had the same problem and it was suggested I stop the Windows Update service. Tried to do that and what do you know...Windows Update got stuck on "stopping!" Rebooted a few times to avail. Ended up restoring the computer which finally fixed the issue but the experience obviously left a sour taste in my mouth.

For now, the machine seems to be running a little smoother even though the whining noise is still there. I'm customizing my Windows 8 tiles and will give it a week or so but it definitely wasn't a good start. Let's hope the next week is better than the first day.

EDIT: BTW I also want to add that I think this machine is beautiful and feels great. It's lightweight for a 15" notebook and the aluminum lid and carbon fiber bottom both feel premium to hold.

 

Me too, I have also requested a simple test with 3Dmark 11/13 just to compare with GT750m on XPS15 and K1100 on M3800, but until now no one has answered my request.

I can't believe that DELL continues in this way about WiFi:

 

I ordered about a week ago and am really hoping I didn't just spend 2000+ on a machine with bad wifi. Are there people without a wifi issue?