XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

They're on crack if they're saying the webcam is mediocre everyone I Skype with are thrilled and very impressed with the video quality over my wifes Asus U43J and even my old XPS Studio 16. Ultimately Skype is bottlenecked with up/down speeds on either connection but if you'd got some speedy pipes it works great. Microphone quality is great too IMO

 

Not sure if disabling in Device Manager turns off the radio, but disabling it the proper way definitely does. Go to the Charms bar > Settings > Change PC Settings > Network > Airplane Mode, and underneath the actual Airplane Mode switch (leave that off), turn off the radios you don't want to use. No idea why general radio management is handled under an Airplane Mode heading....

He mentioned in the original post he was using an app called batterybar for power draw readings.

It'd be easy enough to compare regular hibernate with Rapid Start if you want to manually re-enable traditional hibernation. And yes, that protection advantage of regular hibernation when using encryption is totally true, in fact if Rapid Start detects you're using disk encryption it will warn you that Intel strongly recommends NOT using Rapid Start in that setup for exactly that reason. I'm using BitLocker and opted to keep it enabled because I very seldom leave any apps open when I hibernate my system anyway, certainly not ones that would have data I was concerned about keeping private. And actually keeping that 16GB partition unencrypted could be beneficial to SSD performance since full disk encryption makes the drive think it's completely full, which can block internal performance optimization mechanisms like garbage collection (though OS-managed operations like TRIM still work). This way there's always 16GB of unencrypted and usually empty space the the SSD will see is usable as temporary space for those kinds of activities.

Interestingly though, Rapid Start is also throwing that warning on a non-encrypted system where I installed a Samsung PM841, which I believe has self-encrypting firmware, so maybe that's why the warning is being thrown? Unfortunately that system has Win 8.1 Core not Pro, so BitLocker isn't available (the system is for someone else). So not only is the warning wrong about whether encryption has actually been engaged (yes I know SEDs always encrypt data, but if the key is still in the clear, that's not meaningful encryption), but ironically if encryption were enabled, an SED would encrypt the entire drive, including the Rapid Start partition, so there would be no cause for warning. SEDs can't be instructed to encrypt only the system partition. Another perk of SEDs is that they don't suffer from the performance problem of of the entire drive being seen as full due to encryption; since the drive itself handles the encryption, it knows what spots just appear to be random scrambled data but are in fact available space and therefore usable for garbage collection.

Yes, installers are hit and miss. Some scale, some don't. Ironically the Windows installer doesn't scale, so entering a product key on that built-in panel at native resolution was quite an exercise! The easiest workaround is to drop your entire panel down to 1920x1080 or so and disable scaling until you've got everything dialed in.

The key will be valid for Windows 8.1 installs (in fact the installer won't even prompt for a key because it'll just use the one it detects in the BIOS). But yes, there are apps and VBS scripts that will show you the key that active in your current Windows installation. There's also an app called "RW Everything" that will allow you to pull it straight out of your BIOS too if needed.

 

Yeah - I've been testing Rapid Start on my current system (SSD used for the OS disk) and at first I thought it was a faster resume than from normal hibernation, but after using it a bit more, I have to say it feels about the same (which is slower than wake from sleep). I think I'd rather have the reclaimed disk space. Just my opinion though.

 

I don't actually have my system yet, so I can't test it. I was planning to wipe the system and start with a clean install, but I suppose I could test regular hibernate and compare to Rapid Start before I wipe.

That's a good point. I do plan to use an SED so the whole drive will be encrypted anyway, including the Rapid Start partition if I choose to set one up.

The XPS 15 comes with 8.1, so the BIOS-embedded key should be good for 8.1 installs too (not just activation), right? And since it is a valid 8.1 key, I imagine the installer won't prompt for a key when installing 8.1.

On the topic of 8.1 installs and product keys, I plan to upgrade to 8.1 Pro (before wiping and re-installing). Assuming I upgrade to Pro from within Windows itself, will I be given a new product key that I can use for a fresh install? Or, will performing the upgrade just make my existing BIOS-embedded product key an 8.1 Pro key?

Btw, does anyone know the cost to upgrade to 8.1 Pro (in Canada)? I know I can purchase the Pro Pack for $139, but that includes WMC stuff that I don't care about. That's why I'm planning to do it directly within Windows itself, hopefully being able to upgrade to Pro without WMC, and maybe saving a few bucks as well.

And if for whatever reason I end up upgrading via the Pro Pack, same question as above: Do I get a new product key, or does it make my existing BIOS-embedded key an 8.1 Pro key?

Oh, and if I get a new product key, does the old product key become invalid? Or do I effectively get to keep both old 8.1 key and new 8.1 Pro key?

 

I got a small issue here... Everytime I play a game after a while a message box pops up saying:

"Close programs to prevent information loss

Your computer is low on memory. Save your files and close these programs:

[game name, for instance Far Cry 3]"

... with 2 buttons: "Close programs" and "Cancel". If i cancel, everything keeps working just fine. I just wonder why this is happening, I mean with 16GB RAM I don't really know why my system would run out of memory, and according to the task manager when that happens I'm usually only using 4 to 6GB...

 

Ah, good to know, thanks. Even if there is a difference, I'm guessing it doesn't amount to more than a few seconds, which is not significant to me. (I say that now, but down the road, I may end up griping about those few seconds

 

Way back when, the first upgrade I did to my l521x was bump ram to 16 Gb and then figure out to reset rapid start to support it. It took some shenanigans but it worked. But, the 32Gb mSATA was slow enough that the doubling of memory size was very noticable on startup. The extra restore size really ate into the boot time benefit, and the reduced cache space available clearly impacted the Rapid Storage functionality.

Bumping to a 64 Gb mSATA would probably have fixed the second, but not the first.

Bumping to a 120 Gb mSATA was enough to host the whole OS and just throw out the crappy intel wedges altogether.

Moving to Win8 sealed put nails in the coffin of boot time.

The obsessive nerd inside me now wonders how much I would notice going from my cheap-o Muskin Atlas 120Gb to a Plextor M5M. Would the significantly increased max throughput eat away at my 4.4s cold boot time? How would it feel in general operation (which right now really isn't bad at all)?

 

I actually DID buy the Pro Pack, so I'll drop some knowledge on you. You get a new product key, and it doesn't invalidate your old product key (which remains in the BIOS), but it can't be used for clean installs since it's just a feature unlock key (tried it in a VM). HOWEVER, the install experience was awesome. You just choose to add new features to Windows, enter the key, it performs two standard reboots (no lengthy installs or anything), and you're on Pro. It's NOTHING like the Windows 8 to 8.1 upgrade that was essentially installing a brand new OS. So if I wipe my system again I'll be perfectly fine installing Core first and following that process again. However, I don't think there's a way to upgrade to Pro without WMC (short of buying an entirely separate Pro license, but that's not cost-effective). I didn't care about WMC either, but that seemed to be the only way to go once you already have a license for regular 8.1. But you may be able to save a few bucks by shopping around rather than buying from within Windows; I bought my Pro Pack from Newegg for $95 when the regular price was $99. Just make sure you get the 8.1 Pro Pack, not the 8.0 Pro Pack!

I also just checked and found that my installed product key now shows just the Pro Pack key, not the original installation key -- so if you ever use a Pro Pack upgrade on a system that doesn't have a base install key embedded in the BIOS, you'll need to hang on to both because you won't be able to retrieve the "base" key out of Windows after you upgrade.

And you're right about the embedded key, Windows 8.1 won't prompt. Sorry, I had been working installing Windows 8.1 on another Dell system that shipped with Windows 8, so I was thinking of that at the time. Corrected my original post.

As for Rapid Start vs hibernate, if you're getting a 16GB RAM system, Rapid Start may not work correctly out of the box since Dell doesn't set up a 16GB hibernation partition. You can certainly test after you wipe the system though. Just do a regular hibernate, then shrink your OS partition to make room for the Rapid Start partition, create it, enable Rapid Start, and test it (remember, choose SLEEP to use Rapid Start hibernation.) If you don't like Rapid Start, turn it off, delete the hibernation partition, and extend your OS partition to fill that space again.

 

Not really sure how doubling your RAM would reduce your cold boot time, but I can see how it would affect your time to wake up since more data has to be shuttled back into RAM from the SSD. Windows 8 does seem to boot very quickly though, even on a regular hard drive without a Rapid Response-enabled SSD. On the two systems I have using mSATA SSDs exclusively, reboots are about 6 seconds, and cold boots are even faster thanks to the Fast Boot feature that's intentionally disabled on reboots.

No experience with the Plextor M5M. My XPS has a Samsung SM841 and I just bought a Samsung PM841 for another system. Both are performing phenomenally.

 

May you post some test about the difference between SM841 and PM841 maybe crystal mark?

 

Good point - when your system cold boots so quickly, why even hibernate? I never used to hibernate until I joined my work domain and got Direct Access. Having DA, a login takes about 30 seconds for me, so I started using sleep/hibernate to get around that long login time.

When my XPS 15 (top spec) arrives, I will probably test it for a few days and then flatten the whole thing and put Win 8.1 Enterprise on it and just use one big partition (apart from the boot and EFI ones that Windows makes during installation). I think I'd rather have the extra 16GB free than mess with Rapid Start.

 

Below are my QUALIFIED SM841 results. I say qualified because I've got BitLocker enabled (software encryption, not tied into any SED functionality), so that may have skewed results. I think there are other benchmarks of the SM841 in this thread or the M3800 thread. I believe the SM841 does have onboard encryption, but it's an older firmware that relies on using a BIOS HDD password, not newer firmware that can tie into OPAL and Microsoft eDrive, unfortunately.

As for the PM841, I don't have access to that system right now, but that comparison would be even trickier because it's a 256GB unit compared to my 512GB SM841, that system does NOT have BitLocker, both systems have already had different sets of apps and data set up on them, and the other system is an Inspiron 7437, which has a slower CPU, less RAM, and I believe a different chipset. However, here's a review of the 512GB PM841: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-rev...pacity-in-a-client-ssd/?ModPagespeed=noscript

But for what it's worth, here's what I got on my SM841.

I believe in a proper comparison under the same conditions, the SM841 will be faster because it uses MLC rather than TLC NAND, and I believe the SM841 is an mSATA version of the 840 Pro, whereas the PM841 is an mSATA version of the 840 Evo. The difference shouldn't be huge, though, in fact in real world usage it would probably be unnoticeable.

 

Even with fast cold boots, hibernating instead means you don't have to close down all your apps the way you do with a shut down. I'm surprised DA takes that long to connect. The new version introduced in Server 2012 I believe connects much faster and has MUCH simpler implementation requirements and architecture, but you can only go that route if all clients are running Windows 8, otherwise you have to keep the legacy architecture set up for Win7 clients.

I've got Rapid Start now because I'm only using 158 GB of my SSD, so I've got capacity to spare. But if that ever changes, it's trivial to disable Rapid Start, delete the partition, and extend the OS partition later anyway, so in the meantime I'm not losing anything. If you create your hibernation partition to the left of the OS partition that would make things trickier (especially if the amount of installed RAM changes), so just don't do that.

 

Thinking about this a bit, I'm guessing you may not need the original key. The installer will determine whether to install 8.1 Core or Pro based on your BIOS-embedded key, and proceed to install without prompting for a key. That's also why you can't just use your Pro key directly for a clean install -- you're never prompted for one!

That said, I'll be sure to make note of my original product key before upgrading / re-installing anyway, just in case.

Edit: I missed the part where you said you tried the Pro Pack key in a VM and failed, and that it can only be used as a feature unlock key. I guess I was wrong then -- the fact that you can't use the Pro Pack key for a clean install has nothing to do with having a BIOS-embedded Core key. I guess I can live with having to fresh-install Core, then feature unlock Pro. Not that I have a choice

Yeah, we'll see how lazy I am If a straight up hibernate is fast enough for me, I may not bother. Coming from my old Windows 7 system with software encryption via TrueCrypt, I'm sure the new system will be super fast by comparison.

 

Your touchscreen didn't freeze, it just went to sleep. This is an issue that has cropped up for some, myself included. There is a fix, and it worked for me:

- unplug any USB devices you have (this will avoid future confusion while you run this checklist)
- Go into device manager
- open up human interface devices
- right click 'USB Input Device' & properties -- NOT the touchscreen
- To make sure you have the right device, go to the 'Details' tab, choose Hardware IDs in the dropdown and look for USB\VID_06CB&PID_0AC3 and a rev code -- that's the correct device
- Go to the power management tab and uncheck the sleep option - apply

plug your USB devices back in if necessary.

Should solve your issue. Worked for me.

 

It looks like the SM841 (and PM841 for that matter) are supposed to be OPAL compliant:

Supported Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) Compatibility List | Wave Systems Corp.

That compatibility list is for a different encryption management software (than Bitlocker), but I would think the fact that the drives are identified as being OPAL compliant means they should be usable as eDrives for Bitlocker too (and hence use the drive's hardware encryption).

 

About SM841 and PM841, according to a document posted on a thread regarding XPS 15 or M3800 (I don't remember exactly where) both use MLC technology, but SM841 has 2 cells instead PM841 has 3 cells.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Unless it lets Windows shuffle around less, cache more, I dunno, all I know is that it was *slower* with rapid start / rapid storage overall with 16 gb ram and 32 gb msata as hibernation+cache, than it was with only 8 gb ram.

But anyone who really cares should be running their OS on SSD, is my opinion. While I don't the the intel rapid "stuff" is evil I do think it's the wrong solution.

 

Like I said, it may be self-encrypting using the BIOS HDD password if you set one, but I just didn't want to do that. The Samsung 840 Evo got a firmware update that added OPAL and eDrive support to that list, but the SM841 might not have (or maybe my particular unit just doesn't have it), and sadly Samsung firmware updaters don't work on units like these that are intended to be sold only to OEMs. I can't test OPAL support since I don't have the right app, but eDrive definitely isn't supported since encryption took a lot longer than a few seconds. I have a feeling that the PM841 will support it based on the Rapid Start warnings I saw there but not on my SM841, but that system doesn't have Pro and therefore no BitLocker.

Bummer that it probably WOULD be supported with a firmware update, but that's the way it is. Maybe Dell will provide a firmware update later, though I'm not holding my breath.

 

thanks might or might not try that next time.

I was worried that the laptop overheated the mouse pad

 

found another issue.

my laptop just WON'T go to SLEEP. no matter what I do. if I sleep it, it will hibernate but if you leave it alone it won't sleep.

of course I know something is stopping it, but how to I find out?

I ran powercfg -energy and it gives me a bull report that gives no indication of what stops sleep

INSOMNIA! help!

(ps the only thing I have changed is intel graphics driver (removed Dell's) and updated Nvidia driver from Nvidia.)

 

The Samsung 840 EVO was supposed to get a firmware update that added OPAL + eDrive support, but I can't find any confirmation that that actually happened. This PDF indicates it's supposed to be OPAL compliant as of Oct. 2013, but the document is dated July 2013 so the 840 EVO wasn't actually OPAL compliant yet as of then. The description for 840 EVO firmware doesn't mention OPAL either. (I only bring this up because I was considering getting an 840 EVO, but since I couldn't confirm whether it truly is OPAL compliant, I decided on a Crucial M500 instead.)

Anyway, with regards to your SM841, I suspect it is (or is supposed to be) OPAL compliant, regardless of firmware, but for whatever reason Bitlocker doesn't recognize it as such. My suspicion is based on the fact that the compatibility list I referred to before has footnotes for various drives where firmware updates are required for support. Since it has no such footnote for the SM841, my guess is that firmware version shouldn't matter. All speculation of course And in practice, it doesn't really matter -- if Bitlocker doesn't see the drive as being OPAL + eDrive compliant (whether it actually is or not), then it might as well not be.

 

Apologies if you already said this, but have you disabled Intel Rapid Start? It's a little power icon with a blue background in the system tray. From what I've heard, it sounds like Dell is not setting up the partition maps appropriately to handle 16GB of RAM for Intel Rapid Start, so I would think this could cause issues.

What you described sounds like what rapid start is supposed to do when the timer is disabled (which I think is the default). You put your laptop to sleep and it basically goes to hibernation to save power. <s> The idea is that itwould resume from hibernation as fast as resuming from sleep so you get thebenefits of not losing battery life, but the advantage of quick resume. That'sthe idea anyway.</s>

Hope this helps.

 

Is this the one you bought: Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro Pack (Win 8.1 to Win 8.1 Pro Upgrade) - Online Code

I can't seem to find anywhere in Canada that sells the 8.1 Pro Pack for much less than $139. But, since it's just an online code, would there be any problem buying from a U.S. seller and using the code on my Canadian system?

 

I had the same issue, where I would put my laptop to sleep, and find out a few hours later that it had woken up and was churning away.

I disabled Rapid Start completely, as you did, and now my XPS 15 sleeps fine

 

How is this laptop (the 1080p one) better than the inspiron 15 7000?

 

I few differences I can think of:
-Build Quality (the new Inspirons aren't bad, but they don't seem to have the XPS-type quality).
-Keyboard. I haven't used the XPS 15 keyboard yet, but I used the previous XPS 14 keyboard (which should be very similiar) and I loved it. I tried the Inspiron at Best Buy and the keyboard felt spongy to me. Not to say that I wouldn't get used to it, but it didn't feel as good as the XPS that I remember.
-TPM. The XPS has one and I remember reading somewhere that the Inspirons don't. This only matters if you want to use BitLocker and don't want to have to enter a password on boot.
-Processor. XPS has an i5, while the Inspiron has a dual-core i7.
-Hard Drive. The XPS has a 32GB mSATA SSD for caching to give an SSD-like experience without having to pay for a full SSD. The XPS uses a 1/2 TB HDD for its main storage while the Inspiron uses a 1 TB HDD. The Inspiron has more storage space, but the XPS will provide a faster user experience, due to the SSD.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for responding...so basically the differences are related to build quality and keyboard? I don't know if that is worth 700 extra dollars. Oh well, I will keep researching...

 

That's my take on it. The Inspirons just feel cheaper to me. They do feel nicer than previous generations though. I realize that is totally subjective, of course. The XPS looks to be quite a bit thinner too. If that doesn't bother you, the Inspirons appear to be pretty good computers for the price. I went with the top end XPS because I wanted the Hi-Res screen, Quad-core processor, discrete graphics, big battery and thin chassis. Those things are better suited for my needs, though. You're welcome - Glad to help

 

I've had my XPS 15 for around 5 days now, and have loved every moment of it - but, as with all Windows machines, there comes a time when you must stop playing, and start working, which in my case means formatting and reinstalling Windows to get rid of the Dell crap-ware.

Before I do this, however, can anyone provide a quick list of things which I should specifically take notice of during the install of Windows?

For a start, I'm assuming that a factory reset will leave this as I got it out of the box, and if I want fully clean system, I'll have to install 8.1 from fresh (via a USB stick - I understand that the key is in the BIOS, so all I need to do is get a copy of 8.1 from somewhere).

What partitions should I keep/remove? (I normally remove all the partitions created, then let the Windows installer handle it for me - can I do this this time, or do I need to do something special for the rapid start?)

Also, is there any advice regarding the best versions of drivers to use etc?

Thank you.

 

Anyone else pick up a virus trying this? Virus:Win32/Induc.A

 

OPAL and eDrive support aren't the same thing, so a drive could conceivably support one but not the other. Not sure about mine since I don't have an OPAL app to test with. For the 840 Evo, I saw a firmware release in October but you're right I can't find any release notes, so I don't know if it happened, nor do I have an Evo to test with.

That's what I bought. I imagine it would work because I don't think product keys are region-specific or even language-specific, but I haven't tested this.

Waking up can be caused by either having wake timers enabled in your Power Options (off by default on laptops), in which case even anti-virus updates and scans can wake up a sleeping system, or by Intel Smart Connect, though the latter is supposed to sleep your system again automatically after updating content for supported apps. Wake timers are a cool idea but I can see why they're off by default on laptops: You don't want yours waking up while it's being carried around in a bag and risking motion or thermal damage.

 

Hey guys,

So after thinking it over, I've decided to return my mid-tier machine from Dell and order the top tier.

I found the costco.ca listing that was mentioned here ( Dell XPS 15 English Laptop, i7-4702HQ, 15.6-in. Touchscreen), and it's got a really awesome price.

Has anybody else ordered this computer? Costco.ca did not charge me any tax on it, so the total came to $2001.25 ($1.25 environmental fee for my province), that seems wrong to me. Does Costco have a habit of notifying you closer to the ship date that the price is wrong and they'll need to charge tax?

 

Actually, that's not how Rapid Start works. Rapid Start starts off the same as regular sleep (low power use suspend to RAM). But after a predefined period of time (for the sake of argument we'll say 12 hours) the computer will wake back up and then save its memory to the Rapid Start partition and turn itself fully off. So if you turn the computer back on within that 12 hours it's exactly the same speed suspending and resuming as sleep without Rapid Start. Where things differ is what happens after the 12 hours. With Rapid Start, after the 12 hours the system will wake back up and save its memory to disk and turn off as I mentioned above. With regular sleep, depending on your OS and settings, the system could simply stay in sleep mode forever until it runs out of battery (with a charged 91 W·h battery you could probably stay in sleep for a week or so). On other systems the OS could do something fancy like wake back up when the system's battery gets low and then do a hibernate (zero power use suspend to disk). So vs. normal sleep, Rapid Start is never faster and is actually slower to resume after the 12 hours. But Rapid Start has the benefit of using less battery than regular sleep if you leave your system asleep for more than the 12 hours and of course you won't run out of battery and lose the state of your apps if you leave the system asleep for a very long time. Note that this means that if you leave your system suspended for less than the 12 hours, nothing actually gets written to the disk.

Rapid Start is actually closer to hybrid sleep which is mainly implemented by Windows and other OS's. With hybrid sleep, as soon as you suspend the system, the OS saves memory to disk first (basically doing a hibernate without actually turning the system off) and then performs a sleep (low power use suspend to RAM). If the system is resumed while there is still battery power then it simply resumes from sleep mode normally and the contents of the hibernate data saved to disk are discarded. If the system runs out of battery power before it's resumed then when the system is finally restarted it will read in the hibernate data from disk and recover that way. Hybrid sleep has a disadvantage vs. Rapid Start that suspends are slower because you save to disk immediately every time you put your system to sleep. Even with a fast SSD it can still take several seconds to write out 16GB of memory to disk which can be an annoying several seconds if you, like me, like to wait and visually confirm that the system is really off before you put it away in your bag. Another disadvantage of Hybrid sleep is that you are saving the contents of memory to disk every time you wake and suspend your laptop even if it's just awake for a short time or if it was only asleep for a short time. Saving data to modern SSDs actually slowly wears them out so if you suspend and resume a lot hybrid sleep can theoretically accelerate the eventual death of your SSD. Hybrid sleep does have the the advantage, though, that your memory state is always safely saved on disk so even if your system loses battery power at any time while asleep (for example if you pull the battery out) you can still recover unsaved data you were working on. With Rapid Start if you pull the battery during that first 12 hours then you'll lose your unsaved work.

Finally, Rapid Start has an advantage over hybrid sleep and hibernate that is is implemented by the system's firmware itself rather than by the OS. This means that you can get the benefits of it even if your OS doesn't handle suspending to disk well. Linux, for example, has always had terrible, slow and unreliable suspend to disk so Rapid Start is great for Linux users (like me).

Carl

 

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought a drive being OPAL compliant meant that it qualified as an eDrive. So what qualifies a drive as an eDrive?

Edit: I think I found the answer to my own question at: Encrypted Hard Drive Device Guide. The details are well over my head though.

 

I'm a little bit worried because many future owners of M3800 are receiving notices of delays.
These delays are around than a month, is there any future owner of XPS15 that has received the same notice?

 

I ordered mine Friday Nov 29, and it is en route and expected to be delivered on Monday. No delays there...

 

Thank you for taking the time to clarify. I stand corrected. I have edited my original post to be more clear and accurate. The situation they described sounded like the default setting I got when I tested it on my system (where the timer is disabled) so it was going to S4 right away, so I didn't see any point to getting into the whole timer thing. If you go back to the post I was responding to, they were asking why their computer was behaving that way (with an urgent tone) so I figured they just wanted quick suggestions on how to fix it, rather than read a lengthy description about how Rapid Start works and how it compares to Windows hybrid sleep. Just trying to help them out is all. Didn't mean to spread misinformation

 

Could I get some users' opinion on the keyboard. It looks kinda too up towards the screen and the wasted all that dead space, when they could have added a number pad.

How is the keys themselves, are you required to press all the way down for the key to register?

Anyone running a mSATA boot, HDD as storage configuration?

How hard is it to upgrade the RAM, Wireless Card and mSATA?

Does the default Wireless-AC card support N and Dual Band?

 

Has anyone tried anything similar before? That is, buy the 8.1 Pro Pack from one region (e.g. U.S.) and apply it to an 8.1 installation in another (e.g. Canada)? If not, I might just forgo the measly $44 in savings to avoid any potential issues. I've got time to decide though since the estimated delivery of my system isn't for another two weeks.

 

When I first got the computer, I didn't like the keyboard very much, coming from a ThinkPad, the keys travel maybe half as far as the thinkpad, so I kept bottoming out and getting fatigued. Now that I've used it for a while, I've gotten used to the travel and I wouldn't say it's uncomfortable by any means. My biggest gripe is that anything but the letter/umber keys are annoying to get to. (Home/PgUp/PgDwn/End are Fn-keys of the arrows, and the F keys are half-size). I do like that they made it easy to turn f-lock on and off. You hit Fn-Esc and it will toggle between using the F1-12 keys and the media keys when you're not holding Fn.
You do have to press the key all the way in, but it's very clicky, as in, the key will stick at the top until you apply enough pressure, then it will release and sink right to the bottom.

I have not opened it myself, but from what I read somewhere many pages back in this thread, it's very repairable. You just pop off the bottom cover (with a T6 screwdriver and some spudgers) and all the replaceable components are right there (battery, ram, HDD, wifi/bt, NFC). However, I've heard that Dell has a habit of whitelisting components, so if you try to replace the wifi with an unsupported model, it might not boot. I do not know for sure if this model has that whitelisting issue.

Yes, the stock card does support N and dualband. Currently sitting on a 5ghz 300mb/s network.

 

I just installed batterybar and gave it a go with all the power settings reduced as low as they can go, NFC/BT turned off, display set to 40%, and just web browsing. It settled down at around 19mW/hr, which still seems high. Could the HDD be causing the power consumption to double?

Edit: Nevermind about the HDD, specs saw that it consumes ~1700mW when it's reading or writing, so definitely not enough to double the overall power.

 

Ok, first of all, the MAXIMUM time you can set for Rapid Start's wait time is 2 hours, not 12. And second, Intel's documentation recommends setting it at Immediately, so there's never any time you're in S3. Third, the major difference between hybrid sleep and Rapid Start is that in hybrid sleep you're always in S3, never S4; you just copied the contents of RAM to disk to safeguard against a power loss, so hybrid sleep consumes more power than Rapid Start. That's why hybrid sleep is disabled by default on laptops and enabled on desktops, where power consumption isn't an issue but safeguarding data against total power loss is. And compared to regular hibernate, Rapid Start has a faster resume from some admittedly limited comparisons I've made. And yes, writing to an SSD does technically wear it down, but modern SSDs are large enough that the wear is spread over far more cells than the tiny units we used to have, so even under a heavy load these SSDs shouldn't wear down until long after we've upgraded them.

I don't think the requirements are any different, it's just basically a different language to get the same job done, but if the SSD doesn't understand eDrive, it won't report that it supports eDrive. I doubt there's anything from a technical standpoint stopping a drive that supports OPAL from also supporting eDrive, but if the firmware only codes support for one, then it'll only support one. And if I can't get a firmware update that adds support for eDrive, then even if OPAL is there and eDrive COULD be supported with a simple update, I'm SOL. I'm not too worried though, I used TrueCrypt on a previous system and never felt hampered from a performance standpoint.

I noticed the keyboard was shifted a bit farther up too. I adjusted fairly quickly; you just have more of your palms on the palmrest than you may be used to. I also kind of wished for a number pad, but that's a double-edged sword, because having a number pad means your hands will be offset to the left while typing on the regular keyboard, and some people find it uncomfortable to type with their hands shifted left of center -- of course you could move your entire body to the left to compensate, but then you're sitting off-center relative to the screen. I believe this is why most laptops don't include number pads. I like number pads, but I also think being off-center would bug me, so I'm not sure how I feel about it one way or the other.

Any laptop keyboard (and many desktop keyboards these days) requires full depression to register; that's the nature of membrane keyboards rather than mechanical keyboards. The only difference is how quickly you reach the hysteresis point where the resistance drops basically to zero and the key goes all the way down without much further effort. The keyboard itself feels perfectly fine to type on -- nothing like my Das Keyboard (love mechanical keyboards) or even like some of Lenovo's better keyboards, but definitely on the better side of the laptop keyboards I've used overall.

For upgrading components, RAM is easy because both slots are exposed. As for the others, hop over to support.dell.com, find this system (XPS 15 9530), and read the Owner's Manual to get a sense of what it takes to upgrade.

Any AC wireless card will support both N and dual band. AC actually only works on 5 GHz (AC routers use N on their 2.4 GHz radio), and since nobody would ship a card these days that didn't support 2.4 GHz, there's your dual band support. And all AC equipment is required to be backward compatible with N. Did you really think they'd include a wireless card that ONLY worked on the very latest routers and nothing else?

 

Lenovo is the worst offender on whitelisting; they actually have Lenovo versions of Wifi cards that have certain pins on the connector reversed so that Lenovo laptops only work with Lenovo cards and vice versa. I've upgraded Wifi cards in several Dell laptops to models that were far newer than what was available when that model was still current, and the only issue I've ever encountered was using an Intel Wifi chip in a laptop with an NVIDIA motherboard chipset (remember those nForce chipsets??) I tried 3 different Wifi card models and all of them failed differently, so I ended up getting a Dell-branded Wifi card that used a Broadcom chipset and it worked just fine. Replacing the GPU would be a whole other matter, but the Intel GPU is built into the CPU and the NVIDIA GPU in this system is soldered onto the motherboard, so that's moot here.

 

Same problem here, but after I disabled Intel Rapid Start, problem still the same, how to disable completely?

Thank you.

 

Same problem here, but after I disabled Intel Rapid Start, problem still the same, how to disable completely?

Thank you.

 

If you haven't already, I would check the BIOS to make sure it is disabled there also. When I removed Rapid Start from my computer, I had some odd sleep behavior until I disabled it in the BIOS as well.

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does it support N on dual band?

 

Hello. Does anyone know about the Costco's verification on the shipping address and the recipient? I'm a tenant in MA and I've tried 3 different recipients and addresses, one in CT, one in CA, and the one of my own. They all failed because Costco told me that they can not verify that the recipient is actually living at the address I provided. Is there any solution to that? Since the top-tier is 1999(much lower that 2299 on Dell official site), I want to purchase on Costco. Many Thanks.

 

How quickly can the key reach the hysteresis point?

I'm guessing the BIOS can see the mSATA drive, but can we use it as a Boot drive?

How is the battery life of the laptop?