XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

Can you share the 30% code with us?

 

I am still trying to get a 30% off code. I've tried over 100 times so far, still no luck. I'll probably give up on it if I don't succeed by this evening and settle for the 20%. I have several 20% off coupons that I'll post here later on.

 

I think the code is only valid for one purchase and to top it off it doesn't seem to work outside the US..
The price is already 910$ more in the Swedish store, if you have the 30% off,
people in the states can get the top tier model for 1365$ less than us in Sweden.

I'm definitely cancelling my order until I get a better deal now..damn

 

The dot trick works like this. Let's say your email address is [email protected]. Gmail ignores extra periods in the address and still routes them to that address anyway, so you could use John.Smith, J.ohnSmith, J.o.h.n.S.m.i.t.h, etc. That means you could enter all kinds of variants of your email address into Dell's portal to keep getting coupon codes, and all of them would come to your regular Gmail account.

I already said above that Dell's policy is not to allow coupons to be applied retroactively, even for Dell employees. They specifically say that your only option is to cancel and reorder, or return the item if you already have it and you want the discount that bad. I doubt you'll get a different answer. Of course Seblock says otherwise, but just says "There's a way" without providing any useful information.

I seriously wouldn't recommend going through the hassle for the coupon for all of the reasons already mentioned, especially if that 15% restocking fee will apply. That will cut pretty deeply into any savings from a coupon code.

Either elaborate or don't bother posting. What you said here is useless.

It's a one-time code, so presumably he used the 30% code for his own order....

 

Happy coincidence...I had a dream last night that my order from Dell shipped. Woke up this morning to discover that it has, at least one part of it. My XPS 9530 in en route. Still waiting on the leather sleeve and external DVD drive to ship, but I'll settle for having the machine for now.

Maybe with any luck, it'll be here by the weekend...fingers crossed!

 

I did, for similar reasons. There was a huge discount right when I got my laptop. I called Dell, was frank about the discount, but they could not apply the discount. They were however very understanding of the situation and offered me instead a full refund with no penalty (YMMV). I immediately reordered and got to save save several hundred € (I actually spent more, as with the new price I decided to buy 2 laptops). On the other hand, I had to wait almost 2 extra months.

 

Welp, looks like the promotion is over, can't get anymore coupons. Ah well, guess I'm settling for 20%, still a few hundred bucks off. I'll post my other 20% coupons once I've confirmed my order.

 

3RB8?BXT?VBZSQ - 20%
XRG49950HQ08F0 - 20%

Hope they can help someone.

Also here is some info for anyone thinking about ordering. I ordered the model that is listed at $1949.

Order Date: 2/2/2014
Estimated Ship: 3/17/2014

I was able to get next business day shipping (NBD) relatively easy. Just mention the 1 1/2 month long production time. I tried both on the chat and over the phone. Generally speaking, I was able to get a lower price via chat. If the person is unwilling to work with you, just close chat and try another rep.

On the phone, I was unable to haggle any lower once I presented them with a 30% coupon.
Over chat, I was able to haggle the price down to $1849 and apply a 30% coupon and my 2% membership discount.

 

I called Dell this morning because of the loud high pitched noise. After an hour of talking while waiting for diagnostics, the man on the phone said that UPS will come to collect my laptop tomorrow.

From the service number that I was given, I can already see that the later status will be 'Unit Received', 'Begin Diagnosis', 'Begin Repair' and 'Unit shipped.' But later, I realized that my warranty is 'next day in-home service'. Shouldn't a technical person come to my place instead of my sending out the laptop?

 

Where did you buy it?
If you have bought directly from Dell you have NDB warranty.

 

I bought on Dell.nl. I'm sure I called the number shown on 'Next Day In Home Service with Premium Support'.

Still, the guy instructed me that way and I didn't realize it until now.

 

Recall them and explain that you have NBD warranty.

 

OK. I'll just call again.

Thx.

Edit: Just called again and another guy different from the guy who answered my phone this morning picked up and said that the reason why they gave me a collect&return service is because the problem that I presented was not clear over the phone and they need to take the machine to repair center to test it. And when I asked whether it's possible to send a technical person to test it in my home, he simply replied no. And he said that in such situations, what I can have is the basic warranty, which is collect&return.

I guess I'll have to wait for UPS to collect it tomorrow. If anything more dramatic happens, I'll just ask for a new machine or refund.

 

Just (re)placed my order for the top-tier model with the 20% coupon. Tried hard to get the 30% but ultimately failed. Saved me an additional $300 though (more than $500 off original price with tax), so not bad for the effort and an extra 2 day wait.

Anyway, I have about 15 20% off coupons. If anyone wants one, please PM me.

 

Hey guys, I ordered the XPS 15, and before it arrives I'm getting my accessories. So far, I'm planning to get the Microsoft Arc Touch Surface Edition and the Windows 8 Pro upgrade pack. I was trying to find a microfiber cloth I can put between the screen and the keyboard, but I can't find anything so far besides this MBPr one from amazon, will it fit?

 

Has anyone managed to resolve the 'pinch to zoom' accuracy when using the touchpad? I really can't understand why it's so dodgy; especially when doing the same exact thing on the touchscreen works great (when browsing the web for example)

 

Finished setting up my mid tier with an evo 840 1TB and mSata crucial 500 480gb (I know, overkill but I like my storage space large)

While going through the whole proces I couldn't help but have a sour taste in my mouth because of the awfull faults with the screen (how such things pass QC, no one knows):
- first of all there's a rather large spec of dust more or less in the middle of the screen, very noticable and annoying under normal use
- when I touch my screen, there's like 3 pressure points (up left, right on the dustspec (makes me think it's something harder than dust), and bottom right a vertical line of about 3cm)
- but all this pales in comparison to the biggest flaw: 2 large discoloured halo's (about 1-2cm diameter) on the left of my screen. White becomes yellow on these spots and blacks seem not to exist there...

So far my first 7 hours with my new xps. Good experience more or less ruined by the screen faults. Will be calling Dell tomorrow...

 

My display was replaced today and it is very good. No dead pixels, no dust. A lower latency too. The entire top + hinge comes as an assembly.

I think the hinge may have been redesigned, it seems to stand off a little higher than before and there's more of a gap between the panel and the air vents. This likely improves airflow, especially in clamshell mode.

 

Can anyone with an AC router (I've ASUS RT-AC66) paired with XPS-15 please provide information on the WiFi speed you get? Not the internet, but your Wifi speed between router and the XPS. I frankly don't know what to expect and how to correctly measure it. I've tried iperf and Totusoft's Lan SpeedTest Lite. The Lan sppedtest gives me approx around 60Mbps write and 160Mbps read. I have the Intel 16.8.0.6 driver from Dell.

TIA.

 

For you guys that are having the buzzing problem, someone posted in a comment thread to try this:

Go to this page, scroll down to the WORKAROUND section and perform this. Apparently disabling the power saving profile stops the buzzing:
Stop error message on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has the Hyper-V role installed and that uses one or more Intel CPUs that are code-named Nehalem: "0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

If you don't like it the registry key is easy to add back, which there are also instructions for.

As always, you assume all risk and you might want to set a restore point incase something goes awry. Apparently fixed it for this guy tho..

 

anyone else have issues with the palmrest discoloring?? i love this laptop but for being the top tier model and having this discoloration on the palmrest extremely frustrating.

 

I am planing to replace XPS15 SSD with a Samsung EVO mSATA 1TB. Can someone who has already done this tell me all the tools I need? (the size/type of screwdrivers etc). Also, does warranty cover early palm-rest discoloration?

Thank you.

 

My top-tier XPS 15 came in and I had a couple of questions.

1. Does the firmware for the touchscreen brick the screen?
2. What does the firmware improve?
3. I noticed some white marks on the base, is there anything I can use to clean it?
4. Same with the cover, anything I can use to clean it?
5. I noticed that the touchpad/trackpad became discolored really easily. Is there anyway to clean it or something I can put over it to prevent the discoloration? Like a screenprotector, but for the pad.
6. Can anyone recommend a sleeve for this nice looking machine and a microfiber cover for the keyboard?
7. Do we need the Quickset software?
8. How can we tell if there are dead pixels?
9. What should we use to clean the silicon area if it gets hand oil/grease on it?

 

Dude, you're asking a quite large series of questions.
Some of those can surely be answered by taking a closer look at the thread or by simoly googling.

 

Finally had a chance to switch out the 32GB mSATA for a EVO 512GB, and have kept the 1TB HDD until we are able to source the larger 91WHr Batteries. The switch went painlessly, switched to ACHI and re-installed Windows 8.1 onto the SSD and installed latest Drivers painlessly - was up and running in a matter of an hour or so.

JPH, was hoping you may be able to help with this (or others using Multi-Monitors). For the life of me, the only usable settings/DPI/scale that I can find that suits me (Dual 22" 1680x1050) - I have the scale set to 'small' on both, with the Laptop Display disabled (like you suggested JPH), however even on small the Icons/Taskbar/Apps are ridiculously out of proportion. The only acceptable settings I've found was having to check the 'one scale fits all display' option and move scaling to 100/125% however, obviously with this setting, every time I take my Laptop home I need to readjust everything because the 100/125% is too small on 3200x1800.

I just wished I could manually set the displays to 100/125% without having to check that box, but for the life of me its not possible... Ideas?

Also, on a unrelated note - am I retarded or does the SSD switch out feel the same speed as the Cache + HDD? Haven't done much 'real world testing' yet, but just from startup etc...

 

Hi man. Could you tell me what tools you need to replace the mSATA disk? On a website it is mentioned that you only need a tx5 screwdriver. Is that it? Thanks.

 

Hi,
Finally, there is the possibility of buying in poland
I would like to know whether the version of the Core i5 addition to the Intel HD 4400 also has Nvidia?
or if you sometimes play games, just me Intel HD 4400

or if someone has a version of the Core i5 screen could move from device manager

 

T5 Torx Screwdriver and a Philps Screwdriver (for screws under the metal plate on the underside of the laptop) - that is all. The manual is up to date and has pictures, best to follow them.

 

In Linux, the open source nouveau driver works perfectly fine.

However, has anyone got the proprietary Nvidia driver to work in Linux? I can't get GNOME 3 or Cinnamon to boot if I install the 319 or 331 driver from the Ubuntu repos.

If so, has anyone tested the new Optimus support Nvidia is supposedly working on?

 

I can't say for Poland, but in the US the i5 model has a Intel HD Graphics 4400. The i7 model has the NVIDIA® GeForce GT 750M.

 

1. It did for 2 people who mentioned it on here (who got replacement displays through Dell as a result), but it worked fine for others, including myself.
2. Seems to prevent the touchscreen from randomly becoming unresopnsive during use (without the required workaround of disabling its device sleep option in Device Manager) and others have noticed improvements on the touchpad as well.
3 and 4. Without knowing anything about the marks, hard to say. Try just a cloth or a cloth and water in case it's something powdery? If it's adhesive residue, water should work fine with enough time and patience. I would be careful using something stronger, but if you must, try isopropyl alcohol.
5. People have asked about touchpad protectors but nobody has come up with anything. For discoloration, one person said water and a soft cloth restores most of its look to new. I'm not going to bother. I admit I'm a bit disappointed with how fast it discolored, but I'm not willing to spend a bunch of time cleaning my laptop.
6. A few sleeves were recommended a while back in this thread (try Googling "XPS 15 haswell sleeve site:notebookreview.com"). Not sure about a keyboard protector....
7. You don't NEED it, but it can be handy, especially to disable splendid mode.
8. There are various ways. Create an image that matches your display resolution that's all white and view it full screen, maximize Notepad, etc. Personally I question why you're trying to go out of your way to find problems that you wouldn't see normally.
9. Water. There was some debate as to whether isopropyl alcohol would work. Try it if you want.

 

Wait, so you've actually got the built-in panel set to Disconnected in Screen Resolution and setting the slider to the far-left doesn't result in usable sizes on the external panels? The far left tick on a dual 22" 1680x1050 setup would be 100% scaling, so if manually setting 100% works for you I can't imagine why setting the leftmost option wouldn't. Are you logging off and back on after making these changes to observe their full effect? Making changes either to the scale choice or the display configuration (i.e. built-in panel vs external panels) and clicking Apply only changes SOME of the elements of the display until you do that.

Unfortunately whether you go with the per-display scaling option or single-scaling, you'll need to get used to logging off and back on for optimum results when you switch between external panels and the internal panel. The reason is that even when you've got per-display scaling going, when you switch from a fully regular-DPI environment to a fully HiDPI environment (or even the primary display switches from regular DPI to HiDPI), Windows will know that the scale factor needs to change accordingly, and you'll actually find that the slider will move when you change your display configuration like that. That in turn requires logging off and back on for it to work properly. Definitely an irritation especially for people who might need to connect to projectors for presentations frequently, but that's just how it is at the moment. There's no configuration that will alleviate that need AND deliver optimum results on both display setups.

 

There seems to be touchpad protectors that can turn the glossy screen into 'matte screen'. Maybe at a little cost of lowering brightness.

Is it wise to use one of them on this machine?

By the way, the keyboard seems to be same to apple layout. But I'm not sure what size it corresponds to the apple model.

 

I assume you mean touch screen protectors, not touch pad protectors. You can certainly try them out. As long as they claim to be compatible with touchscreens (or you don't care about retaining that functionality), then there's certainly no harm trying one out. You might want to investigate how they attach to the display, though. I know lots of them count on the display being recessed inside a bezel, whereas this display is edge-to-edge glass, which might require a different approach.

 

Anyone have any 20% or even 30% coupons I could use? Really looking forward to buying the top tier model because of the larger battery.

 

Anyone tried it yet ?

 

PM me, I have some.

 

Are there XPS15/M3800 where the setting battery charge configuration works?

Battery charge configuration (it's a BIOS setting that allows to increase the life of battery) is not working.
If I set custom mode, and set max charge level to 90% and do not charge until level is higher than 50% the battery is always charged in violation of the conditions set.
Actually I set primarily AC only, but I didn't see any difference from others options, my battery is always charged until 100%.

 

Finally, after two months of waiting, yesterday I received my top-spec xps 15. First impressions:

- I am very relieved that I don't have any coil whine (yet!). The machine is extremely quiet, and can only hear the fans when under high load.
- default dpi settings seem to work great
- I really don't like the texture of the palmrest/trackpad: it's a little rough and easily traps any kind of dust and oil from your fingers. I now can see why the "discoloration" is bothering people so much. Here's a picture .
- I've installed kubuntu on it (dual boot with win8). Evything seems to work so far except for the touchscreen (I have not tested the card reader or bluetooth yet). While I really like the screen real estate, the native resolutions is a bit too much to handle. I set the resolution to 1080p, which is sharp enough. Hopefully I can tweak things a little to use 3200x1600.

My biggest gripe is the battery life in linux. I was hoping that someone had some advice about how to optimize this. In windows, it seems that the laptop consumes roughly 10 W at idle. In linux, this was originally 25 W. I installed bumblebee, tlp, and all system updates. As a result, things are a bit better now, but I still see roughly 16-17 W at idle (using powertop). What kind of power consumption / battery life are you guys seeing?

Edit: forgot to link to the palmrest picture.

 

Thanks, it seems like the white marks on the base are like scratches. No amount of rubbing or cleaning has fixed it. From an angle it looks like it is inside the carbon fiber base.

For the dead pixel problem, I noticed an area of maybe 3 pixels that stood out with a white background. When I put pressure on the screen near the "pixel", a pressure point shows up. Does this mean it isn't a dead pixel?

One more thing is has anyone held onto the laptop like you would hold a book to your side, but the hinge side of the. laptop is in your hand. When you do this, do you notice that the laptop opens up a little? I am worried about a weak/faulty hinge

 

PMed you.

 

Hi, it had been already confirmed that also with the bios A2 these charging function does not work.
Not meant to your (because you asked a good TECHNICAL question).
PLEASE people use first google!
So many problems had been discussed widely. From claning , to dead pixels, to your stupid windows questions (not related to this laptop). Now the problem is multiplicating since so much garbage here, that the important things get lost in this!

For common problems like windows, licences, basic dirver install or partitioning or chemical stability of silion: Google elsewhere!

Again I want to motivate the discussion on coil whine (see also my last posts): the charging option could be my last home (in case dell will ever get this working) because it seems that for most people the coil whine gets louder if fully charged.
I doubt that it is frequency related (because I clocked also in charging mode to CPU and GPU specs) like fully charged (see my last posts for tools).
Already tested 2 different ac/DC adapters: no influence.

But one thing we should do: post and quote similar posts of people getting coil whine!
- permanent: yes/no
- just when fully charged: yes/no
- roughly room temperature: xx
- used power adapter: dell/different
- net voltage / freqency: 110V / 240V and 50Hz/60Hz
- bios version

I think just like this we can learn more about the conditions of coil whine. I assume interfderences and therefore already played with different power adapters and frequencies. Im on 240V 50Hz net, curious what our us or Japanese people report here.

And by the way: the windows patch to disable sleep states are not working for me
As expected since I already tried many combinations with throttlestop (also see old posts) of possible c-states. .... Damn dell should give us at least a bios with at least slight access to fsb adjustment and more important the access to the c-state configs like on normal desktop motherboards!!!!


P.s.
Puh I think I still hate laptops . But they are the only ones which are can carry to work.

And why to hell are people buy a laptop for gaming and wondering about throttling

 

I just tried on mine, and the laptops does open a very small amount ( see this picture). This doesn't worry me in the least.

 

I have beefed up the Linux section on the wiki ( Linux - XPS 15 Wiki).

My main outstanding point is how to make the proprietary Nvidia driver to work, which I haven't been able to yet, at least in my current setup. Versions 319.12 onwards are supposed to have partial Optimus support, so it would be interesting to check the performance and battery life.

 

*bump*
Nobody? I thought this q was at least different than coil whine and other typical issues on this board!

 

i understand there is a variety of topics covered in this thread, however when you search for them the info is too spread out or here and there to understand, if you want something dedicated to coil whine it needs to be its own specific thread and as issues are found and resolved it either needs to be updated on the op or put in the wiki, lets take example from other previous owners lounges that have worked succesfully instead of bashing people when they cant find clear concise information to issues when it has not been organized in a clear concise way.

 

My coil whine:

- permanent: no
- just when fully charged: yes, and it's louder while scrolling
- roughly room temperature: 20 degrees C
- used power adapter: dell
- net voltage / frequency: 240V and 50Hz
- bios version A02​

I get the whine when fully charged, but it's only audible in two situations:
- if I am on the left side of the laptop, like someone else on my right is using it
- while scrolling, every screen movement is followed by a small noise, like an echo

All in all, I can live with it, but I'd very much prefer it was not there

 

My XPS has now gone back to Dell. The faulty fan got worse. They couldn't repair it for a few weeks to lack of stock so after a few arguments we settled on them giving me my money back.

 

I'm terribly upset! Or to speak more clearly: I'm totally pissed off! Sorry for ranting

The delivery date for my top tier XPS 15 suddenly just got delayed from February 12th (next week!) to March 26th. As always with Dell nobody informed me. I just happened to realize the delay because I checked myself whether they had finally shipped it after the Chinese New Year.

I don't know what's wrong with Dell, but this company definitely needs a complete makeover if they want to stay in business. I have been using high end dell laptops for 15 years, appreciated their customizable laptops and their good onsite support, but in the last 3 years Dell has become a total mess.

I ordered my last XPS 15 (L502x) about 2.5 years ago. While the order process was nearly ok, the laptop arrived with a malfunction. The after sales experience was terrible. Despite paying for next business day onsite support they insisted in collecting the laptop and fixing it in a central repair facility. They managed to assign the most unreliable parcel service here in Germany for collect & return, etc. I took them 14 days to repair the new laptop.

At the end of December 2013 I decided to order 2 new top tier XPS 15 (9530) for my wife and me. Ordered on December 27th, but got cancelled on Dec 30th. Again, without noticing me. I took me more than I week with several phone calls, mails, escalation, etc. to find out that the orders were only cancelled because an optional 15$ cable was out of stock. They cancelled the whole order because of that. After 10 days I finally got my money back.

I ordered the first XPS 15 again on Jan 4th and the second on Jan 7th. Estimated delivery dates were Feb 12th and Feb 18th. The first went into production on Jan 30th, the second is still in 'work in progress'. I really don't get how the first XPS 15 could get in production a week ago, when they don't have the parts to build it. I must have been clear a week ago that they would be unable to deliver it in time on Feb 12th.

And if the first is delayed, why don't they delay the second as well immediatly? I'm pretty sure it will also go into production in the next few days and then miracally be delayed for another 6 weeks.

If there were any similiar laptop on the market from a different vendor, I would immediatly cancel my orders and buy something else. Unfortunately there is currently no alternative to the XPS 15. I doubt that I will buy any Dell in the future.

Sorry for the rant - feeling better now. Did anybody elso got delayed just before the delivery date in the last days? If it matters, I'm from Germany.

 

That's Weird I'm in new Zealand and my delivery time just got brought forward to Feb 15th, when I contacted dell they said they had a parts holdup until end of Jan.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk