XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

Same thing happened to me. Except I live in Australia where customer service is non existent and they didn't allow me to have a 2nd replacement. It sucks, that this is happening. You would think Dell would have the whine under control.

 

Hi man. I live in Australia too. What you mean they didn't allow you? They said "no we won't replace the machine, you have to keep the broken one"? If yes I will just ask for a refund because most likely the machine (which is arriving in 2 days) will have lots of issues.
Thanks.

 

in aus the mainly wanna repair.. they are so tight.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Can anyone with the top end model confirm whether or not Intel rapid start is enabled in the default configuration?

I replaced my ssd/HDD irst combo with a crucial m500 ssd and clean reinstalled windows 8.1 on that then configured and installed Intel rapid start, and am now getting blue screens after resuming from sleep.

I think the merits of Intel rapid start are there - wipes cache before writing hibernate to disk - but if it is a source of instability, I will get rid of it.

Thanks for this great thread. I'll be sure to update the wiki w my findings.

 

It's enabled but not in a way that works properly because they only have an 8GB hibernation partition on a system with 16GB of RAM. I wiped my system and set it up properly, but ended up getting rid of it because while I didn't get blue screens, I did have it fail to wake up when I powered the machine back on occasionally, which sort of defeats the point.

Not sure what you mean about that benefit; Windows flushes unnecessary pages out of RAM before writing to disk as well. In any case, I no longer use it and my hibernation entry and resume times are within 1-2 seconds of Rapid Start.

 

I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on what I could use my 5% giftcard on? I was going to pick up a battery but there doesn't seem to be any available and I already have a case. I would pick up a venue 8 pro but I got one as a gift recently. Anything you guys would recommend?

 

The leather sleeve for XPS seems nice.

 

Is it just a 5% off coupon or do they give you free money 5% of the value if your purchase? That's interesting.

 

I can disable rapid start in the bios if I elect not to clean install windows 8.1 yes?

 

Yes, but the cleaner way would be to disable Rapid Start inside the Rapid Start application in Windows, then uninstall that application, then delete the existing hibernation partition. Depending on the exact sequence of partitions in the factory setup, you may or may not be able to extend the OS partition to fill the newly freed up space; from what I've read thus far it seems likely that you will NOT be able to do so because the factory image restore partition will be between those two, although if you were ok deleting BOTH the factory image restore partition AND the Rapid Start partition, you could extend your OS partition by the combined total of those two.

Once the BIOS detects that the Rapid Start hibernation partition no longer exists, the Rapid Start option there will be Disabled and grayed out.

 

Great! I'll follow those steps. Actually, looks like Dell will send me an installation flash drive of 8.1 so with that there won't be a need for the image restore partition (assuming I don't care to restore factory bloatware etc..)???

 

With third party partitioning software, after deleting the hibernation partition you can slide the recovery partition to the end of the drive and then expand the OS partition to fill the unallocated space.

 

I think it is a 5% off coupon.

 

I really don't understand why Intel Rapid Start Technology is active on my XPS, because on my XPS the partition reserved to this function is only 8GB but the size of my RAM is 16GB also BIOS and Intel Rapid Start Technology software confirm that this technology is actually working.
I have just read an Intel PDF that confirms the need that reserved partition matches the RAM size.

 

I'm guessing this is a manufacturing glitch where the same factory image is being used for 8GB and 16GB RAM units, and in this case it only works properly for the 8GB machines. How are you confirming that Rapid Start is in fact working? Does your system actually hibernate when you put it to Sleep? If so, I'm wondering if Intel has updated the behavior of Rapid Start without updating their documentation so that Rapid Start will work as long as the amount of RAM actually in use isn't greater than the hibernation partition -- and maybe if it is, it just disables itself and uses sleep in that case, or regular Windows hibernation? It'd be interesting to know more if anyone cares to experiment (lighting up a VM with lots of memory allocated would be an easy way to increase memory usage), but frankly I'm too lazy since I don't care to use Rapid Start anyway.

 

Correct. If you're comfortable reinstalling Windows from scratch, including all drivers, etc, then you don't need the factory restore partition. But not everyone can or wants to go through all of that if they have a major system issue even if it means putting up with a bit more bloatware -- though I have to say I was surprised at how little bloatware there was on my factory image, which is a refreshing change.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if there are more issues with this system than it's worth...

What with HW and Intel Rapid Start being given 8GB...

WHEN/IF my system arrives, I want the SSD all there for performance increases, not quick start-up. Is there anything stopping me removing that partition and having it all available for SSD goodness?

 

Sometimes after waking from hibernation my screen starts blinking. I have seen others mentionining this issue, but I haven't seen a solution for this problem in this thread.

Any ideas?

 

OK, but in BIOS mode if you don't have the partition with right size you cannot enable Intel Rapid Start Technology, instead in BIOS (so this excludes glitch of factory image) IRST is ENABLED, also the IRST software on Windows confirms active status.
Considering the speed of resume for me the machine is only sleeping (but I have the top tier so only SSD)
I have another question to wake up XPS from sleeping I can use only power button, is it normal?

 

You just reminded me that it also appeared once on mine.

The screen blinked at a frequency about 0.5HZ and it seemed I needed to keep moving my mouse to keep it blinking. I shut down windows, although it was kind of hard with the blinking screen. It happened the second day I got the computer and then I sent it for repair and hasn't got it back.

 

Well, I just got my XPS top tier a few hours ago and all I gotta say is that it's AWESOME. No dead pixels, no whining.......the fans are doing what fans do......they turn on under load. lol

The 92 Whr battery is a freaking BEAST. With normal browsing and looking around downloading programs and installations (I haven't set up battery saver options) this thing lasted about 3 hours and used 35% of the battery. I can't wait to see what it does with conservative power options.

Also, I don't see the hazing or anything on the touchpad. What's that about? I'm using the Dell drivers for the touchpad but I think I'll update them with synaptics because I've always used them in all my laptops. I disabled rapid start and am now in the process of clearing out that drive space for use.

This thing is thin and light for it's size. My only regret was not getting it 2 months ago.

I dunno, maybe dell finally got around to fixing the issues on these models just coming out? It's worth the $2100 I paid for it (discounts included). You won't be disappointed!

 

The glitch in the image I'm referring to is setting up an 8GB partition on a system with 16GB of RAM, rather than sizing that partition based on the installed RAM. But I'm confused that you say you can't enable RST without a properly sized partition, but then you say that RST shows up as enabled? Again, I'm basing what I'm saying on Intel's own documentation, so it's possible that they now allow RST to be enabled with an undersized partition and it simply won't work when there's too much in RAM to fit in that partition. I haven't tested it myself. But if your system is only waking up from regular sleep, then RST is NOT working properly. If you have RST enabled and have the timeout set to Immediately, then when you click Sleep in Windows, the system should enter RST hibernation, which takes about 5-7 seconds to enter and resume from even on a full SSD system.

Yes, it's normal for Dell systems in regular sleep mode to require pressing the Power button to wake them up. If you have Wake on USB enabled in the BIOS, you can usually wake them up with an external mouse, but not the touchpad or the built-in keyboard.

Nothing stopping you at all. I ran the diskpart "clean" command on my SSD to wipe it completely and then did a regular Windows installation. See a few posts back about deleting the hibernation partition in-place if you don't want to wipe the entire system.

I personally think the pros on this system far outweigh the cons, and I hardly consider an odd Rapid Start partition a dealbreaker given how trivial it is and how simple it is to fix.

 

I'm saying that I can enable RST even if the reserved partition (8GB) does not match the size of RAM (16GB), also when my system go to sleep there isn't any pulse light so I imagine that's RST hibernation.
The power LED is completely OFF when it's sleeping.
The time to resume is around 3/4 sec, I guess that could change if there were more applications running.


Edit: even if I disable RST from BIOS there isn't any pulse light on power led when it's sleeping.

 

Thanks, this is the kind of response I was looking for - sounds like my best bet is to ditch rapid start. I was under the impression windows didn't flush unused cache, hence the purpose for Rapid Start existing...I got my information reading a bunch of threads, but most just address the usefulness of rapid start/storage with the hdd/ssd combo - and none really address the SSD-only use case. Glad to have that cleared up.

I could've sworn resume was a bit quicker on my xps14 - but that could've been it just having less open crap to deal with. Wishing it was closer to the 3-4 sec range than 8-10.

Anyways, thanks for the help!

 

How long ago did you order it? Mine is supposedly being built tomorrow/day-after.

 

Yep, they said that the new machine could have similar problems, and that they will either replace components or offer me a refund (it was within the 45 day window anyway)

 

Yes, I just noticed that the Power LED on this particular system doesn't pulse in normal sleep either and edited my earlier post. But fyi if your system is resuming in 3/4 of a second, that is definitely not RST hibernation; as I said, RST resume takes 5-7 seconds. If you were to create a 16,384 MB version of the RST partition and try it again, you'd see how it's supposed to work. Based on what you're saying, it looks like all RST checks before allowing itself to be enabled is that the partition exists with the proper identification without validating the actual size, but even when it's enabled in that case, it doesn't actually work.

But as I've said before, I truly don't see the point of Rapid Start on a full SSD system anyway, even if it DIDN'T fail to wake up properly on occasion, which it did. I used it for a while and gave up partly for that reason, but mostly because it wasn't any faster than regular Windows hibernation resume, required an extra 16GB of disk capacity to support it, and stored data in unencrypted form on the disk, which regular Windows hibernation does not. The only possible reasons I can think that someone might want this was if they wanted to use Intel Smart Connect and still have the battery savings of hibernation, and/or if they wanted the option to enter hibernation only after a certain period of time in sleep. Windows only allows you to configure timers for sleep and hibernation that start during any idle period, not that only start when you've entered sleep mode. I did like that feature, but not enough to outweigh the drawbacks.

 

Basically ive heard a mixed reception to these new 4th gen laptops before i plough some money into one, what are the outstanding issues with these, in terms of noises? etc etc does anyone have a definitive answer. If they come with windows 8, can they be easily downgraded?

 

Coil whine still shows up on most shipped systems. Dell is apparently looking into it, but since new systems still have it, it seems a full fix hasn't been developed.

Yes they can be downgraded from 8.1 to 7 by using the drivers from the Precision M3800 (except for GPU). I think some drivers are missing from that list, in which case find them on the 8.1 list since chances are the drivers are identical. However, the XPS 15 won't come with a license for Win7, and I'm not sure whether it's possible to exercise downgrade rights on an OEM Win8.1 license or how you would do that even if it were. But unless you know that 8.1 won't work for something you need, I'd give 8.1 a try. Once you get it set to log on to the desktop and make a few other tweaks, it's actually pretty solid -- and I say that as someone who tried 8.0 twice and both times wiped it off my system in less time than it took me to install it. 8.1 has some changes that are subtle but make all the difference in the world IMHO.

 

Interesting!!

Ok so your selling 8.1 as a decent setup. So how is Windows 8.1 for you working well?

So if i wanted to run Windows 7 on mine look for a 3rd gen then ?

Any issues with those do you know ?

 

I got confused what is the problem with 4 th generation CPUs ( i guess this is what you mean when you talk about 4 th generation laptops). And if there is a problem with them how does windows 7 solve it ?

 

You asked jphughan, but I like to answer your question, too. Coming from Windows 7 I have been working with Windows 8.1 for a week now. I pretty much like it and see no reason to replace it with Windows 7. I don't like the Modern/Metro UI. I have added a third party start menu (Stardock Start8, 5 $) and configured several details to avoid switching to the Metro UI. Now my Win 8.1 pretty much feels like an improved Win 7 desktop.

IMHO Win 8.1 offers some advantages over Win 7, e.g. the improved UI scaling (although still room for improvement) and the file history feature.

 

I think it's not about the CPU. It's about that the old XPS 15 L521x (equipped with 3rd gen) has official driver support for Win 7, while the new XPS 15 9530 (equipped with 4th gen) has not.

Anyway, I would recommend the new XPS 15 with Win 8.1 that can be customized to behave quite like Win 7.

 

I waltzed into my Microsoft Store today and was able to pick up the top tier system. I'm excited to give it a shot. Now I just need to find someone looking for a basically new Asus UX51VZ

 

How much did you pick it up for and at what price? Any issues?

 

Same price that Dell has listed. They do match prices from brick and mortar stores, it just so happened that Costco took the XPS off their website!!! In terms of issues, nothing yet that I can tell.

 

Hi guys,

I would like to know if anyone of you knows what the Dell Audio pop up panel actually does. Everytime I plug in an auxiliary jack into the laptop a number of devices are listed, asking me to choose which device I plugged in. I am aware of the auto popup setting which I can simply untick however I figured manually selecting, in my case, 'Speaker Out' or 'Headphone' would actually be doing something. My initial thought was that it would change the volume level depending on previous uses as is the case with some smartphones (which identify the device by themselves) however this is not the case.

Thanks for your time

 

I am a new owner of the top tier XPS 15. My question to those that already own the system is what should I be doing out of the box to optimize performance? Should I be getting rid of anything pre-installed? Updating anything? This is a beautiful system that I think will fit all my needs and wants out of a PC.

 

You should check this wiki out:
XPS 15 Wiki

 

my replacement order was put in on 2/14 and it's suppose to ship on 2/20. I thought the replacement order were suppose to take longer than a week as brand new orders are a month out.
-does anyone have any experience on replacement order time frames for this model?
-should I be concerned they may rush to quick and screw something up?
thanks
jesse

 

Hello. i have the xps for 2 months now without any problems but for the past few days when i boot it up it shows me the dell icon and then immediately shows me a black screen with only the cursor visible. There is nothing i can do but forced turn it off with the button. Does anyone have this or knows what the problem could be? Thanks in advance

 

Some people in the M3800 thread are reporting random issues and are running Win7 (lockups, BSoDs, etc) but since they haven't ALSO tested their system on Win8.1, it's tough to say whether it's the OS. I think you CAN run Win7 just fine on this system, but I think Win8.1 is a better fit given the touchscreen optimizations and better HiDPI support if you're getting the QHD+ panel.

3rd gen CPUs get noticeably worse battery life, and this system with its 4th gen chip doesn't last forever as it is (though I think it's more than reasonable given the powerful hardware in here). But more importantly, it's not like you can order this exact system with a 3rd gen CPU, and the CPU doesn't change anything with OS compatibility anyway. I'd definitely recommend getting a 4th gen CPU system for the battery life and because that would be a newer system rather than last-gen in other feature areas as well, regardless of what OS you choose to run.

I'm just saying give Win 8.1 a shot even if you hated 8.0.

I actually didn't even need a Start menu replacement. Once I realized that the Start screen is simply the Pinned Items area of the Start menu from Win7, the All Apps area was a regular Start menu, and search could be started from anywhere by simply typing, I was totally fine. I actually kind of like having an entire display's worth of space for frequently launched applications, though I admit most of the time I tap the Windows key, type the first few letters of the app I want to launch (so it shows up in Search), and press Enter. It's faster than reaching over for the mouse.

This article also helps A LOT with alleviating Metro hatred: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/getting-around-tutorial.

The popup exists because the physical audio jack can be used for line out, line in, mic in, or headset (i.e. lineout and mic in simultaneously). Therefore you have to tell it what type of device you've plugged in so that it knows whether to set itself up as input, output, or both, and then mute the corresponding other devices (the integrated speakers and mic, for example).

As for there not being a difference between headphones and speaker out (never mind the Dell Speaker Out or whatever), that doesn't surprise me. The MaxxAudio enhancements might work differently depending on that selection if you use that (I don't because it makes external speakers sound worse, though it's a nice boost for the built-in speakers), but I suppose it's also possible Dell listed all possibilities just so people wouldn't say, "I'm using headphones but there's only an option for speakers, what do I do?" or, "What does Line Out mean anyway?" Easier to just list everything, I guess.

 

It is 5% free money from purchase, in the form of a giftcard? Here is more info: Dell Advantage Loyalty Program

 

Hi guys,

My XPS15 top spec has arrived this morning. Here are some notes:

* No dead pixels or any screen problems.
* The only problem I got is coil whine. The strange thing is that I heard it "loud" once when I first booted the laptop. Now I can not hear it. I only hear it if I turn my ear to face the laptop and go very close. When I am in a normal position doing work I can not hear it at all. And believe me I am very sensitive with sounds, All my desktop PCs were fanless with huge heatsinks because I don't like noise.
* The installed software/drivers kinda suck because when I select "High performance" power plan the maximum brightness of the screen is very low, while if I select "Dell" power plan it is extremely bright. Any fix for this?
* The laptop is silent. Of course it gets louder when it is on full load (3d mark), I think macbook pro Oct 2013 was a little bit louder.
* The build quality is better than what I was expecting.

That's all for now I guess.

Thank you.

 

On the Dell website:
Estimated Ship Date: 5/3/2014

On my Order Status: Pre-Production
Estimated date: 25/03/2014

I'm pestering customer services, because otherwise I'll cancel my order and make another one.

 

What's the battery life like with your devices, everyone? I got the model before the top-tier one because I wanted the 2.5 bay for an SSD and that one has a really weird battery, at least for me. I'm barely getting in 3.5 hours. Can anyone vouch for this, or is this a defect? I am worried.

 

And a second look shows that they've dropped the price on the model I ordered!

XPS 15 Touch Screen Laptop Details | Dell UK

 

Hold on, it seems they've just added a FHD, i7, 16GB, 1TB+32GB option between the FHD i5 (bottom tier) and the QHD i7, 1TB+32GB (previously mid-tier).

 

I am in the same position pretty much. I ordered on 28 th of January. estimated on 15/03/2014 Order status Pre-Production for almost 3 weeks. I also ordered from UK too

 

Hi Waru. I have the same model and the battery life is kinda bad. I get around the same time on a full charge. :-/ I got this one for the same reason-wanted a 2.5" bay and the option to expand with the mSATA slot. Would be cool to setup a RAID 0 or 1 between, for example, the 1TB Samsung EVO SSD's!!!