XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

I noticed the optical drive does some noises from time to time without any action from me.

This tickle, though, is coming from the other side of the laptop and starts everytime the hdd is working.

It is kind of strange this laptop is actually producing more noise than my old 2009 Inspiron 1545.

 

Hi all, this is my first post here
I am interested to buy the L521x for my son
This year he will go to college in the Uk
I have read several pages of posts and the latest were encouraging, regarding the wifi issues
I hope it's not against forum rules if I ask where I could get this laptop in London ?
I would be interested in the i5 version of it - Thanks!

 

Hello ezervoud, if you are interested in buy a XPS15 Dell has a callcenter for every country/region from where you can contact sales representatives and get all the info for buying the laptop. You can also buy it from the Dell website in your contry/region. In your case as you're from UK this would be the site Dell UK Official Site | Dell UK and I think this is the phone number according the website 0844 444 4699.

 

Thanks for your prompt response jrmcr
Let me rephrase slightly my request, if forum rules allow, of course
Any ideas on where I could get a good price and availability of the i5 model?
I have been searching regularly the UK site as well as the US one
While in US the i5 model is available in UK the system goes on and off depending on current availability as the online rep told my son

 

I purchased the l521x today, i know what you mean ezervoud they keep changing the configurations their selling, it cost me £1279 it also included office home student which i did not even need could not take it out. but there is a 10% coupon code i ended up getting off £125 ish. You should go with the maybe the i7 in this laptop as it will be for long term.

 

Hi CalvinD, and thanks for your response
I assume you got it directly from Dell's site, in this case?
Was the 10 % coupon standard issue or you had to do or say something?

 

Yup got it from dell website, says 2-3 days shipping so assume they are already built. 10% code is on voucher websites, il post it below.

10% off inspiron and xps notebooks over £498.
code: 3TV61GGR7B51MC

 

Hey CalvinD, you are a treasure mate
Thanks so much !

 

No Problem.

 

Just received my USB wireless adapter from Dell.
Does anyone know if there's an easy way to toggle between the internal card and the USB adapter?
I plan on using the USB only in hotels where signals can be weak.

Thanks

 

BIOS A09 on support site for the L521X released today. I couldn't find any release notes. Anyone tried this one already?

 

Yes, same question here - TIA.
To toggle from internal wifi to USB wifi card, I've been using the Fn-F2 combo key to shut off the internal wifi & it switches to the USB wifi automatically but to switch it back to the internal, I had to press Fn-F2 combo key again & unplug the USB wifi stick - I just want to know if there's an easier way without unplugging the USB wifi stick.

 

Thanks for the heads-up - I'm going try it later this weekend. On a related note, if it's worse, does anyone know how I can reload the A06 BIOS? I can't find that file on the Dell Support site anymore. Thanks.

 

You can download the previous versions by clicking on the latest BIOS A09 (details page), from the support site and there should be a menu item for the previous versions.
You can also try the FTP site:
ftp://ftp.dell.com/Browse_For_Drivers/Laptops/XPS/XPS 15 (L521x)/BIOS/BIOS/BIOS/

Anyway, it seems it cannot find the BIOS A09 file. Seems to happen every time they release something new.

 

In my opinion, you should not buy this laptop until the wireless issue have been fixed. If your son is going to college, he's probably going to need wireless a lot. I'm a college student and the WiFi doesn't perform really well.

 

Well , I was chating with a Dell rep from my region and asked about the l521x, aparently they are not aware of the wifi issue and told me that every laptop they sell is new and in great condition, I was going to told him about this forum and Dell (at least USA) is aware of this issue but the Rep closed the chat

 

yeah, dell chat reps either deny knowing about it or they say they issue was taken care of a long time ago thats what i got from the 3 reps i spoke to. I purchased the XPS 15 today i hope i do not encounter the issue. Hope they address this issue soon though. Those sales advisors do not leave you alone lol one even even took my email adress down and found i had an account and found my number called me 6 times yesterday. Just ended up ordering it online via dell.

 

There isn't a link to the new BIOS yet?
I can't find it on the Dell website.

 

There was but the download didn't work. try tomorrow. this happens every time dell has a driver update, the link goes up but wont work till hours later

***Edit*** download works!
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers.../FX2GFV1?retrieveState=True&isUSDownload=true

 

just download 09 will install...


hmm we'll see. if I don't report back then you know my machine has passed on into nothingness and multiple aliens have succeeded in taking control of dell in order for me and others not to have wifi and poor screen quality mixed with three parts donkey remains plus a side of everything about this laptop sucks and I want the world to heard me roaringocity...

or I just went out for ice cream, it's hot...



Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

 

There's no prohibition against asking owners in an owner's lounge what their thoughts and advice are. What better place to ask?

But thanks for giving the possibility of a forum rule consideration. Welcome to the forum.

 

LOL when I started the install for A09 I think my laptop levitated about 6 inches above the arm of my couch . The fan went into over drive . So I wonder what the new bios fixes ?

 

ehehe me too

 

That's normal, the BIOS update utility sets the fan up to 100%.

 

It would be nice if Dell listed the Bios fixes so we can decide whether to download or not.

 

Well, after installing BIOS A09 WiFi is still garbage (Having 15.3 installed) and now Windows installs something everytime I boot it and asks for a restart. Also I'm noticing a degradation of color, something like a pale blue in the lower left corner on the screen (took a picture, but it can't be appreciated). I remember the same happened to a guy on this forum a long time ago. Has this happened to anyone else? Maybe it's another common on issue on this "premium" laptop.

 

Downloading the BIOS, nobody knows what it fixes right?
Hope I will not hear the optical drive noise anymore.

 

looking at the description I think it may just provide better support for windows 8. Let me know if anyone notices any improvements. I am still on A04 because it found it had much better battery life than A06

 

I have loaded A09 and I do see they added UEFI boot option in the BIOS that was not there before. I have not heard the optical drive access noise since loading the BIOS but time will tell if that is actually fixed.

 

I just loaded an sd card and the optical drive noise still exist's

 

I loaded A09 and (as before) when I plug in my external USB hard drive and Windows Auto-Play initializes, the optical drive's access motor still briefly runs.

 

So yeah, like the one person said above, A09 for me, shows a windows message upon booting up every other time I reboot saying to save all my work and restart, right as windows begins... ridiculous.

 

check your BIOS settings, it changes what the defaults are.

 

Thank you!

Hmm, I never has seen this message before on a laptop the way it comes up here, first time was after the auto reboot during the end of the bios flash. Are you saying this new bios has a new default that I can change so it doesn't give this message? Can you please let me know exactly what to change in there and exactly what happened? Pretty confused here as to why this isn't something I've seen before.

 

I am running Windows 8 and there are now settings to change Boot from Legacy (what it was before) to UEFI which comes into play for Win8....hopefully someone else with a regular HD with Windows 7 chimes in

 

So any improvements on the new A09?

 

Does A09 do anything for CPU/GPU throttling?

 

okay so, this isn't going to make sense but... those aliens..ha.. heesh.. well for two hours I've been on phone with dell.. after doing everything they told me to do before calling them... after restarting the second time post A09 my laptop would blue screen at the end of the windows logo right before loading windows desktop... flash blue screen and restart... we ended up finally after changing nothing..repeadetly tryinhg, to load in safe mode command line.. then safe mode with networking.. then for some reason regular safe mode worked... THEN the laptop rebotted normally... I got a total of about 16 maybe bluescreens while trouble shooting my self and with them...

Long story short he says it looks like the bios may have caused this.. that here nor there.. just be forewarned.. that WE have no idea what the hell happened or why it came back to life..

 

and in msinfo32... at bios.. it says A09 8/27/12 .....

 

Looks like A09 fixed the throttling issues. I haven't checked any numbers or ran programs to test this, but before updating the BIOS I could barely run Far Cry 2 without frame rate drops at 1600x900 res. I can run it in 1080 now and not lose a frame.

 

Well,that happend yesterday. Today my Windows instalation is dead! How nice!

The laptop boots until the password screen very fast. After a type my password, the laptop starts the "very slow motion mode" and nothins seems to work properly.

I update the wifi driver to the 15.03 version and dont even recocknize my wifi anymore.

 

Interesting. Did you have A06 or A04 before? Also, how long did you play on A09?

 

Installed A09 last night. Never had any throttling issue as I don't play games usually anyway, wireless still sucks though. Just noticed another issue, I suspended BitLocker encryption last night when doing the BIOS upgrade, I just tried to resume it and Windows now tells me there is not a compatible TPM chip in my system. I haven't had a chance to check the bios yet this morning as I have to finish what I am working on first, but wasn't sure if anyone else is using the TPM and if it still works after A09.

UPDATE: Apparently the update disabled the TPM and I didn't notice last night. I just re-enabled it and verified that BitLocker works again.

 

I just updated the BIOS, from A04 to A09. I cannot see any positive difference.
I should have stayed with A04, it was working fine. Now with A09 watching online TV live, two channels at the same time and a few pages opened, the fan goes up to 3100 speed and the temps between 60-70, with A4 I never had the fan at 3100 seed, (only when prime95), just under 2600 and temps below 60s.
I tried to go back to A04 but no hope.
Throttling? I do not know, I do not play games, just backgammon and chase . I did not buy the laptop for games.
The optical drive still does noise when attach external hdd, SD card.....

 

Can any of you comment on the battery life with A09? I'm hoping they don't have the terrible battery life with the A06 BIOS.

 

On power saver with 30-35% brightness, five hours and twenty minutes.

 

Yes it does set the BIOS back to default when you update. I had to go change my SATA mode back to AHCI and change the boot order to get my MSATA back as the boot device.

 

FWIW, with the 15.3 WLAN drivers, in my rustic household, things don't quite suck - it is definitely an improvement for me from 15.2.

- same u/d speed up to about 15' from the router (which puts it in my normal use spot, so that's nice). LanSpeedTest doing file writing to a Core2Duo 2ghz machine gives me about 100 Mbps u/d to that range.

- this is the same as the usb netgear wnda3100v2 that dell provided (which previously beat the socks off the inernal wlan).

- at about 30' away though, connectivity is stable but the performance is about 50% of the wnda3100v2

- in all situations, using insidder, all the same wlans are detected (there are two others in any range from neighbors).

- using wither wlan device (internal or usb) if the neighbor's wlans are active then performance drops to about 60-70% of what it is when they are not active

- my router doesn't do 5 ghz, but I have access to one that does and I'll be testing with that - hopefully over the next couple of days - once I have that test done I'll put together a succinct write-up.

 

Disclosure: I'm a Dell employee, but I'm not commenting on behalf of Dell.

I bought a XPS15 at a killer price and used some of the savings to install an OCZ Vertex 4 256 GB SSD. Performance of everything (except the wireless) is phenomal.

I just installed the A09 BIOS and got the perpetual reboot. The new bios reset the HD setting to Intel Rapid Start Technology. I changed it back to AHCI and the system booted properly.

The moral of the story, if you have a stock system, A09 should install just fine. If you have installed a new HD or messed with the dual drive settings, you will probably have to go into the BIOS and change it back.

Nate

 

Nate, did you install the SSD as a second drive while retaining the internal removable device ?
That would be very interesting, would you care to elaborate ?
What else would I have to do/buy to make it work?