XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

I installed that one but it made no difference that I could see on my WIFI

 

Did you delete the old driver first? I have found when im having an issue its always best to delete the version currently installed. give it a try and lmk

 

Hold on, what's this about a $400 discount?

 

I'm still getting the "Sorry..." message when I try to download the update, from both the Canadian and US support sites. I guess Dell hasn't yet translated the driver into Canadian English, eh.

 

IT's not really a $400 discount. They raised the msrp to 1999 for the 1699 version and made it a discount to about 1460 with mpp and 5% discount code.

 

Guys, do you think the wifi issues are with the drivers?? Pretty random i get full upload speed, but download speed is cut by over half upstairs in the house.

 

I have questioned the drivers but most people say its something to do with the antenna placement in the screen because Bill(formerly from Dell) basically told us that. But my wifi gets a little better as more updates are released so im going to say it something with drivers.

 

Oh, I see. My bet is that $1600 is just the new price for that model, especially since the model above it with 16 GB RAM is still $2k.

 

I'm not yet convinced on antenna placement. People who have the wifi issue (me included) can have full bars and great signal strength, but very slow download speeds. I haven't had any upload slow-downs.

Plus, of all the laptops out there that have antennas in the screen, this is the first one I've seen with this big of a problem. And it is odd. If antenna placement is the issue, why does it register good signal strength and good upload speeds?

 

I agree completely. It's just really strange

 

Yes i uninstalled the old ones first. I have both of the latest video drivers and the latest WIFI drivers. None of the drivers seemed to make any difference on WIFI performance.

 

People have been saying wifi speeds improve in safe mode? if this is true surely its drivers.

 

Before he was canned Bill inferred the issue was an issue with interference from the motherboard which would have necessitated a redesign of the board, case or both. Hence why no on-site fix is forthcoming.

I hope they have at least fixed the Wi-Fi issue on new systems (too soon to know for sure at this point). The throttling issue is basically being ignored by Dell. Probably because it's likely impossible to fix without serious changes.

 

Yeah I ll have a look.
There is this one unit on that list that's interesting.
New XPS 15 8GB ram Nv640 + 512 SSD for 1,800.
Thats a really really sweet deal! I will have to think about it...

You are probably right ^^"

The system IS $16,000.
Nonetheless, it kind of gives me an idea what their margin roughly is, so I could call up and haggle them. I have purchased from DELL before hopefully that helps!

 

Just got off the phone with DELL. Things don't look good.

First I asked about the refund procedure.
Me: OK so for the first 15 days, I can have a refund, no question asked?
DELL: Yes. You will get your refund minus $170.
Me: ...what?
DELL: Unfortunately that's the DELIVERY COST. We can't wave the.
Me: You are saying, if I get an XPS 15 with the known WiFi issue, and I decide to ask for a refund because it fails to meet its agreed expectation, I will have to pay $170 regardless?
DELL: YES.

This not going anywhere. I changed the topic to warranty.
Me: so how does warrant work?
DELL: Within a year, if it fails, you get a replacement.
Me: Just to be clear, a BRAND NEW replacement, not refurbished?
DELL: Yes.
Me: So how long does it take?
DELL: You call us, we arrange it to be picked up, in 2 to 3 weeks time you will receive the replacement unit.

Which to be fair is kinda expected.

Finally, haggling for discount.
Me: I am a returning customer and you know this is a very expensive investment for a student like me. Is this really the best price you can do?
DELL: Let me check. *on hold for 5 minutes* Ok, I can do $1,583 for you.
Me: WHAT? Thats $16 off!
DELL: Yeh, we are giving you a 1% student discount!

I just didn't know where to go from there. So I thanked her for her help, and then said goodbye.

I can only say, I am not sure if I am still going to buy from DELL anymore.

 

Definitely better off looking at the "refurbished" units mate if you want major discounts. I'm more than happy with mine. I've actually seen a few go up with no scratches and Windows 7 Professional too (mine came with Home Premium).

xnap30, are you talking US or AUD Dell sites here? The AU$1600 (discounted) unit was $1999 when I looked and bought my refurbished one. They haven't bumped msrp up and then discounted off that.

 

Nah I will probably just get a brand new one
I do thank you for trying to help me save some money tho!

 

OK I tried webchat and had much better results.
Didn't get any discount tho, ah well.
But I did get him to promise a FULL REFUND including the delivery cost should the wifi be bad. I have the conversation record so thats a relief.

I have just placed my order. Estimated Delivery Date is on or before 2012-10-17

Oh I can't wait to receive it >_<

 

Plugged in of course

 

How can you explain that when Dell has sended different brand wifi card (Atheros, Dell) with completely different drivers nothing is changed?

How can you explain that when someone has connected the Intel N6235 to external antennas out of the chassis the issue is gone?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

[QUOTE='[-Mac-]How can you explain that when someone has connected the Intel N6235 to external antennas out of the chassis the issue is gone? [/QUOTE]

Someone did this? I have been trying to keep up with people's troubleshooting, but don't remember this one. So, the card was installed in the L521x, had an antenna wired to it, closed up the laptop case and tried it with the antenna hanging out?

 

1. http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...5-l521x-wifi-test-results-10.html#post8755238

2. http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...5-l521x-wifi-test-results-11.html#post8756263


Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

IIRC it was discussed in the wifi-specific l521x thread, not the owner's lounge.

And yes, externalized the antenna - can't remember if it was discrete wires or simply a display element that was not connected to the rest of the machine, and they reported full-rate / connection in the unusable configuration.

 

An external antenna didn't work for me!

 

Without knowing exactly what is going on inside this laptop, a possible explanation for a driver based fix (purely speculation on my part) is a misbehaving component other than the wifi hardware, and/or issues with the wifi firmware's algorithms for dealing with signals with low S/N ratios.

One may tend to think a laptop and a wifi access point have a "private" communication between one another, but what is actually going on with the plethora of wireless devices around us is more like trying to have a conversation across a crowded dance club with the music cranked up. To understand the conversation, you need very sensitive ears (analogous to moving the antenna outside the case) but you also need to pick out your conversation from the background and foreground noise. This is where the firmware, with fancy signal processing, could be of help. If your antenna is not particularly good, you need better signal processing.

The misbehaving other component would be like having a particularly loud person right next to you singing out of tune...

Of course, this analogy is not perfect (it doesn't take into account, for example, spread spectrum and frequency-division multiplexing) but if the antenna design is weaker than expected, the S/N processing has to step it up a notch, and you need to get the loud out-of-tune guy to shut up or go stand somewhere else...

 

I might be a little bit behind the eight ball, but has anyone noticed a reduction in battery life with A09? It's starting to annoy me....

 

Yeah, most people has noticed it. Fan runs like crazy in A09...every single update has made every issue worser and worser...in my opinion, this laptop's updates have been extremely bad.

 

Than why on my XPS 15z the N-6235 is working fine? I updated to the latest N-6235 driver provided by Dell for XPS 15 L521x and I have the same speed as on other laptop with N-6300, measured at around 10M far from router at 15-20Mbps
Basically the XPS 15z comes with N-6230, but I removed it and upgraded it to N-6235 and it working perfect.
I would say that is the casing/chassis/hardware problem. There is not the driver fault for sure, as I said on XPS15z the N-6235 is working PERFECT.

 

I agree, although I've noticed I don't have the fan issue (knock on wood)

Off topic, I've noticed that updating the driver for my Intel 6230 WIFI card actually got me 17-18 mbps and 14-15 down... Things are looking up!

 

Has anyone tried buying their own antennas?

 

Now with a new defective unit in my possession, all the while still trying to process a refund I was emailed by the case manager from dell that a new driver supposedly will fix this. Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

 

I did it, no improvement at all. Bought from eBay TYCO Laptop Wireless Mini PCI PCI-E Internal Antenna, tried inside and outside, no chance.

To fix what? Throttling or Wi-Fi...or both Is not that new, is there for a while now. They try everything to make users to keep the laptop.

 

Apparently just the WiFi, but yes I agree. I laughed at the joke and even let the manager know that I did, seeing as how after this issue has been pretty much assured that it's not a driver problem and that I've had two techs come out now and a brand new replacement laptop that they would even try this on me. Disappointing.

 

Just received a pm from Lionel on the forum. He said hes going to weigh in today but doesn't have much info

 

How much are you getting with A04/ did you get get A04/A06? Mine drops really quickly and doesn't last long with use. I get at most 3 and a half.

US. Look at the screen shot. This is for i7, 32gb msata, 640m, 750gb hdd

 

You're lucky. The last driver update really &^% up things to me. I gettin random disconnects even at 1 meter from router, no walls or anything in between. That's sad. Also sometimes I get THREE bars of signal in the same location. Back in college I couldn't connect to a router at 5 meters with just one glass in between...I just want to get another computer. I'm sick of this one. Also the only game I can play is LoL. Nothing else because it throttles.

 

If that is true, I would like for Dell to replace my laptop with a Rev2 when it is released.

 

Supposedly A11 BIOS will be posted tonight according to Terry B (Dell): Re: XPS 15 L521X ....Latest Problem - XPS Club Forum - XPS Club - Dell Community

 

can't be too sure yet but new drivers ( Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]) looked like they may have worsened the situations. Getting 2 mb speed tests off a 10 mb connection. Will keep checking.

 

i've been using Windows 8 since I got the laptop and never had wifi problem....so if it is a wifi problem, maybe it's windows 7 only?

im just trying to see if i just got lucky or its my OS

 

Hopefully I can let you know sometime in the next week. I'm planning on reloading mine, with horrible wifi performance on Win7, to Win8 sometime this week or this weekend at the latest. Can you share what driver versions you're running on your Win8 load just to make sure I get mine set up the same (wifi, video, bios, etc)?

 

I was dual booting windows 7 and 8 for about a week and had the same wifi issue on windows 8

 

i am using A09 because that allowed for the switch to UEFI which is what you want for Windows 8...windows 8 picks up everything so far tho there are some issues with video but Dell has promised them in time for release of Win 8 on Oct 26

The stock wifi drivers work fine or the ones on Dell's site work fine too

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?docid=575104#L521x

 

Ok so i logged into my dell account and i saw that my replacement l521x is in production. the order date is 1/10/2012 and the estimated delivery date is 2/10/2012 ... does that make any sense? am i getting a newly built system or just a prebuilt one?

also to note, dell is sending me a 600$ check , a refund for the 4 year extended warranty they sold me. appearently the max warranty you can have is 5 years from the date of purchase.. that also includes system exchanges , so pretty much, i cant get a warranty for my x521l because i had purchased my m1530 back in 2008 ;(

 

Was he around today?

 

He sent me a pm today in reply to the pm I sent him a while ago. Still have not seen him here today but this is the pm I got

 

When A11 comes out could someone post a link to it here? I'd love to have my battery life back..

 

It can be downloaded right from the dell support site.

 

Greetings,

I've been following this thread for a few weeks now, and despite fair warnings I went ahead and bought this system from Dell. I received it last week, and yes it appears I have wifi problems as well with Windows 7, and like most of you, I will wait patiently for an eventual fix from Dell.

However, I am writing here for a different issue. Apologies if this has been discussed before:

I've noticed that every time I load or access a media application like Windows Media Player or iTunes the DVD/BD slot drive makes a noise like it's initializing or ejecting a disc. What's weird is that the slot drive is empty. After a little while it becomes quite annoying and I'm beginning to wonder if it's something that
could eventually damage the slot drive.

Has anyone here experienced this, and if so, is there a way to address it?

 

This is also a common complaint. I have read of people getting their drives replaced and it still not helping. Mine does it too, I just ignore it most the time because that seems to be the only solution