XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

ok thanks.

I don't understand why the Dell guy sent me a link of a driver file which doesn't even exist on their FTP (the HD4000 one)!

 

Same throttle issue with the xps14?

 

Yes, but it downclocks proc until 800MHz instead of L521X 1200MHz.

 

So, I have just got off the phone with the Dell UK Premium Support, the most annoying bit was the wait but the guy I talked to was very polite and he understood the problem after a look through my drivers and WiFi card setup, which I have said earlier in the thread after someone suggested a way that improved his performance, which I did. He took control of my XPS looked through, everything was the way it should be to get good connection. So he put me on hold for a few more minutes, probably to ask someone higher what they should do and he came back and told me they are sending a mini usb wifi adapter until they come up with a permenant fix to implement in this model of laptop, I suppose thats the closest we will get to them admitting there is a problem.

Then I asked about the new Win8 model coming out in america, and when it will come out here in europe, and he said I should wait and see how that goes and if the WiFi problem has a fix implemented in that I may be able to ask for my current XPS to be replaced by that one, due to the faulty WiFi, emphasis on the MAY, as it depends on who I deal with a suppose.

Definitely going to be keeping my eye on this forum for a review on the Win8 model once someone gets one to see how their WiFi is, does anyone know when Europe or the UK will get the options to purchase this model?

 

I an idea of how to see which laptops are effected by the grid lcd(not sure how many people have brought this up or done this yet), go to support.dell.com , click on system configuration on the left side (under product support), then when it brings you to the page with your system click on the system configuration tab, and it will list parts similar to this. You will want the one highlighted in red that says "LCD". Mine is not affected because I have an L502X, so my screen is a different part.

3C4JR
1
MODULE..., ASSEMBLY..., BASE (ASSEMBLY OR GROUP)..., DISCRETE VIDEO..., 1G, L502X

4WYVT
1
Module, Software, Quick Fix Engineering, WIN7SP1, No Bios

7FHH7
1
SERVICE INSTALL MODULE..., SOFTWARE..., EXTREME PERFORMANCE SYSTEM..., L502X

7N17C
1
MODULE..., DVDRW/BD-ROM, HITACHI LG DATA STORAGE..., INSPIRON...

8GFV1
1
MODULE..., LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY..., 15.6FHD, TLF, AU OPTRONICS CORP..., NIMOY

 

Few questions:

1. How long does the battery life last on average?
2. Do the wifi issues still exist?
3. How heavy is the laptop?
4. Is it ideal to be bringing this laptop to university everyday?
5. Anything else I should know? Is the laptop worth getting?

 

balong48: I'll play, for my machine which the display looks great upon,

 

Okay thanks, I'm gonna try and keep a log to try and narrow it down to see which ones are affected and which ones aren't.

 

This drives me crazy. Obviously Dell has made a wrong hardware design, this issue is global, it affects all the L521x production ; and the Dell response is all but global. Some guy in the US has seen his whole screen assembly replaced by the new antenna design, in France, we still talk about driver, and you have the wifi dongle with some PC replacement proposal.

Hey Dell: global problem = global solution.

 

Look at the answers next to your questions

 

I have not much info regarding the system configuration, just: DISPLAY : ELEMENTAL SILVER ALUMINIUM WIT
AIDA64 says a bit more:
AU Optronics B156HTF ; AUO00ED ; 6985X_B156HTF ; 15.6 LCD.
It looks OK, just the fine vertical lines sometimes are more visible.

 

I don't see how it is inferior, my brother has the previous model XPS15 and my screen looks far superior in my opinion. The only issue I have with it is that it is glossy instead of matte.

Also, I doubt I'm the exception, I think it is probably more likely that a large majority of people having issues with their XPS15's have found their way to these forums. There's been quite a number of users posting in this thread that haven't had the screen grid issues.

 

So, I downloaded Core Temp and ran a quick 8 minute test while playing SC2. As you can see from the log file, my temps quickly hit 90°+ C. I think the laptop starts beeping at you around 85° C. Can anyone confirm this? How do you turn the beeping warning off?


Attached is an excel spreadsheet. I was going to turn it into a line graph, but couldn't figure it out.

file backup online

 

Same here Great Screen, but weak wifi.

6985X 1 Liquid Crystal Display, 15.6FHD, Wireless Local Area Network Card, Top Latch, Assembly, Au Optronics Corp

 

Quck question. Was anyone able to install Windows 8 RTM on their L521x? I've been trying since day 1 but failed every single time. When I try to clean install, installation utility could not find "drivers" for something. For upgrade, installation would restart at 90% then reboot just to show me a face to just to revert back to Windows 7.

 

Hi balong, mine looks good as well....
WHFRG1 Silver Aluminium LCD Back with 15.6"(39.6cm) FHD (1080p) True Life WLED Display. Hmmm...mine seems quite different from the other two. Anyway, my wifi works alright. Not sure how perfect it is because my connection here isn't that fast anyway. But it works fine through 10m with 1 wall in between.

 

This is mine, great screen.

 

Something may be wrong with your image. I have Windows 8 RTM myself for almost 2 months now and it found everything except the Intel HD4000 drivers which is a common thing as I had that same thing happen to my DV6 and Sony S15 when i had the same issue.

Dell also promised to have all the native windows 8 drivers by this Friday so maybe you want to look out for those

 

My battery lasted 6.5 hours the other day on wifi with the LCD on 3 bars. It started out not fully charged and said it had 30 minutes left. So it would definitely last 7+ hours. But returned it today

 

Redownload it. Win7 always complained to me about drivers because the download would somehow get corrupt. Very common issue.

 

Shipped mine back today and ordered a new l521x with the new proc, wifi card, and win8. Ships the 30th. I'll report back next week.

 

I thought about the possible data corruption but this is my fifth image download and still doesn't work .

 

Most thermal pastes are not electrically conductive. (They just conduct heat)

Yea, but some games can still be played fine, but not as good as other computers without throttling (Lower FPS). Maybe your friend has the old XPS 15? (L501X or L502X ?)

 

My screen is great also .

 

That's not true I have an incase sleeve designed for macbooks pro 15" and it fits perfectly in it.
Neoprene Sleeve for 15" MacBook Pro by Incase

 

Few questions:

How long does the battery life last on average?
Do the wifi issues still exist?
How heavy is the laptop?
Is it ideal to be bringing this laptop to university everyday?
Anything else I should know? Is the laptop worth getting?

Still looking for more feedback here.

 

I have the same one by incase but not neoprene, it was the more expensive faux leather one. IT did not fit into it by a few cms. The neoprene one fits because it's stretchable

 

Your questions were already answered several posts back. Start from your first post and slowly read forward.

 

Aww , can someone pls confirm or deny this..


Originally Posted by elvis7

Um I just noticed something that's getting on my nerves.. When on battery, the laptop hoes into power saver, that's how I set it, but the CPU frequency stays at 1.8 and that causes the laptop to run sluggish and slow. So I looked at power save options and the minimum state was set to 0% and the max also at 0% .. So I changed min to 25% and max to 50% but nothing. Looked at high performance and its set to max per at 100% unplugged , so I changed it to 80% and behold, the CPU dropped to 1.8,1.9 and doesn't go up, even if I run tests like prime 95, converters etc.. So it's you can either have 1.9cpu or 2.7 at 100% ... Anyone else?





Originally Posted by elvis7

is there a reason why my processor management settings will not save after i restart or come out of hibernation?
i dont want the damn processor max set to 0% on power saver unplugged! could the dell extended battery life be changing it? i have it set to change the to power saver when i unplug the laptop but does it ruin everything? help pls
Can anyone else try this out and see if its just me or another of Dell's stupidity
edit: frequency drops to 1197 mhz

 

Does the A11 BIOS fix anything?

 

My battery lasts up to 5-6 hours for small applcations or internet browsing, 3h30 with videos.

The wifi issue apparently still exists. On mine it's fine but my router is not really far (5m with a wall).

It's quite heavy for its size but easily transportable

I bring my laptop everyday to the university

This laptop is a good laptop to my mind. Of course if you read all the posts you won't think this way but only complaints are posted on internet, people who are happy with it won't dedicate a forum to say how happy they are with their laptops. I think that there are so many complaints on this forum because this laptop appears as the perfect laptop on the paper and people were expecting too much from it. But if it was so bad, everyone would have just sent it back and nobody would talk about it anymore. I think people are globally frustrated to not to have the perfect laptop they were expecting but this perfect laptop does not exist. You always have to do compromises. With a thin design you are always exposed to heating problems so this laptop won't run the last games in high quality but it can certainly run most of the games with a decent quality and be used to do everyday tasks.
To answer this quaestion, I would say it is worth getting, it's a good compromise between performances and design/transportability but it's not the perfect laptop.

 

So I tried again with a new download on USB drive instead of DVD. A11 version of BIOS froze when I had my USB drive plugged in. I tried multiple times and no avail. Then I tried the upgrade path (which I don't really want to do) and still failed at 90% after restart. I'm starting to think it might be my hardware issue?

 

How are you getting 5-6 hours with light browsing? Tell me your secrets. If im lucky i drop 10%in 15 minutes of word and facebook

 

I get about 5-6 hours battery life on 'Power Saver' mode with light browsing on A11.

 

I get 5+ with light work (browsing and mail and some light java based coding).

Bios a11 fixed a conflict with GeForce and the tracking feature of the bios (forget the name). Bios a09/a11 also introduced UEFI support - probably fr win 8 support but can be used with win 7.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

What CPU you guys are using would also help as I would assume there's a difference between i5 and i7? I have an i7 but couldn't comment on battery as I mostly used mine plugged in.

 

I got 5 hours, unplugged, with skype video chat , sending video not receiving, screen dimmed to lowest , bluetooth off, keyboard backlight off, power saver, windows 7 basic look,dvd drive off.

Now can someone help me out with my earlier question? Ive only asked 4 times O_O

 

I ran into the same problem installing via uefi the other day. It kept freezing so I eventually blamed it in hardware. I was able to use the same image to install via bios boot.

 

When I used USB key, BIOS freezes when loading. Tried the DVD route but installtion told me I was missing drivers....

 

Maybe try to install from the same media on a different pc. But those driver warnings I've run into multiple times on multiple PCs and it was always media. Have you checked the hashes after your download? A good tool to have is a shell integrated md5 checker so you can always just right click a download and check if its in its original form.

 

fyi: a USB drive that installs via Legacy Boot will not work under UEFI.

 

Hi all,
I've been called by a Dell tech guy and he sent me last HD4000 driver (revision A02) "which fixes the wifi issue. This was due to a hardware conflict between the chipset and the HD4000" -> Dell inside of course

I'm currently uploading the file, and I'll post here the direct link as soon as I can.

 

Here is the new driver: Intel Ivy Bridge HD4000 Graphics A02

I can't test right now, I don't have my XPS with me. Enjoy !

 

about the processor speed scaling control? it may be that nobody has an answer.

mine doesn't seem to be a problem - on- AC power the scaling works fine, I haven't tried to change the power policy cpu scaling controls so have no idea of the behavior. Don't have the machine to play with right now so can't say (at work you know).

 

Yeah, I must be doing something wrong. I have my power settings set to Power Saver and when I unplug my laptop it says I have somewhere between 1 hour 30 minute to 2 hours remaining.

My screen looks great. No complaints.

6985X 1 Liquid Crystal Display, 15.6FHD, Wireless Local Area Network Card, Top Latch, Assembly, Au Optronics Corp

 

Odd. I have the same display part but i CAN see the pixel grid pretty clearly. Very obvious at 100% brightness a lot less annoying at 55% (where i set it)

I have owned this laptop for a week now and I have been using it frequently. I must say I am overall pleased with it no wifi problems no throttling.
It is a very sexy machine and powerful. Not dead quite but definitely well within my comfort zone.

The only problem is probably the pixel grid. It is fairly obvious at times especially when viewing light colours (white, light blue, light green)
Also, I keep hearing a mild high pitch sound that sounds like a capacitor whine. Very mild tho i don't notice it 90% of the time. But if you are in a quite room, you will notice it.

But again, these are small small issues (even the pixel grid isn't that bad, because you won't see it when you are watching pictures and movies)
If the new l521x does come with a screen with absolutely no grids, I will definitely ask for a replacement tho. Then, and only then, this machine will get an 'A' in my book.

 

Someone reported that was found to be a known quirk of the CPU itself, something about varying processing frequency. No further details.

 

A screen that has 6x% of rgb how it can be superior from one with 9x% of rgb i leave that as a question! I did not hear so many problems with Dell XPS L502x
And because i got many answers my screen is perfect then check how many users said my screen has a problem. When you place a premium price at a product and you claim you can offer the best service you should be able to fix those.

 

Ya I followed all the instructions fat32 n all to no avail its a pretty straight forward procedure. I'd get into the install but it would freeze up.

 

Anyone going to try?!!