---> OFFICIAL: Dell STUDIO 14z Owner's Lounge <---

There's a 13 hours difference. So, Sunday evening in North America is Monday morning/noon in Southeast Asia.

 

haha, that too.

 

I would strongly advice everybody to disable the face recognition feature and type the old good password every time you want to log in. Yes, it's a nice feature and everything, but it's not secure at all. The reason for that is that anyone with high resolution picture of your face can login to you computer simply by holding that picture in front of the webcam! Of course, this is not 14z specific -- absolutely any computer having this feature is vulnerable. You've been warned!

 

I have not been able to fool my Studio 15's FastAccess with a picture of me, and I've been trying.

 

Sorry for interrupting the order status party, but would any current owners of the 14z with a 7200rpm HDD be able to provide the make and model of their drive? Or even info on regular 5400 rpm drives would be useful. Right now I'm debating between a 500GB 5400rpm and 320GB 7200rpm (with free fall sensor, for what it's worth). The two are the same price, so if I'm trying to base my decision on power consumption (from various spec sheets if possible)

 

Only the YouTube reviewer had that issue. Nobody else in this forum reported that. And besides, even the YouTube reviewer might have had an uneven desk.

 

Could be, but better safe than sorry

 

Think it will be possible to set it up with both?

 

All the Studio 15 hard drives I've seen are Western Digital Scorpio Blue (5,400 RPM) or Scorpio Black (7,200 RPM), or Seagate Momentus 5400.4 or 7200.4.

My current Studio 1555 hard drive is the Seagate Momentus 5400.4 320GB, and my previous 1535's hard drive was the WD Scorpio Blue 320GB.

Have you actually fooled yours with a photo, or are you theorizing?

 

By what I tested here at the Best Buy it looks like BOTH are on. I believe you can simply type in the password instead.

 

well that was a fast reply
if anyone else could provide info about their studio 14z or even studio 15 hard drives, it would be much appreciated. although the power consumption between respective WD and seagate 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives don't seem to differ much..

in which case that leads me to ask, how much of a battery life hit would we be talking about between the two? given an 8 cell battery, that is

 

I mean would it be possible to require both.

On a side note, congrats to all participants, this thread is now OVER 1000!!!!

 

If facial recognition is not enough, maybe they should combine facial recognition with fingerprint reader, voice activated, and might even throw in a retina scan of some sort...all at once

You can simply put one finger on the reader, look at the camera, camera will automatically try to do a facial recognition and a retina scan, and you can say one word that will match what you had previously recorded and voila! You're in. lol

What do you all think? haha

 

Theorizing, because I haven't received mine yet. But surely I will try with a high-resolution photo and post the results here

 

all of which would be useless if your hard drive weren't encrypted

 

Yes, that's right. They're both on the sign-in screen. The typed-in password is still the "real" password - you need the typed-in password to enable it and to get it to recognize a different version (lighting conditions) of your face.

 

There's articles online about security teams actually fooling scanners that way - i doubt a webcam is as precise.

 

and that word should be "hamburger"
(i just watched "The Pink Panther")

 

And to keep things a bit more precise...maybe with that fingerprint reader we can include for it to poke you with a small needle to draw blood and test the DNA and allow access

 

not to ruin the fun again, but michaelf i see that you got the 320gb 7200rpm hdd with your 14z. what led you to choose that over, say, the 500gb 5400rpm drive, which should have been the same price?

 

Main and probably ONLY factor: Speed.

I eventually plan to install a 64GB SSD and use this 7200rpm in an external enclosure for data storage. Most of my work demands faster speeds rather than space. It's not like I will be working with 500GB worth of files all at once. I work with several 100MB+ files at times.

I plan to use the SSD and have the work that I work on the most in it. All the other files that I don't use that often will be in the external HDD. In the case where I want to work on a file that is in the external HDD, I will drop it into my SSD to work from there (depending on the need for speed and timeframe etc that I have).

But nonetheless, speed is the biggest factor for me, not storage space. You can always buy a small external HDD for more space if needed.

EDIT: And also, I wouldn't want to have ALL my files inside the HDD. If it is ever stolen (hope never), ALL my files would be gone. That's the reason space is no issue, because regardless, I will try to have the least files on it at a time; only files that I work on or will be working on in the next few weeks etc. That being said, out of 320GB I will probably only use 30-60GB or so from my files. If it was a 500GB...it would still only be 30-60GB of my files. So if I will be using the same amount of space regardless of the capacity, I rather be able to work with those 30-60GB faster in a 7200RPM HDD than a 5400RPM.

Just my $0.02

 

With 5GB of RAM, I doubt that michaelf is keeping the regular HDD anyways. SSD all the way!

 

Lol. Exactly. Looking into getting an SSD for my current projects and the external HDD as storage for archiving previous projects.

I was looking into buying an external HDD but it didn't dawn on me that I could simply buy a $25 or so enclosure and put in the current 320GB HDD in it after I install the SSD

I currently only have about 80-100GB worth of files.

 

Anyone checked this SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231255 ?

Looking into spending..err...INVESTING no more than $200 (250 if need be) for an SSD. (Darn 5GB cash'd me out $275--that's like a good SSD there! lol)

 

^^^ michaelf, this is exactly what I plan to do as well. I have 2TB of external storage, so it doesn't make sense to have a large hard drive in the laptop anyways.

 

Exactly...and that's the problem I have with it. The bigger the storage the more you want to put in it but here you are placing ALL of your files inside a very attractive (some will beg to differ ) notebook that thieves wouldn't mind taking. And to them, they don't care what's inside the HDD, they just want the notebook itself.

Thus the reason I want to keep only somewhat required files in the notebook and backups and storage elsewhere.

Plus, before we know it, there will be 1-2TB inside a notebook...actually I think i've seen some because there's some notebooks that have dual 500GB drives =/ But to me, it's never been safe to keep important stuff all in one place. If someone gets a hold of it, it's all gone. Rather spread them around and give them an adventure to put the pieces together

 

Power consumption aside, you guys would have me convinced to get the 320GB 7.2k, especially since I have over 2TB of external storage. But, as I'll probably be lugging this around from class to class all day, battery life is a pretty important factor to me

 

The 9-cell won't dissapoint. Doesn't even stick out of the back.

EDIT: it's an 8-cell battery, not a 9-cell. My bad

 

just dropping in to give an update on my 14z order status...

received ANOTHER DELAY NOTICE!
this is my second delay notification. i am not happy.
i am going to school soon and it would be a hassle to travel home just
to pick up the laptop i should already have about now.

ordered: 7/14
orig. ship date: 7/29
1st delay: 8/5
2nd delay: 8/11

specs:
ruby red
2.4ghz
3gb ddr3
900p
250gb 7200 rpm
wireless-n
bluetooth
6-cell battery
back-lit keyboard

i'm pretty sure i will cancel the order. so far Dell has proved to be untimely and not so reliable. who knows, they could delay it again!! i'm not sure if it's worth the wait for the 14z. though, it is the best budget-fitting, strong-performing, ideally-sized laptop for me. i have to give consent to Dell to whether or not to continue with my order by 10pm tonight. until then i'll be scavenging for a potential similar lappy to replace...

 

There might be other ways to lower the power consumption if you decide to go with the 7.2K to at least maybe make up for the difference, if not better.

Anybody know ways to lower power consumption?

 

You've waited 16 days so far...maybe a few more days won't hurt??? But who knows, I wasn't able to find another notebook that offered the config I got for this price...and also I get the 7% EPP discount so it made it even better; and to me, hopefully worth the wait.

 

there's been a thread about undervolting the processor to increase battery life.

 

I believe it's 8-cell. But karan is right. It doesn't stick out. If you haven't planned for 8-cell I would recommended, will definitely add more battery time.

That plus I just remembered there is a tutorial here on undervolting. Which can give anywhere from 10-30+ minutes more of battery life.

 

Mine been delayed 2 times as well, but I will wait

Last year when I purchased XPS M1330, the original delivery date was in 4 weeks, but I received it faster, in 3 weeks. So, I'd say that 3-4 weeks is what it takes, especially with this new model, I guess the demand is incredibly high. The bad thing is that Dell promises to deliver it in 2 weeks, but that doesn't happen. If they told us all to wait 4 weeks, but then sent it earlier, I guess no one here would complain! When I was ordering, I knew I should reserve about a month, that's why I'm OK with that.

 

They must think that enough people wouldn't buy it if delivery takes too long. I dunno who actually buys computers that way though.

 

Well, yes, but still it's better to buy a completely customized computer, with all the components that *YOU* wanted, than just grab a stock PC from a store. The exception is the guy here who got a totally wrong configuration

 

haha, I know a computer science major with such strong belief in the cloud who will disagree with you.

But, given the options, I agree.

 

karan and michael, thanks for the help. i indeed am opting for the 8-cell battery (it's actually both the default and only battery option for the configuration i'm customizing) and i was already planning on undervolting my cpu now i just can't decide whether the p8600 is worth the extra $125 over the t6500...performance and of course battery wise

 

Has anyone tried Ubuntu on the 14z? I'm not looking forward to using Vista until Windows 7 comes out and Ubuntu is definitely my second favorite OS after XP. Another question...does the HDD come with any recovery partitions or anything? I remember having some difficulty creating a partition on my current laptop, so I had to install Ubuntu through XP.

 

it may have a mediadirect partition

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

 

Nope, this one doesn't AFAIK.

 

Windows 7 RC1 is very stable, you might wanna try it if you haven't yet. I think all Dell computers have a recovery partition, so yes.

 

Yeah I was thinking about that too...

 

Does anyone know if chiralscroll works with win7?

 

You might want to call beforehand to see if your order is truely delayed again. I had the same order date, delivery dates, and generally the same specs as you, and mine went into the final stages of production yesterday, which means it should ship here in a day or two. I got the same 2nd delay notification today as well, but my rep told me that it still looked to be on track. He sent a request to not cancel anyway though just in case. I was told to basically ignore the delay notice. I would just check to see what's really up if you plan to cancel it.

 

I called in again. when I checked the website just now the date written was the 11 of august, back down from the 14th. This new one did not mention anything about it having left from malaysia as the last one did, but she referred to supply issues, which she says dell has sorted out. This all leaves me thoroughly confused

 

Maybe there's Dell people just poking numbers and dates randomly into a computer

 

Your welcome

Not sure how the battery life is on the t6500 vs the p8600 that I ordered. I would think the performance is better (how much not sure). And if it's worth the $125, that I do not know. I ordered it nonetheless But has anybody done a performance and battery life comparison between these two or at least two cpu's that resembles these (t6400 or p8700 etc)?

 

Moneywise. If your keeping this thing for more than 3-4 years, spend the $125. Otherwise, save it for the next laptop as the upgrade is 20% of the base price for the studio 14z. ( a huge chunk )

Performance difference is apparent but is not as big a difference as everyone portrays it. for most things like office or ims or webbrowsing. you may be able to shave off a few milliseconds but there will be no apparent difference, battery or heat wise (mostly idling cpu)

for performance consuming tasks like video editing, theres a heat difference, power consumption difference, and a few seconds worth of difference. is that worth $125 to you? the T6500 does things just fine though if you dont feel like spending $125

 

I know I got the p8600 because I plan on having this machine throughout college and a 2.4ghz processor will probably be rather low end 3-4 years from now. FYI, if you live on the east coast, your laptop will probably ship out of Nashville, TN. Mine was picked up from there at 6:00AM and is on its way here.

I also have another question...If I got the 900p screen, is there any chance I'll get the LG screen? I heard those are the ones that have the flickering problem... How can I tell if I do have one once I get it?