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

After an hour of talking to a Dell Rep, he finally gave up trying to "enable" the backlit keyboard. So they're sending me a brand new laptop, but I get to keep this one until the other one comes. I wonder if I could call an get them to add stuff to this one.

 

If you're still on the phone, you could potentially threaten to cancel your order (politely, of course, CSR's are humans too) to try to convince them to sweeten the deal for you in exchange for the trouble they've put you through.

 

That's what I'm considering doing. It would be nice to get the p8600, 8-cell, and external DVD drive for $100.

 

Remember what I posted a few pages back; just like karan mentioned, it's about YOUR value (not their <$25 value). You should at least be able to get something besides the backlit-keyboard for their mistake

EDIT: Not sure on the p8600, but i'm pretty sure you might be able to get the 8-cell or external DVD drive for a reduced price.

 

i'm impatiently waiting for my 14z that HOPEFULLY is supposed to arrive EXACTLY as ordered in 2 days! But hey!, if they mess up the order, at least Dell should mess it up to where I get a faster processor or something thrown in for free lol

That got me thinking...maybe your back-lit keyboard was placed on someone who DIDN'T order it in the first place...bet they're not complaining to Dell

 

Haha maybe you'll be the lucky person that gets other peoples upgrades!

Here's hoping for 5GB Ram!

Edit: You already have the 5GB ram.. What more could you possibly want?

 

I think the only thing left to upgrade on my 14z would be the processor and maybe a 500GB 7200RPM HDD if they offer that...I might be wrong though...

And about the 5GB, it was $275 on my order...doubt Dell would be "dumb enough to make that $275 mistake"...I believe the $25 back-lit kb mistake...but $275..??? but hey!!!! if someone gets it, right on!

EDIT: Well hold on a bit...as long as it's not MY 5GB, then it's cool

 

Maybe if they messed up on the order and accidentally sent 2 14z's; or my 14z and a desktop too

 

^^^ I might be asking for a tad too much

 

Haha that'd be awesome. Accidentally sent you an Alienware.

 

Any word on your 14z Lexus?

 

The depth fits perfectly, so there is no sliding at all. Just that the sleeve doesn't fit nicely in my bookbag so I might as well just get another sleeve. If no one buys it off of me, I will keep it...I guess.

Reposting my question since it got buried:
When I reformatted with Windows 7 RC, am I suppose to format the recovery drive too? I only formatted the OS hard drive...and installed on that one.

 

I don't think you need to. That being said, there's no reason for you not to, since the drivers and things on the recovery drive are Vista and not 7.

 

I would keep the recovery drive just in case you don't have any USB drives handy and need to reformat. I find it useful to put drivers and whatnot on it so when I reformat, I don't have to redownload anything. It only takes up 15GB afterall.

 

The Purolator (Dell's courier in Canada) tracking system still shows "In Transit in U.S." as of July 31. No new info so far. I hope it arrives on Thursday.

 

But I think it's not accessible from the operating system, only when you are in low level partitioning mode, no?

 

I don't know much about partitions, but it's accessible for me within Vista/My Computer.

 

It won't show any change until it's in their depot in Canada. Sort of like Dell's internal tracking - no info until it's at the end

 

Mine Shipped on the 30th, is supposed to be here tomorrow. Maybe yours will show up on Wednesday.

 

my 14z is supposed to ship on the fifth. do you think i could call and upgrade my shipping speed, or is it to late at this point? i tried calling today but i didn't call in time before they closed.

 

hey guys, richard here. long time lurker, first time post.
anyways, back on topic.. im on the same boat as you.. mine's in transit via toronto last dated on July 31st. it's supposed to be here tomorrow.. let's just hope so aha.

 

There isn't any harm in trying, you may have some luck, use the word "expedite" for whatever reason they really like that word.

P.S. Has anyone who's installed Windows 7 tried installing the Windows Vista Dell recommended power settings off the site? May remove the difference in battery life between Vista and 7.

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=7&fileid=248262

 

Hi - yes, I've installed them. I wish there was a test we could run on each OS to see the actual difference.

 

mine's the same, shipped 7/30 supposed to arrive tomorrow (8/4). Glad I paid for 2 day shipping.

 

does the HDMI port on this laptop export audio as well as video?

 

yes (10char)

 

I didn't pay for two day shipping but it's coming tomorrow anyway

 

Greeting all. I just joined and have a few question relating to the 14z.

I just got mine a few days ago and love most things about it. But there are two problems so far.
First it overheats when playing back video. I can only imagine what it will do playing games. Video playback will get stuttery and sometimes the laptop will suddenly turn off with a bit of a popping sound.

Second is that I am unable to register for the windows 7 upgrade (yet) I was told that they are working on that.

Anyone else experience the overheating problem? Its only the GPU that is a problem, the CPU stays cool. Or should I be sending this thing back? I would hate to be without a laptop again.

 

I've never heard of anybody having the GPU problem... Your notebook shutting down and a popping noise sounds pretty bad, you should send it back. My video playback is silky smooth, even with 1080p. I just did a quick test and my 9400m stays pretty cool; around 53C idle and 62C under load.

Yeah, some people are having the Windows 7 upgrade problem. It should work in a couple days.

 

Thanks for the pics!

Mine was supposed to be delivered today, but for some reason FedEx home delivery is closed. *shrug* Anyways, it'll be here tomorrow along with my 2209WA LCD

Still torn about the sleeve. The zeroschock looks really nice but I'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment. I mean I did just spend a boatload on the 14z I have a $15 Newegg credit for complaining about how they shipped me something so I'll probably get the Case Logic sleeve. Not like it's a huge investment I can't change later.


-edit-

I caved and bought the Case Logic case. I'll probably try out a Zeroshock later when I have more cash. Was worried about it fitting in my backpack in the designated "laptop area". Anyways, just a head's up, Newegg has the black Case Logic for $16.99 (I didn't want to chance 2 weird blues together after comparing against Mangakjd's pics) but the shipping is an outright atrocity. The lowest shipping amount came to $11.49. That's just ridiculous. Newegg is going down the tubes in my opinion. I could ship a whole laptop wrapped in that sleeve for less. But of course they would filter that out of the reviews section.

If it wasn't for the $15 credit I had there I would have gone elsewhere to get this sleeve. Pretty sure eBags has the free shipping up again, so check there first. Maybe I can complain at Newegg some more and get another $15 credit.

 

Mine is 60c ish at idle and up to 85c while just playing back some streaming low quality video. Well that sucks. Guess I will call dell tomorrow. Thanks for the info.

 

let us know about how the case logic fits.

 

Well, I'm supposed to have mine today. *crossing fingers*

They attempted delivery at my office on Saturday, but no one was there. I had called FedEx to see if I could have the delivery address changed. They said that normally I could ... except they have a special deal with Dell and they could only do it if I arranged it through Dell. Of course, a call to Dell led to 30 minutes on the phone and 3 transfers, only to be told it was too late to change.

I called yesterday to see if I could go pick it up since the FedEx facility is only about 10 miles from my office, but they said the entire FedEx Ground Home facility was closed on Mondays. Who knew?

But, it's on the truck now and headed for my office. I'm looking forward to finally seeing this thing. It's been great reading everyone else's comments and seeing the pictures. By the way, the blue is really nice looking; much better than in the pic's online.

One question, that will probably sound pretty basic to most of you: When you're talking about doing a fresh install of Vista (or 7), is this because it's the best way to get rid of all the extraneous crap-ware most computers companies pre-install? And -- here's the really stupid part -- are you formatting the Hard Drive and then doing the install.

I'm going to do a lot more reading on this, but was wondering if anyone could sort of point me in the right direction.

Thanks for any guidance, and keep your fingers crossed.

 

Yeah, a fresh install involves formatting the hard drive (fresh, clean, not filled with junk). It's gotten much simpler in the past 10 years, where you just put the cd in, restart, and press (I forget which fkey.. I'm leaning towards f8 or f10) to go to boot options, and you choose your cd. Then you basically follow directions, and in the setup, theres one step where you choose your os partition and to format it. When I install Windows 7, I'm probably going to delete the recovery partition and split the hard drive into the normal C and D drives.

This is for the cd reformat, I'm not that familiar with the usb version.

 

Yes, the format is pretty quick and is done as part of the install. Mine was never even booted up in Vista.

While you're waiting this morning, you can download all the drivers from the Dell site and have them ready to go.

 

Sure you can. You can download them through your browser and open or save them like any other file. You don't even have to download them from the PC you're downloading them for.

 

Yeah I found my dell downloader doesn't work either, so when you download the first driver, you choose download through browser or something like that, and underneath there's a use this setting for all current downloads type dealie. Annoyingly you have do download them one by one (I had like 14)

 

5 years ago I orderer two ipod minis on apple.ca, they sent me both but only charged for one on the credit card lol

 

ive tried warcraft 3 and left4dead so far.

as far as heat is concerned, i prop up the laptop a little for gaming and the fan doesn't really stay at full blast the full time. during warcraft 3, it would go on for maybe 30 seconds and shut off. left4dead was more full blast. the notebook itself was relatively cool though. only the heatsink area which is like 1"x3" was warm

 

Has anyone had any luck undervolting their 14z yet, with either the T6500 or P8600? I'd really like to know how much you can cut down power consumption and prolong battery life.

 

I moved my p8600 from like 1.085 to 1.0, and the other voltages wouldn't post. I think some other people have gotten down to .95v.

 

There's a thread on that in this forum somewhere, just search for "14z undervolting"

I installed 7 on it smooth as silk. driver install went well too. Haven't had a chance to compare battery life, but will get around to it soon, hopefully. Now i can actually get around to moving to it permanently.

 

This is insane! lol. Estimated Delivery was set to tomorrow, 8/5/2009 when I check last night. Checked this morning again and it is now 8/14/2009!!!! That's almost 10 days added. How great is that when the day before you are to get it, they tell ya no nevermind, we'll send it in a week and a half.

Hmmm...maybe i should use this as a way to get the free dvd drive

Weird thing is that it's been in the BOXING STAGE since 6 days ago and now they are adding 9 more days for a total of 15 BOXING days. Now I might be wrong, but I believe the boxing stage is after the system has been built already and has all the components in it and has been tested. So this couldn't be a "short on supplies" delays. What could be causing the delay? And I mean, 15 days to "box" a notebook and even 15 days to ship it from another country to the United States is crazy especially when it's supposed to be next-day delivery!

Even when I call to check the status of the order, it used to tell me the estimated SHIP date. Now it just says "that's all the information I have at this time".

Anybody else getting delays that were supposed to get it this week? =/

Note: The status page is what has the new delivery date. I haven't received an official Dell email stating that my delivery date has changed though. I'm really, REALLY hoping it's a website glitch and the 14z mysteriously arrives in my front door tomorrow as it was originally supposed to...

 

I just want to say ... you folks are AWESOME!!!

I'm so glad I found this site.

It's probably obvious, but the last time I did formatted a HDD was something like *gulp* 20 years ago. Wow, even I didn't realize how long it had been. You'll get a laugh out of this. Right out of college, I bought a PC clone (Leading Edge, for those of you old enough to remember those -- It had the snazzy new amber monitor too, no stinkin' green for me.) I'd bought it as a dual 5 1/4" floppy system and subsequently installed a whopping 20 MB HDD and learned all the DOS formatting and programming at that time.

Since then I've always used company machines and relied on our I.T. department. Skill set got kinda rusty.

Anyway, thanks again gang. Much appreciated.

I'll let you know when it arrives. In the meantime ... twiddle, twiddle, twiddle.

 

It could be a short on supplies part still. Could be short on power supplies, manuals, heck anything else that goes in the box that is not built into your notebook.

 

Packing tape?

 

they have everything except for the little slips of cardboard that they ship the cd's and manuals in.

 

For those who haven't bought a 14z yet, two suggestions I'd have is buy from EPP (if possible) and upgrade the cover. (I'm kind of anal about fingerprints). IMO EPP has a much better customer support dept, and you get your 5, 6, or 7% off. As of right now I'm going to prioritize the upgrades I put on my computer, if it'll help anyone. Oh and go for the 8 cell battery... I kind of feel it'd be foolish not to because its one of those rare cases where the battery sits flush..

On another note.. while I was writing this, I was thinking since the 8 cell is flush, dell should have done the 8 cell and had an optional like 12 cell that sticks out ><

 

that would last like eight hours. The longest lasting battery in the history of batteries.

 

Lol. If that was the case (AND they would admit it), I'd tell them to just ship it like that!!!!