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

http://download.esupport.com/files/WinPhlash_64-bit_v1.0.2.5.zip Is the link to the flash software i used to downgrade to A01.

 

Bounty!

Oh, didn't you hear about their new slogan?

"The quicker-picker-upper-laptop-fixer."

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfdoLBni4zA

 

sure thing (just keep in mind i'm 6 foot and over 400 lbs, so this bag is probably NOT going to look huge on me) - please remind me if you don't see it up here in a few days, as i have a tendency to lose track of things...the bag is a little bigger than i expected when it comes to the 2 dimensional length and width but, depthwise (from front to back), it's a little smaller than I was hoping for, since I was planning on putting a set of clothes in there with the laptop but it isn't deep enough to hold much clothingwise. I'm probably one of the few to really want to use my laptop bag as a small suitcase, but I think it's at least worth noting in case there exists another such person (lol)

 

It looks like the glowing logo mod will be easier than I thought. My LCD panel (900p) does not have any foil on the back of it. The foil is actually stuck onto the back of the lid, so there's really zero risk in ruining the LCD.

Essentially, all you need to do is cut out a whole, fill it with plastic which is then covered with a gel diffusion filter. Can't wait til my Dremel gets here.

 

Are you putting in an apple or something else?

 

Does anyone know about the new dell studio 14 that is on Dell malayasia? , it is almost exactly the same as the dell 14z except with built in dvd rom ,512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 and 8 cm thicker at the back. Anyone know about its battery life?

 

One of the major things about the 14z was that it didn't come with a cd rom, and it would need a total redesign if it were to have one. Is it possible that you're thinking about the inspiron 1440 or possibly the studio 15?

 

It's not a new model. It's an old one that wasn't released in many countries - nowhere in North America or Europe.

 

Here is the link http://www1.ap.dell.com/my/en/home/notebooks/laptop-studio-1450/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-1450&s=dhs&cs=mydhs1

I think it is a new one , the model number is 1450, never saw it before

 

Well, since the 14z only came out a few months ago.. maybe its a non-north america type computer? I am kind of jealous, since its 2x 2gb ram, I don't think it'll be soldered in.

 

Are you saying that the A03 version made a good improvement to battery life in windows 7?

With the problems in changing brightness and volume after updating to the A03 BIOS version...does changing the function keys setting back to the default in the BIOS correct all that? Same with the bluetooth problem. Does bluetooth just have to be re-enabled in the BIOS settings?

I would like to update the BIOS if it improves battery life in Windows 7 but not at the expense of other problems. If the problems that arise can't be fixed by just correcting the BIOS settings afterword, I'll just wait for A04.

 

Well, I didn't have any problems, it's just that the BIOS update has reset the function keys to their "multimedia" behaviour, so I was confused, I thought they don't work . But after I went to BIOS setup and in Advanced tab changed them to the "function keys" behavior, everything was back to normal. I don't use any software, like QuickSet, etc., but I think that Zak uses it, and so in combination with A03 update, he says that the screen brightness functionality does not work. Maybe it's a QuickSet + A03 bug. As I said, I don't have QuickSet, so everything works for me fine, haven't noticed any bugs yet. Will run a battery test again, to see if anything has improved in that area.

 

yeah please let us know

 

I do use QuickSet, but even after a fresh install of Windows and before installing QuickSet I still was unable to adjust the brightness. As for the Bluetooth not working, that was completely unrelated to operating system. I ran the diagnostic from the F12 boot menu and the computer doesnt even think that it has the bluetooth card installed. This was all under A03, believe me, I tried everything and had no luck. I spent 8 hours on the phone with Dell support...

 

that bites - hope you can get that fixed. - I'm likely not upgrading the bios just yet seeing the response that you guys have been giving. I will be waiting for a better version to come out.

 

Yeah, it's probably safer to wait for A04.

I did a battery test today, but haven't noticed any improvements. But then again, I watched a ton of YouTube videos on wireless, and Adobe Flash drains the battery fast I will do another one again tomorrow.

 

Did anyone else download the update for face recognition? I haven't spent much time using it since I updated it, but I'm wondering if anyone notices anything different.

 

Which update? I updated to 2.4.7, which fixed a W7 incompatability issue.

 

I think that's the version I have now, IIRC (not on laptop now). I'm still running Vista so it worked both before and after for me.

 

No apple logo. I'm cutting out the Dell logo. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with the circular ring part, since the whole center will fall out if I cut that out. I think the best way might be to cut out half of the ring, then fill it with plastic, glue it and secure it, and then do the other half.

 

I just got my 14z in a couple of days ago and noticed that theres this popping sound coming from the speakers when i turn it off and on. Then it would randomly make a popping sound when im on the laptop. I installed a patch for the wireless card but it still makes the sound. Anyone have any idea whats going on?

 

I have the same issue when I boot Win 7 RC. But I think that'll be resolved with the official release.

If you have this issue with Vista, I think some people that had audio issues had uninstalled their audio driver, rebooted, then reinstalled the driver and it worked. Maybe you could try that?

You could try skimming through this thread if you have a couple hours to spare.

 

I was going to ask the same thing. I installed the update and now it doesn't seem to be working.

Think I have some fiddling to do.

And thanks all for the warming about BIOS A03. Guess I'll be staying away from that one for awhile.

 

Do you mind taking a couple pictures of the inside of the display lid, since it is already open? Did you also remove the LCD panel? I'm interested in how the inside of the lid looks like and where and how the antennas for WiFi are placed.

How much clearance is there between the LCD panel and the back of the lid?

I'm thinking of modding my 14z with a WWAN antenna but need to know what kind of antenna will fit.

Thanks!

 

You're right, I spoke before I checked and then the forum was down. The old Studio 14 had a 16:10 screen while this is 16:9. Seems more-or-less like a 14-inch version of the new Studio 15.

 

I'll take some pics behind the LCD when I disassemble it again later today. This is the only pic I found for now that might help you out.

The green (1) is where your WWAN card would go.
The red (2) is where I believe your antennae would wrap around and insert into the lid section. I don't think it would be very hard to install at all.

 

I've finished cutting out the DELL text from the lid. During the process, I realized it would be nearly impossible to avoid scratching the surrounding areas, so I'll be sanding and repainting the entire lid again.

So far, it looks great even before I've added plastic or diffusion gel. I'm testing out random pieces of plastic I find in my house, you can see that the 'D" has a cheap piece of plastic inside it.

Does anyone know what kind of plastic I could buy that is easily manageable + doesn't look cheap?

 

Thanks. Looking forward to that post.

It looks like your notebook (similar to mine) also doesn't have the WWAN antennas pre-wired. (My understanding was that all the 14z were pre-wired for WWAN whether it was purchased with the WWAN card or not).

Is the back side of the hand-rest over the WWAN slot just plastic with no metal shielding? I'm thinking it might be possible to use a single mini antenna which wraps around the WWAN card without routing it into the lid.

 

There is a metal shield behind the palmrest part. It covers just about everything, except the HDD and the touchpad area.

Is it possible that Dell meant that you could install a WWAN and then use the wires from the WLAN for the wwan card? I'm not sure if those antennae wires are compatible, but if they are and you don't have a need for WLAN, then you could easily just plug them onto the WWAN card.

 

Dope! Looks like I have to do the routing into the lid.

The WLAN antenna is different from the WWAN antennas. The WLAN antennas are optimized for 2.4/5.0 GHz while WWAN antennas are optimized for the 850/900/1800/1900/2100 MHz (GSM band). Plugging the WLAN cables into the WWAN card would be non-optimal.

 

Hi guys

I know this is a bit off-topic, after long long careful and thoughtful consideration, i am still stuck whether to buy dell 14z , dell 1450, a pc

Dell 14z is nice, it is slim but still fat for it size, the graphic card is a bit old(late 2008). It cost me around $1000Au if i bought it from priceusa.

Dell 1450 is more powerful than dell 14z,it got the p8700 cpu, ati 512mb 4530,4gb ddr3 ram, 720p screen, but the extended battery extend at the back. It cost me around $1366Au if i bought through my uncle.

I can build a pc with ati hd 4870, amd phenom ll x2, 3gb ddr3 memory, and 22inch monitor for $1000Au, if i bought pc stuff in australia , i can get half price thanks to the education tax refund.

My current pc is a 6yrs old pentium m , radeon 9600 , 512 mb memory that can't even watch hd.Even my laptop can't watch hd as well and last 15mins on battery . My parents is giving 1000dollar to spend. I need a system that can last for 2 years in perfomance till i can earn my own money.I am more of a multimedia-artist who play game sometimes like CSS,COH,L4D,Sims3,TF2,COD4 mabye sims4 or coh2 if it came out. i need some advice?

 

Pepero, do you see yourself requiring the mobility of a notebook computer? If you spend the majority of your time in a fixed location using your computer, you might as well buy a PC since you'll be getting something way more powerful for a better price, especially in the graphics department.

 

Here's a pic of behind the display. The white antennae goes up along the right, and the black one goes on the left.

 

I see myself as a person who think too too much and too too complex eg. trying to find out how long does dell 14z battery last after a year at 1 charge per day.

 

anybody have any hints as to where else I could find the dell facial recognition? I haven't been able to get that website to work.

 

[/URL]

See previous posts: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5218691#post5218691

and

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5219256#post5219256

Also, you may want to use IE when doing this as I couldn't get the Dell downloads to work on either Firefox or Chrome.

 

Firefox and Chrome simply don't work. IE 64 bit flashes a dialog about it registering the system, but then it disappears and doesn't work. IE 32 appears to start, but hten the website gives me an application error. Any ideas?

 

hm, my fan seems to go pretty loud for no reason, HWMonitor lists only temp of 55C for the cpu..and all I'm doing is surfing...any suggestions?

 

yeah its pretty annoying.

 

I need to install Windows XP SP2 on my Dell Studio 14z. Does anyone know where I can find drivers. Thanks.

 

Most drivers are find able, but unfortunetly there is no driver for the audio card for Windows XP.

 

I actually tried to install Windows XP SP2 dual boot from a USB pen on my 14z. Let's just say it didn't go well and I ended up reinstalling Vista x64. You might have better luck if you have the external DVD drive.

Basically the USB XP install went all the way to the point where it would restart to go to the GUI part of the install, then it would the complain that it couldn't load XP boot loader (I forget exact error). I tried many different fixes for the problem, but couldn't work around it. I think part of the problem was that I was installing from a USB pen.

If you need to run XP for some applications I would suggest you try out Microsoft Virtual PC SP1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=28C97D22-6EB8-4A09-A7F7-F6C7A1F000B5&displaylang=en. It is free and I have been using it for my XP only software. XP runs just as fast as if it was natively running on your PC. You don't need to have a CPU that supports virtualization to use it. Microsoft Virtual PC will run on Vista Home Premium even though it is not officially supported.

The cool thing about virtualization is you can jump between XP and Vista both of which will be running simultaneously.

 

i dig the lack of the optical drive

 

IE 64 worked fine for me. I hate to suggest this, but you may want to call tech support to see if they can direct you to an alternate download site.

 

question for you guys that have the 900p screen...i have the xps m1730 with the full 1080p resolution and i find that it's a bit small for my preference. i guess my preference on a 17" laptop screen is probably the 16xx by 12xx resolution. my 24" 1080p desktop monitor is perfect because it's the same resolution but everything is bigger.

do you think i will find the text and other stuff on the 900p resoluion too small? i checked out the 720p resolution version at best buy and i think it's fine, but i don't have a 900p screen to compare it to.

 

Yes, 900p is small. I never used such high resolution on a screen of this size, so the text was too small for me, especially compared to other computers (at home and at work). But the good thing is that I already got used to it, it's no longer a problem. If you have doubts about that, the best thing is to see the 900p screen in real and then decide.

 

An alternative to dual-booting may be to run a virtual machine. Check out the open-source VirtualBox ( http://www.virtualbox.org) that should allow you to install and run BSD, Linux, Windows XP, OSx(?), Vista, etc, without ever having to leave Windows 7. It seems a lot easier, less painful, and quicker than dual-booting for access to a few legacy apps.


YARR!
}:^)~
WikiCorrupt

 

No problem for me. Occasionally I'll come across a website where the text is too small, but in those few cases I just kick the text size up in the browser and it's fine.

 

From what you say, you'll probably find it small. So it becomes a matter of tradeoffs. Personally I prefer to have the extra resolution for games and video. If I'm having trouble reading text I just zoom it up a notch. Works in Internet Explorer, Office and Adobe Reader. Can't really think of where else I'd need it.