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

Is anyone else having issues with the noise levels with the hard drive on this model? I am actually very satisfied with the power, speed, and portability, but the not loud yet incredibly annoying hard drive writing is driving me a little insane.

I've tried everything to quiet it down (turned off indexing among other attempts) but the hard drive still continues to work even while idling. Worst of all, it seems as if the noise is cyclical at times which is worse than random for me to concentrate. I am pretty confident that it is not an "i'm about to die" hard drive sound, but I find it hard to believe that I am the only one who is annoyed. I guess I would find comfort in the fact that it is not just MY particular computer.

Otherwise, I'm very impressed with the computer. It's why I've kept it despite the hard drive noise. Seriously, great speed and power with good video streaming and sound. The optical drive is NO big deal. I bought a USB and I've used it once since I got the computer.

 

I've been getting a weird problem, that I *think* may be related to the BIOS update to A03. Every 10-20 minutes or so the computer freezes. If video is playing, it stops. Any window you click on becomes "not responding." No response to clicking on the start button (or pressing the Window key). Can't bring up task manager by right-clicking on the taskbar or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

In about 5 minutes all is well. Since it's started, I've done two or three clean installs of Windows 7, and on the weekend I tried an install of Vista with the same results. Has anyone encountered anything like this? I seem to remember some posts about the BIOS, but the search isn't turning them up.

I'd like to be able to fix this on my own, as dealing with tech support on a problem you can't reproduce on demand can be very frustrating.

 

is there a program that makes the Function keys show pictures when pressed? Like the brightness bar shows up? After i installed win 7, the images don't show up anymore...

 

It's Quickset - download it from the Dell Support site.

 

you have to download one specific to win7 in order to get the visual cues. If there's not one specific to win7 yet on the page for the 14z, try one for the studio 15 or any other new laptop, so long as the download is in the windows 7 section.

 

Quickset for Vista works just fine on the 14z under Windows 7.

 

Hadn't checked to see if they'd updated the page with that. Good to hear though.

 

I recevied my replacement 14z the other day, this one doesn't run as hot, the touchpad and left mouse button work way better, the keyboard has some flex in but I can live with that, the issue with this one is that the USB port on the left side is really tight that I can't get any USB devices in there unless I push really hard and then I can barely pull it out, I am assuming that the ports are part of the mainboard so either I request another replacement or have the mainboard replaced, this is very annoying

 

Mind is tight on the left side also, I wouldn't worry to much about it.

 

This one is extremely tight that I don't have complete care so if it breaks I would have to replace the system board, I will call Dell today and see what they want to do about it. Thanks for letting me know that you have the same issue.

 

No problem. I had to verify that, and just put in my thumb drive for the 2nd attempt and it was very tight, but it fit in. Maybe it will loosen up as time goes by.. but who knows. Ya.see what they say say. I personally don't want them touching my machine though and screwing it up even more though. : )

 

So, nobody is having any issues with hard drive noise? Seriously mine really never shuts up. Even during idle when I'm doing nothing. Is this common? I did go for the Best Buy deal. They say it's normal, but I just don't think so. The noise is normal but the frequency is not.

Also, as has been highlighted before, this hard drive noise is usually accompanied by frequent fan spinning. Did anyone with a hot running model note a particularly active hard drive?

Finally, to qualify this complaint. It is not a constant cavalcade of noise like when the computer starts up. It is a much more reserved but constantly repetitive cyclical soft writing sound that is not completely audible unless in a quiet room.

 

I spoke to them this morning, they asked me if I was putting it in right (lol) and that I should try other USB devices (which I told them I tried several different mice and usb sticks and usb printer cables) they said they would not exchange the system as the port is working but would make note of it under my service tag number that it was a really tight fit so we will see.

 

Yeah. Don't sweat the tight fit. My USB ports were tight too (in addition to the headphone outlets). I do have to say that they have loosened up with use. I was alarmed at first, but they seem to have gotten better.

 

I just ordered a dell 14z and have a few questions
1. is it easy to replace the hard drive? is it using a 2.5'' hard drive?
2. what 'bout the memory upgrade?

thanks!
Jay

 

1) hard drive is easy, just lift the bezels beside the keyboard, remove the 2 screw that hold down the keyboard, lift the keyboard up and voila, there is the 2.5 hard drive.

2) memory compartment is at bottom, u can upgrade it, BUT the ONLY option is to buy 1 stick of 4 GB DDR 3 ram since 1 GB is soldered on the mobo. its around 300 bucks for 1 stick of 4 GB...at the time being

 

However with the slots having different sizes you will lose some performance on the part or RAM which is not in dual channel mode, i.e. 2GB will be in dual channel, but then 3GB will not be.

 

I have a the 320 GB 7200 rpm HDD and don't notice it constantly writing. I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but it could be Windows Defender doing scans in the background, or your virus scanner or automated defragmentation tool.

If you are worried about your drive health you can always run the drive fitness tool from the hard drive manufacturer on your hard drive to make sure it isn't dying.

Since my HDD is made by Hitachi I would download:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

I've never run the tool on my notebook but have used similar tools for my desktop PC. At minimum it will give you some confidence that your drive is operating normally.

 

I have a Seagate 500GB 5400rpm and I can clearly hear the drive working. I have drives that make the same noise and have worked fine for years. I thought newer drive were quieter. My last laptop produced no drive noise.

I guess it depends on the quality of the specific drive installed. It is not a defect, just an annoyance

 

I'm experiencing a strange problem on my 14z. I don't know if it's hardware, software, or user behavior based. While typing in programs such as MS Word or even Windows Live Messenger, the keyboard seems to switch to a different layout in the software. Symptoms include the question mark key instead entering a capital E with the accent on top of it. Any ideas? This hasn't happened to me on my many desktops or the few laptops I've had in the past.

PS - other than this, I am still totally tickled with my 14z!

 

Hey I appreciate the confirmation. This is what I had kind of figured, but it is nice to hear that it is not just me. I have reviewed all possible causes of the noise including defender and the defragmenter, and everything has been turned off. I have experienced zero performance problems, so I guess I will just have to live with it. Thanks.

 

Hi folks,

Love my 14z, had a few questions about it:

Is there any way to customize the Mobility Center?

On my old ASUS laptop, I could output to my TV and have the screen mirror my desktop. However, if I ran a movie in VLC on my desktop it would run windowed on my laptop, but automatically go fullscreen on my TV at the same time. Is there any way to do that with the 14z? I thought it was such a great feature.

 

I installed Windows 7 on my notebook I was pleased that the memory usage dropped from 53% with Vista to 33%. The system boots faster and runs cooler. The screen is really nice, clear and sharp.

 

Are you by any chance Canadian? If your system is set up for Canada, by default Windows installs a "Canadian Multilingual" keyboard option as well as US Standard, and a language bar you may find on the taskbar or floating near the top of the screen. And there's a key combination that switches between them that you're likely hitting accidentally. The Canadian Multilingual uses the slash key for é and Shift-é gives you É.

Unfortunately I'm on a Windows XP machine at the moment so I can't give you exact directions, but this should help you muddle through:

Right-click on the language bar. Remove the Canadian Mutltilingual layout (unless you have need for it). This will disable the key combo. Then change the display settings for the language bar to send it to hell. (i.e. hidden).

MS-Office apps have a built-in way of creating accented characters that's pretty clever. Just press the control key and the symbol that looks most like the accent you need, let go and then press the letter.

Ctrl+~, then n gives you ñ
Ctrl+, then c gives you ç
Ctrl+/, then c gives you ¢
Ctrl+Shift+:, then u gives you ü
Ctrl+Shift+^ gives you û

 

I am Canadian, eh! I suspected that this was what was going on, but I also do not know the key combo that I must be activating. Setting the keyboard language to English (US) in the language bar was one of the first things I tried. I will try removing the Canadian Multilingual. Otherwise I will just wait until Windows 7 can solve my problems with a quick format. Thanks for your help!

 

Windows 7 would give you the same issue if you set the locale to Canada. The key combo is something really easy to do accidentally - the left alt key and shift.

 

This is my 3rd day using the 14z (just bought it) and my ram is averging at 61% ... is that normal? ... I feel my keys a bit warm overall.. =/

 

vista stores stuff you do often on your computer in the ram to speed things up. It is normal to have a high memory usage. Vista will free up memory if it needs more.

 

Remember, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

I like to think of RAM like car enthusiasts like to think of horsepower...you may not always need it, but when you do, it's nice to have.

 

anyone know if it's worth it upgrading from the b/g card to the 1515 N card? i'm trying to figure out if the average speed of the N card is faster because i used to have a an m1330 with an intel N card and it was insanely fast.

 

I am about to become an "owner" and official member of the lounge. I placed the order yesterday and they confirmed it today. I don't have a ship date yet, but the estimate was about 15 days. 15 looooong days

 

Depends on how you use your system, what kind of traffic you create on your network. Won't make a difference for internet access, but if you're streaming video or copying large files you'll want N (or a wired connection).

 

So I'm new to this forum, but I've been following it for a while and it helped me make up my mind about getting a Studio 14z, and I love it!

I'm Canadian too, and I had the same problem! It was driving me crazy trying to figure out which keys I was hitting by mistake to switch the keyboard, but now I know (thanks to Reality.Bites and Quaid!).

I've also discovered another problem that randomly started today. I haven't seen anyone mention having this issue before in the thread, but I may have missed it... my laptop for some reason suddenly stopped recognizing my power adapter. I've had my Studio 14z for a little over a month and I haven't had this problem before. When I plug it in it says that I need to use the 65W-AC adapter (though I AM using it) and it refuses to charge my battery, and slows down my laptop considerably.

Has anyone had any similar issues? Or any ideas what I could do to fix it? I figured I'd check here before calling Dell.

 

233 Pages of posts... and "i8kfangui" was not found even once.... lolz!

Has anyone tried this software for fan control? I've heard it requires some effort to get it running on vista.

Does fan control work with this program (even if I have to downgrade to XP!)

From what people are saying in this thread the fan is on all the time. Can someone confirm that this is true? Is it possible to shut off the fan during idle using i8kfangui?

Thanks!

 

I'm not sure if the fan is on all the time. Most of the time it's pretty gentle if it's on. When the system is running hard then the fan puts out warm air, but it's still pretty quiet. I've only heard the fan once.

 

Well my harddrive crashed, I received the notebook on the 18th installed windows 7 but I could hear a clunk every once in a while when the harddrive was being accessed so I ran the Dell diags and sure enough the drive failed. Dell is going to exchange the notebook as I am within my 30 days so hopefully the next one will work better.

 

Hello all, been loving my studio, and today was my first problem. At first I tried ruling out if it was Windows 7 by booting into vista and I could connect to the internet wirelessly (with the 1515N card), but when I boot into Windows 7 a few weird things happen:

1. At home using our router in our apartment I've been having random disconnects and unable to reconnect for a few seconds, sometimes minutes at once.

2. On our universities network, it can take a few minutes AFTER I connect to the university system to actually have internet access.

I know it has to be either something I've done in the registry (which really isn't much and from the knowledge I have couldn't possibly produce this issue) or with the Studio because I have another laptop in our apartment that is on the same network right now running Windows 7 fine, and when I boot into vista I automatically connect with no problems.

Any advice?

 

Hi, I just bought a 14z and am waiting for it. I am thinking of switching to as SSD drive and installing Windows 7 on it. Does anyone have experience taking out and replacing the HDD in this system? How difficult is it?

Thanks

 

it's not hard. take off the black bezel that surrounds the keyboard, it's just held on by clips. start at the top where the battery is and just go slow. since it's held in by clips, it helps if you push opposite of the way the clips are. then there are 2 screws and the keyboard lifts right out. then u unscrew 4 screws and pull the hard drive out to swap.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/studio1440/en/sm/index.htm

 

Found out what was wrong with the wireless N card.

For those using Windows 7, certain versions (I believe i'm on 7700 or the RC) have problems with connectivity. Downloading the dell drivers (in my case the 64 bit version as I have win 7 64 bit) fixed my problems so far and made my overall internet a bit more responsive. Later.

 

Thanks for the info and link.

 

Is Dell about to come out with a Studio 14 that includes an optical drive? The 14z is not listed in their new catalog. They also have no plans (and correct me if I'm wrong) to introduce the current 14z to other markets (i.e. Australia). In addition, on China's Dell site it looks like their Studio 14 does come with an optical drive.

(Note: Not to be confused with the up-and-coming Inspiron 14z and 15z.)

If that's the case, any idea on when???

 

The model names and numbers are confusing between Inspiron and Studio.

In Malaysia and Singapore, they've had a "Studio 14" system for about a month. It does have an optical drive, but if you look closely at the weight and dimensions, that "Studio 14" is closer to what is sold in the US as a "Inspiron 14" or "Inspiron 14z" (the difference being the CPU).

Dell Malaysia/Singapore doesn't (yet?) sell a Studio 14z like the US Studio 14z, which is smaller (length, width and height) and lighter than the Inspiron or their Studio 14.

I suspect the same thing might be true in Australia or other markets also, but you have to look beyond the model numbers to see what they are talking about.

 

All good points. It just seemed odd when it wasn't in Dell's own Fall catalog. I wish they would... the lack of an optical drive is the only thing keeping me from the Studio 14z. (Yes, I know I could pay for an external drive, but for me, that's not the point.)

 

I don't know if they can fit an optical drive into the smaller format of a Studio 14z. It would be nice to make it an option, but I would have opted out because I rarely use it.

But they really need to be consistent with the naming - either designating "Studio" or "Z" as the smaller format, but instead sometimes it means low-power CPU instead of small format.

 

i don't know if they will continue with the studio 14z. i'm not sure how well the laptop is selling because either people will overestimate their need for an optical drive and not buy it or dell might not want to continue with a laptop that has an nvidia platform. i bet the reason why the studio 14z doesn't have an optical drive but still isn't that small is because the nvidia platform still has to take up X amount of space. dell could probably make a 14z slim version but it would have to come with integrated intel graphics.

there's only a small market for those of us that buy a laptop and want to game on it too. the 14z that was sold at best buy was catered towards students and included a larger mousepad, microsoft office and an 8 cell battery. i'm not sure *most* of those buyers were really looking for dedicated graphics.

 

In an attempt to troubleshoot various software problems I've done multiple clean installs of Vista and Windows 7 32-bit, always through a flash drive.

With those issues finally settled, I am able to go back to 64-bit, but I find my 14z will no longer let me boot from a flash drive. When I try it, it instead attempts a network boot! I don't know anyone with a USB DVD drive and don't particularly want to buy one, since I have no use for one (apart from this). I've found (complicated) instructions for a network install, but I'm wondering if this inability to boot from flash (and yes, of course it's been made bootable! ) indicates a larger problem.

Edited to add: OK, we found an external drive at work I can use, but my question still stands about whether people think it's an indication of a larger problem.

 

You probably did this already but... did you check to see if you have set it to boot from USB in the BIOS?

 

I don't know, this thread sure does have alot of posts...? Someone must be buying them.