Dell Studio 1555

No its no longer in Beta. Its in the Release Candidate stage. This stage is basically Microsofts final product which they want users to still test to see if there are any more bugs left that they need to fix before final release. There will be no major changes between this version and the final release. So far I have found nothing wrong and its just as stable as XP if not more!

 

That's not saying much - other OS's like Vista are already much more stable than XP.

 

LOL.. Vista more stable? Good one! The stability of Win7 is far better than Vista! Google a little and you will see.

 

vista is way more stable than XP.

A cliche based on bias and popular opinions holds no water

 

I concur, xp maybe faster, but I've NEVER received a BSOD using vista, let alone freezing.

 

is EISA Configuration usefull ?? or can i delete it ?


also can someone please upload their "Tools" Folder from RECOVERY partition..
(into any sharing website and give me the link..)

 

I have seen many BSOD with Vista. One major drawback that I found personally is the lack of compatibility. The normal user (95%+) wont find as many compatibility issues but power users will find many. I am one such user who does a lot of compiling and encoding with video/audio and believe me, Vista is a complete nightmare. I dont base my opinion on reading forums but by personal experience. I have a retail copy of Vista Ultimate sitting on my shelf. I installed it when it came out and used it for about 1-week before formatting and reinstalling XP. I tried it again a few months later and used it again for about a week. I gave it one more shot when SP1 came out but still ended up going back to XP after about 2 weeks. In my honest opinion Vista was a complete joke, it got a little better with SP1 but for the most part it was a filler OS...kinda like WinME. If you want real proof about its failure just look at the lack of adoption by businesses; many are still using XP waiting for Win7. The average user that surfs the net and checks email and plays a few games wont notices many issues, as in 95% of home users.

 

The Vista experience has improved A LOT compared to when it was introduced. I was an early adopter (April 2007) and it was a painful experience! Now I'm content with it. I recently used a friend's laptop with XP and realized that I wouldn't want to go back to it!

But I am excited about Win7!

 

ROFL! Adoption by businesses cannot be used as real proof - it's not necessarily true. Businesses make money, and thus they won't spend money to switch operating systems on their vast network of computers if there is not enough benefit to do so...that's a huge investment in time and money.

Furthermore, it's funny how you say the home user would not notice how "buggy" Vista is, but imply that business users would, when most of the time businesses stick with your average, non-intensive programs like MS Excel. Funny double standard, ROFL.

 

Guys,

I have put up some pictures of the motherboard/GPU/HS and fan for anyone that is interested. By the looks of the HS assembly I wont be overclocking the GPU!!!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=391358

 

I am planning to install WINDOWS 7 64bit RC1 tomorrow..

Does all the Windows Vista 64 bit Drivers work ??
If it does not, what drivers are to be found and downloaded..??
(if possible kindly post the links)

I need drivers before i format the laptop .. (my desktop is not working)

 

Xiphias, that's well said. I completely agree with you. Furthermore, a lot of companies use company-specific network software.
If you just switched from windows 2000 to xp and your IT departement worked on the adaptation to xp during, let's say 6 months, would you change to Vista if there aren't real advantages.
Let's face the facts, it costs a lot and your employees probably won't like their IT environment being changed again, because they just got familiar with xp.

There are still companies who only switched from 2000 to xp last year! So even xp wasn't such a dealbreaker ;-)
And I think windows 7 won't be either. Except if benefits > costs (basic economics) and no nonsense about a more stable OS or not.

Ok, I'll stop, getting a bit off topic here. Sorry

 

They have all worked for me so far and from what I have seen they seem to be working for everyone for the most part. Upon install Win7 had actually installed all drivers that were needed for every device, sound and all. I did however install the video and webcam drivers from dells website for Vista 64 because microsofts video drivers are alway generic and arent good for gaming but thats it. Goodluck and let me know how you like Win7.

 

There are dedicated Win 7 Video drivers out, I always check out Guru3D.com, Tweaks R US and Laptopvideo2go.

I installed Win 7 RC on a old Athlon XP-M overclocked desktop, runs great. My oldest Son's I-1520 has Vista 32bit and it runs fine, though I will have him upgrade to 7 when it comes out officially, as well Son #2 (his is on order)

Since I never played with Vista much, 7 has taken some learning...the over protective crap for a power user was a big hassle, discovered a cool Vista hack that also works on 7 called "Take Ownership". Awesome tool!

 

I've been looking into the Studio 1555 but I was curious about the 1080p screen: wouldn't that resolution on a 15.6" screen make everything extremely tiny? Dell only have the 720p and 1080p versions available in the UK, so although the 900p version would most likely be the best for me, I can only choose between those two.

 

its not that tiny and remember you can change from 96dpi to any other you want.

 

Thanks for the reply, I guess I'll go for the upgrade if I decide on the 15

One more question though ... does anyone do any gaming on their 1555? I'm actually looking at the same spec as you have JaykaySLO but although there are alot of 3DMark benchmarks on the net I'd prefer some feedback from someone who uses the notebook. I'm not expecting anything too awesome and I'm mainly looking towards my everyday games like WoW, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, although as I play alot of newer games on my desktop aswell I would be interested in knowing just how well it's able to perform in more recent gaming aswell.

I've only been looking at the Studio 1555 and 1737 because they're in my budget and because my desktop is a Dell and I've never had any problems with Dell customer service or anything I'm only really interested in getting a Dell, more specifically only between those models, the 1555 in particular.

 

I guess you missed my post a couple of pages back

Been playing TF2 at 1080p all high at 30-50fps
DOW2 at 720p with a mixture of medium and high settings
BF2 1280x1024 medium at 90fps
forged alliance 1280x768 medium at 30fps

So far well pleased, played everything i have thrown at it

 

Sorry, I did miss your last post about it since I haven't noticed this thread until today. Only found the forum a few days ago aswell

But ... AWESOME! I recently got DoW2 and completed it on my desktop. I loved it and its not exactly an easy game to run - it has some big battles which make the framerate suffer, especially the campaigns last mission. I've been wanting to play through it again so its great to know the 1555 would run it, although I'm thinking those bigger battles would maybe need some settings turned down. Awesome info about TF2 aswell as it was, until recently, my most played online game (damn your addictiveness WoW). All in all its great to hear that it plays those games as well as that so thanks

 

No everything is not really tiny. They are a little smaller than usua but if you want you can correct this by increasing the DPI of icons and text.

 

I probably have a question that has been answered in the last... oh, 150 pages. It's pretty crazy to have to look through every single one of those, so I decided to try asking it anyway.

I play World of Warcraft, and I just got a Dell Studio 1555. Everything looks great, but I soon find out that my function keys are not doing what I want them to do. They always perform the other action also listed on the same key. For instance, I want F2- not the internet turn on/off. Another example, I want F5, not more brightness.

I have tried scroll lock, num lock, and looked and changed what I could on the on screen keyboard- all to no avail. I'm really hoping some of you have answers- it'd be a godsend. Thanks

 

there is a setting in the bios for the media keys or function keys

 

Sorry... not a computer geek. Where is this BIOS?

 

f2 when you boot up

 

Got it. Thanks.

 

You can set the number of posts per page in your user profile.

 

Hmm my product was dispatched from China on Monday 15th June, ETA was yesterday (Thursday) and I have not heard anything nor has my status changed. Should I wait longer or ring them.

 

For those interested, the english version of the review of notebookcheck is online ( http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Studio-1555-Notebook.17767.0.html)

You'll rarely find a more extensive review than theirs ;-)

 

I just finished reading the review from notebookcheck.com. I find the following paragraph rather interesting... I believe the 1555 has only been out for a short while, I am not aware of any "upcoming refreshes".

"Naturally, you can hope for an upgrade in consideration of the GPU in the Studio, but in view of the doubtlessly upcoming refreshes in frame of the normal product cycle, where probably similarly positioned chips will find application, you shouldn't hope too much. After redesigning of the XPS series, Dell is obviously on the way of giving up the gaming branch completely to Alienware."

 

Damn, that is a disappointment. I've always preferred Dell's Studio/XPS/Studio XPS designs over Alienware's more garish, loud designs.

However, the gaming performance part of the review seems a little low based on my own tests. I know that one German review gave it a much higher score/recommendation.

 

i remember reading the review of the 1535 on here and its a very good review. im glad to see the battery life on energy saving and wireless around 3.5 hours. that could possibly be pushed to about 4 by lowering the screen brightness - or am i overestimating that?

 

couple of questions

1) how easy is it to get to the heatsink and fan if i wanted to clean it one day

2) is a notebook cooler ok for this laptop? as ive heard it gets quite hot at the bottom.

 

elim, I changed the cpu, it involved taking the entire laptop apart! Getting to the HS & fan was a nightmare, I wont be doing it again in a hurry

 

Because the XPS M1730 was totally not loud or garish.

1) From what ninja2000 tells me, the heatsink is quite difficult to access and remove. However, you shouldn't need to fully remove it just to blow dust out of the fan and vents.

2) A cooler will not cause any harm, if that's what you mean. It will probably help to keep things cooler, especially if you get a good one with fans that coincide with the vents nicely.

 

Hey, I never received an ad for the XPS M1730 with the words "JOIN US" with a giant alienhead.

 

Touché.

I'm just saying, with the LED lights everywhere and the patterns all over the lid, the M1730 isn't exactly a sleeper machine either.

 

Yeah I wasn't aware the M1730 had the arrays of LED lights. Might as well add inbuilt fireworks so it's a celebration everytime you boot up.

 

LOL.

 

And did I mention you can change the color of all of those LED's?

 

its only changeable through bios by defualt. so you can only have one color option on evey bootup. so the default led light is pretty dull.
ofc, some ppl on youtube modded the bios so they can have flash led lights can switch colors.
.

 

What modded drivers you recommend? Actually I have Catalyst 9.6

 

el polako - hw did you get hold of 9.6? I have looked every where for them but mobility modder doesnt recognise the 4570 and donotargue only go upto 9.4

 

can anybody please describe the steps to get nd install modded drivers for ati catalyst on vista 64bit. i dwded the a modded vertion of 9.5 catalyst nd ran the installer, but my driver version is still shows old.

 

Sorry, my mistake. I've got 9.4.

 

The driver version will not show 9.5. It probably says 8.something, right? That's normal.

 

yeah but in the device manager the driver date shows 14-11-2008. so i m guessing my drivers have not been updated.

 

After clean reinstall of Vista 64bit. I reran 3dmark06 and now get a score of

3728

about 500 points better.

 

the review on notebookcheck.com shows that the 1555 definately gets much warmer than the old studio 15. does the bottom of the laptop really get as warm as 52 degrees centigrade? i thought only the touchpad was warm.

 

For me i would say the touchpad area is the warmest area of the laptop.
I would say that the heat of the laptop is one of the downsides of it.

 

Speaking of the touchpad.... I've heard that the Studio 1555 has a multi touch pad.... like two fingers and such.
What things can you do with it? Is it like the macs? I doubt it is... but I'm curious to see what it can do. I can't find a list or anything on the web.