Dell Studio 1555

900p is nice, i kinda want the sharpness of the 1080p. although i haven't seen it yet... haha

sometimes i want to take the laptop out and use it to watch a movie in the car with a date, and teh 6 cell barely cuts it. having a 9 cell would make it last for sure at least 3 hours.

i plan on getting win7 anyways, and isn't it going to cost about $100 for an upgrade? i figure it'd be nice to get it for 'free'

but yeah, i'm not even sure i'll be able to sell my currentl laptop for the $650 price anyways...

 

Ah I see, that's so annoying. I just checked and at the outlet in the US you can qualify for the Windows 7 free upgrade. In the UK, we don't at the moment. Boooooo!

 

Just curious- with my windows 7 installation, when I format my laptop do I have to install dell media direct beforehand?

Thanks

 

It should be no different than the Vista installation, but I was under the impression that the Studio 1555 did not have media direct, unlike the Studio 1535.

 

Yeah I apologize. I was a little misled by the vista bloatware removal forum....after looking through my driver discs I couldn't see it.

I'm still on vista...got a little confused at the partition screen...also scared of killing the laptop!

 

I can't seem to get the IDT audio software to work under Windows 7, anyone have any ideas on how to get it running?

 

Hi, I'm thinking of getting a Dell studio 15. So if I order one from Dell Canada, they would give me the dell studio 1555, not a lower model?

Also, has anybody had these problems:

-overheating when watching movies -- computer just shuts off
-volume turns up by itself sometimes
-the speakers are very very bad- can barely hear with it all the way up
-the computer has troubles turning back on after it goes into hibernation mode
-computer has trouble with dvd's - many times it ejects the dvd spontaneously
- the media touch buttons at the top of the keyboard sometimes don't even work
- some usb devices can only work in certain ports -- very weird

Thanks

 

You would get the 1555.

 

The studio 1555 doesn't have media touch buttons, because of the problems with it Dell removed it and now the buttons are on the F keys.

 

In case anybody cares about the outcome of this, they would not let me do it. But when I asked for a return after they said no to the 15% off the rep gave me 7% off. Better than nothing I guess.

 

Nice result - well done

 

Yeah I was happy about it. $60 is $60 and now I can use that 15% code to get a new desktop to replace the crappy one my family is using.

 

Just bought a "Previously Ordered New" Studio 1555 a few minutes ago from the Dell Outlet

Midnight Blue
2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB
Vista Home Premium 64-Bit
15.6" 720p Display w/ Webcam
4GB RAM
320GB Hard Drive
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
DVD-RW
Intel Wireless-N Card
Bluetooth 2.1
6 Cell Battery
Back-lit Keyboard
1 Year Warranty

AND Matching Midnight Blue Swiss Gear Backpack

for a grand total of...






























including tax/shipping...






























$721.29



And based on what they're selling for on eBay right now, I think I can get $250 for my current laptop (Inspiron 6000)...so technically I'm only spending $471.29

 

Dell Outlet has some fantastic prices. After that 7% off I got today my total came out to ~$680 and my specs are

Black Chainlink
2.4GHz/1066Mhz FSB/2MB
Vista Home Premium 64-Bit
15.6" 900p Display w/ Webcam
4GB RAM
320GB Hard Drive
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
DVD-RW
Intel Wifi-link 5100
9 Cell Battery
1 Year Warranty

I still wish I had gotten that 15% off but my current laptop sold for more than I expected ($375) so I am happy.

 

so this is strange when I put my headphones in the first 3.5 jack it works fine and sounds comes out of the headphones but my second 3.5mm jack doesn't seem to work. I put my headphones in but nothing comes out of the headphones and my computer speakers output the sound.

 

Have you installed the IDT Audio drivers and software? Without them, the middle audio jack is useless.

 

thanks mastershroom it worked after installing the driver. Your the man!

Just curious what other important drivers would you recommend for 1555? here are the list of the ones ive installed since doing a clean install of vista

-Intel WiFi Link 5100
-Intel Mobile Graphics Media Accelerater
-Synaptics-Driver Touchpad
-Creative Labs integrated webcam
-Dell Quickset
-Dell wireless 370 bluetooth minicard
-Broadcom
-IDT- Driver
-OPTIARC-Firmware AD-7640S 12.7mm SATA Slotload 8X DVDRW (i hope this one was the correct one but my cd burner looks to work fine)

 

Mastershroom you seem to be from canada (from the $100 apple student discount) and I was wondering how long it took for delivery?

The median for americans and UK seems to be a week or ten days.

 

Hey guys,

I am considering getting a studio 15 from dell.ca and I have some questions.

1) How long is the battery life when surfing the internet with music playing as well as when I take notes in university?

2) Is the build quality sufficient to withstand the fact that I will carry it around constantly during university?

3) How much of a difference is there between the T4200 and T6500?


I got a ASUS G50vt-X5 a week ago and while its gaming performance is great, I'm afraid the battery life is too short. I can only manager 2 hours with internet surfing and music. =(

 

It took about.... 10 days for my computer... but they apparently put a rush on my computer because i complained.. (it was a replacement under warranty, total wait for a new computer was 2 months... but thats another story)

For #2... it will be fine. I haul my Inspiron 6400 around UBC all the time and it's fine. The Studio 1555 (which i just got) is even better as far as build. It will be fine too... guaranteed.

for #1... My battery meter said about 4-5 hours? I haven't done a full run on the battery yet... I think Shroom had his meter saying like 6 hours? I can't remember that was a few weeks back.. he posted some pictures.

I would get the T6500 over the T4200... the cache is bigger and should be a worthwhile upgrade.

I've only been using my 1555 for a week or so now, but already I'm getting used to it. It's a very solid computer. Coming from my old Inspiron 6400, it's a very nice improvement. The only thing (i guess this relates to #2) but the top lid may get stratched from your bag... the black chainlink is pretty glossy so it will show scratches... but whatever... that will happen no matter what.

 

Just got to start playing with my new studio yesterday, and certainly liking it so far. I've got a couple of minor annoyances though...

Do you guys get the "stutter" like sound from the optical drive right when you turn on your computer, and is there any way to get rid of that? I have the blu-ray and dvdrw-drive. Tried disabling it as a boot device altogether but no luck.
Also the drive is overall too loud imo. Could work for watching a blu-ray on a tv, hooked up via the nice hdmi output, but way too noisy to watch a film on your lap I think. Although I guess that was to be expected.

My system fan seems to always be on as well, with all the standard vista battery settings, anyone else experience this?

Can't wait to slap an ssd in this thing, I'm really excited to see the difference in performance, battery life, heat, noise etc.
Think I'll install windows 7 on the standard drive while I wait, so that I have something to compare with. Bloated vista would probably make a very biased comparison, even though I've at least stopped some of the unecessary stuff from booting. (2min26s before sidebar and the dock thingy was up and running originally )

 

My optical drive also does that. I would imagine that is normal, but I am not sure.

Yeah, my fan also seems to be on quite often.

2 min 26 sec? Wow, I have Windows 7 installed and it takes about 30-40 seconds...no longer than a minute. Two reasons probably: I got rid of the bloatware and I have Windows 7.

 

You can get Vista to load up that quickly too, if you get rid of all the bloatware, shut down non essential services and get rid of docks & sidebars. Windows 7 is, in my opinion, much faster to start up though.

I think many people would be quite suprised by how long it takes for startup though; I mean they might think it is like 30 seconds, but I bet if you timed it from pressing that power button until everything was loaded, it would be maybe double that. Unless you've turned a lot of things off and have an SSD that is.

If the fan is on too much then it's because your machine is too warm. Try undervolting your CPU to reduce a little heat, and you could always try applying some thermal paste to the CPU/GPU; not sure if Dell uses pads instead of paste in this specific model.

 

I have been checking out refurbished Studio 15's from Dell.

How is the deal on this one selling for $849?

What are thoughts on the processor and the graphics card? I don't do high end gaming...just things like SimCity, Age of Empires, Sims, etc.

Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
Dell 1397 802.11B/G Wireless Mini Card
6 Cell Primary Battery
15.6 inch Full High Definition (1080p) High Brightness LED Display with TrueLife
6X Slot Load Bluray (BD) Combo Drive (BD Read Only)

Thanks.

 

That seems like a REALLY good deal.

Personally I would order it right now! The only thing you may want to upgrade (later off of eBay) would be the Wireless card since the 1397 is utter crap.

I think that a new one like that would retail for close to 1.5K (IMO).

In short; GO FOR IT!!!

 

Do any of you guys have problem with the sound on your 1555?

I hooked it up to my soundsystem and when playing music the sound volume kinda goes up and down a little depending on the song. It sounds like an effect but i've turned down most of the unnecessary effects in the driver software but the wierd volume-effect is still there.

Anyone got a clue?

 

Yup, got down to 1min after installing w7, ended up on around 1min10s after installing catalyst and nod32 etc.
Won't bother to tweak it that much as it will only last for around a week or so, just needed some comparable results =)

Really liking windows 7 so far though, maybe it's just the marketing but it really feels like everything vista should have been.
On a side note, do you windows 7 guys get that nice litte quickset popup when you adjust your volume? I only get it for screen brightness. Doesn't really bother me, just found it kind of strange.
The sound drivers failed the installation as well, but the w7 drivers work just fine anyway.

 

Quickset does not work with Windows 7 properly. The volume will still change, but you don't get the onscreen display.

Today I noticed that Dell uploaded a new version of Quickset on their drivers page, specifically for Windows 7. It's not on all machines yet, but there is no reason to believe that the Inspiron 1545 Windows 7 quickset wouldn't work for the Studio 1555; you could give it a go, or wait a day / week for Dell to upload quickset apps for Windows 7 for all machines.

 

I'm really enjoying Windows 7, although I haven't noticed that much of a difference between it and Visa so far. It does load up a lot quicker and there does seem to be less nag messages about what programs I want to run.

Still, the first time I ever ran Vista properly was on this Studio 1555 which I got last Thursday, and it didn't seem that bad to me.

I also can't get over how quiet this laptop is. It's amazing....my desktop is so noisy in comparison!

 

Holy crap. My girlfriend just got her brand new 1555 today with the 1080p display. I always thought my 720p was beautiful, but now I see what everyone's been talking about...it really looks like crap in every way compared to her 1080p. Hers is so much sharper, clearer, brighter, and has way better viewing angles, both vertically and horizontally.

I think I'm going to talk to Dell and try to order the 1080p panel.

 

Bloody Ninja!

 

any thoughts?

 

I think you have it all down. Unless you have the sim chip option. Make sure you have the latest BIOS, then I think you're good.

 

I went with the refurbished 1555. With the 15% discount code I was able to get it for $775 shipped.

Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
Dell 1397 802.11B/G Wireless Mini Card
6 Cell Primary Battery
15.6 inch Full High Definition (1080p) High Brightness LED Display with TrueLife
6X Slot Load Bluray (BD) Combo Drive (BD Read Only)

 

Once you go hi-res there's no going back.

 

So true... it was true on the 15.4 inch laptops too... I had the WSXGA+ screen and just wow... the room you have to use is awesome. Now on the 1080p screen... Same thing... just brighter and an LED display

 

If there's one thing I miss about my e1705 it's the gorgeous 1920x1200 screen. It was gigantic, and it felt luxurious just using it.

 

Although i bet you don't miss lugging that thing around...... haha

mmm high res....

 

Yay! I just ordered my Studio 1555! So happy! Check my sig, is it good or what?

 

the fact that I'm now using a 14z is a testament to my succumbing to a more practical form factor - but the 900p screen is def. passable

 

ok i got little problem w/ my headphone jack now that I installed the IDT- Driver. Both my headphones jacks work fine but before i installed the IDT driver my computer remembered my volume for the my headphones but now it just takes whatever the volume is for the speakers and output that volume to my headphones which makes the extreme loud.

any help?

 

I dont see why you wont like your computer. Mine has a slightly slower processor and 1gb less ram... but it runs very nicely.

 

I dont know if there is a fix for that... I mean I have the same "problem" so I need to basically turn the sound to the lowest level to use headphones... When i'm using itunes and stuff i just down the volume on that.... Not really sure if there is a fix for that... If you were to plug in external speakers, you would need the power going through there...

 

Interesting stuff! Was it the LG panel or AUOptronics?

 

It was more of a bragging notion

 

Speaking of that, which is better? I have to get my screen replaced soon (flickering issue) and i dont want the Samsung screen as i hear its the worst of the three. So is it:

LG>AUO>Samsung

OR:

AUO>LG>Samsung?

 

I didn't think to check, but I'll take a look tomorrow.

 

I have the LG 1080p screen and it's amazing.

 

The 900p screen by AUO is also gorgeous.

 

People on dutch forums are saying the 1080p screen of AUO beats the LG.

I know the 720p screen of AUO beats the Samsung.