Dell Studio 1555

It was the wireless card for me. I disabled it and did not feel any heat at all my the touchpad.

 

hey everyone, i just received my studio 1555 last week~~
just wondering how to get the middle headphone jack to work? I checked the older posts but then I am not sure where to get the driver for the IDT.... also, does anyone know how to adjust the left/right channel for audio as I wanted to watch foreign videos but they have two languages talking at the same time... =_= Thanks a lot~~

 

opps, I was so dumb~~ i just found the driver and installed it and the middle jack now works... but then i still couldnt solve the left/right channel problem...

 

I am assuming your video plays one language on the left speaker, and one language on the right speaker, and you want to balance it to only where one speaker plays to get only one language on the video.

If that is so, heres how you balance your left/right speaker.

In Vista, goto
Control Panel >> Hardware and Sound.
Under Sound category, click "Change system sounds"
A window will pop up and under the Playback tab there will be options for
ATI HDMI Output and Speakers / Headphones. (There may be more depending on whether you've installed additional sound drivers, e.g USB headphones)
For your laptop speakers/headphones, click on Speakers/Headphones, have it highlighted. It should already have a green check mark on it if it's currently using that option.
Now, right click, Properties. Click on the Levels tab.
You'll see a button on the Speakers category saying Balance.
Click that Balance button.
A window will pop up with volume controls for L, R, C, Sub, etc. You want to turn the volumes down for whichever speaker you want off. Example, if you want to turn the right speaker off, turn the volume control for R down.

 

I've tried Everest, and I remember as it was first running, it was laggy (system freezing) while it was loading up all the sensors etc. It seemed like it was reading all the system specs, such as GPU etc. I only used it once, and because of this I switched to HWmonitor, all I want are temp readings and HWmonitor does the job.

If you haven't changed your Function keys (F1-F12), then pressing the F2 button will turn off your wireless devices (Wifi Card and Bluetooth).
If you've changed it to the normal Function keys, then you'll need to hold down the Fn key and then press the F2 button.

By the way. Yes, it's the Wifi card/bluetooth under the palmrest you're talking about. I've felt that area being warm when I have Wifi on for awhile. I've tested turning it off, and it is indeed cooler. Try the methods previously mentioned, turning the power management setting for the Wireles devices down to power saver. It will idle your WiFi card when there is no bandwidth and therefore its not constantly on. But, it doesn't seem to be limiting the ammount of bandwidth when its active though, as the speed/response time haven't seem to have been altered.

 

Thank you Streetmagus, will try it out this evening....

 

I was wondering if anyone could tell me where the Dell laptops are made? I ordered mine on the 24th and it says expected delivery of 9-1 and it's still in production. I can't wait for it and keep checking the status almost hourly for it to say shipped. lol

 

It depends on your location. If you're in North America it will come from Texas. I ordered mine on a Wednesday and had it the next Friday, 3-4 days before my estimated delivery date.

 

Ok, thank you. I'm in Wisconsin so Texas it is. I wish mine were coming that quick.

 

I'm not trying to get your hopes up or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had it by the middle of next week. Mine had to go through customs and what not, you're lucky enough to be able to avoid that.

 

The differences between the Intel WiFi link 5300 and 5100 are easy to spot, but whats different between the Dell 1510 and the Intel 5100 cards?

 

lol, well they just changed it to shipped and an estimated delivery date of the 28th. So 4 days ahead of schedule.

 

Finally sealed this order from Dell:

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600
15.6in Widescreen Full High Definition (1920X1080) WLED
Ruby Red Microsatin Finish
4096MB 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel
320GB Serial ATA (7200RPM)
Blu-Ray Disc Drive including software
Primary 6 cell 56W/HR LI-ION
256 MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4570
Intel WiFi Link 5100
Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Backlit Keyboard
Windows Vista SP1 Home Premium 64-Bit (with Win7 upgrade of course )

£809.23. Good deal?

 

Re palmrest heat:

After experimenting with the wireless turned OFF, the right side of the touchpad indeed stays COOL. Once turned back on, the temperature starts to rise. The power setting of the wireless adaptor also contribute to this effect.

Thank you for those who have responded to my posts.

 

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, let me know where otherwise...

I just downloaded the trial version of Acronis Image Home as I like the idea of being able to keep an 'healthy' image of my o/s just in case something happened like virus attack and hard drive failure. When I launched the program, it says that it doesn't support dynamic drives?! What's a dynamic drive? I went into Computer Management and my hard drive(drive 0) indeed is showing as dynamic. Is it normal? Apparently, it could be a basic drive?

 

It sure is! When is the EDD?

 

I'll add my order to the thread

Intel Core 2 Due Processor T6400
15.6" Widescreen 900P
Midnight Blue
4096MB DDR2
320GB 5400
9 cell battery
256 MB Radeon 4570
Intel WiFi
Vista Home Premium 64-Bit (w/ Win7 upgrade)

Added 2 yr warranty as well for a total of $900. Purchased it from the Outlet so will still be able to get the upgrade to Windows 7

 

can someone help me out my computer doesn't always display the volume level when i press the up and down volume buttons. Sometimes it works but other times it doesnt. Any help?

 

I got this almost exact spec with the following differences from the Outlet for £460 shipped inc VAT:

Primary 9 cell 56W/HR LI-ION
512 MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4570
Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Standard Keyboard
DVD RW Drive

I would urge people to check out the Outlet first as you may find your exact spec for a good price. The biggest difference in the BD drive but is a £100 option on the Dell site so you could still save yourself a small fortune.

 

What Acronis Image Home version is this?

In April I tried to install it on my freshly bought 1555 and had an installation issue. So I gave up because nobody could solve the problem. I wish you succeed.
Sorry, I don't have the answer to the dynamic drive question.

 

I'm experiencing sometimes crashes of the Dell application managing the Media keys. But I'm notified it crashes therefore I'm not surprised the keys are not active anymore.
However I also noted a couple of times a dysfunction in displaying the volume level widget, just like you. I assume it is linked to the applications running in foreground; for instance, watching TV online in full screen with IE leads to it.

 

@Blackyblack

It's Acronis True Image Home 2009. It installed no problem but won't run coz it doesn't suport dynamic discs...

How's your hard drive set up? Basic or dynamic?

(To everyone) Which one do you use? Basic or dynamic? Why?

 

EDD is the 9th of September. Just went into production today which seems rather quick.

It's strange how after you place the order, you realise how hard it is to wait!

And then when it finally comes there's another wait because you have to fully charge the battery first time lol. Does anyone know how long the first charge takes?

 

It's supposed to be 12 hours according to the manual. But as it's a Li-ion battery, I didn't bother with that....

You may find this battery guide useful:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91846

Keep us posted!

 

My HDD is of BASIC type.
In the Vista Help, they explain how to set it to Dynamic to basic but it causes loss of partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/232463 gives the info that Vista Home doesn't support Dynamic. I guess you are running Vista Business or Enterprise

 

I'll take a look at the link... I'm running Windows 7 64-bit at the moment. My default Window 7 upgrade is in 32bit but I'm testing with the 64bit RC to see if everything's still compatible. If so I'll ring Dell to change.

I wonder if this dynamic disk thing is limited to a 64bit system? The trouble is, I don't even know I got mine HDD in 'dynamic' in the first place? All I did was fresh installing Windows7 RC on it and partition the OS drive during the process...

 

Well it's supposed to arrive in a few hours, here's specs;

Intel Core2Duo T6500
4096MB DDR2 RAM
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon 4570
1920x1080p LED High Brightness Display
9 Cell battery
the rest is stock config.

It better get here today >_<

 

You can disconnect the battery and run of mains when you first get it. Then just plug in the battery and leave it on the mains overnight to give the battery it's first charge. This lets you play with the laptop as soon as you receive it.

 

I've seen lots of complicated battery guides but that one's simple enough to follow. Thanks!

Wow I would never have thought of that! I'm keen to get Win7 RC installed straight away as I've only used it on a Virtual PC without the cool new Aero effects. Thanks for the tip!


I noticed the two-finger flick gesture on the touchpad is good for PowerPoint etc. Can it be used for going back/forward between web pages in IE as that would be really useful?

 

Dell recommeneds 12 hours. You can use the laptop as long as you have it plugged via the AC adapter and you don't disconnect it. It will continue to charge while you're installing/rebooting. Just keep it plugged. I get the impression that you think you need to charge it full before you can boot up the system.

 

Is it safe to shrink the recovery partition? Seems like its about twice as big as it needs to be.


Also, there was 2.5GB of unallocated space on my hard drive by default, if this is a common thing with all Studio 1555's you can give it to the main partition by right clicking Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

Not sure why they would leave that much unallocated.

 

I was just curious since I did a full charge of the battery when I got my phone which is a lithium-polymer. Apparently it helps increase the life of the battery according to the person who sold me the phone . It's OK though I will just connect it straight to the mains and leave the battery out until the evening then charge it overnight.

 

For some reason when I started my Studio 15 today the screen turned a...very unusual color. It was filled with assorted green and whitish bars all over the place, and for some reason it got stuck in that "mode". I couldn't do anything with it and had to shut the whole thing down, restart it. This time everything went as normal. Can anyone explain what's happening with the "green screen"? Anybody else has this problem?

 

Does HD Tune show the hard drive to be in UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA133) for anyone else? I thought ATA133 was for the older PATA standard, not SATA-II.

It also shows my CPU useage to be in the 20-30 range, which strikes me as odd since every benchmark i see online (including the Studio 1555 review) shows it to be much lower. Is something wrong with my configuration?

 

So my Studio 1555 overheated and shut down last night. I was on the phone with tech support for 2+ hours trying to figure out what the problem was and finally they just remotely changed the BIOS and ran a few remote tests. It apparently failed the test so they offered to let me ship it back for repairs or a full refund. I took the refund because they said if I shipped it back for repair it could take 10-13 business days. I don't have that kind of time. Now I have to go computer shopping all over again. Who knows, maybe I will end up back at the Studio 1555 as I really like the laptop.

 

Ew, sounds awful! In the past, I've had experience with Dell external monitors doing things like that with a quick off-and-on of the monitor solving the problem. I'm not offering a diagnosis, but it could be a problem with your display.

 

Ouch, how did that happen? What were you doing at that time it overheated :O

 

No, my computer doesnt tell me Quickset crashing. I cant even find quickset when i search for it but i know its installed.

 

anyone give me recommendations on the hard drive?

should i go with 5400rpm or 7200rpm?
will it heat up the laptop using a higher speed?

 

Get the cheapest from Dell and do the upgrade yourself.

WD5000bevt is a good and fast hard drive. http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/14

 

which hard drives do dell provide as standard?

 

not sure which HD's Dell offers...Western Digitals, Seagates etc etc.. but the one I got..the Western Digital 320Gb Black Scorpio 7200rpm is pretty fast...HW monitor shows it going up to 49C but almost negligent amount of heat can be felt on the outside...
but wat u get depends on ur luck..sometimes some 5400rpm HD's can be as fast a a 7200rpm one..

 

one last thing how would i erase the vista partion if i want to install windows 7?

would i just boot the disc up and it will give me options to erase vista and put on windows 7?

 

Yes. It's fairly straightforward. Once you boot your laptop up with the Windows 7 disc, it'll ask where you'd like to have it install. Just choose the biggest partition...That's where your Vista is preinstalled. This will leave the hidden recovery partition intact.

Hope this helps.

 

so when i choose to install it onto the biggest partion it will auto erase Vista os?

 

They don't have a standard HDD, their supplier can change depending upon mainly the cost at the time of purchase. Mine and a friends had a seagate HDD in, but I've heard of others having WD as standard, even when they went with the same option (in terms of size and RPM).

 

Exactly. So if there was anything you want to save, do it first before you do the fresh install.

 

Just playing Call of Duty 4. It started slowing down so I felt the bottom and it was really hot. A few seconds later I got the BSOD and was able to reboot fine but once I started playing again is BSOD'd again.

 

The latest security patches for Vista 64 bit caused me some crazy BSOD's. Reverting back to before that fixed it completely, hopefully MS addresses this soon.

 

Yep, for example, I have a Toshiba 320GB 7200 drive