Five problems with my M1330.

Okay after waiting two months I have five things that are bugging me about this laptop. Aside from the whine and the battery whine when turned off I found more things wrong with it.

First issue, I have the 120GB Hitachi drive and this thing is loud. It seems to never stop spinning. Is this a known issue with Hitachi drives or do I just have a defective hard drive.

Second issue is the indicator lights on the right side near the wifi switch, it seems the led will never turn on.

Third issue, I have a piece of debris in the web cam lens and it is very annoying, anyone know how to fix that?

Fourth issue, the remote in the express card slot never seem to come out I have to use a toothpick or a small pin to get it out.

Fifth issue, the dvd drive although i changed in bios not to boot it still makes that noise when on powering up.

So any ideas on what I should do, I really do like the laptop. Thanks!

 

For the remote, you have to push it in pretty hard the first time and it'll pop out. You don't have to use a pin or anything to get it out. I am almost sure there's no problem with that on your laptop.

I have the 120GB HD and it is loud too. It sounds like a cooling fan that never stops spinning!

 

lol, I have Hitatchi hdd in all my acers, and I HATE them, the one that is out of warrenty I replaced with a 120gb seagate . my other one is plagued with hdd disk errors, crashes and loud noises. also the constant spinning might be Vista prefetching what you are going to do.

 

1) It's not hitachi's fault, it's vista caching stuff off the hdd, indexing etc... Basically, any drive will be used extensively under vista. Besides, 120gb/5400rpm Hitachi is better than seagate with the same specs, I had a chance to bench both in 1330, and hitachi was around 5-10% faster than the seagate when both were set to performance in bios. In terms of noise, I wouldn't say that hitachi was much louder than seagate, both are used extensively by vista = lots of access clicking.
2) led next to wifi switched is used when you turn off the notebook and if you push on the wifi-catcher switch next to it. it's not used when the notebook is on
3) debris in camera - ask Dell support to send a tech out to clean it out. I doubt it will interfere with webcam functions tho.
4) remote may be getting stuck, talk to tech support
5) dvd drive noise is a design, since it's a slot-loading drive. ignore it or put in a blank disk to quiet it down

 

theres your answers, i turned off caching and the harddisk scratching went away, after all vista has a good file system so you shouldn't lose your work

 

thanks guys for the tips. I will call dell to have a tech come out and clean the web cam there is a big piece of debris that is blocking the camera.

 

Some people had a protective plastic film covering the webcam which had to be removed You might want to check yours out and make sure it's not there and causing the problem.

 

Why dont you just call in for a replacement??? You shouldnt have to turn anything off to eliminate hard disk scratching.

 

The replacement will do the same thing because it is not a hardware problem. Vist's prefetch keeps the drive running for quite a while upon first boot.

Flamenko, you have an ssd so you wouldn't notice

 

What? Sorry, maybe I forgot to tell you but I have 3 laptops and 4 desktops in my home. In my immediate office at work, there is no less than 4 desktops along with my work laptop which just so happens to have a ...oh yes...Hitachi drive in it.

As far as that squeal he is describing, that in itself is grounds to call in for a replacement for a brand new computer. I understand what is gained by turning off the cache but what is dropped is the performance level and efficiency of the disk.

This is the same for any disk and not just a ssd.

Why should anyone have to fix a new computer?

Now if you add on the other features...would you just keep a system that will always bug you so?

Must be fm Philly eh Sleey0?? Was there last year..Mutter Museum...You gotta see it to believe it.