My experience with the Dell studio 1555

Hello everyone I’ve had my Dell studio 1555 for about 3 days now and I thought I might tell my experience I’ve had with the laptop and Dell as a company.

I was in the market for a new laptop for about 2 weeks nothing suitable had come up, looked at a few Sony’s and HP’s and nothing was in my price range, the ones I wanted were £1000+.

I never considered dell after hearing all the horror stories that people have had, however I decided to look at them with an open mind, you know the phrase never judge a book by its cover. Anyway I was considering getting a relatively small laptop that I could carry around university, but at the same time I needed something with a little power to handle all those graphic intensive applications and decided to go for the Studio 1555 (price at £800 was great value) , I chose the high end model and because it had a built in blu-ray drive I thought I might as well upgrade the screen to 1080p, I ordered and that was that.

Being the impatient person I am, after the 3rd or 4th business day it was shipped I was wondering why no one had called to arrange a delivery, so I called them and they said “we can deliver it tomorrow morning.” Was really happy, and felt like an excited kid again.

Next day delivery man came and I signed for it with a big smile on my face. I opened up the box to find a shiny laptop inside, anyway I power it on to find some bloat ware that I didn’t want or need, so I thought I would start uninstalling the programs, MacAfee trial uninstalled no problem, same goes for the office trial, however when I tried to uninstall the Data online backup software it kept on giving errors, so I said full install of vista it is then… After the vista reinstall I loaded up all the correct drivers and everything was good to go.

Playing with for a first few hours I thought it’s a fast and snappy laptop and was really happy with the product. One thing I did notice every time I powered on the laptop on the vista welcome screen had horizontal lines running through it; I thought ill address that problem a bit later.
I put a Blu-ray disc of Spiderman 3 to test out the gorgeous screen and that it where all the problems began, first of all it didn’t recognize the disc, I thought it might be a faulty disc so I pressed eject and low and behold nothing came out, I tried pressing eject on my computer and trying it from the bios all to no avail, I know there some people out there that are going to say it’s a easy fix, but I am not going to take apart the laptop after a few hours of use.

That was the final straw basically have just got off the phone with them after being passed around their telephone lines like a piece of meat and being put on hold for the best part of half an hour, lol they first said they will call me back for a cancellation , i was having none of that and i said i needed sorting out today, to give dell credit they put me straight through. The delivery man will pick up the laptop on Monday and I am going to get a full refund within the next week or so….. Sorry I know this is a bit long but I had to get this of my chest, it’s such a shame because I really did like the laptop. It’s just a case of starting the whole process of buying a new laptop. Im thinking the studio xps but dell has really put me off...

Here are a few pics

 

I think you should of tried all this stuff before you wiped the system back to a clean install of vista..I'm sure they test these things and at least if you checked you'd know who's fault it was and therefore you'd know it would be easy enough to fix..

 

it doesnt matter if i reinstall vista or windows 7, at the end of the day a 2-3 days old laptop should not have a cd stuck in its drive, i mean i understand these things don't last forever, but 3 days? no thanks

 

I was just saying,If you tested beforehand,Users on here could of helped you out with getting the system running again and giving you the correct drivers that they are using..

 

i understand, however everything was done using the cds dell provided. i believe it is a design fault that dell doesnt have a manual overide like on some other laptops where you stick like a thin metal object to maually push the disc out, but hey thats just my opinion.

 

The optical drive is a mechanical device and sometimes they fail. It is entirely your decision as to whether to stick with Dell or go with someone else, but all other notebook sellers may potentially have the same issue regardless. Sometimes people get a bad egg, do you then refuse to eat any eggs from that chicken again? Who can say you don't get a bad egg from another chicken?

 

what i'm saying is if the chickhen is faulty theres a high chance of it producing a bad egg. I know dell doesn't purposely make these things to fail like this, but a little more thinking should have gone in the design, like a manual override where you push out the cd, i mean it only makes more sense.

Some companys have higher percentage of faults than others, i also understand that not every electrical product is perfect, but in this consumers world i expect to get what i pay for. £800 for a student is a lot of money.

Thats why i asked about the sudio xps, is it build quality better? and does it have a manual override for the cd drive.

 

There are no slot-load optical drives with manual overrides. And yours failing is a simple mechanical defect; as Fragilexx mentioned, it could happen to any laptop from any manufacturer. Dell would have gladly honored your warranty and replaced the optical drive for you.

 

dell dosent even make the optical drive. its usually a company like sony, or matsua or phillips etc.

and these suppliers also supply other notebook companies, so i dont think you can fault dell for it other than the bad service on the phone.


if you want a laptop thats really solid and good, go for a business grade one like the dell latitudes/precisions, or HP elitebooks or lenovo thinkpads.

you may be able to find refurbished ones for your price range

 

I believe the Studio 1555's optical drives are made by Toshiba-Samsung (TSST) and Sony (Optiarc).

 

Like everyone else is saying. A fault in the CD ROM isn't a fault with the entire system.

I assume the CD ROM worked BEFORE the fresh install, since you gotta insert the install disk?

 

Dell would have i know, forgot to mention in the first post they offered me a discount on top of getting it fixed, but using the warranty after three days doesn't look good to me.

Thanks for your suggestions, i will research more into them,. I mean dont dont have a long time till University so i have to choose a bit quick.

Looking back in hindsight it probably was harsh to blame Dell only, but i was really frustrated at the time.

The cd drive was working fine for music cd's normal dvd films etc... as you said it had to work as i did a fresh install of vista. When i put in the blu-ray it didn't see a disc in the drive, when i pressed eject it loads for a bit and says 'failed to eject disc'

 

That definitely sounds like an optical drive fault.

For the record, I've found my 1555 to be an extremely reliable system in the months that I've had it. It came to me as a system exchange for a 1535 with no end of issues, including a DVD drive that would never eject. Of course, five DVD drive replacements, and a new motherboard failed to fix things in my case.

 

Mine has a Hitachi GA10N, though it's a standard CD/DVD burner and not Bluray like UltraA's.

UltraA, did you have any problems with the 1080 screen other than the blue lines (eg flickering down the right side?)

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about the HLDS models. My regular DVD drive is a TSST. And I believe all the Blu Ray drives are Sony Optiarc.

 

Good to know that your systems reliable that must have been a lot of hassle with the 1535, back and forth with dell etc... but i can say dell hasn't left a good first impression.

No problems with the 1080p screen, looked really smart and useable, people were saying that text size was too small etc.. but it was perfect for me as you could fit a lot on the screen at any given time.

One question, could their have been a problem with the delivery guys maybe they handle fragile stuff like this with a heavy hand, chucking it about etc...

 

Ultra, sorry to hear you are unhappy with the Studio 1555

I have a TSST drive in mine. A little loud but always ejects... (not Blu ray).

I will be honest, I would have had them replace under warranty, as you know, there is no manual eject so no other way to do it...

However, it is your choice and good luck with your next lappy...

 

Thanks mate, im still searching, you never know it may still be a dell

jid if you have any questions about your lappy, or the windows OS in general im here to help, you can ask anytime