New Inspiron 11 3000 (11.6" Haswell Celeron Touchscreen)

Yeah, but give me till later this week. I'm going to be very busy.

The biggest thing though is that you have to get a copy of Win8.1 Home (not the Pro version) 64-bit on a USB drive. I had a disc copy for I used for my parents' computer and copied the CD files to a USB. The license is automatically attached to the BIOS in the computer these days, so you don't have to worry about finding the key on your computer. It'll detect it automatically.

I'll go through all the steps later.

 

There really isn't much crapware on dells these days, but a clean install is still awesome. Lenovo? Tons of crap. Asus? Not as much, but still plenty. Dell is mostly McAFee and the Dell proprietary update type stuff, nothing as egregious as the other oems.

I like my 1138 quite a bit. Even used it to drive my 1080p touchscreen monitor and it had no problem spanning while I read PDFs, had 10-12 chrome tabs open, Spotify in the background, and word and one note running. Still drop frames on YouTube, particularly if you scroll down for the comments, for instance (though honestly comments are normally not worth the reading).

 

My inspiron 11 has celeron 2955u. I got rid of McAfee and other crapware and the lappy is very smooth for YouTube, vimeo, 10-12 tabs. Even Torchlight II plays very well.
This is with no mods at all just 2GB ram!!

 

How's the build quality on the Inspiron 11 3000? Is the keyboard solid with no flex?

 

The keyboard is quite sturdy. In fact the entire laptop build quality is very good.

 

Looking at the Inspiron 11 3000. Or, rather, switching the Yoga 2 11" for this. A few questions.

1. Can you switch the Fn key and media keys in the BIOS? Userspace switching like an fn-lock is useful information, but I am particularly looking for a BIOS switch.

2. Can you install custom keys to Secure Boot? If no, can you disable Secure Boot?

3. Is the wireless card Atheros, Realtek, or something else? (I believe all vendor branded cards are rebranded cards from someone else)

4. Is the hard drive whitelisted in the BIOS? (I think the answer is no based on this)

5. Anyone tried booting a Linux distro to see which, if any, works?

 

Does the touchpad have the two finger tap right click menu on this laptop instead of pressing down the far right corner of the touchpad?

 

To answer a few questions from above:

As someone said, build quality and keyboard are great! I'm very impressed and trying out the keyboard was one of the reasons I actually decided to get this computer. I feel that the keyboard may be a tiny bit smaller than a normal keyboard - maybe - but it's great to type on, and I have very large hands.

The touchpad does have two finger tap right click. I actually never knew about this until I tried it just now! Good to know! The Dell touchpad driver is really good and there are multiple menus where you can adjust all kinds of things on the touchpad.

If I didn't answer some other questions it's because I don't know the answers.

 

Thanks Roman!! Great to know that there is a two finger tap for the right click menu, I hate pressing down the left or right button on buttonless touchpads.

 

I'll second the keyboard being very nice. I didn't expect much, and it is not full size, but there is something about the key feel and response that is very nice. It's quiet and I don't make many errors (typing on it now).

The 2955U is about 60% more powerful than the 2815 in my Inspiron 1138, so it makes sense that that would provide better performance. As to all the talk about build quality, I think the caveat "for a $300-400 laptop" needs to be added to all the praise. Mine shipped with a defective trackpad which Dell sent a technician out to replace. To do this he had to complete detach everything from the keyboard piece and reattach it to the new one. Technician was great, super friendly, and very skilled, but that didn't prevent him from chewing up the cheap plastic he had to pry to release the clips. My week old lappie looks like it's been on a few rough journeys, but at least the trackpad functions properly now. Also had a series of DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION errors which I haven't had a repeat of since doing a Win8 refresh. So... still a great package, still happy, but I hope to have no further hardware and software issues now that it's set up.

 

Hmmm, maybe asking all those questions at once was too ambitious. How about just the BIOS setting for the media keys? (Usually something like "enable media key") That's probably the most important. Followed by whether it's an Atheros or Realtek wireless card.

 

Since I'm a nice guy, I checked just for you. The wireless is Atheros and you can change the function key behavior in the BIOS. The default is Multimedia, but there is an option in the BIOS menu to change it to Function.

 

Thank you so much for going out of your way to check.

 

Is their a shortage of parts for these laptops or something? I ordered on the 20th of Feb with a delivery of Feb 26th. Then it changed to Mar 5th and now when I check this morning its Mar 11th. I needed the laptop for a trip on the 10th of march. Looks like that isn't happening.....

 

You ordered from Dell USA?

 

Yes from Dell USA....

 

Does anyone's trackpad left-button need to be pressed hard for it to register? In some cases, the button presses don't work until I restart the PC. If anyone has made settings or SW tweaks to improve the trackpad, let us know.

 

Don't even bother with the left or right clicks. Use the single finger tap for clicking or double clicking and the two finger tap for right click menu.

 

I ended up buying two of these machines, the 3137 and the 3138 when it became available. Like so many others I instantly upgraded both machines with an SSD, and the 3137 I replaced the RAM with 4gb. I really like the build and quality of these machines, although I agree with the screen being on the low end and the touch pad definitely could have been better. But I got these machines for a pretty decent price, so I really can't complain. And after these upgrades, they're plenty fast for the simple tasks we throw at them.

The 3138 I deliberately got the version with the Celeron processor, not the Pentium one. I looked at the specs of the CPUs and it seems like the Pentium uses considerably more power. Since I really love the long battery life, I didn't want to risk getting the 3138 with the Pentium. Obviously like many others mentioned, this isn't a machine for heavy duty tasks, but it's good enough for our every day needs. In fact, I even do some light software development on it.

The only thing I find rather annoying at times is the touch pad. It seems to have issues (on both models), sometimes becomes next to unusable (even with the latest drivers) and the only remedy appears to either reboot the machine or shut it down for a few minutes. I hope they remedy this with a new driver at some point, but luckily it hasn't seemed to happen too often recently. They should have never shipped the 3137 with only 2GB ram, it's simply insufficient for the 64bit edition of Win8.

Oh, did I mention that I still hate Win8.1? Too bad Win7 wasn't an option, I would have even not cared about losing the touch feature with Win7...

Oh, I also swapped the wifi card with a cheap intel wifi link 5300 to get 802.11ac so that I can utilize the 5ghz spectrum. Works much better, and unlike the builtin card windows recognizes and installs drivers all by itself. The wifi link 5300 technically needs 3 antennas, but there's only two in the screen of this machine. I couldn't find any instructions on how to open up the screen to route a 3rd antenna in, so I tried the 3rd antenna just in the base of the machine. Unfortunately, that degraded performance considerably, so I removed it and I'm operating it with only the two antennas, which is luckily supported by this wifi card. But it also means, that it essentially makes it the same as the wifi link 5100 card, which only needs two antennas as well.

 

I want to change the wireless card is Intel the best one to put in? I want to get one with the AC standard also what I get a half size wireless card?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Nevermind I figured it out I went ahead and ordered the Intel 7260 AC wireless card for $35 with Bluetooth...

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

I bought the 3138 from Dell on the president's day sale for $293.99. It did not have the rubberized finish like the 3137 2g 2955U one.Did your 3138 have the rubberized finish?Also you said yours works better after the upgrade to the 802.11ac card.Exactly what do you mean by "works better"? I have used many public wifi spots with no drops,but a little slow. Did the 802.11ac card make yours faster? Has anyone purchase the Targus Citygear Atlanta bag for their Inspiron 11 3000 series? If so, did the computer and power block fit OK? Thanks for any info you can give me.This is my first computer,so I have much to learn.

 

Small note about nomenclature:
3138 is the model with the Celeron N2815. This is a Bay Trail processor, meant for the Atom market. It has a TDP of 7.5W. I don't think there is an Inspiron 11 3000 with a Bay Trail Pentium, though Bay Trail Pentiums do exist.
3137 are the models with the Celeron 2955U or the Pentium 3556U. These are Haswell processors, meant for a lower price point than the Core processors. These have TDP of 15W.

 

Yeah the intel wifi link 5100/5300 are only around $10 and support 802.11ac. But they don't have bluetooth. But I don't really need/care much about bluetooth...

 

Yeah I found that out when I got the machine. When I ordered the 3138 I for some reason assumed that the celeron cpu was the same, and that it was going to be a haswell based machine, too. But honestly, I don't really notice too much of a difference in terms of performance. At least not with what we use them for.

 

The 5100/5300 are 4+ years old, they most definitely do NOT support 802.11ac.

If you want 802.11n and Bluetooth, get a 6230/6235. Or just go and get a 7260 802.11ac card - they can be purchased from official sources (not eBay) for ~$30(CAD).

 

I am thinking seriously of purchasing one of these to replace my acer aspire one (AOA150...its from Sept 2008) and I like the long battery life compared to other computers in the same price range.

Is it true that the battery has only 300 cycles on it? Is that 300 cycles until it won't hold a charge or 300 cycles until it loses half of its capacity? That just seems like a terribly low number for a li-ion battery considering that I am still using the same 6-cell battery for my acer that it came with 6 years ago and I am able to get about 3.5hr out of it (it was 7-8 when I first got it).

 

That's what I thought. No way does the 5100/5300 support AC. They are like 4+ years old, the AC tech was not even invented yet....

 

In terms of performance how do the Pentium 3137 CPUs compare to an old c2duo?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Oops, learned something new. For some reason I thought 802.11ac was the same as 802.11a...I guess I bought the wrong cards. Oh well, they still perform much better than what comes with these machines, plus the 2.4ghz band in my neighborhood is so saturated already whereas almost nobody is utilizing the 5ghz bands...

 

Generally for Li-Ion batteries, the capacity of the battery is reduced to 80% of the current capacity after the rated cycles. So 300 cycles means that after 300 full charge-discharge cycles, the battery will only last upto 80% of the current.

 

I want to encourage you to contact Dell about this if it is anything like the problem I encountered. My touchpad would randomly register a continuous touch in its center, often after hours of problem-free operation, requiring a reboot or a sleep to remedy. Dell sent out a tech and replaced it and I haven't had a single problem since then. Touchpad gestures make Windows 8 better, even better than touchscreen if you type a lot like me. But seriously, don't rule out repairable hardware problems.

 

Well I got the Crucial 8GB memory in and the 120GB Crucial SSD drive in. Also changed out the Dell Wireless card for the Intel 7260 AC card. When I get home from work I will install Windows 8.1 and see how it flies

 

I am facing problem when navigating web pages. If page has dark background, brightness dims and again goes back to normal when bright colors are present. I tired changing all power options and also the Intel Graphic Properties -> Power option of Display Power saving Technology. But it is no use.
Anyone faced this problem? Any solutions?

 

I bought this little laptop on Wednesday. It's the Celeron 2955U version. I immediately upgraded RAM to 4GB. I am really impressed by the value for money that this laptop offers. Pure awesomeness!

 

I too seem to be having that dimming flickering issue. I have also turned off all power saving features. I wonder if its a setting in the bios or something. Also after using the laptop for a few days I's say its really great value for the money. The only real complaint I have is, like others have said, the track pad is pretty bad in my opinion. It is ghost clicking moving dragging stuff when I'm not doing anything on the pad really. I wish the track pad was better. Maybe a firmware update might fix this in the future. Has their been any firmware updates to the 3137 version yet?

 

Just to let everyone know, I was the guy who did a clean install with Win8.1 on the newer 3138 model and was complaining about unknown devices. Well Dell finally updated their driver page with Win8.1 (as opposed to Win8) drivers, and all my devices are now recognized. They also threw up some Ubuntu drivers, but I've never messed with that so I can't help anyone there.

 

What's the size for the hdd/ssd drive? Is it the standard 2.5 SATA 7mm?

 

I just got one of these from the Dell outlet. The screen is really dim, and the colors seem washed out compared to my other laptops. Is this typical for these units?

 

The screen is not fantastic but its quite decent. Check your brightness and power settings.

 

What do you mean when you say the wifi is better?Do you mean faster,or drops less?

 

So I swapped my 5300 card with a Wireless AC 7260 on my 3138, but I have to say unless one needs bluetooth it's probably not worth the premium. I have a Asus RT-AC66U router, and it's mounted about 10 ft from here. I tested with iperf

With the Wifi Link 5300 (only 2 of the 3 antennas connected) I usually got 80-90 Mbit/sec. With the Wireless AC 7260 I usually get 110-125 Mbit/sec.

But as mentioned by others, it has Bluetooth support, which I could care less about. But for me, I feel like I probably wasted $25.

 

Both faster and I have it yet to drop wifi on me, at least when using the 5ghz. I don't know if it's much faster on 2.4 ghz compared to the built-in dell card.

 

Yes, 7mm only.

 

My 3138 is my first computer,so I am just learning.Walmart has the AC 7260 for $25,so I think I want to replace my factory WiFi card with it.Could you please step me through the process in very basic layman's terms?I would appreciate it very much.I have downloaded the owner's manual which shows how to remove the bottom of the case.I think I have to download new drivers,but am not sure of the order of things,so am a little afraid of deleting anything.I don't want to end up with no WiFi,as I don't have the internet at home,only using WiFi hotspots.Thanks in advance.

 

1. Download the drivers, just in case. Win 8.1 recognized the card automatically for me, but the driver is an older version than what Intel has on their website.
2. Open the case according to the directions in the manual. I usually start at the back (the side where the lid folds up). But be careful not to bend the bottom up when you're trying to unhook the front. I've broken two of these hooks off doing so. Probably could have been avoided had I used appropriate prying tools.
3. Remove the Wifi card according to directions in the manual
4. Insert new Wifi card and hook up the antennas the same way
5. Close the case.
6. If Windows didn't recognize the new card, or if you wish to install the latest greatest driver, then install what you downloaded in step 1

That's all. Pretty simple. The hardest part for me is always opening the case as I don't have the tools to pry it open.

 

Thanks for the info,I will let you know later how it went. James

 

Before ordering the Intel AC-7260,I read many reviews that were having trouble with dropouts and slowing down,so I had decided to get the 5100 to get dual band.Looking at the Intel website,I found out Intel does not support the 5100 or 5300 on Windows 8.1.Now I am trying to find a dual band wireless card that is supported on the 11-3138 running Windows 8.1,and having a positive proven performance record.

 

The 5100 should work just fine in Win 8.1. I had the 5300 (which is almost the same as the 5100) and it worked fine, Win 8.1 even comes with all the drivers needed for it. Keep in mind that neither the 5100 nor the 5300 support Bluetooth, so if you need/want that you should rather stick to the AC-7260. The AC-7260 works flawlessly in my 3138, I have no drop-outs or any other issues with it.

 

Dell has the 7260.HMWWB PCI express half mini card for $24.95 and free shipping. Is this the part number of the one that you installed in your 3138? Did the antenna wires reach OK? Thanks for having patience with all my questions.Since all my use is WiFi hotspots,I want to be able to use 5GHZ and speed things up. James