Official Inspiron 1545 Owners Thread

Nope. The X-Fi is incredible. It's a waste of time if all you're going to do is listen to music on the built-in speakers, but if you have good headphones that you use, the X-Fi is pure .

 

As I said 'imho it's a waste of time'. imho = in my humble opinion, which means it is user preference, which means there will never be 100% agreement between everybody.

 

Are you talking about the separate X-Fi card? I hope so.

The sound processing chip on these computers is mediocre. I have a creative X-Fi xtreme music because I needed a cheap PCI-E sound card. It isn't bad for the $20 I paid for it. However, all the gimickry creative software is a load of crap that honestly doesn't improve the sound of anything, it just makes it sound different, like if you hit one of those preset "concert hall" or "metal" sorts of settings. It makes sense though as the fidelity of the recording can't be increased and the degree to which the sound card can turn 1's and 0's into what you hear can't be increased. While you could turn everything on and off, I just deleted it all and installed only the audio driver itself. I had the X-Fi software on my 1545 but I reinstalled windows. I wonder if I can reinstall that and compare. I doubt it will make it sound better at all. Actually I doubt it so much I'm not even going to bother.

 

The hell it is! The equalizer is amazing. It also allows you to mess around with the bass and treble functions in the Windows sound settings.

Just because you don't know how to configure something, doesn't mean it's mediocre.

 

I'm not talking about configuring anything, I'm talking about the actual chip in the laptop that converts 1's and 0's to the analog waveform that is transmitted to the speakers. It is the IDT 92HD71B5. You can read all about how crappy it is here: http://www.idt.com/?genID=92HD71B5.

The creative "X-Fi" software itself is a joke, gimmick, fraud. You can download a free equalizer if you want. If the software was for free it wouldn't be so bad. You can't increase the sound quality of a given audio file on given hardware. Contrary to what they say, the quality of the reproduction is not going to increase. The crystalizer sounds neat for a minute but gets old and honestly doesn't improve anything. You can check out Head-Fi forums for a lot more on the subject.

The quality of the sound on my desktop is honestly the only thing keeping me from getting rid of it entirely. I need to save up for a nice USB DAC to hook up the laptop before I can clear some space on top of and under my desk.

 

oh great... and now the price just went up £21. So you have to spend more than £50 to get the same laptop you could get about 2 weeks ago. £420 for a laptop with a 4 cell battery and no webcam seems a bit pricey to me.

 

As I said, their promotional offers change all the time based on various things. If you want the Inspiron then it would be worth holding fire until you see the spec you want at the price you want, or as I said phone them up.

 

I think i'd be better looking at other brands now.

 

honestly, phone them up - what's it going to hurt? The price of one telephone I would think is worth it.

 

It is a fact that messing with the equalizer will give you better sound. It will let you turn up the bass and adjust the overall sound balance to your likings.
That's why it's worth having.

 

You already have an equalizer as well as other sound altering tools that came on your computer in windows media player, not to mention the many others you can download for free. Selling that crap for $25 is literally a scam. And no, the sound isn't better, just more to your tastes.

 

Wrong. WMP's equalizer is laughably horrible. Any messing with the bass and you get massive clipping and auto lessening of volume. XFi's control panel lets you turn the bass up to very high levels and will keep it clipping-free. Nothing matches that equalizer, in my opinion.

And I'd buy it if it was 50 extra dollars. It's worth every penny.

 

Hello i got a problem.
My screen is getting too strong to close.
When i was first using, its easy to close but day after day, its getting strong to close and i hate that. What can i do? please help

 

I'm planning to buy dell inspirion 1545 but I would like to know which
color to choose black matte or pacific blue?
Which one doesn't scratch a lot ?
Is it not to difficult watch a movie or writing when the laptop shines a lot ?
Thanks

 

i cannot use the touch pad because it's gonna burn my hand.

And what does the FN F3 key means?

 

hi all

can any one please provide me with a link to Dell Inspiron 1545 Resource_CD ...

my dvd is damaged and i need to get it as an iso and burn it and i can't get copy from the old one

it will take a long time to download all vista 32-bit and 64-bit drivers from Dell website so if any one can help me and provide me with a link to 1545 drivers image (1.2GB as iso) it will be great ...

it's the one at that link : http://support2.jp.dell.com/jp/jp/faq/270309.asp

thanks and waiting your help

 

black mate doesnt scratch as the shiny pacific blue.

i watch movies fine, sometimes i se the reflection of the screen near the power button nothing that makes the movie unwatchable.

FN f3 is for dell battery manager so pretty much useless.

almost all the drivers for windows 7 are up on the web page.

i need to get the silver palmrest i need to feel unique.

 

I will be keeping an eye on deals near Christmas and may get my 1545 then. Does anyone know if you can hook this laptop up to the TV to watch streaming video on your TV screen? What would I need to do that (cables/connections wise)? If not, which Dell laptop could I use to watch streaming video? Is the quality any good on a big screen TV? Thanks for any answers!

 

The Inspiron 15 (1545) doesn't have an HDMI port which you need for digital video output. The Inspiron 15z DOES have the HDMI port (and it's 0.3" thinner and about 0.5lbs lighter)- LINK

The Studio 1555 also has an HDMI port- LINK

 

Received my 1545 - sad it didnt have a HDMI port, but its not the end of the world!!

I got it in Pacific Blue - and Im please with the colour - I didnt want the colour to be too light, and its not.

Anyway, I dont see a HDD activity light. All I see is a power light, Is this normal??

Ive boxed the system back up as Im waiting for Windows 7 to arrive before I reinstall it.
Ive changed the 500GB 5400rpm HDD, for a 500GB 7200rpm HDD, as I had one spare. Currently selling the 500GB 5400rpm on eBay
Also thinking of sticking 8GB RAM into it. The remaining specs were as high as I could get them at the time of ordering

 

Yes it's completely normal with regards to the LEDs, there is only one which is a power light. Some notebooks have LEDs to indicate HDD & Wireless usage, but imho they are next to useless. Why does it matter if your HDD is working or not

8GB of RAM will work, but will be ridiculously expensive as you need 2x 4GB modules, which are still over £100 (GBP) each.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Not bothered with price. Work are paying for it

 

In which case I'd go with something a bit better than the Inspiron, like maybe one of their business range of lattitudes or precisions, or maybe even the Studio XPS.

 

I got a 1545 recently and absolutely HATE the touchpad. How can this even pass Q&A? It's totally wonky, either ultra sensitive or not sensitive enough. There are plenty of times I'm mashing my finger on the pad and the cursor will not move. Other times it scatters across the screen in random fashion.

No amount of fiddling with the touchpad slider controls makes a difference. To me this seems like an obvious defect. How can other people not be up in arms about this?

I have a separate USB mouse for normal use... but still, the touchpad SHOULD WORK!

 

Or, maybe you've overlooked the possibility that not 100% of models have this issue, and maybe yours has a defect?

 

The system itself is my own personal home system - but since I do a lot of work from home, they are paying for an upgrade.
The rest of the system is top spec, so this was all that was left to upgrade.

 

If they are willing to shell out that money, my preference would be for an SSD rather than 8GB of RAM though. It's your choice though.

 

Hey guys, I'm trying to buy a Laptop Case for my Inspirion 1545. I'm debating whether to buy a carrying bag(that can fit the laptop, batteries, plugs, CDs etc) with nice padded protection OR a case, which fits just the laptop inside with not so much protection (besides preventing scratches). I'm leaning more towards a case, because I already have a bookbag which I can fit everything else into.

An example of a bag I am looking at is something like http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Targus+...26.p?id=1083713711275&skuId=6710026&st=laptop cases&cp=1&lp=3

And I'm sort of leaning towards these kind of cases:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Targus+...25.p?id=1124431844947&skuId=7424325&st=laptop cases&cp=1&lp=2

Or maybe a hybrid in between?
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...il.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=A1499853#Overview

 

I used to use a swissgear backpack and found it great; but the 15.6" 1545 didn't quite fit. I'm currently using a Belkin backpack and carry my notebook to and from work 5 days a week. Is holding up so far; and so much nicer on my back than the old notebook shoulder bags I used to use.

 

The small case you can fit in your backpack is what I use. It's easy to carry, doesn't say "steal me" as much, and I have a lot of space in the backpack for the power supply as well as anything else I might need or want to carry.

 

I'm having the exact same issues with the touchpad on my 1545 too. It's driving me crazy especially when playing timed games on sites like Pogo, the cursor freezes, will not allow me to move it in the direction I want it to go in or just moves so slowly that by the time it goes where I need it to the time is up.

I'm also having trouble that's hard for me to describe but will do my best to do so. I'll be typing on a forum like this one, typing up an e-mail or typing in a wordpad document and suddenly I'll find that while I've been typing the little blinking line that shows where you last typed will be located somewhere else. An example could go like this.. I'm typing in this paragraph and while I'm looking at the keyboard the blinking line could suddenly move a paragraph up and what I was typing would continue up there instead of here and I wouldn't notice till I looked up.

Then sometimes when I am typing in the search box on Facebook, Firefox, IE or etc it will do the same thing as I described above. I'll be typing out a word and then the letters I am typing will move to the front of what I've already typed.

The fan also seems to come on a lot even when I'm not doing much. The fan on the old Inspiron 8600 I was using didn't come on this much and had worse specs then this laptop. I don't know if it would run better with Win 7 instead of Vista or if all 1545's are like this.

Can anyone that's put Win 7 on a 1545 comment on if it changed the way your laptop runs? If it was a good change or a bad change and etc?

I honesly wasn't expecting absolute perfection when I got this laptop. What I was expecting to to simple tasks like typing in various places and playing on pogo without them being a pain in the arse (since I can't type a double s here) .

I just don't know....

 

Can you order internal bluetooth on a Dell Inspiron 1545? I don't see that option anymore anywhere on Dell.com when I try to configure a system.

 

If you click on the 'Tech Specs' tab for the Inspiron 15, it still shows Bluetooth available (below the wireless card options). But you're correct, it's nowhere to be found on the options list when you're configuring a 1545!?

You can actually buy the Bluetooth card on Ebay for under $25 - LINK and it takes less than 10 minutes to install. It's as easy as upgrading RAM and it won't void your warranty either!

 

Thanks so much for the info.
From what I just researched I think there is a compatibilty problem with the bluetooth cards and Win 7. So Dell no longer offers the bluetooth option. Anyone have info or details on this?

Also should if I buy the bluetooth card on ebay and install it myself should I get the 365 or the 370? And does anyone have a tutorial on how to exactly install it on an Inspiron 1545. Thanks.

 

What software are you guys using to watch BluRays?

 

To be honest, I can't figure out the difference between the 365 and 370??? All specs appear to be identical for both models.

I suggested the 365 because it was the one previously available on the 1545. I'm not sure of the relevance, but there were two options shown- 365 for XP and 365 for Vista. There are specific drivers for XP and Vista for the 365, so that was likely the difference in those. There is no driver for the 1545 with Windows 7 for any Bluetooth adapter, so that supports the theory of compatibility issues.

I have the 370 in my Latitude E6400 (works fine with Vista and Win7). Since my E6400 has the same Intel GM45 chipset as the Inspiron 1545. The 370 DOES have a Win7 driver on the Dell website that should work on the 1545 just as it does on the E6400- LINK

So why doesn't Dell just make the 370 optional on the Inspiron with Win7 since there is a known driver for it??? As they say, common sense isn't so common!

As for step-by-step instructions to install it, I can hook you up- LINK. That link is for the entire 1545 Service Manual and listed by hardware component. It's very handy!

If you have any other questions, I'll do my best to answer them for you...just let me know!

 

I just got mine, Inspiron1545 laptop. It is the first one I have ever owned, well Dell owns most of it right now. .) I also bought and paid off a Inspiron 530d Desktop. I think that was part of my decision making process on this laptop purchase. My Model Ins 1545, Intel Pent Dual Core T4200 2.0GHz, 800 FSB, 1m L2 cache. OS Microsoft Vista Home Premium 64bit. 4GB DDR2 800MHz , 2 Dimms, HDrive:WD 5400rpm SATA 9.5MM. Dual Layer DVD +/-,CDRW 8X. SD card reader in front and multicard reader on side. 3 USB ports, Ethernet port and a wireless card.

The biggest thing I noticed with my 1545 was how much more stable and smoother runnig. Anyone else upgrade the Dell Data Safe Loca backup from the basic to the Premium for $39.99. Best money I ever spent. Check it out, if, you haven't already deleted it, thinking it was just some more bloatware, not so. Speaking of bloatware. Mine came with a preintalled MS Student Office 2007. Plus you keep getting updates from MS because your system is expecting them, I don;t know. I just know I could do without a 400GB program that I knew I would not buy.

The Dell Data Safe "Premium" is a nice new feature. I ordered my Laptop on October 5 and it was deliverd October 14. Exciting and surprising that something as small as my laptop was as powerfull or maybe even more so. I dig it.

First post, now you know where I got my nickname from, I have had it for almost 40 years. Oh well.

Later, BigBreeze

 

allfiredup,
Thanks for the service manual link. Very handy!

Anyone else sucessfully using a Bluetooth 365 or 370 internal module on your Insprion 1545 while running Win 7? Still not sure which would be the better choice to get if I'm running Win 7.

 

I'm using the Bluetooth 365 with Windows 7.

It seems to work pretty well, but it's far from perfect. I occasionally have to restart my bluetooth mouse to make it reconnect. A couple times I've had to completely reinstall it.

 

BigBreeze here, I've had mine a month now and I am with you, "Mastershroom" I have already got rid of the virus program {mcafee}. And basically have a half dozen programs and another half dozen apps. for some external hardware. I did upgrade that Dell Data Safe local backup to Premium and so far am happy with it. Actually its my belief that formatting and reloading my OS like spring cleaning avoids the crapola that builds up no matter what you do.

Hang in there, save yourself some hairpulling and try not to call tech support for anything. Unless you buy one of those complete tech care packages for couple hundred bucks a year.

Later,

The Breeze

Humility is the key to permanent success.

 

I haven't posted to this thread in a few months, so I decided to catch up on reading the recent postings and share my latest purchase with you folks!

I bought my sister a 1545 from Dell Outlet almost four months ago and she still loves it. I spent $382 (including tax & shipping) and it has the T6500, 3GB RAM, LED display, 250GB hard drive, Vista Home Basic and the Intel wireless-N card). At the time, it would have cost $680 to order it new, so it was a great deal!

My other sister mentioned a few months back that she wanted to buy laptops for both of her kids this Christmas. Initially, she was thinking about buying each of them a netbook, but I shot that idea down quickly. I got her to agree to a maximum budget of $550 (including tax and shipping) for each kid. My 15-yr old niece has the slowest P.O.S. laptop every made, so anything will be a drastic upgrade. Her dad's mother works at Walmart and she bought a dirt cheap Everex StepNote with a 1.5GHz VIA C7-M processor and 512mb of RAM running Vista Home Basic. She gave it to my niece almost three years ago and it's painfully slow.

My niece loves the color green and the Jade Green color option on the 1545 is very close to the color of her iPod, so I started looking for a Jade Green one in the Outlet but couldn't find one with just the right specs in that color...

Then Dell sent me a notice late on the evening of 11/12 announcing an 8-hr sale the following morning. I set my alarm to get up early to see how good the deals were. For $499, they had a 1545 with Win7 Home Premium, 2.1GHz T4300, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive and a few other extras. I paid the $40 upgrade to get it in that horrible Jade Green (that she'll love) and another $25 to upgrade from the CCFL to LED display. So the total was $564 with those upgrades.

Here's the real kicker and the reaosn I chose the deal above- during the 8-hr sale, I could add an Inspiron 13 for just $199 more! It will suit my 12-yr old nephew perfectly, even though I had originally planned to buy him a 1545. In the end, with tax and all, I got both NEW laptops for $808!!!

The 13 (1318) showed up Saturday, but the 1545 is still 'In Production' with a ship date of 12/2/09 showing. The kids will both flip when they open them on Christmas morning, I can't wait!

 

After buying two of 1545s as gifts (for my sister and niece), I've only found one thing about them that I really don't like- the glossy trim around the keyboard and display bezel!!! It's impossible to keep it clean for more than an hour or two. The fact that the lid is more of a flat/matte texture makes the glossy inside trim seem even more out of place....

The Inspiron 14 and 17, 11z/14z/15z and even Mini 10 have a similar look overall. They have a black display bezel (that doesn't appear to be glossy) and the palm rest, touchpad and trim on both sides of the keyboard is silver/aluminum-looking. It's a very clean and attractive design. Dell really needs to update the 15 with the same look and get rid of the glossy black (ugly) trim!

 

Update on me adding a internal bluetooth module to a new Inspiron 1545 running Win7:

I ordered a Dell 365 Bluetooth adapter on eBay for just under $20. Installation was pretty easy using the service manual that Allfiredup posted the link to a few posts back. I also requested a screw from the eBay seller and he actually sent me 2 different sizes just in case. The module pops right in and one tiny screw holds it down. After I installed it I downloaded the 365 driver from Dell. There is a new Win7 64bit driver on Dell for the 365 bluetooth module that was posted on 11-11-09. It works great. My bluetooth mouse and headphones paired easily to the 1545 and they all function properly. Thanks for the advice guys.

 

where to find camera driver 1545 for windows 7?
dell webcam manager always said no supported webcam detected
i've already download driver for vista and xp
and now in windows 7.camera drivers is not working

 

Very cool story. I too bought my wife a 1545 from the outlet in all black. She loves the Steelers so I went to skinit.com and got her the Breast Awareness Steelers skin. When she's happy, the kids, the dog and I are happy.

 

As they say, "If momma ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy!" You're a wise man...

 

I just got this laptop today. So far it works pretty well. Things are much faster after replacing Mcafee with Avast. Since the processor is almost 2x as fast as my desktop Athlon 64 X2 3800+ I expected windows to run as such, and it just doesn't though. It's kind of sluggish in comparison to my desktop with 1GB ram, and the laptop has 3GB. Explorer also randomly crashes and I have to restart it. It does it for no apparent reason. One time it even did it while clicking an option in Control panel.

I was thinking of reformatting and getting rid of the preinstalled dell crap, but I kind of like the idea of datasafe. I read that it installs in a hidden partition or something. Do I need to set special partitions when re-installing.

Has anyone else had issues with explorer crashing, and done anything to fix it?

 

No issues like this for me. I would say to have a look into the event viewer to try and figure out what's going wrong, but as the machine is brand new I'd actually suggest a restore from the Dell installation media and shouldn't mess with any of the partitions unless you specifically tell it to. Not 100% on that last part; I tend to install my own retail edition of the OS.

With regards to speed - what are you basing your opinion on?

Some tasks are HDD bound, and so you wont see much of a performance gain, if any at all, from your desktop.

 

Thanks for the reply. Being windows 7 it recovered without a problem, but I'm pretty sure the same thing on xp or maybe even vista would have required a reboot. Event Viewer is not helpful. It only shows an "Application hang" for Explorer.exe, and nothing else. The very first time I shut it down, It hung at "Logging off" and I had to do a hard shutdown (hold power button down).

I am basing my opinion on the most obvious.... load times. Firefox takes about 4 seconds to load on my desktop, but about 10-15 on the laptop. Probably a bad example, but in general it just seems more sluggish, even on AC and set to max performance. I am aware it only has a 5400RPM hard drive, but didn't think it would make that much difference. Haven't run the system rating test yet, but maybe that will shed some light. FWIW I have the HD 4330 as well.

Will I lose anything useful (other than the dell backgrounds I've read about, and don't care for) If I do a fresh install? Also, would it be better to create an additional partition for program_files, and one for system, and if so, what size should the system one be?

EDIT: I have attached my performance index results. I find it interesting that i got a 5.9 for gaming graphics but 4.5 for desktop performance.