Owner's Thread: Dell Inspiron 13 7347 2-in-1

HI everyone,

Since no one's started a thread for the 7347, I thought I'd start.

I'm curious is anyone's tried putting an SSD, and if so, if they can post their performance.
So far so good, I'm enjoying my 7347. It a nice size and weight.


Here's two links to other related forums, incase you've missed them.

Inspiron 11 3147 2 in 1 - Shares similar 'yoga' design. Might be worth checking out, as this model shares similar physical attributes
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ner-s-thread-dell-inspiron-11-3147-2-1-a.html

Inspiron 7000 series - Big place, lots of information.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...owner-s-thread-dell-inspiron-7000-series.html

Cheers,
Gedsdead

 

I have and it is quite the difference. I have the model with the i3 and 4 gb of ram. I upgraded to 8gb of ram and a 240gb kingston drive which has a 450/450 mbps speed rating. It is awesome now. I also did a fresh install, instead of cloning the drive, so I have a clean windows 8.1 install. I received mine last Saturday, put the ram in monday and the SSD yesterday.

Totally worth the 160 dollar upgrade and 2 hours of effort.

 

That's sweet.

We just had the boxing day specials and I picked up an Sammy 840 EVO, so i'm anxious to get in installed.

How did you do a fresh install, if the install software is on the mechanical HD?

 

My husband ordered me this 2n1 and it should be arriving tomorrow. Has anyone tried handwriting on this? Dell told me their active stylus would improve my experience with this system. I need good handwriting and would love to draw digitally. My husband will be disappointed if this doesn't work for what I need it. So I am worried about it a little bit.

 

That and a USB stick.

Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help

 

AFAIK, the Stylus is not active, so for example, hovering over anything has no results, its the same as hovering your finger over.
I just tried opening paint, and tried using it. Its okay, you have to press firm enough, but you can't hold it in one place, otherwise it will think you're trying to right click/Long Press. You can disable this in Windows "Pen and Touch" settings. You'll probably want to find a fine tip compatible stylus if you envision painting a lot. But this won't substitute a Wacom Digitizer.
Post a reply if you find a better stylus pen.

 

I ordered Dell's active stylus. Got it before the computer. Lol. Will see how it works. Really hoping this works out. Will post my findings after I try it. If the computer ever shows up. Lol

 

It looks like two BIOS's have emerged, oddly, both released on the same day:

Version A02, A02
Fixes & Enhancements
- Improve display experience
- Support Dell Power Companion

Version A03, A03
Fixes & Enhancements
Fixes
-1.Improved Adapter warning message behavior.
-2.Improved Ambient Light Sensor control backlight keyboard behavior


I just tried flashing A03, since I have been seeing a few issues with an error message both in windows or during boot up - " AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined". This usually occurs if I plug the AC power pin into the device really slowly. Even running A03, I can still reproduce the error. So I resort to plugging it in more quickly.

I wish there were more details or release notes on the BIOS updates.

Can anyone comment on the fixes ?

 

My less than a week old machine has the soft touch finish literally peeling off of the bottom of it. They are sending me a new on next week since the display was not properly fitted into the housing and is displaying a number of issues. Red color to screen, flickering, and sensitivity issues. Have to say I am really disappointed in this so far. I hope the replacement does better, but at this point I am not going to hold my breathe.

 

Hi Everyone,


My boss handed me an Inspiron 13 7347 from one of our bigger clients and tasked me with finding out if Windows 7 Professional can be installed on it. Does anyone know if there are drivers available? I have downgraded to 7 on other machines and it was a hunt for a lot of the drivers. My main concern that this is a new laptop and not all drivers may be available.

Any information, suggestions, or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank so much and stay warm!


Respectfully,


George D.

 

Hi George,
How are your attempts to downgrade to Windows 7 going?
Are the drivers posted on Dell's support site backwards compatible with Windows 7?
Have you spoken with Dell at all? Did they provide any feedback?

Cheers,
G.

 

Hi,

I got my Inspiron 13 7347 just last week from the Microsoft store. Interestingly, it is still on BIOS A00 (!). Should I upgrade to A02 or A03? Are you still on A03, and is it still good? Trying to decide if I should upgrade my bios or not

And I wonder why they released A02 and A03 on the same day. Wouldn't A03 have all of the same fixes as A02, making A02 irrelevant?

 

Has anyone else ordered the Inspiron 13 7348 with the Broadwell processor? I ordered it on Monday while it was on sale and I am looking forward to receiving it.

I am planning on installing an SSD. Does anyone know if the recovery media created using the instructions on the first page will allow me to recover to a smaller drive? I had owned an older Inspiron and I ran into the issue where the backup solution provided there would only allow me to restore to a drive the same size or larger.

 

max 8gb right? only one slot ?

 

I'm not sure if A02 fixes apply to A03. If you do contact Dell to get that answer, post your reply.
I'm running A03, and it is working quite smoothly.
The best time to do your BIOS is while its still under 30 days from the Microsoft store. Just return it if there's any issues.

 

Correct, only one slot, currently occupied by 8GB. But its removable, so one day we can all go higher.

Also, the SATA supports 7 mm drives.

 

Originally I used the Samsung SSD software to duplicate the image on the drive.

Then I chose to do a clean reinstall. I end up going back to the mechanical, and used an app to get the licensing key out of the PC install, and saved it offline.

I used this Microsoft link and a USB stick to make proper Windows Media. It worked great, I would have saved a lot of time doing this originally.

Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help

Everyone should probably do this as a backup, whether they go SSD or not.

 

thats only if it can take 16gb sticks which is already available.

 

That's cool.
Can you post links to a few options?

 

Thanks for creating this thread Ged. I picked up the Inspiron 13 7000 at Costco a couple weeks ago and am really enjoying the 13.3" screen size and 2 in 1 form factor ($700 for the Core i5, 8 GB, 1080p, 500 gb model). I used to think it was a gimmick with the folding keyboard but I find myself enjoying Windows 8 more now. I either keep it in laptop mode or else have the keyboard folded underneath acting as a stand (its mostly replaced my iPad).

The only issue I had was slow wi-fi (5-6 Mbps) until I downloaded the newest drivers. Now the speed is as fast as any device in my house (100 Mbps).

I have been trying the included stylus but don't find it very useful yet. It does help for clicking on Mines in Minesweeper but it does not let me swipe across the screen or scroll down webpages (I'm a novice stylus user). I just ordered the active stylus (750-aagn).

The fifth generation Broadwell chips were just released as Raptir noted and I'm thinking of returning my laptop to get one of the newer models primarily for better battery life. Graphics will be a little better too (but it is still not discrete). I was playing Microsoft Minesweeper Treasure Hunt last night and that game really ate away at my battery life. The fan was going the whole time. I'm not helping the battery life either because I like the brightness level pretty high (I turned off adaptive brightness too).

Peter

 

I got this laptop for my mother a couple of months ago.
It's the weak i3 version, 4GB of RAM, 500GB HDD. For 600€ (laptop prices in the EU are higher, especially in Italy) I was surprised by the overall quality, despite a couple of weird design choices.
She's very happy with the purchase.

I installed Linux (Mint 17 LTS in this case) on it as that's what my mum is used to, and these are my opinions for now:

General remarks:

• Right USB port does not work at all, it just does not do anything (both Windows and Linux))
• A couple of times it (wrongly) complained of the non-original power supply. The LED on the power supply sometimes blinkes, I'm a bit worried about it

Windows remarks:

• Automatic backlight causes a backlight blink every ~10s, this is EXTREMELY annoying. Updated drivers, but uknown BIOS revision (I've not had much time to tinker with it)
• Screen rotation and touchpad work very well.
• As usual with Windows, few and limited configuration options, especially for touchscreen and multitouch actions

Linux remarks:

• Had a couple of problems getting the wireless to work properly (this is because Ubuntu repositories are the worst in the history of mankind and the broadcom drivers had to be compiled with the correct Kernel version, which had to be scavenged)
• Automatic screen rotation and automatic brightness of course do not work out of the box, but the sensor(s) is(are) automatically recognized as of kernel 3.16. A fast scripting session later and the screen rotation now works well (with a slight delay: not as well as fast as in Windows, as my script only uses data from the accelerometer and not from the gyroscope, one could easily implement that tho); I cannot be bothered by automatic screen brightness but it's 10 minutes of work.
• Battery life seems to be a little better on Linux than on Windows out of the box, even without the usual tweaks one can apply on Linux systems.
• Touchpad would work in i2c-hid mode only before suspend (then locking up or falling back to ps2 mode), an acpi hook to unload the module immediately before suspend and reload after fixed that pronto.
• Touchscreen and multitouch work well, setup with touchegg was amazingly simple and configurable, I absolutely love it, to the point that I've decided my next laptop will sport a touchscreen too, if not for the joy of playing with infinite customized gestures. Touchegg still has a few row edges tho, for example press-and-hold does not work in all cases.

On the whole, I'm satisfied, but a bit worried about the overall quality (power supply, USB port). Linux cannot be enjoyed on this laptop if you do not know Linux a bit unfortunately. I expect quirks to be implemented with some time tho.

Probably the best convertible on the Italian market for the price.

If anyone needs hints on how to get Linux working properly on this machine, just LMK.

 

Can you post a photo of the bottom peeling please? I checked my machine last night but did not notice anything. Hope your replacement is better!

 

Are you referring to me?
I have not noticed strong peeling from the bottom, I know my mother is not featherhanded with computers (last one was left over the big wood stove we have and melted...) so I ascribed the marks it already has (screen edges mainly) to her rough handling.
However, I'm not 100% convinced on the quality of the laptop finish either.

I'll have the occasion to see the laptop (and take pictures) this weekend, if needed.

 

no sorry, thought i responded under the thread. it was for Ninja who noted it.

 

the active style from dell apparently wont fit in the stylus hole lol kinda pointless to carry that seperately.

 

I hope this post doesn't jinx my laptop...

Did I get lucky?? I have had my Inspiron 13 7347 for 2 weeks now and no real issues to speak of. Not a single instance of ghost touch. No AC adapter related messages/issues. The touchpad isn't excellent but it's serviceable and much much better than my Asus netbook. Keyboard backlight works great, no flickering or blinking or anything. Also: absolutely no peeling of the soft-touch material anywhere.

In the past 2 weeks I've probably turned it on and used it at least once a day, for 1-2h. I hope that was enough "usage" to make evident any defects with my unit.

I got scared reading all of the issues with this model but I haven't actually faced any of them myself, so I thought I would make a post about it.

 

Hi mom2ninjas,

I was hoping to get your opinion of the active stylus.

1. Have you used it for drawing, how does it perform?

2. Is there support for character recognition? (note taking with stylus, save to text or word doc)

 

Thanks for the link. Did you actually need to use the licensing key when you did the fresh install? I thought the UEFI was supposed to contain the key and eliminate the need for that.

I received mine yesterday and had some time to play around with it. I'm not sure what kind of battery life people are seeing with the Haswell models, but I'm a little disappointed with the battery life on my Broadwell model. When just browsing the web in Firefox I'm only looking at around 5 hours of battery life (based on hitting 50% after 2.5 hours of usage). My old HP dm1 (intel model) from almost 3 years ago still gets 6-7 with the original battery. The graphics performance is also not quite as good as I expected. On Diablo 3 with everything at minimum and the resolution at 1280x720 I'm only seeing 32fps, while Haswell gets around 30fps with the same settings.

Anyway, my overall thoughts...

Good

• The display is great. I knew it was 1080p IPS, but I still didn't expect such high quality for the price.
• The keyboard is surprisingly solid. The backlighting is even and I don't run into many missed keypresses. The only weird quirk is that it keeps turning the backlight on without my intervention. I'll have turned the backlight off when I first boot, then when I go back to the startscreen to launch something else it will come back on.
• Great wireless signal and speed. I'm able to get my full 50Mbps down/up that my connection provides with no issue, even with it set to "Moderate Battery Savings."

Meh

• The speakers are nothing special. They get decent volume but the quality isn't there with a lot of static and etc...
• Build quality. After playing around with the Inspiron 15 7000 at a similar price point I expected a bit more of a solid build out of this.

Bad

• Battery life, as mentioned before. I know this is using a 43Whr battery vs my old laptops 55Whr, but the fact of the matter is that my old laptop is an 11.6" device while this is 13", and not a particularly light 13". I would have expected a bit more, especially given the fact that they can get ~12 hours out of the XPS 13 at a much smaller form factor.
• Touchpad. I was optimistic because of the good size, but it's very inaccurate and misses taps frequently. I've also found no easy way to configure it. With my three year old HP, despite having a small touchpad, I was able to get much better accuracy as well as get a three finger tap to emulate the middle click. I could even set up three finger swipes to be back/forward. I haven't been able to find any such options for this one, and even if I could the poor quality would be a bigger issue.

WTH?

• I'm not sure if this is common, but the screen of my laptop rests on the wrist rest when the laptop is closed. That seems like a very poor design that could lead to scratching or cracking very easily.

I'm really undecided as to whether I will keep it. The only thing that really wows me is the display, which is far better than deserves to be on a laptop I paid $700 for. But the rest of the system doesn't live up to the price tag. And the glass sitting on the wrist rest does really concern me.

 

did anybody sucessful cloned the 500gb sshd to a ssd with no error?

 

I was hoping to do this within the next few days. The impression I had was that it was possible by creating a bootable usb drive using the dell recovery application.
My guess is that then you take out the HDD, insert the SSD, boot from USB and then there is some option to install the OS to the SSD.
I haven't done this, i'm just getting the info from the comments in the following page:

http://www.myfixguide.com/manual/dell-inspiron-13-7347-disassembly/

"Ok I just bought this and upgraded to the Samsung 7mm 120gb drive. no the 9mm will not have enough clearence. PLEASE do not open this computer with a flat head. I’m scared on the things you guys are posting. Use a credit card or guitar pick. run along the seams. Get a 16gb usb flash drive. Install the Dell recovery utility and create bootable media. Then after the bootable media is verified by booting from it. THEN you should replace the hard drive with a 7mm drive. NOT a 9mm."

 

Can anyone share experience they've had with temperatures, fan noise, and general build quality?

I'm looking to buy the model with an i7-5500u, 256GB SSD, 8GB memory but I haven't heard much about the above, but I did see this video on YouTube which has worried be a bit, thanks!

EDIT: Just seen another here

 

Updated the Hard drive to an SSD over the weekend. Much simpler than I had imagined.

1. Create a bootable rescue disk (I used a USB hard drive, but a USB flash drive is as good).
2. Open up laptop and swap HDD for SSD.
3. Boot the machine from the USB HDD
4. Select option install onto the SSD

That's it. You could be done in about 30 mins.

Laptop is running great. Hard to tell how much faster it is as I've only had the laptop a few days, so I didn't really have a huge amount of time with it with the HDD in.

 

Anyone ever try dell active pen with model 7348?

i'm looking dell 7348 to replace with my old surface pro 3 (i5 ram 4GB). I bring my old Surface Pro 3 to my sister. I want new cpu i7 5th gen and ram 8GB. To compare with surface pro 3 at the same cpu (i7), the price was very different. Surface pro 3 have advantage to use pen in handwriting. But Dell have flexibe to customize or service such as replace ram, HDD, battery.

i found info from internet and dell official's site that we can use dell active instant passive pen. So i want to know the true experience about it from anyone who ever use it.

Can i use active pen with model 7348?
Can i use it with palm rejection in onenote?
What part number of dell active pen? (I assume it may be 750-AADH. If not, please advise.)


Thank you

PS. Sorry for may english

 

Temperatures are great because it throttles pretty early. I've only hit around 70/72c but the performance drops as you get up there. It idles around 35-40c depending on ambient temperature and what "idling" is (browsing or whatever).

Fan noise isn't bad unless you're pushing the CPU hard. Even then it's not loud but it's a little high pitched.

Build quality is my biggest complaint along with the touchpad. The laptop doesn't feel particularly solid with some flex in the keyboard and back of the screen. There's also a small plastic piece on the bottom of the screen that flexes easily. The hinges are OK but doesn't keep it completely closed (or open in tablet mode).

 

Watched the YouTube videos thanks. That one guys laptop with the purple corners is amazing. I assume he cannot return it easily or he would have. I've had the 7347 (7000 13.3") for about a month now. When I'm playing basic games (e.g., Microsoft Treasure Hunt), the fan stays on but I find it relatively quiet compared to a real gaming laptop I have (ASUS G60JX). The bottom does get warm after a while (hour+) and it is uncomfortable if I don't put something between the laptop and my pants (e.g., a mouse pad).

Since my laptop is from Costco I have 90 days to return it but so far I really like it and doubt if I will return it even to get one with the newer 5th gen (Haswell) processor based on Raptir's feedback in this thread.

Peter

 

Well I ordered one anyway, will let you know I get on when it arrives - could be about 3 weeks though

 

havnt even turned mine on yet. arrived today and less than 15 mins later im on the phone to dell asking them to replace it with one without this fault. Corner to the right of trackpad is raised off the table / desk

 

Ordered the 7348 (i7, 8gb ram, 500hdd) yesterday for $836 with tax. Got another $100 ($736 total then) off as they are offering a free tablet promo for the weekend and I called sales retention. Someone please post if they are successful with the 16gb upgrade.

 

Yikes, what did they say?

 

I've had my 7347 since early Dec. So far I've experienced none of the major issues many owners report. However, I do have the incredibly annoying issue of laggy user input, both mouse clicks and keystrokes. Seems to be most often on web browsers, FF/Ch/IE, that my clicks go ignored forcing me to rapidly click 5+ times to get one to register. It is guaranteed the first click goes ignored. Right now, I'm even experiencing laggy keystroke typing creating jarbbled sentences. Anyone else have these issues? Do you think its tied to the hardware/drivers or is it a Windows 8 issue? (My friend recently got an Asus gaming laptop Windows 8 and has similar clicking issues)

 

I've never heard of that dood, do you have all the drivers updated? If your seeing it in KB and Touchpad, its obviously something in the system. I'd test against a mouse, but again, if the KB is affected too. Check your task manager and see if there's anything suggesting a cpu load, otherwise its off to the device manager, and try disabling some of your hardware, see if you can find the culprit. I'd start with the touchscreen and move on from there. If you can never find it, test a Linux live cd like Ubuntu, see if you can replicate the issue (which may suggest a hardware problem), and if you can't, I'd be reinstalling Window 8, perform a clean install.

 

Rethinking my order since skylake is just around the corner and I want a new system that is quite a jump from the rig that I have right now.

 

same question here, someone with the active stylus and laptop please answer

 

I would not recommend relying on the stylus for the arts. It's more of a feature for clicking and scrolling. If you want stylus style drawing/painting, I suggest going for the real deal in buying a drawing tablet. There is a character recognition feature, though I don't use it.

 

not talking about the passive stylus that comes with the laptop inside a silo.

We are talking about the Dell Active Stylus using Synaptics tech and it's potential compatibility with the inspiron 13 7000

specifically this pen: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&sku=750-aagn

this is the description on the 13 7000's official page concerning the active stylus:

Dell Active Stylus
Use the included built-in passive stylus or upgrade to the Dell Active Stylus featuring two-button operation and industry leading accuracy for a natural writing and drawing experience.*
*Active style does not fit into the built-in Inspiron 2-in-1 passive stylus holder.

i've heard plenty horror stories about synapitcs pens before on the venue 11 and 8 tablets, just wondering if the tech got better with the new laptops and new pens.

 

Update: My laptop is still good. No yellow/purple corners yet. Also, in mid-Feb I took it on vacation (plane trip) to Florida, so it even survived getting "bounced around" in the metal detectors without any issue. Haha.

Once again the old adage is true; only 1 out of every 10 people who *like* a product will post on the forums, but every single person who *doesn't* like a product will post onto the forums.

 

My laptop arrived a few days ago and so far so good. I'm pretty happy with the build quality, although the issue that I posted a video of is also on mine. After using it though I found it doesn't really interfere with the way I type/use the laptop so I'm too worried.

The other thing I've noticed is that the thin metal bezel around the keyboard (so you can lay it flat in tablet mode without the keys being pressed) sometimes leaves marks on the screen after it's being folded. I'm not sure how tough the screen is, but hopefully this won't lead to permanent damage.

Anyway I still haven't had too much time with it so will probably post more thoughts on it later.

 

Looks like I spoke too soon... my wi-fi seems to be really slow! I just did a quick test where I was sitting *right next* to my wi-fi router and I was getting like 5 to 9 mbps, LMAO

meanwhile my Nexus 4 is in the next room (past a wall) and it was getting 25mbps

What is the best driver to get for this machine's wireless lan?

 

I'm just using the standard driver from the website.
I get about 5-10 MB per sec (40-80 Mbps) on 802.11 N router @ 5.0 channel.

If you want more, make sure your running 5.0 ghz, and if your router doesn't support it, upgrade to AC.

One thing to make sure is your laptops internal antenna is doing its job, that you have good signal strength.

But when troubleshooting wifi, you'll usually be unpleased with the results, getting 50% is a good job. Unless your doing a test in an open area with no walls in a field in the middle of no where.

Can anyone post their experience or results of running AC?

 

Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1 (Early 2015, 7348) Build issues: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-in-1-early-2015-build-quality-issues.772629/