Owner's Thread: Dell Inspiron 7000 series

SSD Installed Will keep you updated if it will work over time

 

from the dell website. it could be that i just had bad luck but my recommendations is use dell drivers first even before turning on wifi and then update

 

Need help big time guys...new here too...
I'm torn between the Dell 15" 7000 and Samsung Ativ Book 8...which has the better battery life and all around better performance? Wife said I need to decide before my birthday (Dec 30th) it's gonna be a suprise gift lol
Thanks for any and all assistance...

 

In terms of battery life the Dell just edges it, with general use you are probably going to get about 6 on the Samsung and 7-8 with the Dell. In terms of raw power the Samsung wins due to its quad core i7, however the gaming benchmarks are fairly similar between the two.

It really comes down to what you intend to use it for, and also the fact that the Samsung is around 43% more expensive in my region, would be an even higher difference if you factor in the discounts available on Dell's website. (Going by specs of 1TB HDD and 8GB RAM).

 

This is really outrageous - nowhere on the Best Buy site does it say that the warranty terms are different than if purchased through Dell. This is what I found after searching the Dell site:

Dell may offer different delivery methods for warranty service, including but not limited to parts and product dispatches, mail-in service and in-home service. Renewals and extensions of your limited hardware warranty may also be available after you purchase your product(s). To determine the warranty that came with your hardware product(s), or the warranty renewal or extension that you purchased, see your packing slip, invoice, receipt or other sales documentation.

None of my documentation says anything other than there's a one year warranty - no details anywhere. I'm seriously rethinking not returning this laptop.

 

Hi there!
Something strange happened to my 7537 twice in a few days, strange but potentially interesting.
When booting, instead of the usual Dell logo, there was the Dell logo + a blue progress bar underneath AND some text below saying "F2 ptions; F12: bios options" (if i remember correctly, this was probably different). I can't figure out what I did to get this special boot menu vs. the usual one.
Do you know how this is possible?

Other question: with the UEFI bios, is it possible to boot from a linux USB key without needing to go to the UEFI options in windows 8.1 beforehand? Like, if I plug the key and start the laptop, would it boot on it?

thanks!

 

Thanks. Mainly will be using it for school...programming and photo editing. Battery life and build quality is very important. Would love to hear from some users of both devices. How are the keyboards with backlight?

 

If you have the cash, you would def do with the Ativ. It is thinner and lighter even though I prefer the 7537 mainly due to its macbook pro look-alikeness. 6hrs for a quad core is pretty decent. The two screens are fairly equivalent in terms of brightness and contrast ratio. So the ativ got my vote.
Regarding the whole bestbuy thing, I didn't hear the technician say anything about not being able to ask for repair from Dell side when I requested a screen replacement. So maybe it was just the technician you guys talked to mostly.
Aldo38, i thought that was normal for the laptop to show that when starting (if it didn't just get stuck there) so if there's no problem after that, nothing to worry about.
Ps: I really liked the settings with 51 contrast and 1.1 gamma that one of you guys suggested. It makes the screen cooler and the colors brighter (not to the level of being washed out?

 

If you have fast boot enabled no, you will always need to go through Windows first. Sadly.

 

One other thing to consider is that I believe the Ativ may not be user serviceable the 9 certainly isnt. That means no SSD upgrade if you feel like it. More Importantly if you see this as a long term device, the two things that have always failed on mine are the battery and the HDD, neither of which you will find easy to replace outside of warranty.

Gut feeling is the Ativ is the better machine, and its the ironically the one that will probably keep you happy the longest, which ironically is also its biggest liability in my eyes if its a sealed box.

 

Now I've return the 840 Pro, i'm wonderind which SSD is the best between
256 GB 840 Evo or 240 GB Intel 530 Series (+20€, nothing for me).
Which one is the best, if we don't consider the price.

 

Have a look at website such as ssdreview.com, I would personnay go for the evo. If 20€ is nothing for you why not go for the 500Go EVO, it's around 270€ and the 2x difference would make a significant difference in a few months I would say...

 

Hello techies,

I am looking at buying the i7 version and I am confused between the one with nvidia and one without it, the difference is 250 $ and I do not play games other than some net based ones, is it suggested to buy a system with graphics card even if there is no gaming planned

 

What are you going to do with your computer?

 

I would say no. Inhave that version and I don't experience any slow downs during my day to day usage and 8Gb of Ram is more than enough for a non gamer and non professional person.

 

Just got my Inspiron 15 7000 in today. Noticed that there is no windows disc or a recovery disc of any sort. What happen if I need to reinstall windows?

 

You have to use the partition on your hard disk to recover it.

 

About Samsung 840(basic) ssd compatibility... i first installed my basic 500gb Samsung 840 ssd on the inspiron 7537 with the Samsung cloning sofware and it failed after 2 days ... i then installed a clean copy of Windows 8 on to my basic 500gb Samsung 840 and it worked fine until i installed the sm bus controller driver and it started failing so the Samsung 840 basic and pro are definitely not compatible.

Have ordered a Crucial m500 so hope that works which it should(hopefully) cause Crucial have tested the m500 on Haswell.

 

Is there a way to backup my windows 8 cdkey? If possible, could I not just download windows 8 off the internet and reinstall windows with that and the cdkey?

 

I booked an engineer to come out today to replace my keyboard (with the dodgy spacebar) but when he came he had the wrong keyboard! My confidence in Dell is decreasing. Hopefully he will have the right part next time. Apparently the box was labelled correctly but the actual part inside was wrong.

 

Tech came out today to replace wifi card - with an Intel 6235, which has more known issues than the 7260. Still having same problem, speeds are fine close to router, drop off a cliff as soon as I get more than 10' away. Sent them email asking specifically for dell 1901. We'll see what happens.

Another note: the tech told me that the antenna in this model is in the display portion of the laptop, which is a sealed unit. He said if the antenna was bad, then display would need to be replaced.

 

My spacebar sucks too....and some other keys. Sometimes you have to really push it hard to get it to register.

 

I haven't given every key a good test yet but it only seems to be the spacebar on my keyboard that is rubbish so far. Only the middle of it works reliably (and then not every time). The left and right sides need to be bashed really hard for it to register. The sides are where I press it the most when I type.

 

Exactly issue as mine. I wonder if they are ALL like that?

 

My spacebar works fine - it responds to a light touch any where on it. I do feel a smidge more resistance in the center, but it doesn't affect my typing at all.

 

Still debating whether to pull the trigger on on this laptop, Ive got a couple of questions outstanding:

1. The sound hiss on the headphone socket. Just how loud is it? Would you say it was disruptive if you wanted to watch a movie? Does it get louder with the headphone volume or is it always the same level?

2. This would be my first chiclet style keyboard. The keyboard I have now suffers majorly from crumbs and 'stuff'' getting under the keys. Is this keyboard 'crumb proof'? Or more Importantly, if not, have I got any chance of knocking the blighters back out again?

3. I recall a previous SSD upgrader advising to do the upgrade before going to 8.1. Im thinking of using the laptop for a bit to decide if I want to keep it, but Id like to test it as as an 8.1 machine. Have other people had experience of updating then upgrading?

 

I bought an inspiron 15 7537 the other day and it is perfect other than this space bar. Just typing that sentence was a massive pain in the , it never registers unless you hit it hard in the middle.


If anyone contacts dell, let me know if they come and fix it, I'm afraid this is a design fault rather than a manufacturing error.

 

The engineer is coming back on Friday to swap out the keyboard so I'll let you know how it works out. Hopefully my wife will be in to sort it out as I am back at work. I think that it is unacceptable that a major key does not function correctly. I tried some really budget laptops in Tesco the other day and they all worked perfectly. The spacebars responded to light presses everywhere along the spacebar.

 

Thanks a lot, I'd really appreciate that.

 

My spacebar works fine too

 

In that case I will contact Futureshop for an exchange.

 

Mine is from futureshop as well, I wonder if they possibly had a faulty batch or something. I'd also appreciate knowing how your exchange turns out as I really don't want to drive a couple hours for nothing.

I know there are two models of this laptop, one with a bilingual keyboard, and one with an american standard one, that could possibly have an affect on the keyboard.

 

Just an update on my SSD migration using an EVO 840 500Go, it's been Ok for 9 days and counting...fingers crossed.

For those who have an EVO as well and switched with a full cloning like me and not a fresh install: the partitions layout is quite busy (5 partitions), and there is no space left for an extra unallocated partition to use with Samsung's Magician in order to enable the Over Provisionning. I tried to shrink the OS partition and have Magician use this partition but it won't work because apparently not located at the very end of the partitions list...so OP is not enabled on my SSD which is probably a shame. The problem is I cannot move this unallocated partition towards the end of the list... Do you guys have a workaround to this problem? Is OP such a big deal for performance/reliability on the EVOs?

View attachment 106863

THanks!

 

My understanding is that the EVO will use any blank space for data swapping. Should you be planning to keep a your drive not close to full, there may be a minimal benefit to OP. However as the drive gets full its ability to do this reduces, and the write sequence without available swap space or allocated OP would reduce the life of the drive.

If I do purchase this laptop and get an EVO, I think Im going to get a large SD card to leave in the laptop to hold some large rarely accessed media, and keep the SSD 20-25% empty at all times.

 

Installed my Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260 yesterday. Best $35 I spent. Consistent high speeds and great range.

Here is my speed test from 25 feet away (2 walls of separation)

 

I was one of those people that had problems with the Samsung 840PRO and I can report that after I've used a different SSD for some weeks now I have had no problems whatsoever (it's an older Crucial M4 or something like that) can't really tell any difference in speed.

Not needed, the Samsung Magician software lets you reserve space (called Over Provisioning, typically 10%) among other things to reduce the wear on your SSD.

 

If you check out the original post, the user cannot enable OP due to partition size issues and was asking about the effects of not using it

 

I've swapped out the rubbish Intel N7260 for a Dell DW1901 I picked up off eBay for £13, will see how it goes with the new wireless card and report back.

 

Very quick test but looking promising, tried a 12GB VM transfer from my NAS drive with the Intel card before I swapped it out, it very slowly got up to full network speed over the course of a minute or so, before crapping out part way through the transfer and losing all network (as usual - even though I'm 6 feet from the router). The same transfer with the DW1901 (same location), full network speed hit instantly, whole VM transferred, no issues early days still, but will keep trying stuff and hopefully it'll keep performing well.

 

How difficult an install is that? Is it exposed when you remove the back panel for the HDD? What is required driver wise, or is it a straight swap?

 

Well, Dell called same day, asked how everything went. Told them still having miserable download speeds (3-6mps) when I move more than 10' away from router. Rep again tried to convince me that that was a perfectly acceptable speed at that distance. I respectfully disagreed, explained results other users have been having on this forum, plus explained that my 3 year old xps was getting 16-17mps at same distance. He just kept repeating what his script said, and added that you can't compare to what you see on forums because of model differences, etc. I didn't touch that one. He also told me that speedtest isn't a reliable measure of download speed, that I have to actually download something to test it. Funny how the other reps I've talked to ran speedtest themselves when they looked at my machine, but I digress. I did download a 25mb file, and, guess what? The dl speed was 4.5mbs. I finally told him to send me the 1901 card and if that didn't improve things I would leave them alone (because then I'll return the laptop, but I didn't mention that to him). He agreed and is also going to send a new display, just in case it is the antenna that's bad. So, even though I did have to argue with him, he's still trying to make me happy, which I guess is something:thumbsup: Will post update after new card is installed.

 

What is the whole return situation like with Dell? In all the laptops Ive owned Ive never had to return one, and outside of the 7 day distance selling directive, Im not sure how it goes if you just dont think its good enough, but they maintain its not a fault.

For the first time Im considering buying a laptop with a reasonable expectation of returning it

 

That's what I thought too, but it works perfectly, so I don't want to return it at all. Maybe I got lucky, but don't be so pessimistic.

As far as I know, they should let you return it the first 30 days with a full refund, regardless of the reason.

 

I was waiting for someone to try that. Thanks a lot for reporting back!

 

The wifi card is accessible as soon as you remove the maintenance panel, took a few minutes to change the part. Drivers wise Windows 8 recognised the new card right away and it's been a rock solid connection since I changed it maybe 4 hours ago? In that same time period the Intel card would have lost connection probably 3-4 times at least.

 

Ok, card has been in the system for over 12 hours now, it's been on all night downloading stuff from Steam, no dropped connections at all! A vast improvement over the Intel card.

Annoyingly, the only other issue I have with this laptop is with the Intel gfx! Not sure what's causing them to be so bad in certain areas at the moment...

 

I received my 7537 yesterday, found out that it had a Intel 7260 card in it which is not a dual band, surprisingly the intel driver detect utility identifies it as 7260 AC, I have called Dell and they will send a replacement card.

Interface name: Wi-Fi

Driver : Intel(R) Wireless-N 7260
Vendor : Intel Corporation
Provider : Intel
Date : 8/29/2013
Version : 16.1.5.2
INF file : C:\Windows\INF\oem191.inf
Files : 12 total
C:\Intel\Wireless\Setup.exe
C:\Intel\Wireless\setup.xml
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data\WiFi.msi
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data\WiFi1.cab
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data\Driver.msi
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data\Drv1.cab
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data_BTHS\BTHS.msi
C:\Intel\Wireless\Data_BTHS\IntelHS.cab
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\NETwew02.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\Netwfw02.dat
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\vwifibus.sys
C:\Windows\system32\Netwuw01.dll
Type : Native Wi-Fi Driver
Radio types supported : 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n
FIPS 140-2 mode supported : Yes
802.11w Management Frame Protection supported : Yes
Hosted network supported : Yes
Authentication and cipher supported in infrastructure mode:
Open None
Open WEP-40bit
Open WEP-104bit
Open WEP
WPA-Enterprise TKIP
WPA-Enterprise CCMP
WPA-Personal TKIP
WPA-Personal CCMP
WPA2-Enterprise TKIP
WPA2-Enterprise CCMP
WPA2-Personal TKIP
WPA2-Personal CCMP
Open Vendor defined
Authentication and cipher supported in ad-hoc mode:
Open None
Open WEP-40bit
Open WEP-104bit
Open WEP
WPA2-Personal CCMP
IHV service present : Yes

 

I just bought the 7537 refurbed with the 750M, 1080p with 16GB of RAM, I tried to restore from a usb backup created to my new 256GB toshiba pro SSD, it errored saying it was the wrong size drive, so I had to do a clean install and install drivers, the Wifi didn't work great at all and the on-board Ethernet wasn't being detected, I had to disable and re-enable in the bios, after that, my wifi works great, i dunno... awesome laptop though, I don't get what people are saying about the keyboard, feels fine to me, I thoguht nothing of it. perfectly acceptable imho.

 

Did you test the wifi before requesting the new card? I thought that the few here who reported replacing their 7260n with the ac version were getting good results.

 

The engineer came out today to replace my keyboard and I can happily say that the spacebar is now working perfectly. It took him about ten minutes to do. I guess there must have been a few poorly manufactured keyboards and one of them ended up in my laptop. I can now start to enjoy my laptop.