Owner's Thread: Dell Inspiron 7000 series

Mine said the same thing, yet I'm still waiting. Wish the tracking page would actually show something though

 

Is the dedicated GPU worth it and 8 gb ram worth the extra $200 in this laptop.

 

Well, that depends on if you plan on playing modern video games (more than just casual games). If you do, then absolutely. If not, then probably not. Some people like to use the dGPU for number crunching or video encoding, but they would already know whether it was worth it for them.

The RAM is worth about $50 (or less) and you can upgrade it later if necessary.

Is the ability to play modern games worth the additional cost to you? The integrated GPU can handle older games.

I like to play video games; I only looked at models with dedicated graphics cards. Integrated only, wasn't even an option for me.

 

Hi people, first post here. I've ordered the i7, 8 GB and gt750m on the 22th of October and it will arrive tomorrow! I also ordered a 840 evo SSD, i will tell you soon how it goes!

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Thanks that's reassuring!

 

Hello, can someone tell me how does the i7-4500u handle video and photo editing (Adobe Premier Pro and Illustrator)? I just wonder if it does their job or the ULV processors are too week.

 

Please give the used model 7537 to 256 GB mSATA SSD + 1TB HDD together? Need msata plus a HDD. If someone has the courage to try out the Msata port, pls make a video, really interested in that upgrade !!

 

I've just found my proper tracking code and the laptop is already in the country.

If you don't see anything on the tracking page, it'd be worth to login to your dell account and view all orders and click on the most recent order number and the tracking number. This finally gave me an update on where my parcel actually is.

I find it weird that I have 2 orders and that dell sent me the tracking code for the 1st order which shows absolutely nothing.

Hope this helps to those who are still waiting!

 

So what did the Engineer said regarding entering the BIOS?

 

anybody know if i have to install the gt750m myself? Because it didnt come with an pre-install.

also:

YouTube is very choppy. To me this config (i7 4500u and gt750m and 8gb) is more than sufficient to watch HD YouTube videos. Anyone any advice?

 

Firstly, download nVidia GeForce Experience, my drivers weren't installed either.

For YouTube you could look in to YouTube center, possibly related to your internet connection? My YouTube seemed fine.

 

Dont think its an connection issue but can look into that. Thanks in advance!

 

Hello,

I read the keyboard of the 15" version was quite poor. What are your feedbacks you people who own it and use it every day? Are you struggling? Is your typing slower than before because of it?
What about the Wifi sensitivity, does it affect significantly your performances (from a bedroom to the living room for instance)?

thanks!

 

The keyboard doesn't seem as bad to me as people made it out to be. I regularly type on my work laptop (HP EliteBook 8460p), and my old laptop (XPS L521x), and the Inspiron 7537 one feels decent enough to me. I haven't typed for an extended period on it yet, but in the first week of ownership it's been decent for casual typing so far. I don't feel like I'm typing any slower on it.

The WiFi performs similarly to my L521x, and notably worse than the EliteBook 8460p and my old XPS m1530. One room away from the router I can hit 50-60 Mbps download speeds on the 7537, but two rooms away with a bathroom and HVAC closet in-between speeds drop to about 25 Mbps max. The m1530 and 8460p have no issue maintaining 60 Mbps downloads in both locations. The router is a Belkin N750. All speeds above tested on 2.4 GHz using the clearest channel based on inSSIDer 3.

 

Hi there, Im planning to get the 15 7000 but unfortunately it doesnt come with 16gb RAM but only 8gb RAM. I dont do gaming but more towards video editing using Vegas & Adobe After effects. EDIT: (I express strongly that I plan to use this laptop for heavy video editing)

My question is, should i look elsewhere because of the 8gb RAM or would this be good enough for use in video editing? How great is the difference in terms of video rendering speed? Is the difference significant?

Im based in UK therefore I cant get the 16gb RAM option. I know DELL US has that upgrade option.

I am also looking at LENOVO Y510p but skeptical due to its WiFi problem.

Any thoughts? Im very close to making a decision in buying this laptop.

 

Guys, the question about Inspiron 7537 mSATA slot for ssd drive is QUITE ACTUAL!!! Does anyone can resolve the question ???

 

For heavy video editing you would probably want a quad core i7, this only has two cores.

 

Please stop asking the same question, I too am eager to find out if the mSATA port is active but constantly asking people to try it won't help. Patience.

 

Now, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but if it's heavy video editing you plan to do... I think you may want to look for a quad-core CPU before you worry about RAM. The Inspiron 7000s use battery-friendly dual-core CPUs. These are fast enough for most uses, but for heavy video editing, I think the extra cores could save you a lot of time.

Keep in mind, if 8 GB of RAM turns out to be insufficient, you can upgrade it yourself later. This goes for most laptops.

 

Okay, thanks for the advise. I had no idea this dell has dual core instead of quad core. But how do i know which laptop has quadcore? As they all seem to say the same thing on the description. I'm only looking at i7 4th gen.

Thanks again for the advise

 

The most common 4th gen quad-cores are the i7-4700MQ and 4800MQ.....

ARK | Processor Feature Filter

 

I believe the model numbers of the popular quad-core CPUs usually end in "Q" (e.g. i7-4700MQ), while the ULV ones end in "U" (e.g. i7-4500U).

 

First of you'd most likely need a laptop with the i7-4700MQ, simply put you'd probably need to look into more expensive laptops alltogether.
But secondly, there is a 16GB Ram with 256GB SSD configuration available, at least in my country there is.

 

Have ordered my 7537 from Dell's UK site on Sunday.

It showed an estimated shipping date as the 5th November, yeah right ! I have just checked my order and it is leaving China today.

Do Dell not actually keep any stock ?

 

Hi Waxedbat,
do you know where Dell is keeping its stock in Europe? Do they ship from Ireland?

 

I've decided to return my 7737. There is a lot of flex in the main body. The keys are the same colour as the body giving no contrast and makes the backlight keyboard ineffective imo.

I have had it a week and really tried to like it but it's not for me.

 

I have posted a picture of the internals of the 14" 7437 in the 14" thread. I will be adding an mSATA SSD (Plextor M5M) and upgrading the wifi to AC tomorrow if amazon comes through. Very easy machine to take apart and access the msata slot.

 

Nice! Let us know how it goes

 

I have now received my 7537, its up and running and I installed a Corsair GTX 480 SSD in it.

Questions to other owners: What do the following buttons do?

F9 - Is this meant to turn the trackpad on and off?
The button to the right of F12 - Is this meant to turn wireless on and off?

A few observations from me for prospective buyers.

I had a bunch of trouble cloning/imaging from the 1Tb HDD to the 480 SSD, I tried things like the Corsair software downloadable from their site for the SSD, Partition Assistant and some other software and they all failed because of moving to a smaller disk. In the end Acronis TrueImage saved me. How are software/hardware vendors so behind the times?

The HDD in there before was super slow. My boot with the SSD is about 10 seconds from cold. Before it must have been 30-45 seconds.

I'm glad I didn't get the new XPS 15 because so many things particularly on the web would have looked terrible and been painfully small. There are some issues with compatibility with older software and websites even with the 1080 screen, but there are also some work arounds.

I updated to 8.1 without any issues at all.

The keyboard which some people have complained about seems fine to me, yeah there is a tiny bit of flex, but for me I don't even notice.

Medium use on battery I reckon 5 hours is easily achievable, possibly 6 or more.

Overall it has been great so far, I really like it. I have not tested it with any games yet, nor with video editing or anything like Illustrator/PhotoShop, but I will be using that stuff shortly.

Delivery, as other people have complained about, it said 23rd Oct shipping when I ordered, that turned into 30th Oct on my confirmation. It then took a week for anything to show up on my tracking about it arriving in Europe (Holland), then it took 3 days to get to me from there, so about 10 days from delivery to arrive in the UK.

 

As far as I can tell they do not keep any stock.

 

Hey MrZod,

I also intend to upgrade to a ssd as soon as I recieve laptop. I was going to get the Samsung 840 pro.

Do you think it is best to clone drive before or after installing windows 8.1 ?

 

F9 brings up your recently used apps, F12 is air plane mode so disables the wireless card completely.

 

Recently i have a serious problem with f12 key: it just doesn't work! Is there someone with the same problem?

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Dear 7537 owners,

I'm really close to buying the 7537 but 2 points really worry me and unfortunately I cannot have access physically to this laptop as it's only available through dell website in my country (France):
1) wifi low sensitivity: is it really noticeable and does it really affect you on a daily basis? For instance if you have your router in the middle of a 5-bedroom house, would you have some places where you would loose wifi connection at all? My internet connection being already quite slow (few Mb/s), I don't have much room for additional speed reduction caused by wifi connection!
2) keyboard typing experience: i read in several reviews that typing on this laptop was not great. Do you guys confirm? How bad is bad? what's really annoying in it, are the keys hard to press, do they feel 'weird' to use? It's hard to understand I guess as long as you don't try it for real.

your feedback is highly appreciated!

 

I can't speak on your first question, but I have tried out this laptop and in my personal opinion it had the worst keyboard I had ever used on a laptop. The keys were really mushy and shallow and I couldn't type as fast as I usually do. There was close to no key travel, the keys felt like they were bottoming out, and it was just uncomfortable. However, my brother typed on the laptop as well and said that the keyboard wasn't that bad, he was also able to type normally without any discomfort. Some people on this thread also say that the keyboard is not that bad.

 

I got mine yesterday. Quick opinions.

HDD
The hard disk is so so so so much slow, SSD Samsung 840 Pro ordered already.

SOFTWARE
I started an update to Windows 8.1 through the Store and left it to download overnight, this morning I wake up with a black screen, PC still on, and no matter what I did the computer could not recover. I then forced a reboot by long pressing the power button and Windows recovered "to a previous version", restoring everything to just before the attempted upgrade. Did anyone have the same issue? I'll try to upgrade again today.
No bloatware at all, just Amazon, eBay, McAffee and Office preinstalled.

KEYBOARD/TOUCHPAD
Keyboard is fine to me, only issue I've noticed is the space bar that gets no input when pressing on the corners of the key...
The touchpad is "meh", the "click anywhere" function triggers a little bit of cursor movement when pressing isn't as strong as it's supposed to be. Also, no horizontal scrolling.

SCREEN
The screen is absolutely awesome, touchscreen is also useful under some circumstances.

AUDIO
Audio is really good, great job on the equalizer as well, using earphones is also very pleasant.

EXPANSION/CONNECTIVITY
USB 3.0 looked good to me, I will do some more testing today with a real USB 3.0 drive.
Didn't try the Ethernet or HDMI port yet, the SD reader neither, will do that today.

OTHER
The notebook is heavy at 2.6 kg, but looks very solid.
I read about someone complaining the AC adapter buzzing: it is very minimal and could only hear it with my ear at 3 cm from it. The HDD is somewhat noisy, but the notebook looks quiet.
No heat problems, but of course I haven't had the time to properly stress it.

Does anyone with Ubuntu have any advice? I will install 13.10 as soon as I get the SSD from Amazon.

 

Just ordered mine friday. Could you specify how you replaced the HDD with an SSD - how to move the OS to SSD specifically if that is what you did. Did you clone the drive (perhaps using Dell recovery) as I am about to do the same on the 22/11 when my system hopefully arrives. Any bios settings or anything to be aware of.

 

For all those wondering about the mSATA, gus6464 did it!:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/733564-new-dell-inspiron-14-7000-7437-a-13.html#post9444322

 

Thanks MacGyver88 for your first detailed feedback.
What about wifi sensitivity? Most reviewers say it's quite poor due to the aluminum frame; don't you lose connection when going farther from your router? What are your performances and specific configuration at home?

As for the mSATA, are you guys confident this is exactly the same thing with the 7537? (in case the mSATA port is enabled on the 14" and disabled on the 15" I don't know...)
should we all be ordering mSSDs rather than 2.5" SSDs??

 

speaking of cloning the hard drive onto an SSD: did you guys manage to also clone the recovery paritition?
thanks!

 

FYI -- I just picked up an 7537-4340SLV from Best Buy. (Like it so far.) Network performance is great via my wired network connection (FIOS) -- ~59Mb down/~33Mb up.

When I switched to WiFi using the supplied drivers for the 7260 performance was pitiful. But I went into control panel, found that device in Device Manager, clicked on Update Driver and search for Driver, and after a bit the driver update was done. Driver is now version 16.1.5.2. Performance on WiFi NOW EQUALS performance on wired -- ~59Mb up/~33Mb down.

So the WiFi performance can be improved with an updated driver.

Regards

 

I don't think that's possible, did you try to do that?

 

no. So what would be the option if your SSD fails and you need to reinstall Win8? Did you create a recovery USB key during first start up?

 

I honestly have no idea. I don't even know if there is such a utility.

 

I just received the Dell 7000 15-7537 yesterday. It is for my wife. I tried to steer her towards an ultrabook (I have the Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch and it is the best PC I've ever owned), but she didn't like the smaller screens and keyboards. She wanted something more substantial. All the PC manufacturers seem to be going smaller and sleeker, but if you want to buy a straight up laptop the pickings are pretty poor.

So I set out to find a laptop with:
- touchscreen
- haswell CPU
- 15" screen
- (at my wife's request) 10 key numerical pad on keyboard
- ideally <£1,000

My first choice would have been a Lenovo - my last 2 PCs have been Lenovos and they are just great. In the UK, however, they don't seem to yet offer a 15" haswell laptop other than their gaming rig (not a good choice for my wife). After much looking, I landed on this Dell.

First off, let me say that at the end of the search process and some grueling trials in getting the laptop and getting it dialed in I am *very* pleased. Exceeded my expectations and I'm loving this machine. Here are some notes along the way.
- Dell's anti-fraud team is atrocious. I recently relocated to the UK from the US and tried to buy the PC initially with our US card but have it shipped to our UK address. This somehow tripped their fraud sensors and the order was silently cancelled with no notification. When I noticed and phoned them up, they were asking for my passport, proof of address, work email address, home land line number, etc. That was crazy - I'm buying a laptop not a nuclear warhead. So I just said screw it and ordered again with my wife's email address and our UK card. Worked great that time.
- Second time through I found a 7% off coupon at Dell Coupons & Coupon Codes | Dell UK. Nice!
- The delivery ETA on their site is a blatant lie. I ordered on 22 Oct and the page said ETA to arrive was 25 Oct. Then immediately after purchase it changed to 8 Nov. And along the way there was very little status. I kept wondering if it was actually going to come.
- The PC did arrive on time on 8 Nov.

now onto the machine
- Build quality is very nice - much nicer than I expected from pictures and reviews. Feels like a premium PC, more like an Lenovo business class or MacBook pro than the Dells I'm used to.
- The screen is gorgeous. I went for the full HD and am really glad. The resolution is great, windows scales reasonable to it, and the touch works flawlessly. It's also very very bright.
- The keyboard is fine. I worried that it would be crap, but it's just fine. I prefer my Lenovo keyboard, but this Dell is just fine. My wife is even pickier than I am about keyboards and she had no problems either.
- The trackpad is actually very nice. It has an intelligent palm detector so the cursor doesn't dance when you type (your right palm naturally lies on the trackpad). I also bemoan the loss of physical mouse buttons (like I have on my beloved Lenovo), but I've found this one to be just fine. Click and drag, right click, etc all work great. I personally hate windows gestures on a trackpad (esp. when you have the touchscreen) so I disabled them, but two finger scroll and pinch-zoom work well.
- The 10 key pad is actually really great. This makes me jealous.
- The audio is good quality and reasonably loud. I wish it were a bit louder, but it's OK. Watching movies in bed is great, but if you want to play music while folding laundry and the kids are running around it's not loud enough - need to research a good Bluetooth speaker for my wife for this scenario.
- The jury's a bit out on the battery. I haven't done a full rundown yet, and the indicator dances around too much to be credible. Sometimes it will say I have 8 hours left on a full charge and other times it will say 4 hours. Depends on how hard you push it. I have noticed that if you select the Dell power option it seems to do better than the balanced option I typically select. They must have dialed some things in.
- No optical drive. My wife had some anxiety here, even though she hasn't used hers more than once or twice in the past year. I bought her a £20 external drive from Amazon and she was happy with that solution. I doubt she'll use it much, but she likes the option.
- The hard drive is a dog. In task manager if you're ever slow you will see the I/O at 99% - it really is the bottleneck of the system. It is plenty fast for what my wife wants to do (facebook, email, Netflix), but it would drive me crazy. I'll upgrade to SSD when 1TB drives get reasonably cheap.

software
I'm a big fan of windows 8, and I dialed in my wife's Microsoft account, SkyDrive, Xbox Music, office 365, etc. It's actually pretty slick, you get 60 hours a month of free streaming music from Xbox music (basically all you can eat of any artist/track - not like Pandora, just basically iTunes catalog for free with the caveat that you can't download the song). And with o365 we got 60 minutes of Skype worldwide phone calling a month free. It's pretty cool.

Impressively little bloatware. I'm typically prone to just wipe the hard drive and start with a pristine copy of windows to avoid all the free trials, junk software, and all the crap in the systray. Pleasant surprise on the Dell, it had little stuff there and was easy to remove what I didn't want (e.g. Dell Backup - I use Carbonite and recommend it or Mozy or other cloud backup software to folks)

Also, for the love of all things good, uninstall McAfee. It's redundant and slows everything down. I trust folks here already know that.

drivers
Oh man I had a headache here. I updated to windows 8.1 and then the machine stopped waking from sleep (or responding when the screen went off). I redownloaded drivers, futzed in the bios, messed with the power options, and nothing. I finally contacted Dell and they said it was a known issue and they had just released new drivers for windows 8.1 and a bios update. I went through all of this (hours but straightforward) and now everything is perfect. You have to go here and *specifically* select windows 8.1 (not the windows 8 drivers). Product Selection | Dell US

So a bit of a process getting things dialed in, but I'm happy and most of all my wife is happy.

 

Shut, that's why it didn't come back alive after upgrading. Thanks for the info man, great review! Agreed on the dog.

 

Haa, more and more interested by this one. Thanks for your reviews guys.

Still, I would love a confirmation that the MSata port is working on the 15" version.

 

I read in the Notebookcheck review of the 7537 laptop that for some reason the CPU's TDP was apparently incorrectly set to 10.5 watts rather than 15 watts. Do the owners in this forum confirm that? And did you try to st it back to the nominal value with Intel extreme tuning utility?

 

Heh, man .... if msata possibility will be confirmed - it will be the best laptop in the market! (15" 7537) (my opinion )

 

could anyone who managed to successfully clone the original HHD onto an SSD kindly describe in details how this was done? In particular:
- software used
- were the 2 paritions present on the HDD cloned (including the recovery partition)?
- did you do it before or after upgrading to Win 8.1?
given the numerous cloning issues that can be found everywhere I would appreciate having any feedback before taking the plunge...