Owner's Thread: Dell Inspiron 7000 series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moKHrcRyvno&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

First of all, that's one of the best 19 second clip I've ever seen.
Second of all, thanks.
Third of all, so I don't have to remove those 2 screws in the front, just on the sides and lift it up

 

Would you believe it, laptop turned up on Friday afternoon, result !

Have spent most of the weekend installing Windows 8.1 and associated drivers.

Have not experienced any issues apart from the non resuming from sleep and trying to get my head round Windows 8 !

Really don't like the mail app.

 

Hi, everyone, which power plan are you one and what's your battery life on that? Also do you enable the Desktop and Longevity Mode in Battery Meter? Also 2 Dell technicians just told that this $899 model only support 128 and 256Gb SSD. Can you please confirm once again? Thanks

 

Hi
I just chatted with a Dell technician who told me that the 7537 model (HDD/i7 4500U) did not have limitation on the SSD capacity...
What cloning software do you plan to use? Any advice from people in this forum who already did it? Cheers

 

I think we need to start emailing the Dell marketing department and asking for another version of the 7537. One with a 1080p high gamut non-touch screen and an activated msata port.
Statik

 

I believe so since there's a gentleman who is having the same model as mine with 512Gb SSD. i'm not sure which software I am going to use yet but someone advised not to use the Samsung one and I think that gentleman also mentioned the software he used some pages back.
Edit: here it is http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/734278-owners-thread-dell-inspiron-7000-series-37.html

 

Has it been confirmed that the mSata port doesn't work? As far as I know, no one has actually tried it on the 15" models, only with the 14" models, which worked.

 

No, as far as I know, no one has tried an Msata drive on the 15". There have been three reports that it should work and two reports that it shouldn't, all from Dell representatives, from what I have counted here. That is why I included it in my list so that it is guaranteed working.
Statik

 

Well when I receive my 7537 this week I'm going to try it. I can buy the mSata and return it if it doesn't work at a store in town. So I'll let you guys know.

 

mSata is listed in the specs pdf for the 14" model but not the 15", as mentioned earlier by trueg, the high spec one with a 256GB mSata ssd may have a different board to the other models.

 

But it is in there, so I'll give it a try anyway. Doesn't cost me anything if it doesn't work

 

On my version of the configuration page it says it has a SSD not a mSATA, and from the reviews I've seen it's an OEM Samsung 840 PRO.

 

Breaking News: 15hrs of usage! Hah I know it's not true but hah!

 

Does anyone know if a 9,5mm SSD fits in the Inspiron 15 (Model 7537)?

 

Not necessarily, as mentioned by trueg previous Inspiron models that actually shipped with an mSATA configuration had a different board than those without. Therefore no mSATA slot, by all means give it a go and let us know. Pure speculation at the moment.

The page I am looking at says mSATA 256GB but I do agree that the notebookcheck review had a full size SSD. I wish they would display the right information... and more of it.

 

Yeah, I just ordered the SSD model, and it shows this on the configuration:



I'm sure it will arrive with a 2.5" SSD though.

 

My version says:

"256 GB 2,5" seriel ATA Solid State-drev" (Danish-EU).

But maybe there are different configurations in different parts of the world!!!

 

double post

 

Tried the search but no luck. I assume a USB flash drive to make the back-up. My question is it a factory default recovery type thing or just OS only and get newest drivers from Dell like I could with my Studio.

 

Hello 7000 owners.

I've read through about 2/3 of the comments about the 15" model (with discrete GPU) and find it attractive. I'm reading mixed opinions, though, about both the keyboard and the display. I'd like to sort of rephrase the questions to see if I can tease out any further opinions:

Display:

I looked at the models at Best Buy. All they had were the 15" with x768 display and 17" with x900 display. Both were awful in terms of brightness and saturation. I was able to get something close to acceptable by decreasing gamma and increasing brightness in the IntelHD settings. (For some reason backlighting and the Fn key weren't operating today. I did verify brightness at 100% in Windows though.) Regardless, when compared to the XPS 13 and Dell All-in-one computers nearby, the 7000 displays couldn't hold a candle (ha!) to the others. I can see that a higher density display would be better, but how much better, especially in terms of brightness? Is the 1080p display better than, say, my current computer (XPS 15z)? If the higher resolution is, say, equal to the lower resolution displays I would probably have to call no sale. I can't go through 3-4 years with a marginally 'ok' display like that. I would probably go crazy within a few months.


Keyboard:

I tried the keyboard and it wasn't all that bad. I'm used to a low-travel board in the 15z. It did seem a little bit mushy, though. I could touch-type satisfactorily but noticed I was missing a few more letters than normal when typing quickly. Any opinions from those who have had previous dell laptops, especially from the Ivy Bridge Inspirons and earlier XPS computers?


Thanks for your input. Sorry to belabor the question, but it is pretty important to those of us making at least a 3 year investment.

 

I have the full HD 15in and with indoor use, you will have no prob at all viewing things with even low brightness, the IPS panel is simply gorgeous. I was like you unsure about the brightness before I bought it since the reviewer on notebook check only said average brightness was only 270 nits something. But I find myself extremely satisfied with the screen. The Full HD 17in though not an IPS, is still the best of its TN line. It got even higher brightness and gamut than the IPS on both the 7537 and Asus n550jv (which also has an IPS). So yeah, Dell has really stepped up in their full HD panel choice for this line.
Regarding keyboard, i really don't know what the fuzz is all about. The keyboard looks cute and big enough to type although I prefer black but that's fine. Maybe I'm not that fast of a typer like you guys so.
That's my PERSONAL opinions.

 

Brightness seems fine to me, I haven't seen the TN models in person so couldn't comment on them. As for the keyboard I don't notice any flex when typing, I too wish the keys were black as it can sometimes be hard to see in certain lighting conditions.

I personally hardly use the numpad either, kind of wished they didn't bother to allow for bigger enter, left shift, left ctrl and arrow keys.

 

Thanks for the feedback. The numpad is actually kind of a nice deal to me (programmer and engineer). Not critical but nice to have. And I suppose they have to choose some kind of color other than black to differentiate from MBP.

Thanks also for the feedback on the screen. That's encouraging enough to go for the purchase. I'll be sure to provide feedback if I do buy it.

 

Here are some technical numbers regarding the screen of these model and some other popular panels so you have an idea:
- Dell 7737 Full HD: Review Dell Inspiron 7737 CN77304 Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Information
X-Rite i1Pro 2
Maximum: 354 cd/m²
Average: 323.6 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 80 %
Center on Battery: 336 cd/m²
Black: 0.29 cd/m²
Contrast: 1159:1
ICC File (X-Rite i1Pro 2)
- Dell 7537 Full HD Review Dell Inspiron 15-7537 Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Information
X-Rite i1Pro 2
Maximum: 293 cd/m²
Average: 267.4 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 84 %
Center on Battery: 278 cd/m²
Black: 0.25 cd/m²
Contrast: 1084:1
ICC File (X-Rite i1Pro 2)
- Macbook Pro retina 13in Review Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13 Late 2013 Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Information
X-Rite i1Pro 2
Maximum: 368 cd/m²
Average: 330.8 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 81 %
Center on Battery: 360 cd/m²
Black: 0.4 cd/m²
Contrast: 900:1
ICC File (X-Rite i1Pro 2)
- Kindle Fire HDX Review Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 Tablet - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Information
X-Rite i1Basic Pro 2
Maximum: 446.9 cd/m²
Average: 426.5 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 91 %
Center on Battery: 446.9 cd/m²
Black: .669 cd/m²
Contrast: 668:1
- Iphone 5S Review Apple iPhone 5S Smartphone - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Information
X-Rite i1Pro 2
Maximum: 579 cd/m²
Average: 538.4 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 88 %
Center on Battery: 579 cd/m²
Black: 0.8 cd/m²
Contrast: 724:1

 

Good idea. Some other relevant comparisons (for reference the 7537 is 2.6 kg and the 7737 is 3.287 kg and the XPS 15 touch is, what, about 2.0kg?):


XPS 15z (my current laptop)
Information
Gossen Mavo-Monitor
Maximum: 286 cd/m²
Average: 258.7 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 79 %
Center on Battery: 282 cd/m²
Black: 0.55 cd/m²
Contrast: 513:1

:: Weight
2.54 kg Power Supply: 0.45 kg

XPS 15 L521 (The closest relation to the 7537)
Information
Gossen Mavo-Monitor
Maximum: 340 cd/m²
Average: 320.4 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 90 %
Center on Battery: 309 cd/m²
Black: 0.65 cd/m²
Contrast: 523:1

:: Weight
2.7 kg Power Supply: 0.3 kg

 

I ordered a Dell 7537 with the Full HD touchscreen, 750M Graphics card, 16GB memory, and a 256SSD on November 5.
Originally showed a shipping date of November 20 and I was excited for it to ship tomorrow. But now I logged in and it says the 25th.
Frustrating. But I guess not much I can do. This normal?

 

My Inspiron 7537 just arrived. I'll... probably return it. For the same reason I returned the Samsung Ativ Book 8: that sparkly screen. I find it odd hardly anybody else mentions this. It's the effect you get on a cheap matte display, and this is glossy. My current laptop, a Dell XPS 15 L502X, looks perfectly clear by comparison.

Other impressions:

Display. Sparkle aside, its contrast is lovely, and color saturation is good... mostly. Cyan, like on the mail and photo tiles, looks washed out compared to my current machine. In fact, the color looks completely different - I first thought it had changed because of Windows 8.1. There's also some backlight bleeding on the sides (I believe this is common for IPS displays). But, overall, I'd say it's very good - if you're not allergic to sparkle like myself.

Keyboard is meh. As said before, it's mushy and consequently lacks feedback. I could probably get used to it, but I'd strongly prefer something more crisp. There's obvious flex, but I didn't find that very bothersome while typing.

Build quality is good. The device looks beautiful, very solid. The bottom corners however are very sharp, which makes it very uncomfortable to carry. The touchscreen wobbles slightly while it's being used, but not as badly as some other devices I've tried, at least.

Touchpad is roomy, but the integrated buttons lack travel and feel a bit awkward to me. Again, something I could probably get used to, but I would've liked something better.

WiFi reception seems bad, but I haven't tried the driver update yet.

Audio (3.5mm jack) so far has been, um, terrible (I suspect some driver updates may fix this). I have fairly sensitive earphones, and the 3.5mm jack seems to emit a very annoying white noise and a weird whistling-like noise on the right. There's also some horrible bass and soundstage "enhancements" going on, but luckily, those are easily turned off.

It's going back into the box now, so that's it for my rant. I hope it turns out better for the rest of you.

 

I've just seen a film on the 7537 and wow: it has a discharge rate of 4~5 W per hour!! It was on min bright and WiFi off, but that means 12~13 hours of video playback!!! Crazy better then rMBP!!!!

Inviato dal mio Nexus 4 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

I've had mine for just over a week now with the 1080p screen (model 7537). I have started noticing it ghosting on the screen, has anyone else experienced this?

Kind Regards,
Aaron K

 

Received my 7537 yesterday. 1080p/1 tb version

First impressions:

Display. Display looks great, nice viewing angles. The colors are a bit off compared to my monitor, but that's acceptable. Just a bit of bleeding, but that's with every LED screen. Touch works great as well, except that like with every glare screen fingerprint smudges are really visible.

Keyboard As I don't have much experience with laptops, I honestly don't understand the complaints. It's really nice, has a numpad even, which most don't have. To me it's fine.

Build quality It looks great, feels great, no complaints at all for the moment. Feels really solid.

Touchpad A huge touchpad which works, well, just fine. Gestures as well, does what it is supposed to.

WiFi reception Wifi reception is perfectly fine, download speeds are high, range is pretty large. No complaints whatsoever. If you haven't even updated drivers yet, you shouldn't complain.

Asside from a terribly slow update to 8.1 my experience has been great so far. Just make sure you update the drivers. To all those who complain, but didn't update the drivers, I say; get off the board, update the drivers, then come back.

 

I know someone posted the specs of the 1080p IPS screens, but I wanted to mention that the 1366x768 panel you saw comes in at only 139 lux. So the 1080p 15" model has nearly twice the brightness of the 768p 15" model.

 

Hi

I just got an new 17" Dell 7000 with windows 8 and touch screen. The machine is awesome, by far the best I have ever had but I had the wifi problem you described. Dell was even supportive to send another machine but it also does have the same wifi problems. I really would like to keep it, but I need to have the fast wifi in another room, it is just 15 feet from the router but the machine only gets top speed when it is in the room with the router. Do you have any info on Dell finding a fix for this?

Thanks
Jerry

The frustrating part is my old dell, an XPS gets great speed results in the other room 31 m vs 5 m for the new one. Same for my 15" Inspiron 32 m. So I do know it is problem with the new Dell 7000. I even tried changing routers and the results are the same. I really like this new touch screen Dell, I hope somehow they have a fix and I do not have to return it.

 

Sorry to double post, but I had wanted to ask if anyone had tried Linux on this machine? I know the switchable graphics can be tough to deal with but I had it working on my MSI X460DX back in the day. Also, how hard is it to revert back to Windows? I just ran into an issue with my laptop where I had bought an upgrade version of Windows 8 and it would not reactivate with the key since I had formatted my harddrive.

 

It's probably related to the aluminum body... I remember the first Asus Transformer to use an aluminum body ran into this, and I believe they added a plastic strip to increase reception on one of the later models.

 

That make sense. I thought of that when I saw the reviews about the new ones being Aluminum. I will check with Dell to see if a fix is in the works. That would seal the deal. The new 7,000 is just amazing. I can such an improvement in changing laptops, And this is my 7 change/upgrade.

 

Unofortunately I think that Dell is not going to do ANYTHING to resolve this issue with WiFi.

As other people have said, it's a design/material issue, which also affected last year's XPS model. And this year's Inspiron seems to have almost identical body to last year's XPS.

If you read that older XPS owners thread, you'll see quite a detailed discussion on the WiFi issues, which at the end remained largely unresolved. I know this very well, as my girlfriend bought that XPS and at the end she had to return it for a refund, even after the normal refund period. Dell simply agreed to refund her without any objections, as they were fully aware of the design flaws of that system. But of course, in public they would always say that the WiFi issues appear only in limited(!!) situations and that they were investigating and that a fix would eventually arrive. And then they send people on a wild goose chase updating drivers, changing settings, replacing machines or screens or antennas or whatever, but with no real and definite improvement at the end...

It now seems that this design flaw was carried over to the Inspiron. This is unfortunate for me as well, as I was strongy considering buying it. But having had the past experience, I don't expect Dell to be able to make the WiFi work properly without a major redesign of the laptop chassis.

 

That is disappointing. Thanks for the info. I do love the machine and right now I am next to the router and I get 33m. But when I go downstairs 15' away...5-7 m. I spent over 5 hours with them downloading drivers and trying to fix the router. The part that confuses me is they sent a technician to change the wireless card and when that did not work they set me a brand new system. It is costing them a lot of money. do you know of an 17" touch screen laptops which do not have this issue? Again thanks

 

Updating the wireless card drivers have helped other users with slow speeds, could give that a try.

 

HP Envy Touchsmart 17? It's plastic so I assume it doesn't not have the same issue. Reviews say it's not nearly as sturdy as the Inspiron though. It also uses a quad core processor instead of a ULV, but pairs it with a relatively weak GT 740M instead of the DDR5 GT 750m.

 

this is very confusing...I'm really having a hard time believing that some people have such a lousy wifi sensitivity when others post very decent results in the same forum...Apparently this driver update fixed it significantly for a few users and now you're saying that it did not change anything in your case. I do not know who I should believe!, how can results vary that much?
I just need a decent wifi connection (10 MBPS) up to 7 meters away from my router...can this laptop achieve this??

 

Might not be the answer you want to hear but wifi on laptops varies wildly with different routers, channels, and living situations. Sometimes the only way to know is to test.

 

right, I guess at this point the best thing to do is to test and see...it's a shame though to see such contrasted results.

for those who updated the wifi drivers, would you advise to do it before or after upgrading to Win 8.1?

 

As already mentioned, WiFi performance varies wildly between different situations. It might even vary over time for the same WiFi network, as for example more and more WiFi routers are being activated in nearby flats/houses/offices! Interference from neighbouring WiFi networks is always a big issue. Most WiFi cards/antennas in laptops are robust enough to overcome these issues and offer decent performance.

But metal cases/chassis make their work much harder and often additional design changes are required to overcome this. It seems that Dell hasn't put enough effort in this case, as they probably think that not too many people will be affected by this "flaw".

So, while software tweaks might improve things for some, nothing can be done in the most "severe" situations. So, if your WiFi performance with the Inspiron is very bad, don't expect spectacular improvement. If it's not too bad, then you might have a chance to get decent performance with updated drivers or some tweaks.

Unless you try, you can't really know for sure. But, what if the laptop works fine at your home and then, you realise that at work/hotel/airport/coffee shop it doesn't? so you need to test a lot, unless you are only going to use in a specific location at a specific place with a specific router etc..

 

This makes me tempted to crack open my antenna design book and see what could be done.

 

I don't think it really matters, there is no new driver for 8.1 on Dell's website, just for 8. So I cant see it making a difference.

 

My approach/order was to config Win 8.0 on the laptop, do the offered Microsoft updates to 8.0, create the Dell recovery media, and then do the install of Windows 8.1. Then I applied updates to 8.1 from Microsoft, updated the WiFi drivers automatically via Device Manager (letting it browse), and updated BIOS, video drivers, and other items from 8.1 support area on Dell's web site.

 

I just got a replacement for the one I bought on Saturday from Best Buy today (the service was really nice, go Best Buy). Anyway, on this new lap I don't have any wifi issue at all. It is on point with the Envy 15t I have. For those concerns about driver, I didn't have to do anything. First of all, after all the normal setting up for a new machine, I went to windows update and chose all 59 updates that were there. After rebooting, I went to windows store and did an upgrade to 8.1. Then when finishing, I checked windows update again for additional software. Finally, I download the latest BIOS from Dell. That's it. Worked like a charm.
EDIT: the BIOS update also fixed that 8Gb of Ram but 7,71Gb Available thing.
EDIT 2 kay my wifi speed now is ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR! Wow what did I do right?

 

For those looking for the 8.1 wifi drivers if it doesn't show up on the 15" page you can go to the 14" page and download those. All 7260 cards use the same driver package from Intel. I have yet to experience any wifi issues but I did install Win 8.1 from scratch and also upgraded to the 7260 AC version and that puppy is strong.

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I rejected that one because I wanted the stronger design. But now I have to get it because I need the wifi more than the strength. :-( Again thanks.