New XPS 15z

[austinwachukwu]

Can someone message or PM me if they see a 15z with a 1080p screen for less than $999? I would seriously appreciate. I have to keep my eyes open too. (NVM)

[cz9h3d]

Lol, cz9h3d...I couldn't really understand you...so you DO like the laptop?

I've nothing bad to say about the 15Z - it's a beautiful laptop, my refurb is pretty much brand new looking - I jumped on it when I found a 1920x1080 screen version, $810 total with tax. Alas I've decided to add a MacBook Pro 13 instead to my household (and have, leveraging the 20% via Amazon Kindle).

Now I just need to get rid of this 15Z. I'll call Dell back again today and say I've "found some issues" - fans running too much/too loud, etc, to avoid the restocking fee BS. It's tempting to keep it now at $760 total, but do I really need $1800 worth of laptops in my house at present?!?!?!?! My son does do a little gaming - I just struggled through upgrading Parallels on my i7 iMac, so now he can play his Lotro...

[cz9h3d]

1 1/2 hours on the phone with Dell, and I should have an RMA coming in my email soon! Those guys are as bad as the worst car salesmen. Not a pleasant experience. I will think twice before going through this kind of pain again. I may consider again when I need to add another laptop to my household. My son is already complaining about playing LOTRO - I just tell him to go play on his XBox that is only two weeks old...

[uchihacg]

1 1/2 hours on the phone with Dell, and I should have an RMA coming in my email soon! Those guys are as bad as the worst car salesmen. Not a pleasant experience. I will think twice before going through this kind of pain again. I may consider again when I need to add another laptop to my household. My son is already complaining about playing LOTRO - I just tell him to go play on his XBox that is only two weeks old...

I've had to call support 2 times.
1st time because i have ordered a 1080p screen and i hated how the text was too small (so i returned and bought one without)

Also for people here, for the xps with 1080p screen it comes with DPI at 125% the text doesn't look natural and if you scale down to 100% it's IMPOSSIBLE to read!! (at least for me, and trust me im not blind) I tried scaling res down and that makes the image blurry (you'll notice if you look close enough). The 1080 screen was a lot brighter though. That's the only difference i noticed. Maybe the colors are a bit more vivid but other than that 720p screen's perfect for me. =) Having pos experience with this laptop so far. Got it 1 month ago.

2nd time because question about hyper threading (you can't turn it off for this laptop btw)

Both times, my experience with the dell support was great. They sent me a replacement as soon as i asked it. Sure, it took some time but the problem got fixed. There's no tech support company in this world that can give you answers in 10 minutes. If you call them, expect to spend time.

[uchihacg]

how hot does your 15z get?

mine is a i5 and it seems to get a bit hot on the left side next to touchpad!

is there a utility to show (and maybe manage) the heat?

Yes, that's where the hard drive is. The left side of touch pad. I was wondering why it felt hot there.
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

My overall temps (mb sensors):
Web surfing: ~50-55 F
Gaming (100% usage): 86 MAX.

To control the heat problem, I edited the balanced performance power plan in windows power management. And under max processor state it set mine to 60% and that helps A LOT!!. If you're gonna be surfing the web or doing light gaming/ other stuff, that's enough power and you won't notice a difference in speed as this is still a fast processor.

When i'm gaming/rendering i change plan to high performance (which kills your battery (3.5 hours max) and heat comes back up to 80's. (which is still very low for laptops)

While using the laptop with 40% brightness and cpu at 60% wifi on, web browsing. I got 7 hours of battery with this laptop. IDK how cnet got 3 hours ;-; on their wifi test. Faulty unit?

If you know how to tweak some basic settings you should be getting about that time also. If you keep your processor up so high, you will notice a battery life drop to about 5 hours. On wifi tests .(same goes with brightness). 40% is not bad.

Also when you get your unit, re calibrate the battery. I had 5% wear on mine when i got it. When i calibrated it its down to 2%.

[uchihacg]

Has anyone had any issues with the 15z fan running pretty loud ALL the time, regardless of what youre doing? even with absolutely nothing open the fans are pretty loud. any help would be appreciated.

Another issue I've been noticing is that whenever I right click on the desktop the laptop makes a high pitched noise. only on the desktop though. the sound is off so it can't be coming from the speakers. thoughts?

Nope, i'm not having this problem. (mostly because i put max processor state to 60%)
But when I'm gaming also, the fans aren't that loud.

One con about this laptop is it's audio is terrible. I wish they put sub woofer like for the normal xps 15.

[hapbeeboy]

Looks like the 1080p screens are back in stock! Looks like only the highest end config ($1499) has option for the 256gb SSD, has anyone successfully swapped out their HDD for an SSD and if so how difficult was it? Thanks!

[lancorp]

I got a 15z from the Outlet and it arrived today. Unfortunately, for me, it was supposed to have the 1080p LCD but came with the lousy 1366x768 panel. After an hour of being bounced around Dell, the return resolution specialist said refund was the only option. Usually, they can put in a replacement order and sometimes you get something better. But, this time, they said refund only because of the 1080p LCD.

Before I send it back, I wanted to play with it a bit and put in an SSD. I followed the service manual, but that darn base cover doesn't seem to want to budge and separate. I'm afraid to pull too much.

Anyone have hints on how to remove the darn thing? It shouldn't be so hard!

[BigNerd]

I followed the service manual, but that darn base cover doesn't seem to want to budge and separate. I'm afraid to pull too much.

Anyone have hints on how to remove the darn thing? It shouldn't be so hard!

I would be very careful with that.

The tech that replaced my motherboard and "knew" how to remove the base ended up ruining the chrome trim.

Someone here has replaced with an SSD so you may want to PM him about it.

[ippikiokami]

I'm surprised at all the issues, I have a 15z that i bought the day it came out. Other than a trim issue that dell replaced for me i havent had an issue since. I just ran speedtest on it to and get 11.79 mbps (i subscribe for 12) and 1 mbps up.

I did replace my hd with a ssd and it screams. I edit pictures and stream video on this machine daily. The times it has gotten loud were when i had it on the bed streaming stuff and it does take a bit for it to calm down.