D830 Owner's Lounge

Commander Wolf: I got as far as that. I don't see why it wouldn't work but you never know. Still hoping Dell might offer the machine without any OS and drop the price a bit

 

Lightbleed update:

Dell sent me a replacement backlight (just backlight, inverter, and ribbon - no plastics)... No change in the bleed. The ribbon was foxconn instead of tonka, but otherwise still a Samsung panel.

Dell then sent me a motherboard, since the only other logical place would be an overamped signal from the graphics card. If you've ever swapped out Dell laptop motherboards, this was a great improvement over 3-4 years ago (last time I did one). Anyway, no change.

My tech at this point - same gold tech from the start - has photos of the issue and forwards them to his manager, who forwards them to 'the engineers.' The report back to me from the manager directly is this (paraphrased from a phone call):

"The engineers said that this is only an issue with the WUXGA version of the screen and that the issue exists because a thinner and lighter substrate was used to meet weight requirements of the new model. It occurs on all D830s shipping with WUXGA. This 'new technology' was used to improve the user experience from a weight standpoint, and the lightbleed is considered an acceptable result. There is no intent to change this at this time, as it is not seen as a flaw, and if you are unhappy, you can send back your unit for an equivalent D820 or a lower-res D830."

I ask to have an engineer call me. She balks. I said a few things that I probably shouldn't have, but I didn't curse at her or anything. Still, she stonewalled any further help from this avenue.

So at this point I'm livid. I spend 50-100k with Dell annually and this flagship model was purchased to replace my road-weary (and headless) Inspiron 8000. I signed an NDA to find out the D830's release date, and waited another month after release for the improved graphics card to arrive. What I wind up with is a laptop that I can't watch a movie on during a flight because of annoying lightbleed. I even see the light (and the dark upper corners) during normal work. Like the 60Hz flicker on improperly set CRTs, it's annoying me more than it might someone else. But it's no so subjective that it should be ignored as a problem. My wife knows little about technology and she even thinks it's annoying. But the news isn't all bad...

I call my sales guy, who knows that I don't get angry often. I had a multi-RAID config for a server a few months ago that was compex, and after making absolutely sure the hardware engineer knew what I wanted and triple checking that he knew what was expected, the build was wrong. I was able to break and rebuild the arrays correctly, but I was mad. This was another one of those times.

After voicing my perturbance and forwarding the photos to my sales guy, a senior account manager for business sales, he promises action and escalation. That evening I get a call from a support rep whose job it is to resolve the problems other people can't or won't resolve. He agrees that this is unacceptable, and we got off the phone Friday with his promise to make it right. He says he has his own set of escalation engineers that will be able to provide a better solution than "because we had to make it lighter."

I don't care if it takes 6 months to resolve, I just want to know that it is going to be worked on and will be resolved at some point. That's what I think will happen at this point, and I'll update here when I know more.

In the meantime, those of you with the lightbleed problem, please speak up! Call Dell and complain loudly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the high-end Latitudes should not suffer from such a design flaw - especially when we pay *more* for the higher resolution.

-J

 

Processor: 1.8GHZ
Ram: 1GB
Graphics: Integrated
HD: 120GB @ 5400RPM
Vista Business

 

Bimbo, well, if you and I agree I think it's safe to say that you can buy it with a good degree of confidence that it will work XD

Corster3, shoulda gotten 80GB @ 7200 RPM, imo.

Joriki, concerning the light leakage on the screen, I don't really have too much of a problem with it... like it's pretty rare that I have the screen in such a state that it's turned on and blacked out at the same time such that I notice the light leakage. So I'm not dissatisfied enough to call Dell.

Besides, I take back my original comments about the dimness of the screen. One day I had it on next to my 500m and noticed that it was actually significantly brighter than the older machine's screen. Surprising to say the least; I must be spoiled by the screen on my desktop.

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to install a 12 mm (height) hard disk into the Dell Latitude D830? Or will only 9.5 mm fit?

 

Hello --

If you are like me, you may be deciding between the T61 15" and the D830. The specs on both my configs are very similar:

I am considering both with their respective dedicated cards (128x140m on T61, 256x140m on D830), with only the batteries that won't stick out (6+3 on T61, 9+6 on D830).

Can you please post here your D830 Processor, Battery Config, and Graphics, and what you were doing during the battery life test.

This will be a huge help.

Thank you very, very much!!

-Smirch

 

Does anyone know what company makes this screen LPLC500?

That is the type of screen my D830 has.

EDIT:

I found out its LG Philips LCD Co. is that true?

 

eBay, I didn't see it @ Dell but they do have the drivers for it on the support site.

 

Any idea why pcmark 05 keeps failing and wont post a score? It keeps telling me transparent windows failed and my test results are invalid?

Anyone experience this?

 

I too am wondering about this. Just how bad is the display if you have to use a lower resolution for some applications? In my case, I will only be using it for text based applications.