Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Please do not cross post (ie putting same question in more than one place). This subject is being discussed in detail in the other thread you started.

John

 

think I finally got a good set of parameters for the keyboard. it still occasionally double-keys or misses a key, but it is usable. note that external keyboards plugged into it will sometimes mis having the same keys twice in a row.

AutoRepeatDelay 330
AutoRepeatRate 50
BounceTime 60
DelayBeforeAccept 0
Flags 59
LastBounceKey 500
Last Valid Delay 300
Last Valid Repeat 300
Last Valid Wait 300

 

Dear fellow Dell Precision 5510 owners,

I recently got the 2016's model - pretty nice machine so far. Nevertheless, one thing strikes me odd and annoys me: below the touchpad there is this horizontal led bar. It only lights up when the laptop is charging (or to indicate some error (in amber)). It does not light up when the laptop is on and running on battery. I have my machine configured to hibernate once I close the lid - that is, I have no way to figure out if it's still on. Yesterday I closed the lid and put it in it's laptop case. Couple of hours later I took it out again and it was really really hot and apparently overheating (the fan was running wildly). If there would be a way to indicate the power status via the horizontal led that would not have happened. Do you have any ideas how to change the behavior of the front led?

Thanks for taking the time for reading this post and best regards

Chris

 

I'm sorry I can't help you. It's a mystery to me why Dell didn't make that light flash when the notebook is closed but sleeping - the logic already exists to make the light on the power button flash. My Latitude 7370 which also has the light on the front behaves exactly the same. Fortunately, the Core M CPU in that notebook means it won't get too hot but the rule I have used for over 20 years is to never trust sleep and always make sure that a notebook is either off or hibernating (ie no power light on) before putting it in a bag.

You may want to examine the system log to see if there is an obvious reason for preventing the hibernation.

John

PS: By "2016's model" do you mean the Precision 5520? If so, it deserves its own thread but, at the same time, has so much in common with the 5510 then I understand why you are posting the question here.

 

Hi John,

thanks for your kind and rapid response. Yes, it's a mystery to me as well ... the laptop is really great otherwise, but basically the front led is pretty useless to me in its current form. Having it flashing while in sleep or being light up while the laptop is on would provide a way to make sure what state the the laptop is in once the lid is closed ...

No, my model is the 5510, but the manufacturing date in the service flap on the bottom of the laptop said it was built in 2016. That's why I said 2016's model. Sorry, if that let to some confusion!

Again, thanks for your response.

Best regards,

Chris

 

Has anyone else experienced what honestly sounds like a blown speaker? My left speaker all of a sudden got really fuzzy and almost sounds like it's vibrating against something. I don't play audio loudly on this at all so not sure why that happened. I'm sure it's the speaker as it doesn't happen with headphone and occurs at all volume levels and the right speaker is just fine.

 

Those speakers have reasonably strong magnets such that they will attract any small iron/steel objects near the front of the notebook. First look closely to see if there is a small metal object on the outside of the chassis. If there's nothing on the outside then it's time to look inside and see if a stray screw has taken an attraction to the speaker.

John

 

Thanks John - turned out to be a bum speaker which once replaced sounds much better.

 

I just got one of these and installed Ubuntu 16.10 on it. Everything seems to be working out of the box as far as I can tell but I'm having trouble configuring "three finger tap" to be "middle mouse button". Looking at the output from 'xinput list' I can see that the synaptics touchpad has id 14.

According to the links below, the property I need to modify is called "Synaptics Tap Action".

https://major.io/2016/07/05/bring-back-two-three-finger-taps-fedora-24/
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/yakkety/man4/synaptics.4.html

Comparing the current value of that property to the information below, it seemed like changing the last digit from 0 (disabled) to 2 (middle mouse button) would do what I want. Setting the property with the command below still doesn't seem to enable the feature though.

Code:

xinput set-prop 14 "Synaptics Tap Action" 2 3 0 0 1 3 2

I confirmed that the property was updated but it doesn't seem to do anything. Has anyone been able to get this working? Does it work in Windows (I forgot to check that)?

 

The configuration is under the Windows Precision touchpad control panel on my 5510 and the 3 finger tap does work.

You might find some useful guidance by searching for "Linux Synaptics XPS15 9550" as there are many more users of the XPS than there are of the 5510.

John