Vostro 1700 + VISTA - THE BAD

1. The first thing I noticed when I played some MP3 files was a soft 'p....p..........p...' in all of the playbacks. I'm not an avid audiophile by any measure, but this is annoying even to me. When I eventually got Linux running, all MP3 files played fine, so scratch that one up to BAD DRIVERS and lackluster testing by Dell. (edit: That's the 'On-board' sound. Doubtless if you pay more for the 'Sound Blaster', it's a non-issue.)

2. Both lower corners of the 17" display have 'dark spots'. The rest of the display is a bit unevenly illuminated. This was initially masked by Vista's horrific transparent masturbation-fest (a big selling feature for manufacturers who wanted to skimp on display quality, no doubt), but became very obvious when I switched to a 'classic' theme, got all the 'effects' turned off and went to a solid color background. Looks exactly like some dork at the factory cranked the screws down too tight and warped the display, because it looks 'fine' if I move my head two feed to the left or right and look directly at the dim spots. Set the background to black and the start menu to 'auto hide', and I don't notice it so much, now. No dead pixels, anyway. At least I can see the edges of those cutesy translucent icons that you can't turn off in Vista with a black background.

3. Vista's 'resize partition' function initially wouldn't shrink a 30GB Windows partition on a 160GB drive any smaller than 90GB. I only wanted it down to 60GB. Deleting the 'Hibernate' file, turning off the swap file, turning off recycle bin and turning off 'System Restore' and rebooting and then running 'optimize' (which also sucks worse under Vista) didn't make any difference. When I gave up, the empty partition it made couldn't be formatted AND couldn't even be reclaimed by the boot partition. I eventually had to use 'UBCD' to launch a few different FDISK variations to find one that would identify and destroy the offending extended partition. Then I was able to install UBUNTU to that empty space. Naturally the latest available 'Partition Magic' CD won't work under Vista, and won't even work if you boot off the CD. It pops up an unhelpful error number and refuses to do anything.

4. The reason I 'eventually' fixed that 'lost partition' problem was I dared not use any sort of recovery tool (as they occasionally make matters much worse) until I had a Vista boot disk. This I had to pester Dell for, for three weeks. They have a 'recovery' partition that is only capable of running 'Windows Repair' or 'Windows Restore', and it's on partitions VISIBLE to Windows, with a drive letter assigned to it, where anything that can get Administrator access can scribble all over it. Not to mention where you are left if the computer DOES NOT BOOT as far as their little half-baked 'recovery' tools. Eventually, the light came on in one of the Dell support technicians' heads and someone actually had a CD shipped to me. It also came with a copy of 'Roxio CD Creator'. Hmm, I knew there was something else missing. I was finally able to burn the UBUNTU and UBCD ISOs with that. The CD burning software wasn't pre-installed on the system, even though it SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

5. Dell's support is horrible. The web site will make you log in, then MAKE YOU ENTER your customer number to beg for support. You know how I found my 'customer number'? I logged in and eventually tracked it down in one of the sub-menus. Their system already knows all of that information, but they prompt you for it again and again anyway, even ASK you for it in correspondence after you've entered it. Even after redundantly typing in my name, address, phone number, customer ID, computer ID, etc., I got an email asking for THE SAME INFORMATION AGAIN. Actually, the first email I got back was from some mindless FAQ ROBOT that assumed that I wanted a 'VISTA UPGRADE' from XP! @#$^!!! If I had 'XP', I wouldn't have had MOST of these issues! Seems nothing there at Dell support is integrated, and their 'live chat' has never worked even once.

On to Ubuntu. It won't install straight up. After tracking down some 'easy' instructions, I got it installed at 800x600 mode. The first thing useful I tracked down on my own was 'Envy'. It'll do the whole NVidia setup for you, which is a big help. Do a search for that. Unfortunely, every time you let Ubuntu update the kernel, you'll need to run 'Envy' again. So maybe let Ubuntu finish the first hundred or so 'automatic updates' before bothering, since you'll have to almost immediately run Envy again from a command line after the new kernel refuses to load the NVidia drivers and fails to launch X.

Then my bad decisions in purchasing continued to haunt me. Seems the 'Dell' branded wireless cards have no Linux drivers. Never fear! I installed that 'Use Windows Drivers' thing for it and... only ever got as far as SEEING my wireless router. It would never connect. So, it's plugged into the wire when using Linux until that's sorted out (if ever). Even to get that far, I have to manually delete and re-install the Windows 'driver' that does this after each reboot, as there's something missing in the configuration that is not setting up the driver again, and I haven't bothered figuring out what, yet.

And, as someone asked, "Why haven't you returned it, if you're so unhappy with it?" Like I'm some sort of hopeless whiner without a single clue.

Well, all of the problems surfaced over weeks, not all at once. In that time I have gotten the computer set up as my development machine, dealt with many things that are 100% VISTA's fault, and am busy making a living with it programming things. I can't just drop everything I'm doing to ship this computer off to Dell to have them claim that the Display is within whatever tolerances they have for such defects, that the sound is a driver issue (or my 'imagination'), then do a complete wipe of my hard disks and send it back to me with a new batch of defects and in an utterly useless state until I've spent another three to five days re-installing software and calling various OTHER sucky tech support for 'permissions' to reinstall their products now that the registrations/activations have all been stomped and it looks to them like I have it installed on too many computers.

Other things that are my fault:

Ordering 4GB of RAM makes some difference at runtime (i.e. you can switch virtual memory off and forget it, and virtually everything will work fine). I already did know Vista couldn't address all 4GB of RAM, but 3.5 is better than 2. The problem is, if you press that 'hibernate' button you'll regret it. It takes longer than a normal shutdown to hibernate, and about as long as a fresh boot to restore again. May as well turn hibernate off and at least get rid of OS memory fragmentations and leaks with a clean boot each time. But with a notebook that might be on battery power, you dare not disable hibernate, as you NEED it to hibernate if you walked away and got distracted, and it needs to hibernate for a low battery. Just sleeping the computer also takes an unusually long time. I can't tell if this latter bit is a symptom of some other problem, or 'normal'.

Finally, this won't be an issue for most of you, but if you are using your machine in a remote location, it's a bit of a POWER HOG. Yeah, I should've seen that coming, but I do need a big display. It uses a big brick of a power adapter that consumes every one of those 90 watts it's rated for (when running and charging). Absolutely idle, with the screen at its dimmest, it eats 24 watts. At its brightest, still idle, 30 watts. During a compile at about medium brightness (where I normally keep it), it consumes 50 watts. There aren't any compatible DC-DC converters that I've found for it, yet, so it needs a 120 watt or bigger inverter to run it. Since inverters are at best 90% efficient, it's consuming up to about 100 watts when its running at capacity. I finally tracked down a small inverter that didn't have a fan in it (most sound like a vacuum cleaner). Large inverters, like the house inverter are even less efficient for small loads. Anyway, it doesn't exactly sip the amp-hours off a battery bank for you alternative energy users who are living off the grid. After a video game 'all-nighter' that only ended at 3:00am playing 'Supreme Commander', the battery bar was down to 'yellow' (and precisely what that means in AH on my meter, I'm not quite certain) on a 400AH bank, without any power generation going on. Since mine's solar, that's not producing much at night. Best guess, probably about 45AH, or almost half a kilowatt hour. Still, a LOT less juice than the desktop PC it replaced. And NO, that's not 'just 1/4'. With lead acid batteries, you don't want to draw them below 75% on a routine basis, or you'll be replacing batteries VERY often.

Dell's lithium ion battery will reportedly run it for four hours (at least that's Vista's power management guesses), but that's more like two hours of 'real' use, and then you have the current draw for running the computer AND charging its batteries, which is what will get you right up to that 90 watts of continuous power consumption, at least until the charger switches over from the bulk charge and begins trickling that last 20% or so of the charge.

 

Wow, what a tirade. It seems like you bought the wrong computer for you, and it seems like you know enough about computers to have known better. How odd.

You also seem to have a ton of time on your hands, not only to worry about all the issues, but then to post at length about them...

Chris

 

I didn't bother to read everything, but I noticed you complaining about Roxio. That's your option... read what you're selecting when you configure your system. It clearly gives you an option whether or not you want Roxio. And they easily ship out the Vista CD if you request it... did that not ever come up to YOU?

 

Sorry to hear that you aren't happy. I personally love my 1700. However, I don't travel much and pretty much just carry it to and from work. If I needed a notebook to travel or one that I knew I would be using on battery power for more than an hour, I would have gone with anything other than a 17 inch giant like this 1700.

Personally, if I was you, I would reformat the machine and go with Vista 64 to make use of the 4gigs. You may have a hard time with the drivers, but I'm sure you will get it all figured out.

I would also keep the pagefile active. It should hinder you much even with 4gbs but Windows is much happier with it. Everyone has a different opinion on pagefiles, but that's just mine.

Your screen issues sounds like a deal breaker for me though. Luckily my screen is perfect, but if it was as bad as yours sound I would hesitate to send it back.

 

EagleDevil: I'll certainly know better than to order from DELL again. I really should've known better in the first place. Anyway, you have 100+ poorly documented details on the Dell configurator to choose from, and there's always going to be something to miss.

xScorp1on: CD software was ordered, was not installed. Yes, they 'easily' shipped that Vista CD, as I said, AFTER THREE WEEKS OF SENDING REQUESTS FOR IT! To be fair, two weeks of that was after I had completely given up on them EVER sending a reply back, and then getting a response out of the blue.

Gobo: Vista 64? The 32 bit version is plenty horrible enough, and I GUARANTEE several (additional) critical pieces of software that I need won't run under it. If all I wanted to do with the computer was admire the pretty Vista desktop, then yes, Vista 64 would be an option. I'm better off with Linux for actual Windows compatibility. I can at least run most of my development and productivity tools under Linux and have a WINE and/or VMWare/Bochs session up for the rest.

I'll consider re-enabling the Swap file if anything misses it, but nothing has missed it so far. It would actually only provide 512MB of additional virtual memory if enabled, but then it would be copying code and data to the swap file for things that would've fit into RAM.

 

What I'm saying is, if you're picky about your computer, it doesn't make sense to buy a bottom-of-the-line Dell. I'm not saying it's a bad computer, but you can get a lot better quality and service elsewhere -- even an XPS or a Dell business-class notebook would be better.

I know it's more money, but sometimes you just have to prioritize.

Chris

 

This IS a Dell 'Business Class' computer. It cost me $2500 to configure it as it is. It's exactly the same as the Inspiron 1720, only not painted a fruity color and with the slightly slower RAM/CPU thrown in to differentiate the brand. I'd rather have 4GB of 'not quite the fastest' RAM than 2GB and a system that's hitting the hard drive constantly for the same money.

If I'd have spent $3300 on the Inspiron 1720, the chances are VERY GOOD I'd have exactly the same problems, except it would eat even more power, and I'd be $700 poorer.

No, we have to go beyond Dell and say, maybe I should've paid $500 more and got the WUXGA VAIO machine I was looking at before I settled on Dell. Except it'd still have Vista which is >50% of my issues with this machine in the first place. Sony probably wouldn't have screwed up the display, though.

WUXGA (1920x1200) was one of those things that narrowed the selection quite a bit. I need the resolution, I need the large, wide screen. The notebooks that supported it were:

1. CLEVO D900 based systems (various little companies put their own stickers on it). Actually it's desktop parts beaten into a notebook form factor with lots of fans. VERY power hungry.

2. VAIO AR590E and a couple of its older siblings.

3. The Dell Inspiron 1720/Vostro 1700

4. I think there was an Alienware system, but I could buy my own space fleet for that.

That was about it when I did my search and comparison shopping. On the plus side, and on the minus side, the SONY came preconfigured and boxed up just the way it was. No tinkering with a configurator, just pretty much one computer fits all.

The CLEVO, well, not really an option. Swell specs, but I'd need to drag a nuclear power station with me to keep the little blinken-lights lit.

That left the Dell, and silly me, I had a recommendation for them from a friend and believed him. Oh well.

 

I run Vista 64 bit on my desktop and don't have any issues. It run 32 bit programs just fine. Maybe some your dev stuff won't run, I wouldn't doubt that at all. If you want to see the entire 4 gigs of ram, it's your only option in the windows world. You should try it out though, worst that can happen is you have to reformat.

On a side note, I think I am having an issue with my 8600 in my Vostro. It gets way too hot and ends up throttling. This could be enough for me to send it back.

 

wow man i actually like vista.. i have yet to have any problems as you are having with it..

 

I disagree. Dell has a real business-class line (D4XX, D6XX, D8XX); that's the one I mean. The Vostros are simply consumer-grade computers (Inspirons) painted black and called "small business." You know what "small business" means? It means "can't afford as nice a computer as a big business." Sorry!

Every computer line has a "sweet spot" price range. I am horrified at the thought of paying $2500 for a Vostro/Inspiron. The one I bought my wife cost under $800, which is about what I think Dell consumer-grade quality is worth. If I were going to spend $2500, I would buy a ThinkPad or something comparable. Of course, we don't game...

You seem like a nice guy. I don't mean to be overly harsh. I hope things work out for you.

Chris