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    New XPS 13 owner with questions...

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by greymarch, Sep 23, 2009.

  1. greymarch

    greymarch Notebook Enthusiast

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    Got a refurbed Studio XPS 13 a few days ago direct from Dell, now I have questions...

    1. Besides these messageboards, what other messageboards are worth cruising for discussing and reading about the Dell/Studio XPS laptops?

    2. Is there a way to turn-off the media direct buttons at the top-right of the keyboard? I seem to accidentally hit them all the time.

    3. Upon receiving the laptop, I replaced the HD with my own HD. Have I invalidated the warranty? (I have the standard 1 year warranty.) If I have problems with the laptop, will Dell fix it, even though I put my own HD into the laptop?

    4. The laptop is a finger-print magnet. Can I find skins/cover to put on the lid of the laptop and the palm wrests? If so, where can I find these items?

    5. I have the hybrid SLI video card(s). I am using Windows 7 final version (I am a computer science grad student, and I got Win7 final before it releases in October) I plan on doing plenty of gaming with this machine. Right now though, I am mostly playing World of Warcraft. Which video drivers should I use or try?
     
  2. Sephoroth

    Sephoroth Notebook Evangelist

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    3. So long as you have on-site service it doesn't really matter anyways. They obviously won't warrant the new hard drive but the rest of the computer should still be covered (if they ever request usage of the backup partitions you can just state you deleted them). If you're paranoid you can switch in the old one before they service it.
    4. Ebay seems like a good place XD. There have been some nice looking skins posted on these forums.
    5. For me 186.81 (the latest Nvidia drivers) has performed best of all I've tried. This would be followed by Dell's beta M17x drivers (186.12).