---> OFFICIAL: Dell STUDIO 14z Owner's Lounge <---

go into the power settings, change plan settings, advanced settings, processor, cooling policy. You can change it from passive to active or vice versa. I changed it to active so the fan is constantly on, but it doesnt come on every once in a whlie and try to start a hurricane.

That said the passive mode isn't really that passive.

 

I rofl'd..and I have no idea why. Sleep deprived maybe?

 

I did that, but for some reason I only see the option "processor power management" that expands to "min CPU usage" and "max CPU usage".

 

Well, I see "Minimum processor state", "Maximum processor state" and a third option "System cooling policy" each with 2 options: "On battery" and "Plugged in", but that doesn't change anything.

 

what OS are you using? (I'm in windows 7. Don't know what the settings in vista are. I just went straight from xp -> w7)

 

That system cooling policy, I think there is some confusion over what it does.

Basically, if you have it set to passive mode, then instead of turning the fan on when things get too hot, it will first try to slow down the processor. Active will leave the processor as it is and turn on the fan. It does not turn the fan on permanently, and passive mode will not disable the fan; it is just that it will try slowing your processor before it turns on the fans.

Why anybody would want to do this, I don't know. Your CPU likely has speedstep activated, so if your processor is not busy, it will be running on lower volts anyway as it will be stepped down.

 

Yeah that was my understanding of it, but you have a more eloquent way of putting it. Thanks for the clarification.

 

I've been having this same issue. Are you running Vista or W7? I'm running W7 and unfortunately can't remember if I saw the flicker before I installed W7, so I'm not sure if it's a W7 issue or something else.

In any event, I just now uinstalled and reinstalled all the nvidia drivers (2 chipset drivers and 1 9400M driver) from the Dell website. It was a bit weird when I first restarted - at startup Windows automatically DL'd and installed some drivers, one of which was called "coprocessor". Things got real slow then and I started worrying that I had screwed something up. I restarted again and now everything seems to be back to normal, except I haven't had a screen flicker yet. It's only been 10 minutes though, so I'll report back later after further use.

 

does anyones fan make a whistle noise when running?

 

The whistling only happens on the highest fan setting 4 me.

 

yeah its pretty annoying. a technician is coming to replace the fan because apparently it is not communicating with the BIOS and is louder than it should be.

on that note, at what temperature do your fans spin up to a higher RPM? mine happens around 50c to a rather annoying level... a clearly audible, high pitched whine. happens when im idling a lot of the time too, even though i'm undervolted.

 

Does anyone of a compatible travel charger for the 14z? Dell has this one and I couldn't find anything on the iGo's website either.

 

By travel charger I assume you mean one with air and auto adapters? Dell makes one - P/N MK911. It's from the PA-12 family, which was replaced by the PA-2E family, but comes up on the Dell website as being compatible with the 14z. It's pricey, although I did find it on this website for cheap (disclaimer: I have no experience with this vendor and have no idea if they are a reliable credible vendor):

http://www.notebookacadapter.com/p4...ct_info.html?gclid=CNPbwebylpwCFRwpawodzG1WdA

 

Is anyone that bought 900p unhappy with their laptop? I'm ready to buy my 14z, but I wanted to be sure 900p is the way to go. That obviously seems to be the consensus on this forum. The only reason I ask is that I generally will not be using my laptop for videos, editing photos, or playing games. 98% of my use will be with Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and statistical analysis software. So I worry about the icons and buttons becoming too small (e.g. within Word). Thanks in advance!

 

It's not too small at all for me. It's simply amazing.

 

DEFINITELY go with the 900p. I do the same stuff as you (minus statistical analysis, but plus some PS at times), and it's absolutely incredible. Definitely one of the best things, if not the best, about the laptop IMHO

 

I'm not sure right now, but I think that the 900p screen might take alot of energy over the 720p. I changed every possible setting, and I max out at 4 hours surfing the web, while others have said something like 5-6 hours (I havent run it down yet, but that is from the estimator) The main difference was the 720p screen and possibly a 5400rpm hard drive.. I want some other people to post up though.

 

Yes, just like you, I only get 4 hours, not 5-6 as other people claim. And yes, the 900p is a must! I was afraid that the text would be too small, but it's excellent. Now so much stuff fits into the screen, I can open programs side by side and see what's going on in both, instead of constantly switching. I do not regret getting a 900p screen, I'm very happy with it!

 

Oh, by the way, I undervolted, and indeed the CPU runs cooler now. I could set the lowest possible voltage (0.8750V) on all multipliers, except for the highest one 9.0x, which only got down to 0.9250V. Here's before and after temperatures under stress on my P8600:

Code:

[FONT="Courier New"]
                  Before      After
                  ------      ------
CPU (core 0)      66            58
CPU (core 1)      68            59
GPU               77            73
HDD               39            41

[/FONT]

So I shaved off 8-9 degrees off the CPU, 4 degrees off the GPU, and for some weird reason, the HDD runs 2 degrees hotter now, don't know why. But overall, it's good. I will run a second battery test and see how the undervolting increased the battery life (if at all). Will post later.

 

Can't forget about the amazing speakers.

 

i stand corrected. They are pretty sweet

 

For those of you running rmclock, you can get the battery's discharge rate from the device screen when on battery power. It appears to be a moving average, so you have to wait for it to settle down after turning on/off a device, but you can use it to estimate the power consumed by a device, LCD backlight level, keyboard backlight, WIFI, etc.

For example, the drain on my system when idle is about 10.2W with WIFI off and about 11.8W with WIFI on. Keyboard backlight adds about 0.4W and LCD brightness from 0 to 1 adds about 0.2W. The USB dongle for my wireless mouse adds 2W when plugged in!!

Anyway, it might help with finding what is draining your battery if you are getting low life times.

 

What's your screen resolution?

 

I have the 1600x900 screen (just added it to my sig). Still on Vista x64 though.

 

I noticed your battery is manufactured by Dynapack. Mine is by Sanyo. I wonder if that matters.

 

The discharge rate won't show up immediately after you unplug the power. Wait about a minute and then check, it'll probably take that long for it to stabilize anyway.

 

Has anyone else tried XP on this? Everything worked fine for me except for the audio card, no matter what i did i couldn't get it to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Are you certain it's your audio card? After installing W7 and all of the various drivers, my audio suddenly disappeared. I uninstalled and reinstalled the audio drivers to no avail - still no sound. Finally while going through all the various audio device settings, I noticed that for some reason my default audio had been reset to headphones (I've never once plugged headphones into my 14z). I reset the default to the speakers and voila - I had sound back. I should have spotted it sooner, but it just never occurred to me that my default audio would somehow get switched to headphones, so it was one of the last things I checked.

 

The same here: after installing the audio drivers, the default output device was set to headphones, so I had to manually set it to speakers.

 

I love the 900p display on my 14z - it really is one of the best features of this notebook. That said, if you don't care that much about photo or video quality, it might not be worth the minimal size trade-off. Given how reasonable the price is, however, I would recommend you get the 900p, use it for a while, and if you don't like the smaller sizing, just reset the display resolution to a lower resolution (or increase the dpi or icon sizes if that's an option within the application you're using). You also have to factor in the fact that the 900p display (allegedly) has various other advantages over the 720p display beyond just ultimate resolution (brightness, contrast, color, etc.). I've never done a side by side so I can't verify that claim, but if it's true, those attributes may actually make it easier on the eyes than the 720p.

 

I love the 900p screen - very few other notebooks of this size have it, and that was one of the reasons I chose this. The screen real estate is handy with almost everything, from document editing to videos etc.

The same thing occured with the audio drivers for me, but that had happened to me enough times on other stuff that I looked there before doing anything with the drivers.

 

I undervolted my cpu to .925 on 9x and .875 at 6x, I'm on a pretty strong power saver profile, I've turned off wifi, backlight is at minimum and I'm still getting around 15.5w pull at idle. Any tips, as I'm seeing idling in the 11w's, and I feel kind of worthless.

 

Yea, I haven't been able to get any drivers to even install. Windows Update installs some but has "Error Code 10: Device could not be started" I've installed 7 too and had the same problem you did, so i looked for that first when trying on XP. Still haven't had any luck though.

 

I have Dell Extended Battery Life enabled with all the options set. Rmclock set to Power Saving on battery with the OS setting on Power Saver. The Realtek GBE device has some power saving options in its advanced tab - I enabled the PCIe/PHY options for battery and left gigabit disabled since I still use it. Also, set the hard drive to advanced performance policy - the battery is effectively a UPS, so long as it is set to hibernate at critical.

 

I cannot send a picture from my phone to my laptop VIA bluetooth. I'm pretty sure it's just my phone though. Has anyone else tried this? Yes they're both bluetooth enabled, yes they're paired, and yes the bluetooth is turned on for both devices.

 

Is the PC set to receive the file? Right click the bluetooth icon in the task tray and select the receive file option. It should now show up as a target to send to on your phone, at least, that's how it works on my motorola phone.

 

Hey all!

I have a few questions from a potential 14z owner:

- How confident do you owners feel with the build quality of this laptop? Think it can withstand the pressures of time?

- How is the hinge build? Anyone feel wobbly screens are on the horizon? How does this laptop stay closed? magnet?

- Does the 8 cell battery lift and raise the bottom of the laptop or stick out the back (thus keeping the entire base on the table)?

- Can you use Vista Readyboost with the express card mem card reader?

- If you open the bottom panel, does it void warranty and can you access the fans? I would like to know just in case dust accumulates over time and over heats the laptop (like it does with my current A8Jm)

I am not trying to troll, but if only this laptop had an optical drive I would so buy it. I am still considering it however...its just that my current laptop's optical drive cannot burn anything anymore. I can see myself living without the drive, but it would render my tv show collection useless!

 

The build quality is excellent. I've used many systems, and this is at the top for sure.

It doesn't stay closed by magnet. It's hard to say. It almost seems like gravity holds it closed.

No, the 8 cell doesn't stick out the back. it's the same dimensions as the 6cell, just heavier.

 

I bet it does use a magnet

I didn't realise the Inspiron 1545 used a magnet, until I was holding a piece of paper with a paper clip on it near the display and it stuck to the top right of the web cam. Not a massively powerful magnet, so I suspect it's not really to keep it closed but more to detect the fact that the lid is closed.

 

I do this on a regular basis, using nokia phone manager and my nokia phone. I haven't really done anything more than what you've said besides use this software.

 

I'd say build quality is ok. Not bad, but not great. There's a bit of creaking when I pick up and handle it and sometimes when opening and closing the display, and I can feel and hear the battery moving around a bit when I'm carrying it about. Nothing that really concerns me, but it doesn't have the more solid build quality of some more expensive notebooks I've handled, and it's not even close to a MBP.

As far as the lack of an optical drive, if your use would only be occassional, then the Dell external drive might be sufficient. It's very slim, light and the cables are integrated and retract into the drive. As far as your tv collection goes, just get one of the larger 7200 hard drives and use the external DVD drive to rip your tv collection onto the hard drive.

 

After reading NBR's review of the 14z, (bout time by the way) I think my temperatures or at least fan control may be different than theirs. Mine has a low hum like they describe, but no matter what, every 30 seconds or so it'll blast on and stay really loud for 5 seconds or so, then go back to the low hum. Pretty annoying. How do these temps after really light web surfing on battery power compare to all of yours?

 

Dell will not sell me a midnight blue cover to replace my black chainlink. Anyone has any idea how to go aout it?

 

That's odd. did they give a reason? It's likely related to the fact that their covers are selling out, but I wouldn't think that would be a reason for them to straight up refuse to sell it to you.

 

Try a different sales rep.

 

when in doubt, redial and try a different sales rep. usually 3rd time is the charm

 

A bit overdue, but here are some pics of my 14z next to my 13.3" Sharp and MacBook.

You can see from the first 2 pics that the 14z doesn't seem particularly larger than the other two, and from the second pic that the 14z's screen height is the same as the MB's and lower than the Sharp.

You can see from the 3rd pic that the width (i.e. depth) of all three units is about the same as well (ignore the apparent length - the photo angle makes the MBP look the longest but you'll see from the 6th and 7th pics that the 14z is longer).

The 4th and 5th pics show the relative thickness of the 14z compared to the MP, and the 6th and 7th pics show the difference in length between the 14z and the MB.

 

Awesome responses to my q's.

Should I hold out on purchasing it now or should i wait for any School deals? Are there typically School deals on Studio or XPS models?

 

Ok so, got my backlit keyboard today, Dell Overnight shipped it to me...anywho, I installed it, anddddd no backlight. I cant get the darned thing to work, think it may be because Im using Windows 7?? Do I need a driver for it??

Ive tried installing/removing 6 times and no luck...anyone else tried this?

 

Yours did have the backlight connector, right? If it didn't then they've sent you a non-backlight model.

the service manual: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/studio1440/en/sm/keyboard.htm#wp1179891