Deadbolt360's E1705 Journal (Sorry Symetrikal I copied you)

Well, I got my E1705 finally and I have to say I am happy with it.

Specs:
T2400 1.83ghz Core Duo
256 MB Nvidia Geforce 7900GS
17' WUXGA Truelife @ 1920x1200
2 GB DDR2 OCZ Ram @ 533mhz Cas latency 4 ( www.newegg.com, make sure to get 200 pin sodimm ram for laptops)
60 GB 7200 RPM drive (Seagate)
XP MCE (reformatted)
Intel Pro wireless 3945 a/g
Internal 350 Bluetooth
8x Dvd+/-Rw (Phillips)
Soundblaster advanced audio for XPS 1710
6 Cell battery


First Impressions
Well I was surprised at how big it was at first. Then about 5 minutes later I got use to it. The screen is nice and shiny. The keyboard is fairly comfortable. The touchpad is pretty nice, the buttons don't click very loud but aren't "squishy." I love the 1920x1200 WUXGA, it is perfect for a computer of this size. The looks aren't its best feature but they aren't that displeasing. It looks fairly "nice" and plain, not in a bad way at all. Obviously if they made it all silver without the white bars it would look better.

Performance
I have the T2400 1.83 Core Duo, 60 GB 7200 RPM drive (Seagate), 512MB ram ( I installed 2 GB's from www.newegg.com, the brand is OCZ and it is 533mhz with a cas latency of 4) I chose this ram because it was cheaper and the difference in performance would not be huge. I also got it with the 7900GS, this card rocks! It has the capability to do pretty much anything I want it to. I have never had something that was this "new" on the market and it's nice to not having to scale down everything on a game, I can turn it all up on BF2 and I mean everything! This game looks amazing at such high detail. I have stock Dell Drivers, so I'm sure I can get better performance out of better drivers. The DVD/CD burner drive is very loud on a few occasions, but most of the time it is not too bad. My boot up time is extremely quick and I can alt-tab with multiple programs and a game running without trouble. I am more than satisfied with performance.

Speakers
Well, I have heard that this E1705 has a built in subwoofer. I have to admit I am not too critical of computers either. This is a great feature to have and I think it is needed. I am not going to buy external speakers because these speakers rock! I got the 20$ upgrade with the software and I have configured the speakers to the way I like them, I also increased the Bass somehow in the EAX enabling program which is awesome. I am very happy with these speakers.

Looks
See first impressions. I'm actually starting to like the way it looks now. I guess I'm getting use to it or something, but when the lid is closed it has a nice look to it, very professional.

Ports
This thing has an abundance of ports, I don't know what half of them are for. I know there are 6 USB ports, a firewire port, external video input ports, microphone, headphones, a memory card reader (I think for cameras?) I honestly don't know what some of these are for and I doubt I will ever use them.

Screen
The screen is wonderful! The colors are excellent. I do have some light leakage when I load windows up, I also noticed at different angles (a little to the left) there is a spot that is whiter than the black screen. I don't think that these things will bug me because #1 I am not picky and #2 I dont look at my screen from those weird angles #3 I don't watch DVDs. While in windows the lighting looks uniform and pretty nice. Maybe this is because I was using a crappy old monitor before? IDK. The WUXGA 1920x1200 is a great resolution to have. I thought it was a bit small at first, but then I realized I loved it. I think it is spoiling me. I don't see much glare in the daytime either, some complain of it. BTW I have a Samsung screen. I am noticing a little more light leakage eh.

Battery life
I haven't tested the battery life yet. I am using this as a DTR so I didn't get a 9 cell. I am plugged in 95% of the time. However, I am assuming that it should get inbetween 1.5-2 hours unplugged, maybe a little more with ultra battery conserving mode.

3rd party materials
Well, I added ram to the notebook. It was OCZ brand. 2 gigs 533 Mhz with a Cas Latency of 4. Ran memtest86+ and 3 passes no errors (about 2 hours). I'll try again but I haven't had any hiccups, kicks ass.
Update I ran 3dmark 05 and got an expected score of 6200. I used Dell drivers, so I'm sure I can get the score higher with other drivers, but I don't need to. I found out I have a seagate HD, a phillips dvd burner and I'm still trying to figure out my screen. I ran pi calculations and the result was 1 min 20 secs (keep in mind I have a lot of processes running). While idle Everest claims my GPU hovers around 60 c. My hard drives access time is 15.1 ms,burst rate is 91.9 mb/s, average is 32.3 mb/s, low is 17.7 and max is 41.5 with a cpu usage of 7%.

 

Enjoy your new e1705!

I have a question, how much was the 2gb of ram?

 

what are you gonna do with dell's memory?
i bought 1gb from newegg.... and thinking if i should buy another 1gb to make it dual channel...i bough g.skill ram.
wait for your feedback about that.

 

@Lilredfoxie:
I bought 2 GB's for 167 after tax. I figured there isn't a huge difference between the 667 ram and the 533 ram (mine is 533). I have a MIR though for something like 16$, the ram was immediately recognized by the notebook.

@Catennacio: I am going to keep the ram in the OCZ case, in case I need to send in the notebook for repairs. The OCZ works fine, I still need to run memtest though.

 

I have an issue. I am at the point where it says please wait up to 30 mins for the installation to complete. Do not press any keys.
Well I have been waiting a while and it's still flashing that it's in progress but I don't see the optical drive light on. The only light on is the power light, that's it. Help?

 

Are you reformatting right now? What all has it done?

 

what are you trying to do? Install what?

 

I am trying to reinstall XP because there was too much crapware. I deleted 2 partitions (kept the 47 mb one). Then I created a 4.7 gb partition for windows and installed in there. Went through the user set up, now im on step 11 of SG's guide of step by step guide to reinstalling xp. The weird thing is I never had to enter a CD key...

 

if you want to see if the dvd is working or not, simply remove the installation cd. if it asks you to insert the cd for files, that means everything is ok. just bear with it until it finishes the installation. if it just stands there and doing nothing for more than half an hour, force restart the machine and the process should begin again. i know microsoft has a very good installation process...

also, another possibility is that your windows installation cd is damaged.. just my guess..

edit: after reading sg post... yeah you can wait and see what happens.. if it stands still for a long time, i would restarts the machine to get it initiated again..

 

You don't need to worry. For that part, it doesn't use the disc, it uses the install files on your HDD. I can't remember where it says it, but eventually (if you haven't already) it will say installing applications. This is not junkware - just the typical XP software.

You won't enter a key because you are using an OEM disc that was supplied by dell. It already detects everything that it needs to know.

I should have the repair for Media Direct up in the next hour.

 

Well, I restarted the laptop. I think it said something about not enough space? Is a 4.7 GB partition not enough?
I am repairing the windows installation. Should I just reinstall with a bigger partition?

 

if i were you i would give at least 20gb for the windows partition... just to have it installed first and you can resize it later.. but 4.7 gb with initial windows installation should be enough
i think having little space for your system partition is not a good idea, since later you will have to install sofware into program files, you have to keep the recycle bin, all the documents...
just my 2 cents..

gl with the installation and keep us posted

 

I thought I could install programs, music etc in the other partition? While the partition i seperate for windows is the OS only? Maybe I'll remove the partition completely. I only have a 60 GB hd

 

yeah you can do that too... but somehow you follow an "abnormal" settings for your windows which could probably cause pb later with other bad-designed software... since i know some of them only know the regular windows settings when they try to look for something..

have you tried to do what sg adviced? be patient a bit more and maybe you wont have to do the whole process again...

gl

 

You can install programs and store files on the other partition, but it may be a good idea to make your windows partition at least 8GB. Also, may I ask why you're repairing your Windows installation instead of just installing a new instance of Windows?

 

Well, should I even make a partition? Exactly what size should it be? I'll follow her guide again and just reinstall. The thing is I have installed XP many times on my desktop and haven't had a problem.

 

depends on your need... if you want to store files on other partition then go for it. i dont know what exactly the size it should be so how about be a little generous to give it 10gb (later on when you install other programs, some dll files will be copied to the system32 folder anyway, so dont think after this installation your windows size is stable. it will grow more).

 

Well, I know I don't use a ton of HD space. I'm not a junkie for movies, music or anything like that. I doubt I'll have 1000 games. I'll probably have at most 5-6 on there at once. So recommended partitions...I'm open to suggestions please. I guess I wouldn't even "need" one but I would like to keep my files, papers etc after a reformat.

 

im having an e1705 with 60gb too
this is how i partition: 40gb (system) + 20gb (data)
on the data partition i keep an image of the system partition (~3gb) after i finished installation all the essential stuff, so later i can just re-image the system partition if needed.

 

You don't have to have a spare partition. I just recommend it if you want to be more organize and have somewhere to back your files up. Generally i always recommend to put your programs on the same partition as XP because you are going to have to reinstall those anyways. It won't do you any good to put those on a spare partition.

If you are going to have more programs/games than music or documents, I would do like catennacio said and do something like 40/20, or even 50/10.

On mine, I have 30/30 because I have a ton of music and documents. XP takes a minimum of 5gb and that is without any programs installed.

 

Updated 6/9/06

 

Partitions? Why fool around with that? Do offsite back ups. CD/DVD, Webserver, USB key, external harddrive. If your harddrive fails what then? Even with the other partitions it's not like that will save you. Yes I can see the merit of having that extra partition if you need to reinstall windows but if you're doing regular back ups then you don't need to worry about it.

 

I've never messed around with multiple partitions on the drive that has my OS on it. I just use that drive for the OS and backup any data on other drives or external media. Like SouthernGirl said, don’t install programs on another partition. If you backup your Windows partition regularly and you have a problem, you’ll end up having to re-install all of your programs. That seems a rather messy way of doing things. Since your drive is 60gb, I’d recommend you just have one partition for your OS and everything. If you want separate partitions for organizational purposes, split it 30/30. That way you can still install all your programs on 30GB of space on your Windows partition and have your data on the other. I can see merit in that.

 

Congrats on your purchase! I love mine and I know you will love yours!

 

update 6/9/06

 

Could you post a list of your complete specs? I just bought one of these with 7900gs, 1MB RAM, and 5400 RPM harddrive, and I will hopefully be playing a lot of BF2 with it. Could you show me where you purchased the RAM?

 

A great place to purchase RAM is from www.newegg.com. I have ordered RAM through them before and and was very satisfied.
The Dell E1705 takes DDR2-667 (PC2-5300) RAM - here's a page for 1GB modules:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&description=&srchInDesc=&minPrice=&maxPrice=
For BF2, it would be ideal to have more than 1GB. I wouldn't game on anything less.

 

Awesome, thanks for the help.
But why in the world is Kingston RAM twice as much as Transcend RAM? Same basic stuff right? And one more thing. 667mhz RAM will work in conjunction with 533mhz RAM correct? But the higher speed RAM will be brought down to the lowest speed RAM in the system correct?

 

Kingston ram is considered to be the best quality ram. I personally went for the OCZ because I have heard it is a good brand, and it was cheap. The 667 mhz ram will downclock to 533, that is correct. I do not know if that enables dual channeling, however I doubt you would notice a difference anyway. BTW specs posted in my first post, also how would I run memtest? I want to check my memory before i send for my MIR.

 

Also, how can i force native resolution on BF2 and other games?

 

Updated. I made things easier to read.