Dell Studio 15 1558 Thread

that doesn't sound right...you should call dell support and get them to send another one out to you...

 

It only seems to be that hot when the battery is recharging while I'm also using the laptop. Still might talk to tech support anyway.

 

Hello. I need some assistance.

I have a Studio 1558 and there is something wrong with my wireless connection speed. I can only download at a max of 400 K/s over my wireless connection (wireless adapter: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6200 AGN). Over a wired connection, I can pull at least a megabyte, so I know it's not my internet connection. I've checked the wireless status in my router homepage and my connection should be good. The readings are: Mode: 11g, Rate: 54, Signal: 100% (laptop is only 5-6 feet from router). I do not know what's going on. There is another computer that's on wireless and its download speeds are fine. I am thinking there's something up with the laptop. I reformatted and reinstalled Window 7 by myself so if I'm missing anything, please let me know. The wireless drivers are installed. Usually, I'm pretty savy at diagnosing and troubleshooting, but I'm stumped here. Please help. Thanks in advance!

 

hey is this straight downloading from the web, or from newsgroups? or copying files?

 

Downloading from the web. I also used and tested my speeds (wireless vs. wired) with speedtest.net.

 

just for giggles, try copying a file from your laptop to somewhere else on your network (wired preferablely) and then click on show detail and see what the speeds are and if they are in line with what your internet speeds say

 

Mine gets hot too when charging, but it's normal because of the size of this adapter. Isn't bothering me because why would you hold your adapter anyway?

 

My adapter got very hot almost every time when i use the laptop, and the battery charges.
It stopped 2 times (no light on the adapter for 2-3 minutes).
Last week when it was very hot here (35C) and i played COD4. The adapter got short-circuit. After a big *pop* al the lights in my room went of!!
So call dell and tell your problem! I get a new one tomorrow...

 

Hi,

Has anyone used Photoshop CS5 / Dreamweaver CS5 on this laptop? I'm looking at getting the 1558 with

Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB Cache)
6GB DDR3 (1333mhz)
500gb HDD (7200RPM)
15.6" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED
1GB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 5470 Graphic Card

This should easily be able to run Photoshop CS5 / Dreamweaver CS5 easily shouldn't it?

Thanks in advance

 

Yes^^......

 

hello. just received my dell studio 1558

core i5-520
ati 5470
intel wireless 6200
500gb 7200rpm
4gb ram


I like it but the only thing I don't is that the place where I put my left hand feels hot. and so it's somehow unconfortable... didn't expect to notify it so soon...

well,

something I dunno:

what drivers should I install? do they all come installed by default?
in the webpage there are many one available.


about ati 5470,

the drivers I can find on dell's webpage are from february, a really old version.
I can find the latest version (june), in ati official website.

I understand that ati's version DOESN'T SUPPORT switchable graphics. dell driver does?

which one should I choose?

 

* Download the ATI driver from here to the root of your C: drive. Unzip R272996.zip and it should go to C:\R272996
* Click Start- Control Panel- Programs- Uninstall a program
* Choose ATI Catalyst Control Center or ATI Catalyst Install Manager
* Click Uninstall/Change
* Follow the prompts to Remove the software
* Do this for all ATI listings
* When done, close the Control Panel but do not restart the PC
* Click Start
* Right Click Computer
* Click Manage- Device Manager
* Open Display Adapters
* Right click ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
* Click Uninstall
* Be sure to check, "Delete the driver software for this device"
* Click OK
* Close all boxes and restart the PC
* Click Start
* Right Click Computer
* Click Manage- Device Manager
* Open Display Adapters. It should state "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter"
* Open My Computer- C: Drive- R272996
* Run Setup
* Follow the prompts and restart the PC when done

 

you didn't answer any of my questions.

that driver is old, isn't it?

I can obtain better fps with the ones at ATI.com, but I don't have switchable graphics?

do I obtain switchable graphics with that driver?

 

I have had mine now for a couple months and so far not many complaints. Just noticed something happening in the past day or so. When the power is plugged in the brightness is very dim and when unplugged and on bat power it is very bright. I have all my settings set to high brightness and when I go to the settings while plugged in and adjust the brightness either up or down it does nothing. it just stays on the same brightness level. Anyone know what is up, thanks for any suggestions.

 

There are no switchable graphics on studio.

 

Why not just update the software, you don't need to uninstall everything.

 

Have you try the Fn + F4/F5 buttons or the windows settings?

 

Yeah earlier they didn't do anything while plugged in only when unplugged now it works..,lol. Thanks btw.

 

so, no switchable graphics?

and about the left part of the touchpad being specially hot,

any recommendation?

how to measure the temperatures, just to be safe?
tried speedfan, showing temperature of 4 cores. reached 50-55º degrees.
gpu-z -> GPU temperature,playing dragon age (low graphics) reached 70º

can't get any other sensors to get shown.

the temps are normal, or should I worry?

 

That is funny because I have the right part of touchpad hot.

When playing games the gpu temp goes over 85, as long as it works it's notthing to worry about, studio is made of plastic which is easy to cool down, I had vostro with magnesium case and there was no way to play games holding the laptop on laps.

 

I literally burned a graphics card in my PC at home. it was summer, and I was playing. seems that the case cooling system wasn't good enough.
luckily, motherboard wasn't affected and I could just clean the case from dust and buy another card.

don't want to harm my new studio 1558. want to be on the safe side...

 

Jako,

Why not just update the software, you don't need to uninstall everything.
* Those steps were written that way because just updating was leaving the old driver installed and windows was grabbing it and not the newer one.

 

Ok I understand, but you can always install drivers from device manager by "pick from list" option. I think is better to leave older driver in case if the new one is not compatible or broken but everyone has different ideas.

 

Hi,

I'm currently toying with the following spec as an upgrade from my XPS M1530


Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 740QM (1.73 Ghz, 6MB, 4C)
Computrace LoJack for Laptops, 1yr license - included with your PC
15.6in Widescreen Full High Definition (1920 x 1080) WLED with TrueLife
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
250GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
1GB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD5470
DVD +/- RW Drive
Primary 6-cell 56 WHr Lithium Ion
Backlit Keyboard
Intel® Wireless LAN 6200 2x2 802.11a/b/g/n card
X by Korakrit Arunanondchai Cover

My current quote with 4Yr In-Home Hardware Support & 4 years Accidental Damage Support is £1,268.16p which seems pretty good.

Couple of questions?

1. Core™ i7 740QM versus Core™ i7 640M? The 640M outbenches the 740QM in all but 2 areas iirc, and is about the same price.
   
2. Will a Core i5 be much of a step up from T9300 @ 2.5Ghz?
   
3. How easily can I park an SSD into the HDD slot?
   
4. Is £1268.16p a good price considering the 4yr cover and care?

Thanks

 

Very helpful, yet Office 2010 starter wasn't available for download.

 

left part of the touch pad is close to the hard disk. if your hard disk is 7200 rpm then it should be a bit warmer than 5400rpm one. but hard disk temperatures are pretty much bearable(i have a7200 rpm hdd and its average temp is 36degree c

you can use everest ultimate edition 5.5 to determine the temperature in detail
usually these kinda laptops gets only while playing high end games. if you r playing a lot of similar games , then i strongly recommend getting a laptop cooling pad. (i have one ..

one more thing dont worry much about temperature much. cpu and gpu temp getting above 60- 70 (can be even higher)degrees are common while playing games.. for any other situations, it should be less or close to 60 degrees.

tips.
update bios, graphix drivers to optimize these situations. (i guess u had done that already)

 

go for the quad core 740. since you are going to use your laptop for 4 yrs atleast.
multicore processors are the future. eventually every software will be updated/tuned for multi core support for getting better performance.

640m and 740qm both are very high end processors. if you a long vision , then go for the 740qm.

note 740 qm is a quad so defintely it will be a lot warmer and power consuming than 640m.

in ordinary use like browsing , watching videos , there wont be much difference.


2. definitely core i5 is better in almost all the ways (technology-turbo mode-grapghics integrated , performance, power consumption, price wise also similar or less )than a age old T9300.

3. How to Install an SSD in Your Laptop - PCWorld

4. i think the price is a lot. i think you should check more on the better options with in dell and other companies also.
with that money you could buy a dell studio xps with core i7 processor and 1gb ati 5650 gfx card and xps support.


choose a larger hdd 500gb is avg these days.

 

Thanks dude, great feedback.

The HD is 250GB purely because they have no 7200RPM drives in 320 or 500, and tbf, 250GB is big enough until I go SSD.

As for the price, I've tried to build an XPS Studio but it keeps coming out t nearly £1400!!

Only Dell will give me a 1920x1080 screen. HP won't match the res, even with an Envy and are only selling th 720 & 820 chips which I want to avoid.

I'll look around a little more, but it's only really Dell that will let me customise.

 

Some questions:

1. What are the latest graphic drivers? When I go to Computer Management and check out the drivers it just says 8.692.10 and a date of 22/1/2010, although I'm pretty sure I've installed these drivers. In the CCC it says: Driver Packaging Version 8.692.1-100122a-094670C-Dell. Am I OK?

2. The F10-F12 buttons which are assigned as play-pause-forward etc, can they work with programs I choose? Because they don't work with Winamp for example.

 

i can understand that you want to buy a great system.... thts obvious i too wanted one....problem with studio is that its platform is pretty much an average kinda one (even though there are great specs available like core i7 cpus and 4gb 1333mhz ddrr3 ram and all, the studio is not a balanced sort of system..the graphix card hd 5470 1gb is a poor mate for a core i7 (just imagine couple like brad pitt- jolie kinda) ,apart from that studio doesnt provide 130w adapter which is better adapter for tht kind of configs(other wise the adapter will heat up enormously(which dell says normal )but with studio xps 16 you will get 130 w .and a lot of the specs are standard its designed to be a performance laptop.
more over the design of studio 15 is not great for very high configs which produce heat. its pretty much designed for an average i5 based processor.
so if you r spending more money for a serious laptop, then reasearch more on the design part of the laptops(how the components are arranged, how much heat it produces , and performance etc)

in paper so many laptops are very good (due to their configs) but practically they fail due to design flaws.

top tip: don't buy a new recently launched model.... always wait for some time so that you can study more abt the laptop...
dell is one of the company which launches new processor based systems(eg:740qm,840qm) which other companies are yet to produce (perhaps they are doing more tests than dell before their actual release)

i strongly recommend tht you wait in the case of 740qm 640m processors (so tht more studies are done on them.....

 

they are not actually the latest one for your graphix hardware the latest one can be downloaded from the amd website which is better than the one provided by dell and are updated monthly.
the latest one is 10.6 catalyst version which you can get from here...
ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver
and fully uninstall all the existing driver for ati before installing the new one.
this tool will help you to delete all the existing values of the old driver.. Guru3D - Driver Sweeper
pls read the instructions which is mentioned in the site.

for your second problem.. thts because the dell quickset is configured for particular programs. for instance it works for pretty much all the windows softwares.. like media player.. but wont work with winamp or vlc player..

but a winamp plugin from the past( to be precise yr 2005)seems to be fixing this issue ... just try out.... here is the link....
Dell Inspiron Media Buttons - Winamp

sorry i am not a winamp guy so i didnt test the plugin...

 

First of all thanks for the plugin, it works fine until now. Except the Eject key which is assigned to the DVD and is not the "Open file", the other buttons work fine. FYI the buttons work fine for BSPlayer and VLC, which are the video progs that I use.

Now about the drivers. The 10.6 Catalyst is something like a generic driver for various cards, while the driver in Dell website is specifically for the notebook? Am I getting this right? And if so, wouldn't it be better to use the more... "specialized" driver than the other one? Probably stupid questions, but I'm not a graphics guru.

 

No, it is for mobility radeon, same as dell driver but newer, you can wait for dell version but new release means some issues fixed so why wait.

 

tht plugin was not meant to work with the quickset of studio .. tht may be the reason.. atleast it works in a way..

no need to worry more on the driver ....
in general for a ati mobility hd 5xxx card ther are a lot of fixes coming in the recent updates of the driver... they added support to new features too..
eg: eyeinfinity, opengl 4 extension, direct compute 5 and a great deal performance increase in new games..
since 5470 is a recent grafix card and have new features also , majority of the fixes will be evident clearly..
old graphix cards like hd 4xxx and hd 3xxx may not benifit much because in a way its already tuned and fixed...

why dont you try both(recent dell and ati ones) ... and we ll see...

 

Hey guys,
So I just got a new Studio 1558 a few days ago. Everything is working great except ONE thing...
My internet connection keeps dying on me. I have a Intel 6250 Wireless-N w/ WiMax 2x2 minicard. It doesn't go out for long, but it does it frequently, like every couple of minutes. I'll have good connection and then 2 minutes later it'll say that it is reconnecting to the network. and then 2 minutes later it'll do it again and again. I dont know what's going on. If i get lucky i get like hour long periods where it doesnt do this and when I have it plugged into the wall it seems to usually (but not always) fix the problem as well. I was just wondering if you guys have this problem or know how to fix it. If this is an old problem sorry for reposting but I havent looked through all 100 pages of the forum haha. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

 

Studio 1558 can do a x2 1.0 DIY ViDock

The Dell Studio 1558 can do a DIY ViDock running desktop video externally using the WWAN slot ( port1) and wifi slot ( port2) in a x2 1.0 pci-e link. Means very fast gaming graphics performance if use a ATI HD5770 or NVidia GTX460 desktop adapter. See DIY ViDock Experiences thread if want to do an implementation.

 

First of all have you checked your internet connection? Is it stable? Check if you have disconnections at your router log. If you have another device with wi-fi you could compare it and see if there are problems again. Or try using your notebook in another wi-fi network that may be availabe (a friend's house or a wi-fi spot if there are any). Check out at the Dell website for any updates for your wi-fi card.

 

Hey. Ya my brother and my dad both have computers that are running off of the same wireless network from the same router and they do not have this problem. But I will check the Dell site and see if there are any updates. Thanks.

 

its a great idea...very impressive but is now in a pre-mature state...it will take a while for a dock to release world wide(with all support and bug fixes)
at tht time, i am sure there will be many guys ready to buy one...

 

Try going on the Intel Website and download the drivers from them. On my Vostro 1220 with the 5150, I had the same exact issue with the Dell drivers. I am not sure why, but after updating with the intel drivers instead it is perfect. Hope that helps.

 

Got my 1558 for a week now. Love it, nice performance, awesome screen. (i7 720QM, 6GB DDR 1333MHz, ATI 4570, 500GB 7200RPM, 1920x1080 Full HD)

I did a clean re-install obv, Windows 7. I have a small concern: it has crashed on me 2 times already. Freeze -> black screen -> have to do a hard re-boot.

I see some people have experienced this as well. Is there any idea yet what the cause may be? A fix? Any words from Dell?

 

hello raf...
have you updated your bios???
by the way could you recall when and what software you were using at the time of crashing??

ati mob hd 4570 is still available with 1558 ??... nowadays hd 5470 is common..

 

I think you should update your video drivers. Mine has crashed like that few times and windows says it's problem with graphic card. After updating to catalyst 10.6 it haven't happened since.

 

Just updated it, keen to see if it ever happens again.

I was using Chrome & iTunes, about it. Crashed both times when surfing in Chrome.

I meant ATI 5470 of course, sorry, my bad.

 

Sounds interesting. Where do you find out what Catalyst version you have installed? CCC version is Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0122.858.16002 . (downloaded from Dell website)

 

I'm using the one from ATI. Version 8.632.1.2000.

FWIW, I got a strange start-up message:
WARNING: The battery cannot be identified.
This system will be unable to charge this battery.

Press Any Key to Continue

Press <F2> 2 times to enter SETUP
Press <F12> and Any Key to enter Boot Menu

I have the 9 cell battery. I shutdown, removed the battery and put it back in. No problem since, but it is worrisome. I have the latest BIOS and drivers. I read about the 1501 having issues here and via Google. Seems very odd.

 

Probably just a weak contact. Makes sure there's no dust dirt or debris and you should be fine.

 

hello man..
stay cool its not a problem.. it happend to mine also. and i did the same and havent experienced any like tht..

 

the second one shows the catalyst version which is installed..

 

I am thinking of buying a 1558 as an upgrade from my cuurent laptop, and I was wondering if the 5470 graphics card has the GDDR3 or GDDR5 memory.