Dell Studio 1557

Definitely set the power settings to the "Power Saver" option. The default "Dell Recommended" settings are more of a balance between power savings and performance.

I bet you can get at least 3 hours out of the 9 cell.

 

Thanks guys will try it out, I do realise it's not about battery life, I even got the 9cell mostly for added airflow I'm quite happy with 2.5 hours thats good enough for me, it's not often I'm somewhere that lacks power, It's just lazyness while laying in the couch.

 

I did the copper shim mod on my GPU and havnt had a single freeze,shut down,nothing so far.
Before after about 10-15 minutes of gaming my system would just shut off do to heat.

Now,I have gamed on this thing for hours and never a single problem

It voided my warranty but I have a complete working laptop now.

 

Why would that void your warranty?? They have no idea if you opened your machine! There are no warranty stickers or break tags on these anywhere... When my mobo was replaced there wasnada to say it was sealed and he didn't do anything to reseal it!!

 

As for battery longevity....

Throttling back the CPU rates has an effect, use it on ya power saver mode coz i know for sure that regular browsing etc doesn't require anything like 100%!!

I have my power settings so that usually it's on Balanced and when mobile I switch to Power Saver.

I have my Power Saver settings so that ALL devices are throttled back including the WiFi transmission power, GPU etc etc!! I have CPU set to max 40% and min 0%, PCIe power management on, screen brightness lowest setting.... You get the idea!

I have an SSD in mine now but I can easily get over 3hrs and have done countless times! In fact right now I'm showing 40% remaining (an apparent 1hr48m which is unrealistic) but I've been switched on now for just over 2hrs and have watched a movie (cheaper than hotel room movies LOL).

Fiddle with settings, see what works and experiment to get the best results for what you need

PS: I heard that having a fairly sizeable readyboost drive can also increase battery life as it reduces a lot of the pointless shimmying of data back and forth from the HDD, so you guys on magnetic disks should get a decent reduction in power drain!!

SDHC cards are cheap as chips these days and make decent drives, you can pick up 8Gb for under £15!

 

As long as it is removed before any work is carried out, they should be fine.

Technically though it is voiding the warranty. It is the introduction of a foreign object into the machine that was never intended to be used. If you asked a Dell tech rep, they would probably class this as voiding the warranty due to this - even though we all know that in reality it's going to do zero damage, and in actual fact it fixes issues that Dell should have fixed themselves.

They would of course be able to tell that something had been done - I mean you would have applied some thermal compound in there no doubt? However, applying thermal compound would not void your warranty unless they could prove it was doing this that caused the damage. Would be pretty tough to prove that I suspect.

You could always clean the thermal compound off completely and "reset" it back to how it was in the first place.

In short - if you can undo it and you are positive that putting it in place in the first instance will not cause any issues to arise with regards to operation of the notebook, then I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Sound advice!

I didn't actually like how the engineer who did my repair work didn't replace the thermal compound when he reseated the CPU.... We always used to follow the practice of replacing it after any seperation so as not to create air bubbles Maybe this has changed now, but I know for sure that if I get any heat issues I'll be putting some decent compund in there just to be sure it's not that causing it!

 

hey guys if i wanted to not use dell's outdated drivers and download newest ones from ati's site, where do i go, there isnt a 4570 one, just a 4550 one.

 

Just got my 1557 i7-820, and I have to say I'm blown away. I've never seen my Windows 7 desktop gadget for displaying CPU load display 8 cores before!
It is VERY FAST, and never once did the computer get hot to the touch underneath or anywhere. I was installing applications all night long (plugged in), and I didn't even hear the fans kick on at all. It is very quiet and very, very fast.
However, it looks like it will have to be returned to Dell. I tried to move my AT&T Mobile Broadband card (HPSA 5530) from my old laptop into this new one, and they forgot to install the antenna wires into the machine! They are no where to be found! Very dissapointed. I am going to call them today and see what they have to say.

 

I didn't know a 1 gig hd 4570 existed, why don't they put in a decent hd4650? I'm not buying one untill they do rofl

 

The antenna wires for the mobile broadband card are only installed if you choose the option from factory, otherwise they just install the wires to suit the wi-fi card you have chosen!

On my system I have 3 antenna wires for the optional upgrade wi-fi card but no antenna wires for HSPA card, Dell confirmed this is normal as did the engineer who visited!!

FYI this laptop is spec'd with the HSPA 5540 from factory when ordered.

 

It hardly seems right for them to not install the antenna wires at all if I don't order the Mobile Broadband card from them. That's like blackmale if you ask me. They are essentially saying that these laptops are not upgradeable after the fact for broadband capability. If you don't order their "expansion" card to begin with, they're not going to bother installing the antenna wires. I guess the same policy would apply for the WIFI card. My guess is that if you don't order the Wireless-N card from them, don't go looking for the antenna wires for that either when the time (and money) comes down the road when you want to expand your lappie.
In the end, no harm to me. After calling Dell tech support today, they happily agreed to send a technician to my house for free to replace the LCD screen with a new one, because that's where the antenna wires come from.

 

The antenna is located on the LCD cover, if they're happy to replace that for you with a new one which has the antenna wires included that's very interesting and I think I might have to make the same call myself again!!

I asked once and they said it was normal, if they're going to replace yours they're sure as hell gonna replace mine LOL

Where are you located??

 

Florida (USA)

 

Ah cool, I'm in the UK so will see what the UK support guys have to say for themselves!!

I've been trying to find the 5540 card but it seems you just can't buy them for love nor money so if I can persuade them to change the LCD cover I'll just go with the 5530

 

Hey guys, I recently just got my 1557 everything is working fine, with one exception, it gets super hot. I'm not sure if Dell sent me the correct adapter, or the power cord.

AC power adapter:
Input: 100-240V~50-60Hz 1.5A(1.5A)
Output: 19.5V

Power Cord label says 2.5A 125v~ but on the cord itself it states 300V.

Help I'm freaking lost, also note, that the area on the floor the adapter is on gets extremely hot as well

 

I wonder what the main differences are between the 5530 and 5540. Do you know?

 

Thats the same thing mine says on it.Mine gets hot when the system is under a good load but at idle or surfin it just gets warm to the touch.

 

It's normal mate! They do get hot when the system is demanding decent power but on idle it will just stay luke warm

I believe the main difference is to do with the GPS sensor, I think the 5540 uses A-GPS whereas the 5530 uses regular GPS.... Apart from that

 

I ordered my 1557 with the Dell 365 Bluetooth module. I did a clean install of Win7-64 Enterprise. I can't seem to get it functional. The installer keeps prompting me to Activate the Wireless Switch.

BT is indeed enabled in the BIOS. I even set the hotkey to only enable/disable BT to see if it could get tricked. No luck. I'm using R235168 from the dell site.

Anyone else have trouble?

 

Press Fn-F2 (or just F2 depending on your keyboard mode) to activate the wiress on the laptop.

 

I am doing that, and the wireless active/inactive icon shows up when doing so. That's when I changed the hotkey behavior in the BIOS to only enable/disable Bluetooth, in hopes of triggering the installer. Unfortunately it didn't work..

 

It's beginning to sound like your BT module is defective. Bummer. R235168 is definitely the right driver to use.

 

hi there, i am also having exact same problem with dell studio 1557 with i7 processor (win7 OS). i also get similar high-pitched "chirping"/Clicking sound, it sounds like some kind of short-circuit going on inside the power adapter, it happens randomly and when it happens my room light also flickers. i called dell support and they send another power adapter but the problem is still there. did you got any solution from dell support?

 

The AC adapter appears to be very low quality. Today when plugged in I got this message:

The AC power adapter type cannot be determined. Your system will operate slower and the battery will not charge. Please connect a Dell 90W AC adapter or higher for best system operation.

So not only does the adapter wattage appear to be insufficient, but the physical quality is not very good either. Does anyone know of any alternative adapter with better quality and performance?

 

Dell sure seems to be having problems with the I7 based laptops.

Studio XPS 16, Studio 15, Studio 17 all seems to have power issues.

 

Dell have issues, period.

 

When I got my second 1557 (I know ) I compared the power adapters before sending the first one back.
I seen on the first one they sent me the revision was REV:A00 on the newer one its REV:A01
I dont know what the differents is between the two though.

With that said I didnt have any power issues with either.Either that or it would heat up and shut off before the power issue was present.

I can say that i have pushed this 2nd one VERY hard and havnt had any power problems at all.

 

My 1557 has a 9 cell battery but I've been a bit disappointed with how much each charge lasting, despite choosing power saver option(s).

I don't use it for gaming, mostly surfing/research/Office so I went onto Intel website to check for latest drivers for wireless card:

http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm?iid=dc_iduu

After it scanned my system the driver update utility recommended changing the wireless card driver to the one it recommended. I downloaded and installed and battery life has improved as a consequence!

Would still like the fan to be on less though..

Tim

 

Agreed! I've been using the Intel drivers for a while now (including using My WiFi) and find it much better than the Dell drivers!

 

Wow. The speed at which they release new versions of their systems is pretty off-putting to me.

Because of circumstances beyond my control (theft, basically), I have been forced to upgrade my laptop twice this year, first in February and again in August. In February I replaced an old Dell Latitude D510 with a Studio 1537. In August I (very happily) upgraded to a Studio 1555 (and the improvements were so worth it).

I haven't been to this forum in a while, and seeing this... man! Dell is just churning out these things! How are the improvements compared to the 1555, for those who have owned both? And speaking of adapters, do the 1557s still have an annoying blue light on the power adapter? I always have to cover this thing at night because it's so bright.

 

Yep,the blue light is still there

 

Got my 1557 last week, the power adapter is REV:A03
I guess the good news is they keep improving their stuff

 

I'm kind of embarassed to be asking this, but I can't turn on num lock in my laptop ...where is it?! Does it have anything to do with the Fn key?!

 

Nothing to be embarassed about. The num lock, scroll lock and pause break keys are not on this notebook, as is also true of many other newer notebooks.

You can access the num lock via the onscreen keyboard, use an external keyboard, use an external number pad or use a program to existing key combinations to these functions.

 

That's what I thought! Thanks, man!

 

I kinda find it good that they are not there to begin with.

 

Anyone know why sometimes when a movie is played some random pause happens ????? (This happens even when the computer is not running any app besides the windows media player)

Btw, I'm having this issue after installing the new BIOS update and I do notice that my laptop is getting way hotter than before....

Thx

 

Just ordered mine!

Pretty decent specs. Only things missing I would of liked would be a 3G mobile wireless radio and Blu-Ray drive, but Dell don't offer either for the Studio 15. Still, very happy with my purchase, cannae wait till it arrives!

 

I will pull the trigger for one of these guys as soon as it gets the BluRay drive back ... it had it a few weeks back ... but I pulled the trigger on a 1645 (SXPS 16) instead. Had a lot of problems with that guy so I returned it.

 

I wonder why they stopped offering the Blue Ray drive?

 

I heard in this forum on one of the threads that there are a shortage of bluray drives now ... or a shortage in the laser part for the bluray drive ... something like that ... no matter what the reason ... sucks for me

Perhaps its best though ... I have also heard that come CES next week that Dell is going to be anouncing new laptops ... so I may have something new to drool over Hopefully ...

 

I asked the Dell salesman if I could get Blu-Ray and he said it was only available for Studio XPS, I didn't realise Studio 15 had it recently...

If it comes back I will be somewhat disappointed tbh, is the slot loader easy to swap out if I decided to upgrade in future?

Ah well, it's a minor thing cos I don't own any Blu-Rays anyway and I'm fine with DVD tbh, but for the money I paid and since I got the 1080p screen, I figured it would be worthwhile to have...

 

You have to take the laptop almost completely apart to swap it out.

 

Unfortunately slot loading drives are typically harder than tray loading drives to replace. The instructions for doing so are available here:

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/studio1557/en/SM/optical.htm#wp1179928

 

I have had the 1557 for about a month now - it seems more and more when I view youtube videos full screen the laptop locks up! I have the latest bios - A3 right? - and the latest video driver from Dell. Is there something else I should be doing to fix this problem? Thanks.

 

I've got the same problem. If you look into the windows event viewer you'll see error messages like atikmdag has stopped working or something like that. I searched some forums and there are many many reasons that could be cause but I wasn't able to fix it for me. I contacted Dell about it but all they said was that I should install the ATI drivers without catalyst control center, which didn't make any difference for me.

 

There are much smaller versions now. you can buy it for under £10 from ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Inside-hide-A...opAccessories_PCMCIACards?hash=item3ca8dcc9d2

 

You can get the blue-ray drive if you want but you need to make the order by phone. If it a online special deal just tell them which on it is and you'll be able to do it.

Only thing is it cost an extra £194 for a blue-ray writer.

 

I dont see why everyone who owns one of these is not having this problem? Seems like being able to play youtube full screen is the least of the privileges I should have after paying $1200.00 for this machine!