Dell Studio 1557

Have you tried right clicking the video and disabling "hardware acceleration"

With that said I do not have this problem and I dont need to disable it.

 

Whats this

Outdated already

 

If anyone's ordering Studio 1557 laptop you can use the coupon code LGP?PXR7ZJG4FC to get 5% off the total. I think this only works for for UK site.

I ordered mine on 30th december for £664 + free delivery.
The estimated delivery time 14th of Jan.
Let's see if I'll get it on time

It's the basic prec
Base Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Mobile Processor (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
Microsoft Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English
Memory 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
Keyboard Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard
Video Card 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HP 4570
Hard Drive 320GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Optical Devices Fixed Internal DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive including Software
Wireless Networking Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g)
Cables 1 Meter Power Cord (3 Wire) - UK
Shipping Documents English Documentation
Standard Warranty 1 year of coverage included with your PC
Enhanced Service Packs 1 year of coverage included with your PC
PalmRest Silver chainlink palm rest – with Black Chainlink cover only
Bluetooth No Bluetooth Upgrade
Order Information Studio 1557 Order - UK
Primary Battery Primary 6-cell 56 WHr Lithium Ion battery
Dell System Media Kit Studio 1557 Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers)
Camera 2.0 Mega pixel Integrated Web Camera
Colour Choice Black chainlink
Accidental Damage Support No Accidental Damage Support
Call Dell Experts One free Dell Expert call to help with your PC queries within 60 days of purchase
Labels Wireless Label CI7
LCD 15.6in Widescreen High Definition (1366x768) WLED with TrueLife
Microsoft Application Software Microsoft® Works 9.0 / English - (Does not include Microsoft® Word)
Power Supply 90W AC Adaptor

 

Hi,
I posted before but eventually had to change my laptop specs. On December 3rd I ordered a:

Studio 15
Intel Core i7-720QM Quad Core Mobile CPU
6GB, DDR3, 1066MHz, 2 DIMM
15.6 Inch Full High Definition (1080p) High Brightness LED Display with TrueLife and Camera
500G 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Back-lit Keyboard
2X Slot Load Bluray (BDRW) Rewritable Drive (BD Read and and Write)
Intel WiFi Link 5300 802.11AGN Half Mini Card
Laptop Lid Artwork: Sea Sky by Mike Ming
Bluetooth included

When the estimated delivery date (EDD as I call it because I'm lazy ) was January 4th, Dell bumped me up to Next Business day shipping, and then my EDD became 12/28. On the 26th Dell delayed my order (guessing the BD writer has been low in stock since it is no longer an option) Today my order status has become "Shipped" it being "In Production" for a month. It should still be arriving on the 5th. Oh and the total price was $1998.

Footnote:
I am looking to dual boot "Hackintosh" my new laptop so if anyone has any recommendations with fixing any issues they encountered, please help me!

 

A little strange your memory is 1066MHz
When I ordered mine it was 1333MHz

BTW why on earth would you want to install that crappy MAC Os anyway. I would have understood if it was someting like redhat.

 

Oh noes!!!! =( Damn PC's and their ever improving technology!!!

Anyways just bought GTA4 and was wondering if anyone has gotten this to run smooth?... I have tried dropping all the settings and it still "Chugs" as in while walking the game runs fine, but when driving it will be normal and then slow normal slow, normal, slow... Almost like pausing to load in more background...
So anyone with a 1557 let me know if you got it working?... I have GTA SA Vice City and 3 all running perfect using a 360 controller...

 

What driver are you using?

 

Ummm you mean graphics driver?... i believe the most uptodate from ATI...

 

You could try their 9.12 hotfix driver here http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/ATICatalyst912Hotfix.aspx

of course you will need to modify them for a mobile gpu

 

Guess the studio 1558 will be with the new arrandale processors, presented at CES on 7 January if I'm correct. So no news here... this was already expected.

For those who want to know about arrandale (vs i7 clarksfield).
Arrandale is a new processor family produced on a smaller die (32 vs 40 nm). They are all dualcore's with two physical cores and two virtual ones (through hyperthreading). A innovation is that the igp (internal graphics processor) is integrated on the same chip as the cpu. Still the igp is baked on 45 nm, so in fact it are two dies on the same chip. See the image in attachment.

In short clarksfield is quadcore and arrandale dualcore. Both have hyperthreading and turboboost (except i3-models). On clarksfield only the northbridge got integrated (memory controller, PCI Express for external graphics, integrated graphics and the DMI connector) and in arrandale both (so also the southbridge: I/O inputs like usb, esata,...).
Plus arrandale should support switchable graphics, but I guess it also depends on the OEM's, because I doubt it's standard...

 

Well, at least in the USA, the standard memory is 4GB with 1066MHz. I upgraded mine to 6GB 1066MHz. I also had the option of upgrading to 4, 6, or 8 GB memory with 1333MHz, but it was not worth it for me.

Also, I am a big PC guy, and against Apple in all ways (and I type this with my DROID in my pocket), but I did want to use Final Cut Pro and some other OS X exclusive softwares. It is always a good thing to have on hand. I have hackintoshed my existing crappy HP pavillion laptop, but the graphics card is so bad Final Cut won't run

Anyway, right now my package is in Memphis, on next business day shipping (which makes no sense why they say the package will come on the tuesday not tomorrow). I'm going to post an unboxing video and a review a week after it arrives (and will post the link to them here obviously )

 

Ok I see your point on MAC OS.

Here the standard option is 4GB 1333MHz. To upgrade it to 6GB it's another £405 (about $650 ). It's a ridiculous amount of money for just another 2GB. I don't have money to burn so just settled for 4GB plus I won't be using this for games.

Yah it would be good to see the unboxing. May be I'll do the same, but I'll have to wait for mine till the 14th, that's if dell doesn't change the delivery date.

I heard it gets a little hot on high load and also the screen lids suppose to be bit fragile.

Good luck with your new machine.

 

I just got my 1557 with Intel Core i7-820 from Dell. After reading this thread from beginning to end while waiting for it to be delivered, I was beginning to get worried that it would have one or more of the problems I've seen other people having.
Here is my machine's specs:
Studio 1557, Intel Core i7-820 (1.73 GHz, Quad Core)
6GB DDR3 RAM @ 1333 MHz
15.6 High-Definition 1080p LED Display with TrueLife
Creative SB X-Fi
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
160GB Intel X25-M (I carried this over from my previous lappie)
Intel 5300 Wireless-N
9-Cell, 85 W-Hour Battery
Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit

Much to my relief, the following quick checks were all perfect:
1. Sub-woofer working perfectly - music sounds deep and rich, and putting my ear directly up to the opening in the back, I can hear the sub working.
2. 90W Power Adapter is Rev. A03, and no clicking or buzzing noise ever happens, period.
3. I downloaded the keypress utility (OSD HotKey v1.6) and ran it while tilting the computer in every direction, and no keys were being pressed.
4. No Audio Studdering at all while watching videos or DVD's. I did notice that Dell is now pre-configuring the ATI Catalyst Control Center setting to "Maximize Performance".
5. Last, and MOST IMPORTANTLY for me, the laptop runs COOL and QUIET. I am not a gamer, to I may not be taxing the GPU to the max, but I am a software developer, and do a lot of compiling and multi-tasking during development. Everything is lightning fast, and I've only heard the fans kick up to a medium speed twice so far in the week that I've had it.

Now, I have a question: It is really cool seeing the 8 CPU's listed in my CPU Usage meter gadget in Windows 7. However, I am wondering if the technology that automatically shuts down some cores to increase the speed of other cores would be better served if I disabled the Hyper-Threading feature in the BIOS, effectively taking it down to 4 true cores? My primary usage is a lot of software development tools (Visual Studio 2008: C# ASP.NET, SQL Server 2008, IIS, Ubuntu 9.1, Python 3, Qt4).

 

Very happy with my base spec 1557 so far, bar one minor issue. When I do video over HDMI to my 1080p TV, and full screen any media player (WMP, Real, Quicktime, etc) it does not -quite- fullscreen. There's a about 1 cm black strip vertically either side and an equivalent (to aspect ratio?) black bar top and bottom. Very slight, and I was blaming the software. But I tried connecting at the same resolution to the same TV over a VGA cable, and it fills the screen completely. So presumably it's a graphics-related thing. Anybody know if there's a setting I should fiddle with somewhere? I looked through all the Catalyst options but saw nothing obvious. (PS. I don't have a Blu-Ray drive, so this is not major, it's mainly just a convenience thing).

 

Does anyone else have issues with iTunes syncing to a iPhone on the 1557? My syncs will not finish. Have tried reinstalling iTunes several times but no luck. Other folks running Windows 7 64 bit also report this - but some claim a bios fix fixes their problem.

 

I never had any iPhone issues until last week when my 3GS just wouldn't play ball (my missus' 3G still worked fine).

I uninstalled iTunes and reinstalled and it seems to be working ok again, god knows what the issue is though :-S

As for HDMI resolutions etc etc, I too have noticed on some TV's a small black border.... We have a 63" Samsung FullHD TV in the lounge which connects up no problem and fills the screen with a very crisp and clear picture, but in the kitchen our 32" Samsung LCD TV connects up with a small black bar around the picture and nowhere near as crisp a picture! I thought it was the TV doing it, very interesting that someone else has an issue!!

 

Here i have the same issue. i have an Asus VH232H 23in full HD monitor, i normally used it via RGB cable, and all was OK. Today i tried de HDMI cable and it happens the sames as you, the image dosent get to full screen. i get a bar almost 1cm. all the edge of the image.
anyone have solved this?

 

Guys (and girls )
The updated studio 15 will be released soon! Named studio 1558 with the intel core i5 processors. Believe it or not, but there's already a review ready by notebookcheck.de. They got a presample with:
Intel core i5 520M 2.4 Ghz (up to 2.93 Ghz with turboboost) - 3MB L3 cache en tdp of 35 watt (igp included! which is about 7-9 watt).

Read the review here:

• Review in English (automatic Google translation)
• Original german version

 

My second 1557 arrived a couple of days ago, and this one works! Pleased with it so far, it has no sign of the video driver problem that made the first one unuseable. I also had the black border problem with my 1080p monitor, the solution was to go into ATI catalyst, right click on the display icon at the bottom of the screen which got me into a display properties page, and then set the overscan to 0. The picture then goes to the edge. I'm at work at the moment and don't have the computer here, if you can't find what I'm talking about I can give more details this evening, or google "ATI catalyst overscan" and you'll probably find the solution.

By the way, does anyone know how to uninstall McAfee?

 

I really like the reviews ... if it comes with BluRay and lighted keyboard ... this puppy will be my next laptop ...

 

Hi guys im sorry for my bad english.....


I just recieved my new 1557 with core i7 , all works fine but, suspend, when i go to suspend my laptop stays on and unresponsive and the only way that it awakes is turn of from power button, so.... some one has the same problem, im thinking about format , but i think that is not the solution, what do you think is the problem...

 

What do you mean by suspend? Sleep or hibernate?

 

Does anyone know if there's a way to change the backlit keyboard time-out? After a few seconds it will turn off, which IS a good feature, but I want the ability to let it on indefinitely...

 

Just found out the answer messing around...thanks anyway!

 

Hey thnks for your reply, i mean sleep not hybernate, i called dell , and they couldnt fix the problem but i have find the solution, sadly Format and reinstall Windows i s the only solution, because some driver (i dont know wich driver is), i think was outdated or corrupted from the factory install.

 

Hey thnks for your reply, i mean sleep not hybernate, i called dell , and they couldnt fix the problem but i have find the solution, sadly Format and reinstall Windows i s the only solution, because some driver (i dont know wich driver is), i think was outdated or corrupted from the factory install.

 

Sorry to hear. I also just received my 1557 i7 and so far it's working great...good luck.

 

Hi, sorry for my english...

I got a Dell 1557 and since the BIOS update I have the famous issue between P55 chipset and my iPhone 3G... I can't sync it anymore.

I read on forums that it is a USB issue that gigabyte solve by a Bios upgrade on their MB.

Does anyone have a solution ?

Thx

 

That makes sense - I had it working fine for a while - recently it has stopped working - I did do the BIOS update some time ago! Is there a way to file a bug with Dell?

 

Has anyone else noticed that the CPU temperature sometimes jumps up like 20 degrees (celcius) for a few seconds and then drops down to normal again? It makes the fan spin at full for a few seconds. Maybe there's some problem with my heatsink...

 

I'm curious about how the 1557 compares to the 1558. I was getting ready to purchase a 1557 when the new one came out and replaced everything in my shopping cart (more expensive to boot!). I see that the 1558 is running the new i5-520m with 2 cores instead of 4, but its nominal clock speed is 2.4GHz compared to 1.6GHz. If I can manage to get the the quad core i7-720qm in the 1557, is it still better?

 

The i5 is fast enough for most people.
According to notebookjournal the i7-720 and i5-540 are almost the same for dualcore enchanced software. You'll only benefit from the i7 when you do extensive video editing or programming.

There's a review of a pre-build of the studio 1558 here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Studio-1558-Notebook.24496.0.html

 

Does anybody know if the Studio 1557 have USB charging capabilities while the computer is put to Sleep?

 

i got my dell yesterdy that is 1557 for price of rs 71298/- INR

 

I have a problem with my wireless connection. A few times a day my Internet connection on my studio goes down. The wireless icon says im connected to the router, but that I have no internet access and the icon has a yellow mark.

Meanwhile on my two other wireless computers I can still us the Internet fine.

To fix it I have to disconnect from the router, and connect again and it works perfectly, it's really frustrating, anyone else with the same problem?

Did a problem solve and it says "Default gateway not available", I did a google search about it and it seems to be very common.........

 

Wow, I have exactly the same issue quite often, though i was thinking that was a wireless connection problem related....

This really sucks, I have to turn off my router so I wait for about 10 sec and turn it on again. After, I'm able to get connect..

Can someone know if it's a hardware issue or maybe a driver issue ?????
Hope it can be fixed without having to send it to DELL

Thx

 

There is a new driver update for the Intel WiFi 5100/5300 series on the Dell support website since a couple of days..

Maybe that helps

 

Thanks !!

I'm going to download and see if it will fix the problem....hoping it will !

I will leave an feedback as soon as possible whether its can fix or not this issue!!!

 

Im starting to think that it is my modem/router that is the cause, I shut down all other computers and it has been stable for a long time now, strange though how it was only my laptop that was being affected, maybe because it was the most active and the crappy router couldn't handle all the wireless connections.

 

Weird, I tried to install the driver from Dell Support and it didn't work.....

So I went to Intel Support and downloaded the software and the drive, and
it worked....

BTW, my router is quite new (just a month old), I'm using a D-link615 Wireless N
so I don't know if I can blame it for this issue....

 

You arnt hitting F2 on accident are you?

That disables the WiFi card until you hit it again.

If you do hit it and then disconnect/reconnect your router then it will reconnect back to the wireless connection.

Just a thought.It can be disabled in the BIOS.

 

Thanks man, but as was told before this issue refers when I'm connected and suddenly the connection is lost with no reason and is showed that I still connected to my router though no internet access....

BTW, when the wireless card is disabled its appears a red cross on top the wireless icon....and in this specific case is just appears an yellow triangle..

 

It was just a thought.It happened to me a couple of times before I realized it

 

Try going into each network adapter properties page (wireless and wired) and ensure IPv6 is deselected.

Sounds strange but I've had this problem before with seemingly random loss of internet connection (not actual wireless connection) and it was due to Windows trying to communicate using IPv6!!

Hope that helps

 

I have the 1080p screen, with the ATi 4570/512Mb...I can set the resolution (on Windows 7) at 1080p or 720p, but not at 900p (which will be 1600x900). Is there a way to force this?

 

Hi,

I got my 1557 in mid-december. Since then I have seen the various problems:
1. My system freezes requiring a hard reboot. This happens at least once a day. (BTW: I have not noticed my system ever getting too hot.)
2. My various USB devices mysteriously diconnect and reconnect.
3. My brand new wireliess mouse stutters sometimes...my wired one does not.
4. BSOD with and IRQ issue while running Chrome - I believe this could be a chrome issue as I have stopped seeing this issue since I stopped using Chrome.

Maybe these are all related, I don't know. Dell has been useless.
I have seen several posts related to some of these, but I don't ever seem to see the answers. Can you all help me?

I am running BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A03, 12/4/2009

Thanks!

 

1. Do you have any idea why your system freezes? Does it freeze every time when you do a certain handling? I don't know if my problem is similar to this one, but sometimes when I watch HD movies with GOM-player or on YouTube, my video card fails on me and the computer gets really slow.. Sometimes it recovers again after which I can continue using the system, but usually I have to do a hard reboot. Rarely, a BSOD appears

2. The only USB device I have used so far is a wired Logitech mouse (G1) and a USB stick. No problems at all.

3. I use a wired one and never used a wireless one before so I'm not familiar with this problem you have. Maybe it's a driver issue, since you dont have the problem with a wired mouse..

4. I tested Chrome several times on my system. Didn't have any problems using it.


I have one question for you guys, related to issue #4:
I prefer using Chrome or Firefox but at the moment, I'm forcing myself to use IE instead. The reason is that IE has a built-in 'magnifier' which I can set at 125% permanently. Chrome and Firefox have one as well, but whenever I restart either of them, the 'magnifier' resets itself to 100%... Only IE remains at 125%. I can barely read anything if it is set to 100%

Does anyone have a solution to this? How can I set the magnifier to 125% permanently in Chrome or and/or Firefox?

A solution to issue #1 is welcome as well I've tried updating AND rolling-back the video driver but the issue remains.. I have also tried the modder to use desktop drivers with no results...


For the rest, this laptop r0x my s0x

 

Hi,

The freezes seem to be random, but I do kow it I wasn't watching any video at the time.

I saw some post that mentioned another BIOS update, but not from dell, but i can't seem to find it. Does anyone think that would help?

Thanks

 

I was reading the XPS forum of notebookreview and saw their issues of down throttling
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437800
I'm aware that our model, 1557, will also have the same results due to our 90watt power adapter that it comes with. Is anyone else aware of this? - and if so know about an alternative adapter with a 120+watt for the feed enough power to the cpu that the powerful i7.

Also has anyone tried and successfuly overclocked the ATI 4570?

Also does anyone know if the memory supplied is a triple or dual channel? How to check?

lol im filled with alot of questions.

 

Ok,I dont see a way through ATIs driver.Are you using a Dell driver or a modded desktop driver?

You could try Powerstrip but I dont know how compatible it is with this system.