Dell Vostro 1500

Posty said:
ordered

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7300 Processor (2.0GHz,800MHz,4MB L2 cache)
Base Warranty - 1 Year Business Hardware Support
15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display
Matte Jet Black without Camera
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024)
160GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
256MB nVidia® GeForce® 8600M GT
Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive

hope ill be happy :)
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Nice. I'm looking to order something very similar to this myself. Did you go for win xp or vista?
 
First time i tried Bioshock on this laptop i had the sound turned off (as i was playing Bioshock on my desktop :p), tried it again with sound, but only get none after the intro :(

I know theres in issue with onboard sound cards but i was just wondering if any of you have sound in Bioshock? I have the steam version.

Had cpu whine this morning, completely vanished now, no idea what ive done :confused:
 
I downloaded the demo and sound was working perfectly on that.

Tell me how you got rid of CPU whine!! Mine disappears when you select the Power Saver power plan but ideally I'd like to leave it on High Performance.
 
Who's going to be brave and reapply some thermal paste?

I'm just running Orthos and load temps on each core is currently sat at 75oC!! :eek:

I remember with my last Dell laptop I re-applied some thermal paste and the load temps dropped by about 10oC.
 
Can I ask, what screen would people recommend for this? I'll be using it for college (doing a degree in Law so loads of essays)

I was looking at the Ultrasharp WSXGA+ (1680 X 1050) with truelife, cos I might do a little bit of gaming or watching DVDs.

Any suggestions from the other choices?
 
GuruJockStrap said:
I downloaded the demo and sound was working perfectly on that.

Tell me how you got rid of CPU whine!! Mine disappears when you select the Power Saver power plan but ideally I'd like to leave it on High Performance.
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I heard it briefly this morning on some in the ear headphones but it vanished. All i can remember doing is installing the Turbo Memory drivers.

I've tried playing with the power options, doesnt seem to be a difference. Tell you thing i did try recently while trying to get Bioshocks sound working - Uninstall your Sigmatel (sound) drivers and reboot letting vista automatically find and reinstall your drivers. I've disabled quite a few things in the bios that i wasnt going to use any time soon - like bluetooth, i also remember turning on a faster hdd setting or something

Now im back at home, and i think i may know why its humming. I only get a hum when the power cable is plugged in, otherwise theres no hum at all. Strangely, the hum is barely audible on my Bose, used to be very loud.

Ahhhhh the reason mine is humming right now is due to the 4 way its currently plugged into, if plugged directly into the wall, there's no hum ;)


Found a screensaver that works nicely on this laptop and looks rather funky, nvidia Geoforms. But then you've probably already seen it, ive been away a while :p
 
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At the most a laptop should only really be used for "light gaming", forcing games like bioshock onto these small systems doesnt really do any good, remember at the end of the day this particular laptop is designed with small businesses in mind so i wouldn't expect top notch gaming performance, might be ok for pinball or minesweep lol.
 
Played the Bioshock demo at 1280x800 with settings on high for me the other day. Bit of a step up from pinball and mindsweep. ;)

It'll play CS:S ok at 1280x800 with everything on high so thats all I care about.
 
I just timed my Vostro's loading - it took 32 seconds from the press of the power button to the appearance of the Vista x64 login screen. Not bad at all. Even after logging in, the system is immediately useable whilst the startup programs continue in the background.
 
Seems to get slightly better over time as Vista learns your habits. For example, one of my biggest complaints for using Firefox was that it took ages to start up. Now I just click and it loads pretty much instantly.
 
/\ndy said:
At the most a laptop should only really be used for "light gaming", forcing games like bioshock onto these small systems doesnt really do any good, remember at the end of the day this particular laptop is designed with small businesses in mind so i wouldn't expect top notch gaming performance, might be ok for pinball or minesweep lol.
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These laptops play current games very well, on max or near max settings (at least at 1280 x 800), for not much money. Why should they not be used for gaming?
 
GuruJockStrap said:
At first the CPU whine was tolerable, now I can't stand it! The more time I spend at my laptop the worse it gets.

What happens is when the CPU goes into a low power state, this annoying whine becomes clearly heard. It could be a faulty motherboard, CPU or Dell cutting costs and sticking in cheap components.

Anyway, I used the above software, checked the Disable C4 Mode and if by magic, the whine vanished.

I've got a Dell technical support person coming round to fix my other issue later today.

Remember I was telling you about the screen making a buzz/hum noise on every screen brightness setting other than max? Well, the inverter that steps up and down the voltage to power the backlight tubes needs replacing. Will be getting the whole panel replaced today.

I'm tempted to phone Dell back up on Monday and get this CPU Whine issue resolved as well.
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Is this "CPU whine" the same as the headphone noise people have mentioned or is it a different issue? If there is indeed a fix for the headphone noise I'd be tempted to make a purchase
 
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