Windows 10 on Dell M1330

[CJVant]

Thank you for the heads up!
Seeing as 8GB DDR2 from a trusted brand isn't exactly cheap these days, I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to this upgrade, if at all. I have to research pricing more.

However, startup issues aside, on Win10...
How do you find the laptop performance wise with 8GB over 4GB?
Is the increase at all noticeable for day to day tasks?
Any areas in particular you'd say it helps?
Does the running 8GB configuration force a reduced bus speed on these machines? (I have an old PC that will drop bus speeds if all 4 ram slots are used.)

Thanks again for your feedback!

 

[Bilito]

The machine seems to run smoothly with 8GB and is quite snappy. I don't use it very heavily (not my main machine).
Windows 10 is said to be more efficient with RAM than Windows 7... so 4GB may well be sufficient - it is certainly running better than my previous 32bit Vista installation which could only use about 3.5GB out of the 4GB installed.
I guess the main benefit of 8GB is when running a lot of programs in parallel.
I don't think 8GB of RAM causes any problem with the bus speed. In any case, the M1330 only has two RAM slots.

 

[CJVant]

Good to hear.
I'm kinda starting to like Win10. There's a good chance I'll make it my primary (maybe even sole) OS when I get the new SSD. <-- Thinking 850 EVO 500GB
I suppose as long as I'm happy with the memory management for my typical usage, there'll be no need to prioritize the 8GB upgrade.

Thanks again for your input.

 

[OspreyO]

I don't like the way MS moves things around in Windows 10 for no reason at all. It also has issue with some older hardware. We have a All in one Laser Printer that has no Windows 10 Drivers. Performance is fine, probably the best since XP. I'm running it on 2GB of RAM with 32bit trial version. I was having some crashes but I did a re-install and its better now.

 

[CJVant]

There are definitely a few silly things in Win10, major one being two separate windows settings/configuration interfaces running concurrently. I suppose the new "universal" settings interface is nice for tablet users and people new to windows but i still think it's silly that they are both available, you can't choose to disable the universal one and they aren't 100% linked up. What i mean by that is that changing a setting in one doesn't necessarily correlate to a change in the other... for example, I switched from "Balanced" to "Power Saving" mode in the old school settings, but in the universal power management settings, it still shows the screen time off and standby delay times from Balanced. Strange.

Still though, i think 10 is a major improvement over 8/8.1, especially in stability and hopefully the above mentioned quirk is just a stepping stone to ease everyone gradually to a new unified and fully funtional configuration interface.

 

[OspreyO]

I have had no problems with 8.1. Though I do tend to turn off the metro stuff as I don't need it.

On 8 and 10 I turn the power saving to hibernate. Makes the battery on my laptops last a lot longer.

 

[CJVant]

*UPDATE to my install/setup experiece*

After more fiddling around, I realized that the generic HD Audio device drivers Windows installed gave me sound via HDMI and Headphones (only 1 of 2 jacks) but not from built in speakers.
So, I went to Dell support site and downloaded the SigmaTel High Definition Audio Codec that they had listed for Vista 64-bit which is version 6.10.0.5866 (file name R186858.exe). Extracted but canceled setup and noted folder location. Then updated the driver for the device listed under 'Sound and Video Game Controllers' in device manager by pointing it to the aforementioned extracted folder. After restart, it now lists "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC" for ALL the Audio Devices in DM.

Now I have sound from speakers and output from BOTH front jacks.
Only thing now is that the Windows10 built in "Audio Enhancements" conflict and had to be disabled. I don't think that will be an issue for me though.

It doesn't appear that any of you had issues here, but hopefully this will be helpful for anyone that does.

 

[CJVant]

*UPDATE #2*

So it's now a few weeks later and I've got my new screen and new battery installed and can finally experience what it's like to have a LAPTOP again!

I'm still running from the original 200GB hard drive dual booting to either Win7 or Win10 and so far, everything is running smoothly in Win10 except it wouldn't let me install my old copy of Office2013... Might be a file corruption issue though so I'm still troubleshooting.

Once I've got that and can confirm a couple other software compatibilities, I'm going to go ahead and order an SSD for a completely fresh system.

I've decided to hold back on the AC wifi card (I don't even have an AC router to take advantage of it) and the 8GB ram (too damn expensive, $100+ eBay from China or $170+ local stores).

We have a members market for this-Please take the time to read the rules-schizo
And finally...
I've got a T9500 on the way (was only $40CAD) so I'm excited to give that a go!

Thanks again to all contributors of this thread!

 

[Bilito]

As a follow-up to my previous posts. As of about 2 months ago, I retested WINSAT on the M1330 without NVIDIA graphics and it no longer crashed... so I presume this was fixed with one of the Microsoft updates. The Windows Performance Score came in at 3.9

 

[OspreyO]

Mines on Win10 now no issues but I don't really use it anymore.