Incoming! My E1705

I've been on the fence for a while trying to decide whether to upgrade my two year old I8600 for a shiny new E1705. I'm not lugging it around the way I once was, so it being a desktop replacement will have the power I need with the ability to still code and surf on my deck.

Found a great EPP deal with an extra 35% off that pulled me over the edge.

Thinking about selling my I8600 as it is pretty well packed and in great shape with a over a year left on their good warranty.

Here's my new toy:

E1705 17" XGA+
1.88 GHz
512 MB Ram (getting two 1GB sticks of this ram from Newegg)
100GB 7200 RPM hard drive
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS
Intel wireless + Dell bluetooth
DVD burner
XP Pro /w CD
8 cell battery
Spare power brick
Backpack
3 year whole enchalada warranty + complete care
Oh, and Adobe Acrobat reader too!

For $1,793.49, including 2 day shipping

Here is my second offering to the dead-pixel Gods:

Cool!

Where did you get your RAM?

WOW--- I ordered this on Saturday morning and its already in testing! With all the upgrades it said it wouldn't ship until 6/16. At this rate it will be in the mail tomorrow!!!!

My next offering to the dead-pixel Gods....

I went and ordered my RAM, instead of going through Newegg I saved $10 on the advice in this thead and ordered it from outpost.com.

More offerings for a perfect screen and system:

Shipped, arriving tomorrow. So much for the original June 16 delivery date!!!

Like a lot of folks here, I was a bit confused why the boxing stage took 3 days. That's when its being flown from overseas to the plant in TN where it is assembled with any other accessories, manuals, etc. for state-side shipping.

Still amazes me just how fast Dell is able to build these things. I will have received my new lappy in less than a week, and that included ordering a) on a Saturday, and b) on Memorial Day weekend! Pretty amazing!

Plan on arrival is the anxious first boot up and dead-pixel check (for which another offering is upcoming), run some benches to ensure everything is working the way it should, then introduce the new machine to my friend FDISK.

6 days from order to door, my E1705 arrived this afternoon. A quick kick of the tires, 3dmark05 produced ~6500, audio and video look good, now its off to reformatting. Performance is pretty good, but with all the bloat its hard to tell; will know after I reinstall.

Its just about done reformatting the 100GB drive after about an hour, now for the fun with a XP reinstall.

My only concern is on the screen. No dead pixels, but a bit of light leakage. The default XP blue menu bar is very washed out, and on one of my reboots it seemed there was a white stripe top to bottom. I'm looking at the DOS blue screen of setup and it appears even. I can compare it to my I8600 color wise and it seems to have better color balance. Read in other places that the E1705 screen is very bright, and have played around a little with the brightness controls.

A question I've searched for on these boards with no definative answer is, does the light leakage get better over time. A few folks have said yes, some never replied after seeing if it would get better. Very concerned to play the swap LCD thing, and may just see how this weekend's burnin will adjust things.

Overall though, very happy.

Well, not sure if I'm getting used to it or its getting better, but the Screen is looking better. Played a lot with various color/brightness/gamma settings and its looking better. It is still noticable on a black screen, which may suck for DVDs (but I don't play many on the laptop). Don't want to go through the hastle of convincing support to send a tech to me, especially given some of the horror stories I've heard on these boards. May give it another couple of days and see.

Now that the OS is reloaded, CPU undervolted, fan adjusted, and everything else tweak'd, HOLY CRAP this is a monster! Never played a modern game at full detail (City of Heroes). Forget the framerate, its just purty!

Speaking of temps, now that I have fan control set up my CPU idle temp is 37, GPU idle at 58. Only jumped 10 degrees now that the fans kick on more quickly.

Happy with the purchase, now just need some sleep

667 MHz, everything showing up as it should in bios. Picked these up from Outpost.com, though if I had thought about it my discounts would have come out even from Dell.

After going to work and looking at my gorgious 20" HP display, there is no question this display is lacking.

I'm on the phone with Dell to arrange a replacement. Tech should be coming out this Thursday to do the work. Compared to other stories I've read on these boards, the display not bad or horrible, far from perfect. The light leakage is just washing out and distorting the colors.

An app I found elsewhere here that really helped me determine the problem was Undead Pixel. Now its a given, if you go looking for problems you are going to find something. I'd recommend if you are happy with your display, stay happy and go read something else.

However, even with my great discount I still payed a lot for this and owe it to myself to try and get a "perfect" display, as I plan to be looking at this one for at least two years.

Support folks were easy to talk to and understand, no arguing or begging for a replacement. Can't ask for much more on that end.

One thing we tried over the phone was to reseat the display cable into the system. Its right under the power switch plastic plate. For a little bit, it appeared as that action may have fixed things, but there were two things happening at that time. First was the cable reseat itself, doubt that made a difference. The other was fully opening the LCD so the unit was flat. I opened it a little hard and "bonk'd" it against my desk. When I restarted things, for a moment it appeared the color washout was gone. 30 minutes later its still there but better, maybe (or I'm just getting optimistic).

My plan is to see how things work out this week up and until the tech arrives. If it improves, no harm to foul. If the new LCD is better (they say they are sending me a Samsung instead of a LG), great. If its worse, the old one goes back in and we may roll the dice again.

Stay tuned...