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Opinion on new Dell XPS m1330 webcam, poor audio, slow, overall opinion-bought June 2

post #1 of 2
Thread Starter 
Opinion on new Dell XPS m1330 webcam, poor audio, slow, overall opinion-bought June 2008 Vista



Web Cam-Terrible:Better frame rates in better light though, but still sub-par performance.



Audio: Also such lousy speakers in my new (June 08) XPS 1530. Like an old transistor radio if you are old enough to remember those. No bass, too much treble. Tiny speakers. Saw them when tech replaced my LCD which was broken on delivery. Took him 3.5 hours to replace. A lot of wires and tight fits.



LanTray icon: I get a red X for 60 seconds on the network icon in System Tray but can still surf wired or wirelessly. After 60 seconds, red X goes away. Plugging in Ethernet makes no difference on Red X. Who knows. Also records some error regarding the Broadcom mini card 1395 (I think) adapter not being able to find a certain file specified. But others have reported this with no problem or resolution. You find this error in Event Log under System.



Vista slow-have tweaked everything I know and read about. May try a dual boot back to Windows XP and hope everything works including portable small IR Remote Control for Video/Audio, webcam, etc.. Tweaked services, paging, TCP/IP connections, write cache, advanced caching, eliminated some tasks from the onerous task scheduler, and on and on..... But sure there are more....



Media Center Direct: Supposed to press Media Center button and have it not boot into Vista but be able to play DVD's/CD's. Not a big issue for me but it does not work. Perhaps I have an incorrect BIOS setting or form what I read per Dell: If you have more than one account, Guest or other, and an Admin account requiring a password (like I have) then it will boot into Vista first. Others told me this is not true, but this is what I have experienced on my machine and what I read.

I have all the latest drivers.





Open to comment suggestions, tweaks,etc...



Sincerely

Peter
post #2 of 2
Sounds like you got the new guy to replace the screen on your 1530. I've had to replace an Optical drive on one and while it wasn't easy. It didn't take me 3.5 hours. However, my technical aptitude is what some describe as above-average. I don't know, to me it's just easy.

As far as the webcam goes. Unfortunately in order to take an intelligble picture and not just one of your silouhette, the camera has to reduce the frame rate in order to get enough exposure time under poor lighting conditions. Ideally you want a light shining on your face from in front of you, and not lights shining from behind you.

As for the poor audio, you can only fit speakers so big in such a small package. My guess is some focus group was willing to sacrifice built-in speaker quality for another feature and for a smaller form factor, or they were willing to bring along headphones. Or they could also haven't a care how the speakers worked (like most of my customers.)
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