One of my clients and I both have Dell XPS M1210 Laptops.

These were small 12″ performance laptops.

Now my client’s M1210 had his motherboard recently replaced after it developed a Video out problem. It took Dell two site visits to effect that repair and a number of post repair problems  occurred:-

Corrupt Intel Pro Wireless Profile, so he couldn’t connect to his wireless network.

iTunes would not re Activate, so he was locked out of purchased content.

We got passed those problems and his laptop settled down for a bit.

So my heart sank when I got a call last week to say his laptop was dead suddenly, the power light was on but nothing else.

We tried removing the battery, we tried removing and re-seating the memory but nothing would bring it back to life.

My client is a Managing Director so the clock is ticking, his laptop is dead, he is locked out of his recent data.

So I do the right thing. I don’t want to inflict another Dell repair on him (a minimum 24 hour delay) So I swap the hard disk from his M1210 and put it in mine. He gets my laptop with his hard disk.

A couple  minutes later we are back up and running. The only hurdles are some software product activation and  iTunes was playing up again but that was expected.

All in all my client was offline for about 2 hours and most of that was me doing prep and travelling to site.

Naturally I come out of this worse as his laptop was several months older and had less ram and no web cam  and was based on the initial release of Core2Duo. However this is a small price to pay to get my client up and running.

The Next Day Hangover

After spending 25 minutes talking to Dell Technical Support they agree to replace the motherboard again.

This time I hope they do a better Job. The picture below is the faulty one I got back from the client, the one that had its motherboard replaced about a month ago. You can clearly see masking tape covering a good 20% of the air vent.

I would imagine this could have easily caused the machine to overheat and fry.

For my sins I am back computing on a Dell Latitude D630 running Windows XP (again) until I decide what’s next.

***Update 11th June 2008***

Dell contacted me about this case.

There was a lot of debate about who said what when, and each engineer site visit was investigated in great detail.

They acknowledge that the masking tape should have not be left in place (pictured above).

Initially they said as I elected to replace the customers machine with my own one, that was a business decision I had made.

However they have subsequently offered to perform a number of upgrades to the M1210 to bring it back into line with the specification of the machine I gave my client.

This includes replacing the screen to include the inbuilt webcam, upgrade the memory to 2gb, replacing the CPU to get to Core 2 Duo 2 and extend the warranty by the 70 odd days.

So I thank Dell for investigating this case and offering the upgrades.

Earlier in April I chose to install Windows Vista SP1 on a spare machine to gauge how robust Vista is based on a SP1 clean install.

Well 16 days have passed without incident, I have only been able to use this test machine about 1 hour per day but the general feeling is that SP1 is very resilient.

So I am now ready to reformat my main machine (Dell XPS M1210 Laptop) and start using SP1 day in day out.

My Laptop dual boots Windows XP Pro and Vista. I saw no reason to change this. I just backed up my Windows Vista data, deleted the Vista partition and started all over.

Driver Support

Interestingly enough the only hardware device that was not installed by default was the Logitech webcam installed in the M1210. Every other component was automatically detected and installed including sound, video, modem and the two network cards (wired and wireless).

I am going to run with these drivers for a bit, but at the first sign of trouble I will update them from the XPS M1210 software repository on www.support.dell.com.

I then installed the usual

Office 2007 + SP1

Winzip, CutePDF, Nod 32 Business Edition, Windows Live Writer and Filezilla.

The only change I have made was to substitute Foxit Reader as my PDF reader and ditch Adobe Acrobat all together.

What issues I encounter in the next month will determine my plans to roll out Windows Vista to my clients.

I would say I am fairly positive about SP1 in a clean install but time will tell.

I can’t help but feeling the Windows Vista that was released to manufacturing in November 2006 and then to public in January 2007 was one big unofficial and unintentional beta test and only now are things settling down.

I suppose its true what they say “wait for the 1st service pack”.

If you are interested in my Windows Vista SP1 coverage bookmark the link below.

Link: View all posts filed under Windows Vista SP1

Since January 2007 I have had to manually force my  Dell XPS M1210 video output onto my external Dell 2007WFP display. The laptop is running Windows Vista.

By default you would receive a “out of range” message on the display because the old drivers were supply some wrong information, a resolution the monitor could not cope with.

The video card in the laptop is a Geforce Go 7400

So finally Nvidia have released a set of Drivers for the Geforce Go 7400 that fix this problem.

I downloaded them from Windows Update. They appear as an optional download.

Six months is too long to wait for a fix but I am glad it has finally be addressed.

I took a look at the Windows Experience Index score of the new drivers:-

Desktop Graphics: Before 3.7 After 3.7

Gaming Graphics Before 3.4 After 3.3 

So you drop .1 on the gaming performance, it would be nice if newer drivers improved performance as opposed to losing it.

As you can see the M1210 has a total of 6 cables that need to be connected/disconnected as and when the laptop is moved.

These are:

2 x USB
1 x VGA
1 x Power
1 x Network
1 x 3.5m Audio Out.

Dell Latitude D420 12.1″ Laptop Docked

A D420 docked still has cables but the “cable hell” is significantly reduced. To dock a D420 you just place the laptop on the Docking station. All the cables are already connected to the port replicator in the dock. So you just Dock on / Dock Off. On the M1210 I have to do major heart surgery.

Dell Latitude D420 12.1″ Laptop Undocked

If you are interested in the D420, then check out this video overview.
screencast-dell-latitude-d420-laptop-5min-video-overview

Are you a North West based business looking for a really smart I.T Consultant? get in touch I can help you Tel: 01606-841587.

Update July 2007.
The issue reported on this post was fixed in the June 2007 update from Nvidia.
I used the Nvidia Driver from Windows Update.

So far things are going ok. One annoying issue is video related. 

I cant get my Dell XPS M1210 Laptop to Use my Dell 2007WFP monitor as the primary display by default (at the log on screen for example). I have to force the video onto the external monitor using the Nvidia Control Panel.

Another Video Problem which I assume is related is when you lift the laptop lid after the laptop has been sleeping the monitor displays the message “Out of Frequency Range”.

I have tried various Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 Video Drivers and Monitor Inf Files but none seem to work. 

I am about 4 Days in of using Windows Vista. No system crashes as yet. A few problems with IE7 browsers crashing and having to be restarted.

The Video/Monitor issue is annoying.

I shall post here when I find a solution.

I know a few readers are keen on all M1210 news.

Dell have updated the bios to A04

This is an optional update and dell have list the changes as.

1. Updated Support for Microsoft Vista.

2. Updated Support for Intel Processor T5200.

3. Improved High Definition Audio Device performance.

Link: http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/

Lots of visitors to the site either have a Dell XPS M1210 or are interested in this super laptop.

Here are some links you might be interested.

Forums
http://www.notebookforums.com/forum237.html

Dell XPS Support
http://www.support.dell.com/

Alternative Video Drivers.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

Video Clips
http://www.youtube.com/

Reviews
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?

Please leave some your links in the comments section.

This is the tool that tells you how your computers performance is rated by Windows Vista

These results are using Beta Drivers on Windows Vista RC1 Build 5728

Machine: Dell XPS M1210 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo
100gb 7200 RPM Hard Disk
2.0 Gig Ram (533Mhz)
Nvidia GeForce Go 7400

Component: Subscore out of 5 (Higher is better)

Processor: Subscore 4.9
Ram: Subscore 4.5
Graphics: Subscore 3.1
Gaming Graphics: Subscore 3.4
Primary Hard Disk Subscore 5.0

Base Score 3.1 (Determined by Lowest Subscore)

The Windows Vista RC1 (Build 5600) the Graphics: Subscore was 2.5. So some improvements have been made in the 25 days since the builds shipped.

My Notes
Although the Nvidia 7400 video card is pretty amazing by 2006 standards in a small form factor laptop its also the weakest link in the chain. I have fast CPU and Hard Disk the bottleneck has to settle somewhere.

I am very pleased with how Vista is performing, but I would not be in a hurry to install it on anything other that the fastest hardware I have access to.

So my other Windows XP machines are all staying on XP.

The Dell XPS M1210 is a great little computer.

I heard the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo had some new instructions to speed up multimedia, so I did a quick test.

The Test: Ripping a 54min Audio CD to iTunes @ 192k Mp3

For comparison I tested the Dell Latitude X300 which had a 24 speed CD Drive against two Dell XPS M1210’s with DVD+RW drives, which for these tests were treated as a 24 speed CD Drive.

Dell Latitude X300 PentiumM 1.2Ghz took 8m4s

Dell XPS M1210 Core Duo 2.0GHZ took 3m54s

Dell XPS M1210 Core 2 Duo2 2.0GHZ took 3m42s

So the difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo is very small.

Link: N/A

Ok quick things.

Q) Do you notice a difference between Core Duo/Core 2 Duo (at the same clock speed 2.0ghz)?

A) No, on paper core 2 duo is superior but in the real world – not much in it.

Q) Do you notice a difference between a 5400 rpm / 7200 rpm hard disk?

A) Yes disk access feels quicker.

Q) 1gig Ram or 2gig?

A) In Windows XP it doesnt really matter that much, it will in Vista though.

More XPS M1210 and Core Duo stuff soon….

Link: http://www.dell.co.uk