MikeT's Blog and Dell pages

Dell XP Vista Transition

2008-06-02T07:41:00.003Z

Check out the sidebar link (thanks crossbow) for details of Dells options for XP/Vista with regards to downgrade rights and support for your OS of choice.

Dell Vostro 1500 CPU upgrade to Penryn T9300 2.5Ghz

2008-03-15T13:01:00.005Z

I have a fairly top spec Vostro 1700 here 2Ghz cpu, 160Gb hdrive, 2gig ram, 256meg graphics. Its prooved to be just too big and heavy for anything other than a desktop replacement so although it is a nice machine and games well in Crysis I will have to sell it on soon and have chosen a Vostro 1500 to replace it.

While dell were giving plenty of discount on the main site I bought a Vostro 1500 with Intel Celeron Processor M 540 (1.86 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB) with the intention of swopping the cpu for a 2Ghz T7200 or maybe a Penryn chip.I have a spare 100Gb 7200rpm hard drive so was happy to only get a cheap slower 80Gb one with it.This is what I ordered for £350 after discounts

Celeron 540 (1.86GHz, 533, 1M)
15.4 WXGA+ True Life (1440x900)
Black cover Camera 2Mp
2048 MB 667 MHz Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 1024 MB)
Hard Drive 80GB Serial ATA (5400RPM)
Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Primary 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion Battery
256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
European - Dell TrueMobile 355 internal Bluetooth Module
Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini-PCI CardEUR
Dell Black 5-Button Bluetooth Travel Mouse
Genuine Windows XP Home SP2 including Media

I have had it a few days now and thought I would see how well it performed with its celery cpu.

Out of the box it produced 3027 with 3Dmark 06
Farcry ran at max everything with ease.
Crysis GPU bench produced a playable 36fps @ 1440x900 low detail
dropping to 15fps @ 1440x900 medium detail.

I changed the dell supplied video drivers to forceware 169.04 and tried again.

3Dmark 06 was up now at 3161 but it only added one fps to the 2 crysis gpu tests.

Having overclocked the graphics on the V1700 with ease and no overheating I thought I would try the same on this one, I used Atitool 0.27 and set the GPU at 600 and memory at 500.

3Dmark 06 went to 3738 and the Crysis GPU tests showed 1440x900 Med 20fps and low gave 41fps

Compare this against my XPS M1530 that had T7500 2.2Ghz cpu and 8600GT with DDR3 memory running much faster.

The XPS M1530 gave 4329 marks in 3Dmark 06 and 2 more points on the Crysis fps.

So the Celeron isnt doing too badly in the tests above.
I admit it may not do so well in cpu intensive benching but for my needs I was impressed how well it did perform.

I managed to get hold of a well priced Penryn cpu so I have now swopped the Celeron M540 cpu in my Vostro 1500 for a Penryn T9300 2.5Ghz (6meg cache)

3746 3Dmark06 marks
43fps ave in Crysis gpu bench @1440x900 low detail
57fps ave in Crysis gpu bench @ 1024x768 low detail

Overclocked the gpu a tad (gpu 600 memory 500) and
4642 3Dmark06 marks
53fps ave in Crysis gpu bench @1440x900 low detail
72fps ave in crysis gpu bench @ 1024x768 low detail

Running cool under load, well as much load as I can give it. Had to scrape off the nasty sticky heatsink pad dell fit and use Artic silver. Took around an hour to fit, I was being very careful as its a major strip down to get the the cpu in the Vostro.

As I was unable to find a picture of the cpu and gpu heatsink assembly online this may help anyone considering doing the changeover.The gpu sink assembly should be removed before the cpu one as its added last and just traps the cpu sink on the outgoing side of the fan but I was a bit loath to remove it and found I could just about jiggle the cpu sink out from under it, though putting it back was a bit more of a struggle.With hindsight I might take the gpu sink off next time.
There is also to the right of the cpu sink another chip (northbridge?) which has the tail of the cpu sink on it, I didnt replace the pad between the sink and chip but relied on the original going back in exactly the same place. If doing it again I would get some pads so I could replace this one as it did look like it wasnt making very good contact when I removed the sink so chances are its got less of a good contact now with the reused pad.

Microsoft Vista downgrade rights

2008-02-06T06:50:00.000Z

I've set a link up to microsofts page on downgrading rights for those of you with Vista business or Ultimate who may wish to grab a copy of XP pro etc to run on your new pc/laptop for free.

Dell Vostro 2nd hard drive fitting

2008-01-26T22:43:00.000Z

Most 1700 Vostro notebooks seem to be ordered with just one drive so, in order to fit another hard drive you will need to get a few parts from dell first.

Parts required for the second hard drive bay are:

Caddy DLC-C7586

Connector DLC-XK231

Screws caddy to drive and caddy to bay DLC-XC467 & DLC-XC470

Now I just got onto support and told them I had bought a 2nd drive and was unable to fit it as they didnt supply the kit with the machine, they arranged to send me the parts. Quite painless really, you may not be so lucky.

Dell Vostro 1000 9 cell battery detail

2007-10-08T07:24:00.000Z

Lots of wrong info in this battery from Dells pages re the size and if it sticks out the back of the notebook. So here is a picture of the underneth of a Vostro 1000 with the 9 cell battery fitted.

As you can see it takes up no space at the back of the notebook. Sort your info out Dell!

Thanks to Member Spent on www.hotukdeals.com for the picture.

Activate Aero on Vista Home Basic

2007-08-19T10:40:00.000Z

Seems there is now a workround to activate the aero theme on Vista home basic. Be aware that this involves a couple of registry hacks and will not work unless your pc is capable of the task of running Aero.
Link in the sidebar to a site with intructions on how to.

Tomshardware guide to VGA cards

2007-05-03T15:37:00.000Z

I have added a link to this in the sidebar as it gets really confusing trying to figure which card is better than another.

I have been a bit lax in updating the blog for one very good reason, I had nowt to say that would interest anyone!
The costs of pc's and parts keeps dropping and with Google checkout offering £10 off all orders over £30 its a good time to stock up on all those bits you have been meaning to buy. I am having to be very strong to resist the urge to buy all sorts of kit around the £30-40 mark as it would be all too easy to spend spend spend.

Dell dropping the Axim PDA range

2007-05-03T15:26:00.000Z

Read the story http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/11/11397.aspx]

Dell to offer motherboard exchange for XPS700

2007-03-09T21:54:00.000Z

Quote from Dell:

Motherboard exchange at no cost: Later this year, we will offer XPS 700 customers the option to exchange their original motherboard for Dell’s next-generation XPS gaming motherboard. We will make the motherboard and the installation available to these customers at no charge. To streamline the process, all motherboard exchanges will be done by Dell-authorized onsite service technicians.

See the direct to dell link on my sidebar for further info.

Vista Activation cracked

2007-03-05T08:11:00.000Z

Some very clever people have been at work and developed a soft bios that allows any flavour of Vista to be installed and activated on just about any kit you may have.
Also noticed is the tool that allows you to install your oem's logo's and info to a vanilla Vista install.

Seems all is not what MS intended now with Vista.

See my sidebar for a link, just for info of course.

No Fax functions in Vista Premium or Basic !

2007-02-27T21:11:00.000Z

Some editions of the new operating system don't include fax functions, and Microsoft is far from up-front about the matter in marketing materials.

See this link for more

Not much to report this week

2007-02-25T12:00:00.000Z

I have been playing with Vista Premium on my Latitude D620 2.16Ghz core2duo with 2gig of 667meg ram and Nvidia graphics and can say that premium takes longer to fully load than xp and when at idle it hogs 30% of my ram.
Its not given me the wow! got to keep this on my hard drive feeling so I may just revert to xp again for now.

I have added a few sidebar links to mobile graphics and CPU data pages, hope they prove of use to some.

No sign of anyone having recieved their UK Vista upgrade discs yet, should be with us soon now though. I will report here when they start to filter through from Dell.

Dell to supply Vista upgrade driver discs too!

2007-02-13T19:10:00.000Z

From Dell: We expect to begin shipping upgrade kits to customers within the next couple of weeks. In addition to the Vista upgrade, customers will also receive a driver DVD that will contain drivers specific to their system.

You will need that extra disc too unless you want to spend time on the drivers pages getting everything ready beforehand.
For instance the quickset utility installed on Laptops with XP doesnt work well with Vista and doesnt get uninstalled when you upgrade to vista, so you need to uninstall the XP version before starting the upgrade, then install a Vista freindly version after the install of the new OS.
There are a number of other drivers that too need changing to Vista ones.
Good luck!

Upgrade to Vista and keep your XP license

2007-02-02T08:56:00.000Z

With Microsoft's new licensing requirements for Vista, users are required to install a Windows Vista Upgrade from within Windows XP. When this occurs, the Windows XP license is forfeited and the Windows Vista installation process can take place. So no going back to XP if you dont like Vista!
There is a workround now

This workaround allows users to perform a “clean install.” The process is a bit tedious, but is not hard at all to complete. Users have to perform these simple steps to perform a clean install of Vista without a previous version of Windows installed with an upgrade DVD.

Microsoft's internal documentation does explain how to clean install Vista using an Upgrade version. It appears to be more of a workaround than a true clean install, however. Here's what it says.

1. Boot with the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD.

2. Click "Install Now."

3. Do not enter a Product Key When prompted.

4. When prompted, select the Vista product edition that you do have.

6. Install Vista normally.

7. Once the install is complete, restart the DVD-based Setup from within Windows Vista.

Perform an in-place upgrade.

8. Enter your Product Key when prompted.

There's no telling why Microsoft left this loophole wide open with Windows Vista Upgrade DVDs, but this means that any retail upgrade DVD can be used as a fully functioning full retail copy of Vista.
More detailed instruction in my side bar links.

Dell shows off the Vista packages

2007-01-30T11:07:00.000Z

With the exception for some XPS products Dell have today updated the site list of products to the new Vista OS.
The best of these updates can be found over on HUKD pages.

Also available now is the blu ray optical drive as in this model

N02XPS7 - £1,879.00
Intel®Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7600 (2.33 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (incl Operating System Re-Install CD) - English
Premium XPS Service, 2 Year (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support)
17" UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife™
1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x512)
120GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive
Blu-ray Disc DVD+/-RW Optical Drive including software
512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7950 GTX_Blue
9 Cell, 80Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter
Intel® Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g Mini PCI Wireless LAN Card for Core 2 Duo Processors
Microsoft® Works 8.5 - English

Added link to Dells current Vista capable products

2007-01-27T21:38:00.000Z

Take a look at the right useful links sidebar for the list on Dells site.

Dell start to roll out Vista on the home site

2007-01-27T20:36:00.000Z

Dell have today listed 15 ecodes for February using the long awaited Vista operating system. 7 desktop machines and 8 laptops are listed.
Details of what deals are available are on the HotUKdeals forum.

The bell tolls for the Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop

2007-01-23T21:20:00.000Z

Dell have seen fit to remove the anchorman of its laptop lineup this week.

This starter laptop has been around for some time now with options such as 1.7 pentium mobile CPU and 15.4" screen at best and lately with a max of Celeron 1.6 and 14" screen.

I have bought quite a few of these over the period they were available for family and friends, my eldest daughter refuses to swop her one even when offered a later better model.

They have been replaced by Dell with the Inspiron 1501 which is AMD powered and at the moment its priced higher than the 1300 used to be. I have yet to get my hands on one of the 1501's so cant really comment on the use of them but the specs seem fine, just the price that needs adjusting ;-)

Day one of my blog

2007-01-23T09:11:00.002Z

Well here I am at last, I always said I should have a blog but never quite got round to it until now.
I will be using this to write my thoughts for the day and generally comment on whats happening in my life both work wise and at play.

I spend a fair part of any free time on http://www.hotukdeals.com/ forums . Its a very friendly set of forums and if you have not already done so I suggest you take a peek, its free and you are able to browse to your hearts content without having to register, although we would be pleased if you did.