NEW.. Any and all concerns about the new XPS 435/8000/9000

Update here! Ordered 2 XPS 9000 systems on 10/20/09 with estimated delivery date of 11/16/09.  Status updated this afternoon that both of them have shipped and a new delivery date of 11/12/09!  Finally some movement on them!

My 2 XPS 9000 systems were delivered yesterday on 11/12! 

Got them up and running quickly - they are worth the wait!

Umm. Maybe I'm missing something.  But for those still waiting for their orders.  Why are you NOT cancelling them? After a bit of a fuss from Dell, they cancelled my order.

I don't speak for everyone, but I know the reason I didn't go with another manufacturer.  After reading reviews, comparing specs and prices...the only other Ci7 920 system I considered was the HP Elite.  However, after reading their forums, it appears there is a severe case of the BSOD's with this system.  There seems to be a hardware problem that HP isn't even acknowledging exists.  At least that was the case at the time I placed my order.

So, my only alternative (certainly not my only, but the only I was willing to consider) was building a new system.  This would be my first full build, and I didn't want to risk mistakes on such an expensive system. 

I guess, for me, it boiled down to waiting an extra week or two is better than purchasing a system with a know hardware issue or attempting to build my own and the issues that come with that.  In the end, I kind of made a compromise.  I bought a pretty base model of the XPS 9000 with the intent of upgrading some of the components (memory & GPU) myself down the road, as well as sourcing my own monitor.

Dell has been pretty good about keeping me informed.  I had one delay, but was upgraded to Next Business Day delivery for free.  I just got word the computer is now sitting in it's box at my house and can't wait to get home and get it set up.  Overall, my shipment was received a total of 2 days later than the original estimated delivery date, and took a total of 3 weeks or 15 business days for delivery.  I can't complain too much about that.

As always, your results may vary.

- Pogostick

It seems to be getting worse. I ordered my XPS 8000 System on 24/10/09 the System showed it as in Production almost immediately with an estimated delivery date of 13/11/09. Today (13/11/09) I looked again and found to my horror the estimated delivery date has changed to 01/01/10 which sounds unlikely as it's New Years Day. This leads me to suspect that it isn't actually "in production". Any company that takes 10 weeks to produce a PC would probably go bust.

I have received no reason from Dell why the date was changed. I've emailed them today asking why but unless they give me a clear explanation I'm of a mind to cancel the order.

I had a problem with Dell support about 10 years ago wherebye they failed to turn up to my house three days on the trot so I'm not too hopeful that they will come up trumps this time.

Well yesterday ( 11/13/2009 ) at 1:35 PM CST FedEx delivered my XPS 9000. It was built by DELL with i7-920, 12GB Ram, 1TB Drive and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit.
There were two DELL P2210 LCD's waiting here from my old system along with 2 new Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black drives and a Sapphire Radeon HD5770 video card.  Ordered this system on 10/18/2009 and it is the first new OEM system that I have had in over 10 years. I usually build myself a new system about every other year. But I can say it was well worth the wait. The additional drives are installed but I have not installed the video card yet.

I am a software developer and ordered this system with 12GB of ram so I could take full advantage of Windows Virtual PC within Windows 7. This system is really nice.
We have all compalined about the delays getting our XPS 9000 and maybe I was one of the worst because I have wore DELL out numerous times over the phone and in here too. All I can say is be patient, it will be worth it.

On a side note, someone here on this forum wanted to know how the video card upgrade went after I did it. Well at first I was going to install a Radeon HD5850 in the system, I ordered it and it was backordered too and they would not even give me an estimated shipping date. So knowing that the XPS 9000 has a 475 Watt power supply and the HD 5770 requires a 450 Watt or better and I could actually get a HD5770 in my hand, I decided to play it safe and go with the HD5770. I figured the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment would look pretty good with the HD5770.  Since that is the only thing left to add to my new system, I will let you guys know how that goes.

I know it is very hard to be patient, but please try. It is well worth the wait.   :emotion-2:

Orgbrat

Well yesterday ( 11/13/2009 ) at 1:35 PM CST FedEx delivered my XPS 9000. It was built by DELL with i7-920, 12GB Ram, 1TB Drive and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. There were two DELL P2210 LCD's waiting here from my old system along with 2 new Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black drives and a Sapphire Radeon HD5770 video card.  Ordered this system on 10/18/2009 and it is the first new OEM system that I have had in over 10 years. I usually build myself a new system about every other year. But I can say it was well worth the wait. The additional drives are installed but I have not installed the video card yet. I am a software developer and ordered this system with 12GB of ram so I could take full advantage of Windows Virtual PC within Windows 7. This system is really nice. We have all compalined about the delays getting our XPS 9000 and maybe I was one of the worst because I have wore DELL out numerous times over the phone and in here too. All I can say is be patient, it will be worth it. On a side note, someone here on this forum wanted to know how the video card upgrade went after I did it. Well at first I was going to install a Radeon HD5850 in the system, I ordered it and it was backordered too and they would not even give me an estimated shipping date. So knowing that the XPS 9000 has a 475 Watt power supply and the HD 5770 requires a 450 Watt or better and I could actually get a HD5770 in my hand, I decided to play it safe and go with the HD5770. I figured the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment would look pretty good with the HD5770.  Since that is the only thing left to add to my new system, I will let you guys know how that goes. I know it is very hard to be patient, but please try. It is well worth the wait.   :emotion-2: Orgbrat

I just have question about the 12 gig of ram. My computer now has 6 gig of tri channel. I have a photo business on the side that I do using Adobe CS4, Portrait professional 9 and a couple other editing programs. I shoot about 75% in RAW and then convert to TIFF and sometimes JPEG.

I have a chance to do a trade off  for a 6 gig tri channel kit. That is three 2 gig sticks that will works in  my computer. I would remove the 1 gig sticks I now have in slots 1, 3 and 5 and replace them with the 2 gig sticks. which would give me 9 gig. I was told that I would still have  tri channel that way.

My question is with what I do would that help to add to the memory, or take the money and run?. When doing weddings I may take 750 pictures, cull out the obvious bad ones and end up with about 600 or so for processing. It is very time consuming and every little bit would help.

Thanks

Wayne

Hi Wayne,
          What you are saying should work.  There are only a few things that can really use the amout of memory that we are talking about. Windows Virtual PC and Adobe CS4 are right there at the top. I  normally don't recommend  large amounts of RAM for the average user. I know I am not the average user and  it looks to me as you are not either. I would not hesitate the first bit adding the additional memory in your case. Just make sure it is the correct memory for the machine and that everything matches as it should.

I can tell you that my new machine already has a Windows 7 professional ( 32 Bit ) virtual, a Windows Vista SP1 Business ( 32 Bit ) virtual and the XP Mode ( Windows XP SP3  32 Bit) virtual running inside the Windows 7 Ultimate ( 64 Bit ) host and with 12 GB memory it runs just fine.  Almost as good as my DELL 2900 dual XEON server with 32 GB RAM running Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Orgbart

Thanks for that quick reply. The memory is Kingston PC3 8500, 1066, cas 7,  1.5 v  so according to Newegg and Dell it should work OK. I have used Kingston brand ram before and never had any  problems. It is a trade off for taking family pictures to put on  their Christmas cards, which should take a couple hours so it is a great deal for me.

Thanks again

Wayne

Hi there ~ My one and only concern is static in the headphone jack on top of the machine.  It's not a *dire* concern, because I do have alternatives available, but I was wondering if anyone had found a fix for it. Thanks for starting a new thread, Jon.  Good to "see" you again.  :emotion-5:

Mine has this problem as well.  Can anyone with an XPS 9000 confirm that they don't have this problem?  As reported by others, this background noise from the headphone jack (on the top panel) is like electronic bleed through or crosstalk (electronic buzzing).  For example, just moving the scroll bar on this page causes the noise to change.  You won't hear it if you are listening to loud music, but it's definitely there during a quite passage.  Sound card is a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme.

Another lovely 3AM e-mail from Dell letting me know they STILL haven't shipped my XPS 8000 and the new date is 11/30/09. I've called them a number of times, I never get anything besides "We're sorry." This is amazingly bad. Anyone know why this is taking so long? I'm never buying another Dell after this.

Ordered: 10/23/09

Original Delivery Date: 11/9/09

Postponed 3 times now

New Delivery Date: 11/30/09

At this rate I'll be lucky to have it before Christmas. All hope for using it to make my final projects this semester are gone. Thanks Dell!

The headphone noise is on my system as well with the soundblaster card. All I can think of is that the actual card is not built correctly, perhaps that output is not grounded properly so it picks up the system fan and drive noise as interference. I've just been using the back connectors with no problems. I don't think this will be something Dell can fix.

I was curious if anyone has noticed a high pitched transformer hum coming from their power supply on the tower when it is off. My one system I already have does this, I don't notice any weird performance issues, but I'm a little concerned for the longevity of the power supply. The other issue I noticed is that sometimes my usb hub connected to the back usb port doesn't reconnect if the system hibernates. It's an external belkin unit. Despite those issues, it is still an awesome system for the price I paid. I have the 2.66 GHz, 6 GB of tri-channel memory, 750 GB hardrive, SoundBlaster X-fi and Nvidia 260 GTX.

My order update: I see that it shipped on my order details, but for whatever reason I am not able to see the tracking info...it just says temporarily unavailable. I also did not receive an email as promised when the system shipped. I guess this is because these are replacement systems. But still i think Dell should update their system to accommodate for this. I had a little bit of frustration trying to get  the tracking numbers from Dell. I called in and was given 4 numbers even though I am only expecting 2 systems. 2 of the tracking numbers I immediately wrote off as dead since they never made it past the initial scan stage. The other 2 were active and in route to fedex but one of them showed delivery out of my state. I verified this with fedex. Dell reps told me I needed t wait until the package was delivered before they could investigate despite fedex confirming the package was not mine. With no further help from Dell, I called fedex one more time and explained that I was given a bad tracking number for one of my packages and asked if they could search for another package coming to my house today. Their customer service rep located the correct tracking number and confirmed I will be received two packages today. The last two digits of the tracking number were off by 10...one was 940 and the other 950...so if this happens to you try tracking a number slightly different than the one you have.

"I was curious if anyone has noticed a high pitched transformer hum coming from their power supply on the tower when it is off."

Yes, I hear it, and others here have noted that.  The power-supply is the new type (can't recall acronym) that is required in Europe, but used on all Dells now.  Essentially, there is an additional "layer" of electronics that switches from 60 cycles to a higher frequency, wrapped around the original design switching power-supply. It is not very loud.  Age (high-frequency hearing loss occurs in the older) and proximity are factors in being able to hear it. 

Apparently, this additional "layer" is always on, in the bargain-basement power-supply that Dell provides on the 9000 (which doesn't play nice with consumer-grade UPS units).

[quote user="margilowry"] Hi there ~ My one and only concern is static in the headphone jack on top of the machine.  It's not a *dire* concern, because I do have alternatives available, but I was wondering if anyone had found a fix for it. Thanks for starting a new thread, Jon.  Good to "see" you again.  :emotion-5:

Mine has this problem as well.  Can anyone with an XPS 9000 confirm that they don't have this problem?  As reported by others, this background noise from the headphone jack (on the top panel) is like electronic bleed through or crosstalk (electronic buzzing).  For example, just moving the scroll bar on this page causes the noise to change.  You won't hear it if you are listening to loud music, but it's definitely there during a quite passage.  Sound card is a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme.

Hi: I'm in the midst of working through the static/crosstalk problem with Dell/QualEx and will post whether it gets resolved, as well as how. The problem is real and as a recording musician, unacceptable to me. Here's the story so far.

I experienced many of the same delivery and customer support problems other forum members have posted, including being directed to India multiple times even though I paid for My Team support in US. But since bashing Dell here does nothing to help get problems resolved I'll stick to the facts.

I purchased my 435t around Labor Day during an Dell Sale that reduced the price of the configuration I wanted by more than 20%. When it arrived about a month later I left it in the box and ordered my free Windows 7 Upgrade. Once I received the upgrade in early November I fired up the 435t, went through the Vista and Norton Internet Security installs, and created my System Backup disks. I installed nothing else thinking that this would allow the simplest upgrade path to Windows 7. I then iniated the upgrade to Windows 7, which was almost flawless. Near the end of the process I ran into problems with Norton Internet Security and with the Creative X-fi Xtreme Audio card. 

The installed Norton version was incompatible with Windows 7 Home Premium. The solution to this problem was a free download from Symantec of the latest version of Norton Internet Security and complete de/re-install. I was thrilled to see that my 3 year license survived this process.

I experienced two sound-related problems. First, the Creative Automated SW update application would cause a BSOD when launched, and second, listening via my headphones I heard the static/crosstalk that Margi and Terry have each described. Elsewhere in these forums it was suggested that there were incompatibilities between the Creative X-fi cards and the tower-top I/O capabilities. I followed a recommendation and installed the latest RealTek Card Reader USB 2.0 drivers. This helped only partially as the Creative Automated SW Update application no longer caused a BSOD. Now it would run for a bit and eventually respond that no Creative products were found in my system! To be clear, I did get sound both through my speakers and my headphones but it was a bit distorted due to the static.

At this I point I decided to invoke my in home service contract. Dell agreed to ship both a new Creative X-fi card and a new motherboard and to open a ticket for a QualEx service rep to install them. He came today and immediately identified that Dell had sent the wrong motherboard. I then gave him my headphones so he could hear the static problem, which happily, he did. He swapped out the X-fi card and now there is no static.... however, that is probably because there is no longer any sound coming through the tower-top headphone jack!!! We successfully ran the Creative Automated SW Update and installed a new driver and updated applications for the card, but to no avail. The sound is fine through my speakers but I'm unable to use headphones plugged into that top jack.

So we called Dell and now have another X-fi card, a new motherboard and a new tower-top I/0 panel coming next week.  I'll post again after those are installed.

Regards,

Howard

For those interested...

My Studio XPS 8000 has shipped.

Order Date:  11/13

Original Delivery ETA:  12/04

But FedEx picked it up this morning according to the shipment email I received from Dell.

For those interested... My Studio XPS 8000 has shipped. Order Date:  11/13 Original Delivery ETA:  12/04 But FedEx picked it up this morning according to the shipment email I received from Dell.

i ordered mine on 10/21..been delayed 4 times to 12/3...GREAAAAT what makes you so special?!