New Dell XPS 15z (L511z) Wireless Card Issues

I couldn't agree with you more that Dell has come out with a mac basher at a very attractive price, especially because I got the same deal you received through the outlet.  I am sad to say, however, there are some major issues that will keep it at a great distance from being what it should be.  The issues I have experienced so far include:  jumping cursor position while typing, no support for many video and audio codecs out of the box, strange BSOD crashing, and the worst, so far, the terrible wireless performance.  This machine downloads at it's best performance at 300mbps (I think that is the way to describe the speed) while my other laptops are 600 to 700mbps.  It doesn't stay connected either so the net result is in reality less than half of the best speed.  I've went to Intel's site and downloaded their latest driver for the wireless chipset, disabled the bluetooth, disabled the n-spectrum, and that seemed to help a little bit.  This is just not right for a "statement" product from a long-standing leader in pcs!!!  While I can't argue with the price I got the machine at I'm beginning to see that the bargain I thought I had snagged was more of a headache and, worst case, money wasted.  I hope to be able to adjust the cursor's software to fix that problem.  I downloaded a codec pack and Media Play Class ic to fix the Windows Media Player's hideous performance, and I'm hopeful Dell is going to step up to the plate and get the proper driver to fix all of the wireless/bluetooth problems.  I've never owned a Mac, but many of the sales reps who call on me do.  I asked a couple if they ever experienced any of these, or other, problems and guess what?  None, not a single one, said they ever even had to downoad anything, a driver or a program, to make their laptops work.  The can even access my wireless network and printers at my business with no drivers or software...Only by me giving them my password!  That's so impressive I won't even try to describe it in words.  Macs work period and all computers should be made to the standard that they work out of the box regardless of cost.  Don't you agree?  You don't want to know how many times while I was typing this I had to manually reposition the cursor and fix words the jumping cursor edited, I stopped counting when I got to 20. 

Now, I love the aesthetics and the screen, I even like the keyboard...But, these problems are simplly inexcusable.  Dell please help us!!!

Finally, you're absolutely right regarding the Blu-Ray drive.  There is a 9.5mm BD-ROM drive and Lenovo has it.  It is not compatible with Dell due to being a tray-loader, but that means there is a manufacturer who can make a 9.5mm drive and I know it could be also manufactured as a slot-load if Dell approached whoever the vendor is with the buying power that the Dell Corporation has.  It seems a gross oversight they didn't demand this as they could have converted so many Mac users who are having to use USB outboard BD drives and who can't get FLASH support.  Just that market alone would generate an extra several thousand units shifted!  Dell, you  have to come out with a slot-loadin BD-ROM for all of us, PLEASE!  We are ready to buy it to retrofit e our machines and I'm sure that when you combine all of us with the number of new units you'll move by offering a BD option you'll be overjoyed by the results.  Dell, please fix our wireless and give us the BD option.  I'll stayed tuned if I don't have to send my laptop back in exasperation.

I agree, these problems are inexcusable. The longer I have this laptop, the more disappointed in it I am. This is the last Dell I will ever purchase, seriously. Dell had a chance to really shine on this one, but not only are there all these problems with the wireless, the keyboard, etc., but now the fan is running the whole time I'm playing a simple Java game online.

Even worse than all these problems, is Dell's reluctance to come clean and recall these laptops, fix the problems and give us what we thought we were buying, but they even seem to be continuing to deny that problems exist.

As I've read this thread and continued responses over the weeks and months since I first posted here, I'm truly amazed that anyone would buy one of these now. Buyer Beware!!!! I'll never forget when I called them about the wireless issues and the person I talked to was completely unhelpful. It looks like that hasn't changed.

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Terry, hello,

Do you know how this issue affects the new 14z laptop?

Thank you very much

I'll unsubscribe now and just watch the RSS feed.

I rang Dell last week about this issue, expecting to get a new wireless card sent out. Instead they changed a few settings. To my surprise, it seems to have actually solved the issue.

I'm sure you all know the drill by now with regards to changing settings (Device Manager -> Intel Centrino 6230 -> Properties). The support agent changed the channel to 11, and also got me to change the channel of my router to the same. Along with this, Roaming Aggressiveness was set to "5. Highest" where previously it was not set to anything.

That's all, and I'm getting normal expected range and speed now, with pings to my router generally around 1ms. There still appears to be a higher than normal packet loss (5% in a quick test), but I couldn't say for sure if that was due to the wireless card. Certainly an improvement on previous occasions where I was getting pings upward of 2000ms sometimes.

I would have thought Roaming Aggressiveness related to how quickly the card would switch to a different access point, but I have no other access points I connect to in range and it is not switching.

Hopefully this will help some of you out there, it has been a very frustrating issue.

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Hi All

I recently bought a dell xps 15 notebook through dell website.

I'm experiencing wifi issues as well, as a matter of fact my centrino 6230 is unexpectedly slower than my eeepc 1201 'atheros' wifi in the same conditions. When I say slower, it's exactly 5x slower! Windows 7 shows a 300mbits connection to the router (while eeepc's is 150mbits) but when downloading files (different websites used), the dell cannot go over 10mbits/s (~1 MB/s) while the eeepc reaches 4,5MB/s.

As other customers here I would not suggest anyone to buy a dell xps. Instead, HP or even asus seems much more reliable.

blueovalfan, can you tell us which speed you reach when downloading your files? the issues are not only regarding service disruption but also with poor download speed compared with specifications.

For speeds (as I have just moved house I thought I'd check out if my internet was slow or it was just this laptop as usual) I have made a couple of graphs showing transition from ethernet to wireless on this laptop

First, from wireless to ethernet:

I guess it's fairly needless to say where the transition point is. This is with the recommended settings applied and wireless N disabled, with my laptop 8m from the router.

Now for ethernet to wireless:

The first (black circled) transition is disconnecting the ethernet with wireless N enabled while 0.5m from the router. This gives quite a high speed. However, the blue region is with my laptop about 8 metres away, in my room with 4 bars signal. Essentially I can either have wireless N enabled and leave my laptop next to the router, have wireless N disabled, leave my laptop in my room but get 1/3rd of my internet's line speed, or leave my laptop connected via ethernet. All poor choices, Dell PLEASE fix this issue, you have had an abundance of time and I am getting pretty fed up with this.

I have had my connection drop twice while writing this message, 1m from router with wireless N enabled.

All with up to date drivers and recommended settings. Pathetic.

At this point maybe going to the media is the only way they will do anything.  We have been waiting forever and they are still pushing these laptops in stores etc.

I know magazines like Maximum PC have watchdog sections where they will go after companies are not standing behind their products/promises.  Maybe we should write them...  I never thought I would suggest that about Dell :(

www.maximumpc.com/.../contact

On average I get about 150Mbps, but often see upto 300Mbps.

I believe this is inline with intel's advertisement for this device (300Mbps).

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/centrino-advanced-n-6230.html

Hi BLUEOVALFAN, thanks for this feedback.

However the speed displayed by windows is quite a poor way to mesure effective network speed. In my case too the speeds are 150 and 300Mbps on my eeepc and dell respectively. Then when downloading "real" files, the eeepc is unexpectedly 4 times faster.

You can peform a wifi download/upload test on http://www.speedtest.net/, ideally with two different computers.

I found something very interesting: when I use my netbook as a wifi transmitter (with "connectify") instead of my router, I get normal download and upload rates!

This means there must be some compatibility issues (or wrong setting?) between the centrino6230 and my routeur, which is basically an ISP routeur (Freebox V6 with a mini PCI Express Marvell 88W8366)

Now begins another story, but I found useful to inform everybody here. If you have another router available (or another computer with wifi), give it a try.

( I remind that windows displays a 300Mbps link to router when the poor download speed occurs)