Another Studio latency thread...

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I'd say that Dell got away with it because not enough people who bought those laptops returned them for refunds within the 21 day return period. Those who kept the laptops took ownership of the problem instead of forcing Dell to own it.

Of course that is easy to say now but it was not so apparent at the time. I have tried to take a lesson from the fiasco and now remind folks from time to time that if they receive a new laptop with audio problems out of the box, to consider returning it instead of hoping that a future fix will be forthcoming.

PS that is a remarkable screen shot.

Hi Jim!

Yes, in hindsight anyone who bought one of these new should certainly have returned it. I, however, bought my laptop 2nd hand and as such have absolutely no grounds to complain! :emotion-1:

I'm merely raising the discussion because I find it audacious that a company with a relatively good reputation, such as Dell, could basically sweep this under the carpet and leave so many people with an effectively useless machine. I would like a representative from Dell to reply here and explain why the issue was never rectified. I've read the other threads related to this and saw the efforts that were made by Dell to right the wrong. Then they just gave up. 

Surely any company manufacturing a product would be ashamed to have their name on something that was produced which such a major flaw. I know morality and corporations don't go hand in hand but come on, this is just not acceptable. 

this is just not acceptable.

The original owner was a Dell customer and had recourse to be made whole by Dell but failed to take advantage of it. It's decent of you to be concerned on behalf of Dell's customers, but if you find the problems with the laptop to be unacceptable then you should discuss it with the person from you bought it, because you are that person's customer.

I would like a representative from Dell to reply here and explain why the issue was never rectified.

I've read the other threads related to this and saw the efforts that were made by Dell to right the wrong. Then they just gave up.

This was all explained at the time to the extent that it was explainable. The Studio DPC Latency thread is 30 pages long and was fully participated in by a Dell liaison, and if that is too much to read through I summarized the whole thing in this thread . If you saw that you might have noticed that it was marked "verified answer" by Dell. That probably about sealed it from Dell's point of view, because, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything new to add. The history is that the Dell engineers tried for a year to fix it but couldn't, and gave up which was an unsatisfactory but sane thing to do. But then Dell did not offer refunds or exchanges which is where it let its customers down. There is a reason for that, but to expect Dell or any corporation to admit to it publicly is whimsical, and after all why state the obvious?

Having said that, Dell does offer you free driver downloads and this support forum where you can get free help with your issue. If the only problem with your laptop is the historical DPC latency issue, you have remedies to make your machine useable. Look at my post for a summary of the remedies, and then go to the Studio DPC Latency thread for particulars of the acpi disable workaround as provided by DJ Quartz. Some people had luck with Vista, but XP seems to be the best OS for applying the fixes. Note that in the end DJ Quartz was not having to use workarounds at all (page 29).

However with the excessive DPC latency that is shown in your screen shot, I believe that you have additional problems. That amount of latency was not typical of those with the historical issue. There are other reasons for excessive DPC latency than just the historical issue, and one machine can have multiple causes.

The fact is that the issue was unresolved and was dropped like a hot potato.

That's not true.

Jim

My latency has actually improved over the last number of days, 118 Vista updates have been applied and that may have gone some way towards helping the issue. I'm away at the moment so can't provide a screenshot but I'll do so after the weekend. If I recall correctly the max spike was around the 1600 mark and every 3 seconds or so. The audio improved markedly and I was able to watch youtube videos with little interruption. 

Believe me I understand the entire situation and have read the relevant threads. Just because a thread was marked as a verified answer doesn't make it an acceptable answer. The fact is that the issue was unresolved and was dropped like a hot potato. 

I don't agree with your observation that after a year of failure in resolving the issue that the sane thing to do was to give up and forget about it. Let's not have any pity for Dell here, they should have worked on it for as long as it took to resolve the issue. 

I would also like to make something clear; I'm not looking for any kind of "money back" or "replacement laptop" here. A bios or driver fix would be great. And if any kind of hardware replacement was deemed necessary I'd be glad to pay for an upgrade. Basically I want a solution of some description no matter the cost rather than this attitude of "we messed up, we can't offer a solution, enjoy your flawed laptop". 

It's frustrating to have a potentially fantastic computer and knowing that there is just no solution at all for this issue. 

Can you elaborate on that Jim? If there is some kind of resolution to the issue I'd love to know what it is.

The expression "dropped like a hot potato" implies immediacy. If they worked on it for over a year then they obviously did not drop it immediately and is false to say so.

There are workaround solutions if you insist on owning that paper weight.

Fair enough, bad choice of words, but you understood what was implied. They worked on it and gave up. 

That is simply not good enough. Some hardware or software fix should have been made available no matter how much effort was required. 

Workarounds all have their own limitations. While they can resolve the issue, it is at some other cost. 

Jim, you seem to be sick to death of this topic and I can understand that, but for people to just sit back and say "oh well, let's just forget about it" is exactly the attitude that allows these situations to arise in the first place.

Dell should have been put under pressure to resolve this issue long ago. It may now be too late but I'd still like to speak to a representative so that they can tell me exactly why it was deemed a reasonable course of action to give up on the issue and to leave those who put faith in a resolution by not returning the machine up the proverbial creek without a paddle.