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Tópico: New Dell Studio line of laptops - Page: 1

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Mensajes Sat 12 Jul 08 @ 1:46 pm
uuuhhhh they look like dells .....you won't find much enthusiasm for dells here....

if you have to get one get 2 or 3 gig ram , not a 1 gig model ......

when you get it home hook up yer sound card , see how it performs and then start your tweaking process ...probably will take you a day or 2 or 3 to get all running right
 
Good luck my motto DELL=HELL. Every single stupid dell I work on cant do crap with vdj.
 
Weird???

Been using my Dell Inspiron 6000 for months doing full video with shared graphics.
Have used this same Dell for over 3 years for all my (audio only) gigs.
 
I work for more then 10 years with Dell no problemos.
 
I just bought a 15" studio 3 days ago. Works flawlessly with VDJ, I ran the demo on it at work 1 night to try it out. Now I wasn't doing video but the audio and search and what not on the program worked without hiccup. I even used the built in dell dual headphone output for mixing, without a second soundcard or multichannel card and it worked great.
 
Well, didn't get any fruitfull feedback from this forum, so, looks like I'm gonna be the ginea pig!

Ordered the Studio 15 with T8300 processor (2.4GHz), 4Gigs RAM, 320Gig HD and Vista SP1 Home Premium (32bit), 256Mb ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 video card.

Take delivery on or before 27th of August. I am a professional DJ and have 2 nightclub residencies totalling 11 hours every weekend (all video) and you will be the first to know whether its up to scratch or not!

http://www.myspace.com/lesscurr
 
Hope you didn't pay extra for the 4th gig, 32 bit can only use up to 3 gig. to utilize the 4gig you need vista 64 bit (that what everybody has told me anyway)
 
dj-e-lectric wrote :
Hope you didn't pay extra for the 4th gig, 32 bit can only use up to 3 gig. to utilize the 4gig you need vista 64 bit (that what everybody has told me anyway)

Nah, you've been fed duff info, the original Vista 32bit couldn't see 4Gbs.

Vista 32bit with Service Pack 1 can read 4Gb memory. :-)

Check my specs ---> laptop supplied with Vista SP1 Home Premium (32bit)
 
I used a Dell for years. My son has one that I wouldn't hesitate to use and it's 4 years old. I like em. : )
 
DJSoulman wrote :
Nah, you've been fed duff info, the original Vista 32bit couldn't see 4Gbs.

Vista 32bit with Service Pack 1 can read 4Gb memory. :-)

Check my specs ---> laptop supplied with Vista SP1 Home Premium (32bit)


Actually, you've been fed duff info. Vista SP1 will recognise that you have 4Gb installed, but still cannot address it all properly unless you are running a 64-bit version. There is a kludge however...

Microsoft wrote :
"With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS. Therefore 32-bit systems equipped with 4GB of RAM will report all 4BG in many places throughout the OS, such as the System Control Panel. However, this behavior is dependent on having a compatible BIOS, so not all users may notice this change", Microsoft revealed.

All the 32-bit editions of Vista can handle up to 4 GB of RAM, by default, but address much less, a half a GB less, for that matter. Vista Starter is an exception to this rule as it provides support for a total of 1 GB of RAM. There is a way to force Vista to address more than 4 GB of RAM for the 32-bit editions, and it involves the Physical Address Extensions. Otherwise users should look to the 64-bit editions of Vista. x64 Vista Home Basic can go as high as 8 GB of RAM, x64 Home Premium to 16 GB and the Business, Enterprise and Ultimate can manage up to 128 GB of system memory.


Doug Cook wrote :
"The consumer versions of 32-bit Windows XP and Vista have a stated limit of 4 GB RAM, but a practical limit of about 3.1 GB. [And] PAE doesn’t do anything to the virtual memory limit. Pointers are still 32 bits, so a process can only access 4 GB of address space at a time. However, using PAE, two or more processes could each access a different 4 GB of physical memory. With proper operating system support (i.e. AWE on Windows operating systems) PAE also allows a process to allocate additional memory outside its normal address space, then swap portions of that additional memory into its address space as needed. Another hardware limitation [in addition to the motherboard wiring] is the ability of the chipset to remap RAM. If you have 4 GB of RAM, and 600 MB of address space is used up by PCI/AGP reserved areas, the only way to access the top 600 MB of RAM is to remap it into the addresses above the 4 GB boundary. Not all chipsets are able to do this, so some systems will just waste any RAM that happens to be shadowed by a PCI/AGP reserved region," revealed Doug Cook, a member of the Microsoft Platform Builder ("PB") IDE team.

"Windows XP originally supported a full 4 GB of RAM. You would be limited to 3.1-3.5 GB without PAE, but if you enabled PAE on a 4 GB system with proper chipset and motherboard support, you would have access to the full 4 GB. As more people began to take advantage of this feature using commodity (read: cheapest product with the features I want) hardware, Microsoft noticed a new source of crashes and blue screens. These were traced to drivers failing to correctly handle 64-bit physical addresses. A decision was made to improve system stability at a cost of possibly wasting memory. XP SP2 introduced a change such that only the bottom 32 bits of physical memory will ever be used, even if that means some memory will not be used. (This is also the case with 32-bit editions of Vista.) While this is annoying to those who want that little bit of extra oomph, and while I would have liked a way to re-enable the memory "at my own risk", this is probably the right decision for 99.9% of the general population of Windows users," Cook added.


My current gig machine is a Dell XPS M1730....

Regards,

Scott
 
Vista SP1 has only updates Vista to show 4gb Ram is installed in the machine. It can't actually use the 4 gig. The extra gig may be used by some hardware.

Gary
 
Djsoulman

Sent u an add friend on myspace.. as Vj Wiz
 
SBDJ wrote :
Actually, you've been fed duff info. Vista SP1 will recognise that you have 4Gb installed, but still cannot address it all properly unless you are running a 64-bit version. There is a kludge however...

Bugger! Ah well, it only cost an extra £20 for the extra gig of RAM. Lying salesmen eh?

As long as the Video graphics are OK that's what matters with VDJ.

Was concerned about lack of drivers for the 64bit version, so, stuck with the 32bit version. Haven't any experience with Vista yet, but figure we're all gonna have to get used to it sooner or later.

Thanks for the info.
 
I use a dell Inspiron laptop thats over a year old. 2 gig ram and 256mb ATI video card. Had some initial problems but once i got all the right settings I havent had a crash. As long as you go core2, 2 gig and 256+ video you should be ok with most notebooks but its always a good idea to have a try before you buy clause.

 
If im gonna get a new laptop for audio, i wouldnt want no media card reader, blue tooth, no web camera, and 256 mb video card. a 128mb would be fine. anything that would not slow down the computer and no usb drop outs.
 
Having a media card reader can be handy for quickly adding photos to your displays. Turning off most unused features in control panel is a good idea though. Unless you use wireless networking then disable it and also dont have any virus scanners operating
 
Initial report;

OK got my new toy on Tuesday. Installed VDJ, connected my 500Gb HD to try out the videos (this was direct out of the box with no tweaks). 15 seconds in and had a major freeze, then tried several videos and had random freezes anywhere up to 40 seconds in. Didn't have time to mess with it so left it feeling a bit disappointed.

Wednesday started messing around again. Had problems installing the AK1 drivers but eventually got them sorted. Thinking about the freezes I realized that it was Video AND audio freezing. Which meant it was more likely the operating system than the video card. So spent several hours under the hood tweaking and tinkering trimming off all the fat. Had a minor problem with the sound clicking and popping, with a bit more hammering and sawing got that sorted. I now have the system working flawlessly, works great!!!

Couple of things;

I hadn't realised there is no S-Video on this laptop. It has an HDMI socket and VGA socket. Luckily I have a PC to TV convertor box that plugs into the VGA socket.

One disappointment, I was expecting the keyboard to be backlit, it is not. I think it is an option that I hadn't asked for. Nevermind, it's no big deal.

Still got work to do i.e. installing extra plugins, sorting Sonique, tweaking and loading up the Clipbanks, etc. Will look into changing my VOB files for AVIs so that I can sqeeze everything onto the internal hard drive if its possible.

More later.
 
DJSoulman,
We have had a similiar conversation about Dells and Vista before. What tweaks did you do to Vista to get it working with VDJ?

As I've stated here before a few times I also recently purchased a Dell Studio 1535. So I want to get up and running ASAP, after it's delivery. I've read about Vista optimization here and in other sites. I started a thread compiling different links that are Vista optimization related.

The one thing someone suggested was not getting too crazy with optimization. They suggested disabling UAC and Defender first and sticking with just that at first. Then monitor performance.

Again, if you get a chance please post in this thread or in the Vista Optimization thread the tweaks you performed on your Dell to get it rockin' with VDJ.

Thank you and salutations.
Chris

 
djchris73 wrote :
DJSoulman,
What tweaks did you do to Vista to get it working with VDJ?


These are the sites I used for optimising Vista;

This was the main one I used for most tweaks;
http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php

I also picked up a few extra tips from this site;
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2238

Did NOT shut down any services.

OK, now for a report of what happened over the weekends gigs (sorry if its a bit long, just want to give as much detail as possible);
Friday night (4 hour gig)
Everything went great for 3 hours 40 minutes, smooth video transitions, no freezes, great until..........

.......I started getting flickering lines on the screen, video output on large LCDs was OK. I always have a mixed CD running permanently on constant loop all night and have done for 6 1/2 years of using laptops. The laptop screen started flickering worse and started jumping too, sound output and external screens were still OK. Then I completely lost the laptop screen and the external screens. The sound continued without any hiccups for about 30 seconds then the laptop shut down completely! Threw the fader up for the CD player and decided to quickly re-configure the laptop wiring as I had a good idea that this was a heat issue I had seen before on my previous laptop 4 months ago (caused when I first used the PC to TV convertor plugged into the USB port for power, had S-Video on that laptop so didn't need the convertor).

The cause of this is I suspect was too much USB powered equipment attached to the laptop;
USB powered;
NI AK1 soundcard
Logitek infra-red mouse
Akasa Cooling Plate
PC to TV convertor <---- main culprit

Mains powered;
Maxtor One Touch 500Gb USB HD
Vestax VCI-100

A few weeks ago I purchased a powered USB 2.0 Hub which is mains powered. I connected the Akasa Cooling Plate and the PC to TV convertor box to the Hub for power only, the Hub was NOT conected to the computer as these 2 items did not need data. Then fired up the laptop which started normally. It was so late in the night I called 'Last Orders' while the CD was still playing, I then finished the last 15 minutes of the night with the laptop.

Saturday Night (4 1/2 hour gig)
Decided this would be my new way of wiring up the laptop as in the previous paragraph, worked great.
A few hours into the gig the cursor started randomly flying across the screen on occasion. It went completely off the screen at around 4 hours. I had to move the mouse all over the place to get it back, however, when it came back it was not a pointer but a vertical line of about the height of 4 lines of text with dots along its length. Could still select items but it was very difficult cos I didn't know where the pointer was. Got it back to its proper pointer by moving it off to the right hand side of the screen (extended desktop) as far as it will go then bring it back. Very strange behaviour, I suspect it's a glitch in Vista.

Also at the end of the night when I shut down VirtualDJ I got a blank screen for around 10-15 seconds before the Desktop appeared.

Sunday Night (2 1/2 hour gig)
Everything went smoothly until 2 hours in, the same cursor behaviour happened. Got it back by moving the mouse as far right as it would go then bringing it back. No other problems, the program shut down normally. Started to feel comfortable with the laptop now.

Gonna try and find out why the cursor is having this strange behaviour, virus check and ads should be looked for. Although this laptop was only connected to the net for a very short time to download and install Vista Updates, VirtualDJ and Traktor. Looks like I'm keeping the laptop as its great for Video. I even tried using the built in webcam and put myself up on the output screens introducing the next tune!!! Instant 'live' TV!!! Thats one way of getting the customers out at the end of the night :-)
 
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