Dell £339 Laptop 15.4" widescreen, wireless, DVDRW (NOW GONE - that's all folks!)

Browntoa

Cat72 wrote:

Hey hope someone can help me. I got this laptop when the offer first came out and have been using it great.Only problem is all this annoying stuff from dell keeps popping up about updaes, startup cleaning etc. Really interferring.I dont want to do a system retore as it took me a while to set up the internet access so how can i get rid of the dell tosh. Not sure what programs to delete to free up space and how to stop these annoying "helpfull pop ups ".Thanks- i have the usuall stuff corel draw, roxo blah blah that came with the machines and want to stop that taking up ram.

uninstall

1) AOL
2) Tiscali
3)Wanadoo
4) Corel (it's only a 60 day trial and if you have a camera then you will have photo software on disk)
5) Mcaffee (30 day trial and AVG ,Sygate and Windows Bitdefender will do the same job for free

6) possibly Microsoft Works as it's not even got word on it (replace with open office which is free and compatable with Microsoft office)

you may get an error message about Sonic updates asking for a disk but I have posted a fix for that on the techie section, download the patch and that will stop

download and run crapcleaner from www.ccleaner.com, let it remove all the temp files etc it finds and then go to the "issues" button (blue square) and run that to clean the registry (you will need to kepp running and fixing issues until it's clean

finish with a disk defrag and bob's your uncle !!

done that to mine and it runs a treat and no annoying messages

competitionscafe

Browntoa wrote:

4) Corel (it's only a 60 day trial and if you have a camera then you will have photo software on disk)

Another good photo software alternative is Picasa (which is free) from:
http://picasa.google.co.uk/

Timmy

Someone mentioned this earlier in the thread so I thought I'd give a a try.

I phoned customer services to ask about the possibilty of returning my laptop. They said no problem and would collect it free of charge or offered me £25 to keep it as a gesture of goodwill!

They didn't even ask me why I didn't want it but I had called the day before with a problem they couldn't solve so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. It was a bit of a pain trying to get through to the right department but worth it in the end!

Kilty_2

J400uk wrote:

and the fan keeps coming on for some unknown reason.

My 1300 does that too, I believe that it is the nature of the Pentium/Celeron M processors to have the fan come on at intervals when required, as opposed to the older Celerons where the fan must run constantly.

Kilty_2

smsmasters wrote:

It's best to just reinstall from scratch. Email dell and ask them for the windows xp home sp2 cd + any other cds required. They are sending me the whole lot of cds for free.

Do you have an e-mail address for them where I can do this?

Dont really want to brave the call centre

smsmasters

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/emailcustomercare/emea/index.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen

"Thank You" button please.

osagefo

A new offer is back on, slightly different package but still at a competitive price.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=187796

beautifulgorgeous_2

vjain wrote:

The RAM is simple to fit. You open the small flap under the computer. You will find the existing piece of RAM in 1 slot and there will be 1 empty slot. In the empty slot slide the new/extra piece of RAM in until it clicks and then close the back flap. Reboot and voila your laptop will recognise the extra RAM!

It works!!!!!! Many thanks Mary

Lorian

J400uk wrote:

It picked up my wireless network straight away.

I trust is asked you for your WEP/WPA key first?

I installed setup one of these 1300's for someone this weekend. It's pretty good for the money.

Browntoa is spot on with his list of "junk" to remove. I can't believe they put so much crap on a new PC.

The only think I didn't like about the laptop is it doesn't have a "nipple" but the control panel for the touch pad has lots of options to make it more friendly, like acceleration, and "corner clicks shortcuts".

magicplastic

When playing back DVD's on my Inspiron 1300 15" Widescreen, the video is not full screen - there is a very large gap both at the top and the sides of the screen.

I understand that the image will only be as large as the aspect ratio allows - but surely this should only stop when either the top or side of the image meets the edge of the screen.

I have tried the dell DVD player, Windows media player and cyberlink power DVD.

Thanks