Opinion on new Dell XPS m1330 webcam, poor audio, slow, overall opinion-bought June 2008 Vista

Web Cam-Terrible:Better frame rates in better light though, but still sub-par performance.

Audio: Also such lousy speakers in my new (June 08) XPS 1530. Like an old transistor radio if you are old enough to remember those. No bass, too much treble. Tiny speakers. Saw them when tech replaced my LCD which was broken on delivery. Took him 3.5 hours to replace. A lot of wires and tight fits.

LanTray icon: I get a red X for 60 seconds on the network icon in System Tray but can still surf wired or wirelessly. After 60 seconds, red X goes away. Plugging in Ethernet makes no difference on Red X. Who knows. Also records some error regarding the Broadcom mini card 1395 (I think) adapter not being able to find a certain file specified. But others have reported this with no problem or resolution. You find this error in Event Log under System.

Vista slow-have tweaked everything I know and read about. May try a dual boot back to Windows XP and hope everything works including portable small IR Remote Control for Video/Audio, webcam, etc.. Tweaked services, paging, TCP/IP connections, write cache, advanced caching, eliminated some tasks from the onerous task scheduler, and on and on..... But sure there are more....

Media Center Direct: Supposed to press Media Center button and have it not boot into Vista but be able to play DVD's/CD's. Not a big issue for me but it does not work. Perhaps I have an incorrect BIOS setting or form what I read per Dell: If you have more than one account, Guest or other, and an Admin account requiring a password (like I have) then it will boot into Vista first. Others told me this is not true, but this is what I have experienced on my machine and what I read.
I have all the latest drivers.


Open to comment suggestions, tweaks,etc...

Sincerely
Peter

Hi!! There are loads of tweaks you can give Vista. A book called "Hacking Windows Vista" is loaded with all kinds of helpfuls. Kemical has a list of top tweaks somewhere, check files. I have an HP DV6449 Notebook, I've had some problems. The sound is great and the picture quality is excellent -HDTV. My web-cam tests weren't so bad in a dark room- nothing to rave about- OK. (Vista is slower- the price for beautiful pictures) You might want to do a comparison: Test say a Voodoo, compare it to Dell price wise. I don't have as much Media Problems as most people- I did lose my audio, but I fixed it accidently when I returned to factory settings to cure another problem.

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Celestra