Chipset limitations also mean the 10 second mark is all but unattainable. Perhaps 30 secs would be more realistic.

Some RPGs require good CPUs too. The upcoming Dragon Age would be a good example.

15 secs to boot and become fully usable? Now that's almost unbelievably fast.

IIRC that is only applicable to the Pro and Ultimate versions.

This post has been edited by Loki[D.d.G]: Oct 6 2009, 06:35 PM

When did you purchase your laptop?

I'm not sure if you are eligible or not, but you can always try to register for the upgrade here.

Then you can't upgrade. Dell has never offered Win 7 upgrades with Home Basic versions of Vista. In fact, there wont even be a Home Basic Win 7.

I thought the Home Basic version of 7 was renamed Starter or something and can only be had from OEMs?

Which is exactly what I said lol.

@Above;
Dell PCs usually ship with plenty of unnecessary programs that will bog your system down. It's sometimes recommended to either disable them form starting up via msconfig to save you the resources, or remove them altogether via a clean install of your OS.

The 4570 isn't powerful enough to run most current games at 1600x900. So, it'll be a waste to upgrade the screen. Get a 9 cell battery instead.

The GPU used by the Studio 15 will bottleneck your gaming performance far sooner than any C2D or i7. If you have the budget to shell out RM4k for the i7 version of the Studio 15, then why not consider upgrading to a SXPS 16? Better GPU means better gaming performance.

Unless you are running either a single core processor, a low clocked Atom or some kind of faulty dual core, rarely will you see a CPU bottlenecking a game's performance. However, if you run programming or video encoding software, the i7 will be a big boost. Just don't expect it to give your games that much more FPS.

I think you'll have to sort it out with customer service. Most likely you'll have to reship it back to them.

In terms of software, or rather bloatware, why not see to removing some or all of it? You could also tweak some settings with msconfig and stop unnecessary programs from running when Windows first launches.

Also removing the battery when you are plugged in is a stellar idea. Batteries only have a limited life cycle with just so many charges and discharges until it becomes very inefficient.

LOL! I'm flattered.

Well when it comes to removing bloatware, the most effective, or fail-safe way to get rid of all of them is to do a clean install of Windows. For that, I'd look through the Dell manual if I were you. They usually give a detailed walkthrough on troubleshooting methods that involve reformatting your OS/HDD.

As for msconfig, I think it's better you leave it alone if you don't know what you are doing. Don't want to be accidentally messing up a brand new system now, do we?

IIRC Dell doesn't charge shipping for their Win 7 upgrade program.

To remove bloatware and improve performance by freeing up resources that would otherwise be taken up by said bloatware.

The TurboBoost feature is a staple for all Clarksfield CPUs. So, yes, both i7s in the Alienware and Studio 15 can automatically OC itself.

How can they "lock" it when Intel has pre-built that function into all of their i7 chips? I'm sure doing so will violate some kind of trade agreement or another.

So far, when speaking about games with HT optimization, only one comes to mind. So, almost all games in general would be likely to perform better with a high clocked dual core than an i7 ceteris paribus.

Yeah, that's really odd. Dell usually ships all their systems complete with OS and driver discs. Heck they even provide backup discs for all those darn bloatware.