Apr 15, 2012

Dell XT3 - Windows

As I use the XT3 mostly at work (and for work) I'm in Windows a lot. I have high hopes for Windows 8 on the XT3 as it has a nice Touch-Screen. But for now Windows 7 is what I have to use.

Right after I got it I did a clean install of the Windows 7 (+SP1) version that came with it. After the installation almost nothing works out of the box on this Laptop. Luckily it also comes with a separate drivers disc with dozens of drivers on it. Did I mention that the XT3 doesn't have a DVD drive but comes with discs for all the software? Funny ...

Installation of Windows (+all updates) and Drivers took me about 3-4 hours (constant restarting :/ ). After that, I installed all the software I usually need for work like MS Office, Visual Studio and Expression Studio. All went pretty well and after about 8+ hours I was done with a basic installation. Right now it boots in about 20 seconds to the login screen. This feels pretty fast compared to my old work PC which used like 5 minutes.

As mentioned in my last post about the hardware I did get it to a point where the graphics did start to lag a bit while dragging things around. Sandy Bridge processors aren't known for great graphics. So this laptop isn't good for playing games. But that's not what I use it for anyway. All in all I'm pretty satisfied with it so far, it's a good, fast machine to code on ...

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