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- Date:
- Friday , December 16, 2005
- Author:
- Brian Boyko
- Editor:
- Chris Morley
- Google +1
Dell Dimension XPS 400 Evaluation
Dell's new "XPS Experience" includes bloatware bogging down your system and causing all sorts of gaming problems. Is Dell's support able to undo their mess and actually deliver the gaming system you bought?
Part I - Product Overview: System Build and First Impressions
Monitor and Speakers
The 2.1 audio speakers and monitors are both custom Dell branded. The speakers are silver metallic in a distinctive octagon shape.
The monitor was easily set up, protected by a plastic cover that showed the native monitor resolution in pictograms designed to be understood by archeologists thousands of years in the future who may have evolved in a world where all the languages of our era are as dead as Ancient Macedonian.
New BTX Format
The XPS 400 chassis is notable for two reasons: First, it’s a BTX case that opens up on the right side, not the left like most ATX solutions. Second, one of the ways the case gets ventilation is through a two inch “gap” right behind the faceplate that’s just large enough to get my hand stuck in. (Kids, do not try this at home. I’m a computer evaluation expert.)
There are two USB 2.0 and headphone/microphone connectors in the front and five USB 2.0 connectors in the back. The computer also had 5.1 audio connections, a modem, and an RJ-45 connector in the back. We did not see any FireWire connections.
On the top of the case was a Dell service tag with the numbers you can provide to Dell tech support if you need service.
Tightly Packed
Inside the case, it’s very tight with very little wasted space, so, (unless you have a small child that you’re willing to trust with your computer’s innards,) it might be tough, but not impossible, to upgrade or repair the machine. On the other hand, what percentage of Dell’s target market puts their hands inside the computer to make upgrades?
Looking inside, almost immediately you can see one of the advantages of the BTX form factor. Instead of placing a fan on top of a heat sink, which just recycles hot air from inside the chassis, the CPU fan is adjacent to the heat sink, directly between the vent and the CPU heat sink, bringing in cold air directly from the outside, over the CPU heat sink, over the motherboard chipset, and then out the back.
There’s also a smaller 80mm fan over the hard drives adjacent to another vent in the faceplate.
There was not a lot of room for upgrades – while there was room for a second hard drive and two free RAM slots, you only have two PCI slots in the computer (one of which was occupied by the modem) 2 free 3.25” external bays and no free 5.25” bays with the two drives installed. Since the only way you can order a DVD-RW drive from Dell is with either a CD-RW drive or a DVD-ROM drive, chances are both those bays will be occupied on most configurations. There isn’t much room at all for upgradeability in this computer.
Even though it doesn’t look particularly impressive, cabling was strung mostly out of the way and kept from snaking around inside the chassis, including one SATA cable that snakes around the heat sink and across the top of the chassis until it finally finds the SATA connection on the other side of the motherboard.
Finally, the 375 W PSU provides 18 amps on the +12V rail – although we had to get really close to the power supply in order to read its teeny-tiny text.
First Boot
Dell uses a custom bios which didn’t offer many options. Settings were limited to the very basics – you wouldn’t be able to overclock the processor by going into the bios. The Dell BIOS did go further than most to explain some of the settings, which is most welcome.
On the first boot, the computer goes into the standard Windows OEM setup routine; thankfully, you don’t need to enter in a Windows code, which is a minor annoyance. We were shown a screen that pointed out our Service Tag and Express Service Code numbers – the same as on the chassis.
During the set up, there were a number of screens that we found odd – setting up your internet connection gave us the choices of:
Dial-up Internet Connection. Tell me more about how to get 6 months of Free AOL or Earthlink Service.
High-Speed (Cable/DSL) Internet connection. Receive a $100 mail-in rebate* from select providers.
Tell me more about how to enhance existing high-speed Internet connection with 6 months of Free AOL service.
No thanks.
Followed by a “Let’s get on the Internet” screen that stated the following:
Join today! 6 months FREE trial of AOL membership, included with your new Dell PC
Get connected with fast, reliable EarthLink Free dial-up, 6 month offer – a $132 value
No, thanks.
Then even if you choose “No, thanks.” The computer puts up yet another screen that points out the four icons to help you install AOL, Earthlink, or NetZero that you just told the computer that you weren’t interested in, just in case you change your mind.
Our desktop launched to a 1024x768@32bpp screen. We were only able to bring the resolution up to 1280x1024, which is the max resolution the analog LCD monitor supported. There were many icons. In addition to your standard Internet Explorer, Media Center, Windows Media Player, and Recycle Bin icons, there were also:
- 3 Months Free Netzero
- Burn CDs & DVDS with Sonic Digital Media CE
- Corel Photoalbum 6
- Dell Download Center
- Earthlink – 6 months included
- Free 6 months try AOL
- Get High Speed Internet
- Learn with Dell
- McAfee
- Media Center User’s Guide
- Music Match Jukebox
- My DVD LE
- Owner’s Manual
- Quick Books Simple Start Edition
- Play Games
- Simple Start Edition
- Try WordPerfect
Furthermore, the system tray had icons for Dell Support, AOL, MusicMatch, Corel PhotoDownloader, and McAfee, in addition to the standard Volume and Windows Update icons.
These preinstalled programs turned out to be a major annoyance. For example, McAfee’s firewall kept popping up with “critical updates” and asked frequently whether it wanted each program to have access. Asking for access is part of what it's supposed to do, so I won’t begrudge the suite too much on that point – but when these critical updates pop up, it sometimes takes the focus away from the game that you may be playing at the time. No one wants to get fragged when gaming because their firewall popped up.
Why McAfee can’t put these “critical updates” into a simple flashing icon on the system tray, I can’t fathom. Even so, that’s McAfee’s fault, not Dell’s. We would rather have an antivirus program and firewall program preinstalled than no antivirus and firewall – and even so, the “allow access” popups would eventually become rarer as computer users eventually approve particular programs – but getting up and running 100% the way you like your computing experience is definitely an uphill battle.
However, the problems with McAfee, though by far the worst offender, was not the only annoying incident to plague our computer. Dell Support was also running and popped up more than a couple of times, and QuickBooks started popping up on every third reboot.
These pop-ups were so annoying, and seemed very much like a spyware infection, that we downloaded and ran Ad-Aware just to make sure that there really wasn’t any spyware on the system. It came up clean, which meant that it did little to reduce the number and frequency of the popups.
As it was, the icons on the desktop and in the Start Menu didn’t tell the whole story when it came to pre-installed software. There were also programs we had trouble recognizing, including “ESPN Motion,” “My Way Search Assistant,” “Otto,” and “Wild Tangent Webdrivers,” which we only saw by going to the Add/Remove Software control panel.
All of this pre-installed software used quite a bit of system memory. We booted it up and found that the computer was using 216MB of RAM when idle. After we uninstalled the pre-installed software and disabled the services, the computer was using only 130MB of RAM at idle.
[Editor's Note: We were contacted by Alex St. John, CEO of Wild Tangent. He let us know that Otto was a game licensed by MS for use in the MCE OS, and that is why it was preinstalled. Furthermore, their Wild Tangent Webdrivers is part of the "Play Games" option you have on the XPS desktop, and from my understanding, is basically a content delivery system akin to Valve's Steam. And to be sure, none of our spyware programs notified us that this, or any other pre-installed software from Dell posed any kind of security threat. -Chris 12/20/05]
Furthermore, these programs caused severe problems with our games. Sims 2 wouldn’t install, locking up on the second disc of four; Quake 4 wouldn’t initialize after McAfee popped up a question asking to grant access for Quake to access the Internet; and Splinter Cell completely froze the system. Once we disabled some of the programs from loading up, we were able to get the games to install and run. More information on these issues can be found in the gaming and technical support sections.
We checked to see that Dell had included the latest drivers. They hadn’t – they included NVIDIA’s driver version 7.7.7.4, released in July 2005. There was a more recent version for Windows MCE, version 7.7.7.9, released September 27, 2005. We ordered the system in late November, so Dell's testing and evaluation team are a bit behind, at least for a gaming box that needs the latest and greatest driver sets in many instances.