# Question regarding dell studio 15



## prakash.gourav (Feb 21, 2009)

I am ordering this laptop on monday. If anybody could answer some questions of mine it will be a gr8 help...
1. Is it advisable to go for 512 mb ati hd 4570 instead of 256 mb. Means will it have any performance boost?
2. Should upgrade hard drive to 7200 rpm from 5400 rpm? What type of boost this upgrade will have?
3. And finally this one is the most confusing, should i go for intel wifi link 5300 (802.11) half-mini card instead of intel wifi link 5100. I only connect to my college wifi which is 50-60 mbps lan network.
Also any colour suggestions..?


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## The Sorcerer (Feb 21, 2009)

1. Depends which one is ddr3 and which one is ddr2. 
2. Personally, I havent seen much different between drives unless its something like a raptor or SSD drives. Stick to 5400rpm to save extra cash.
3. Laptops do have inbuilt wifi adapters. I think the one for dell is either broadcomm or intel. The speed is more depending on the ISP/router/settings. wifi adapters are just receivers. But the ones dell sends (and some older ones) do support 802.11 a/b/g/n.
I work for Dell U.S. so we give a hardware warranty and if customers want software warranty, then Dell on call tech support charges $239 which covers 4 major incidences wityh 72 hour of grace period for each issue with a validity of 1 year. I am not sure how Dell India works, but the point is get information and confirm if the warranty they are giving is only for hardware or does it cover software.


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 21, 2009)

what is the cost of the this laptop and where are you buying it ?

just checked the site ......it does not say weather the graphics card RAM is ddr 2 or 3 ......any suggestions on how to find out


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## mike ming (Feb 21, 2009)

finally found some body buying studio 15!! m getting my studio 15 on tuesday!
1. go for 512 if ur a hardcore gamer or else settle for 256mb 
*www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html
2. 7200 rpm will eat up ur battery. if ur not concerned with this then go for it.
3. 5100 is more than enough for the requirements u have.

the GPU is available in GDDR3, DDR3, DDR2. check the above site for ur graphics related queries.


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## prakash.gourav (Feb 21, 2009)

It is 50k unconfigured without taxes and i will order it online. 
Yes i like playing games a lot... So i would like to go for 512 mb vram if it offers even 10% performance gain. I dont know if it is gddr2 or gddr3. Is there any way to find out? 

Does 7200 rpm hard disk gives better performance gains in games? I am not concerned about battery.

So if u people say that intel 5300 will not give any performance gains, i will go for a backlit keyboard.


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## The Sorcerer (Feb 21, 2009)

Best if you confirm via calling Dell India and ask them personally. If your city needs to pay octroi, then that will be included later. Just as an FYI- 256MB ddr3 is better than 512MB DDR2. As I said- I haven't seen any much difference between 7200RPM and 5400RPM- its more depending on how many platters are there on the hard drive and sequential read speed, ram read speed and average transfer rate. For a 50k, one can go for a desktop and this way you can enjoy better games. Other than that, its the pointers I gave you.


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## Cool G5 (Feb 21, 2009)

If your sole purpose is gaming then better get a Desktop instead.


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## rajhot (Feb 21, 2009)

1. Go for 256 MB card


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 21, 2009)

256 mb ddr 3 is cheaper than the 512 MB ddr2???? the dell site is adding 1600 bucks to upgrade from the 256 to 512.....can someone please check if it really is a ddr3 card....


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## prakash.gourav (Feb 22, 2009)

I will upgrade my desky later. Right Now i need to have this laptop and want to maximize the gaming performance on this configuration.

I am willing to spend 1.6k for 512 mb vram. Addition 0.5 for red colour and near 1k for backlit keyboard. That way it shall cost near 54k with taxes. But i will get an additional 5% discount for being an iit student. Henceforth it will cost 52k. Is it allright guys?
I am not going for 7200rpm hdd and intel wifi 5300 as u guys suggested...


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## prateek_san (Feb 22, 2009)

The Sorcerer said:


> 1.
> I work for Dell U.S.



dude which site ?
cuz Im also In Dell USCTS ...


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## The Sorcerer (Feb 22, 2009)

^^ Dell on call tech.


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## prakash.gourav (Feb 22, 2009)

By the way, i also play a lot of games on wifi. Usually there is lag. Will intel 5300 give greater performance?


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## The Sorcerer (Feb 23, 2009)

Its more on the router and the connection when it comes to lag. However, many gamers still prefer the good old fashioned but more reliable rj45 cable over wifi for gaming. As for onboard wif you just need to make sure it works on 802.11b/g/n which all new ones will.


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## mike ming (Feb 23, 2009)

Go for the xps gaming laptop. 
*www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1730?c=in&cs=indhs1&l=en&s=dhs


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 23, 2009)

how do you get a discount for being an IIT student? and what other colleges are there in that list ....? any chance of ISM dhanbad being there? 

BTW is the graphics ram ddr 2 or ddr3 ?


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## abhisheksohal (Feb 23, 2009)

Yea...plz let us know how to get that student discount..coz im in PEC,chandigarh..and i also wanna know that is this laptop available in retail stores like some other models of dell are available??


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 25, 2009)

@prakash.gaurav ...dude ....how do we get that student discount???????


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## foruamit2004 (Feb 25, 2009)

@ thread starter 

faster harddrive will only reduce the loading time etc. , their will be no performance gain in games..

regarding gfx card, configure the system and submit, when they call you and send the final quotation, most probably they will mention if it is ddr2 or ddr3, or ask them before payment.. also any wifi card will be sufficient for ur requirement..


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 25, 2009)

even the final statement does not tell whether the card is ddr2 or ddr 3 ....and the ATI 4570 is so new that there are no reviews available for it..


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## prakash.gourav (Feb 26, 2009)

Sorry guys for replying late. I am waiting for the draft to be sent to dell.

The quotation doesn't say whether gfx card is ddr2 or ddr3... I think it must be ddr2 otherwise they would have surely highlighted the feature on the site.

And about discount-
when i asked about it, the call centre guy confirmed it and said that i will have to send the quotation to him so that he can verify me. However, in end he just sent the final quotation to me instead with all the discount. So i think, the extra discount is availaible if you upgrade the configuration a little bit.
Just ask them and ask.
Otherwise i can send the quotation for you using my iit id. No problem.

Thanks for all the help guys.


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## MetalheadGautham (Feb 26, 2009)

HD4570 can't really use 512MB of RAM and give a huge performance boost.
See the second (48K) config in Dell website of Studio 15.
In that, change HDD to 7200RPM and upgrade to 9Cell battery.


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## abhisheksohal (Feb 26, 2009)

I wanna ask ..is this laptop available at the Dell retail stores, (With the Ati radeon 4570)???  And one more thing..im plannin to buy Zenith director plus ultra...if i buy that then i'll have a P8400 2.26 ghz ,3mb cache,1066Mhz Fsb processor with Geforce 9600M GS(512 mb ddr2) nd 4gb ram ..and if i go for dell studio 15 then I will only be able to afford T6400 2ghz ,2mb cache,800Mhz fsb processor and Ati radeon 4570 and 3gb ram...so i wanna know that which will have better gaming performance?? Coz in the comparisons on the notebookcheck.net site...P8400 processor is ranked at 34 while T6400 is ranked at 58..and the Ati radeon is shown to be better than 9600M GS...so which laptop will run games better???


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 27, 2009)

I got some feedbacks about the zenith service....its not too good....for home users having desktops they take forever to come and repair things ...same for corporate customers...plus the quality of their stuff is nowhere near that of MNCs ...so long term reliability is a big question ....I checked with friends in Jaipur , ujjain , and Delhi....

All in all I guess the extra money that dell is asking is worth it considering that there are no other options in this range ....specially with good graphics solutions...


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## MetalheadGautham (Feb 27, 2009)

abhisheksohal said:


> I wanna ask ..is this laptop available at the Dell retail stores, (With the Ati radeon 4570)???  And one more thing..im plannin to buy Zenith director plus ultra...if i buy that then i'll have a P8400 2.26 ghz ,3mb cache,1066Mhz Fsb processor with Geforce 9600M GS(512 mb ddr2) nd 4gb ram ..and if i go for dell studio 15 then I will only be able to afford T6400 2ghz ,2mb cache,800Mhz fsb processor and Ati radeon 4570 and 3gb ram...so i wanna know that which will have better gaming performance?? Coz in the comparisons on the notebookcheck.net site...P8400 processor is ranked at 34 while T6400 is ranked at 58..and the Ati radeon is shown to be better than 9600M GS...so which laptop will run games better???


Zenith.

9600M GS is better than HD4570. Remember that 9600M GS is the lower end mid-range model from nVidia while HD4570 is the highest RV710 (low end) GPU from ATI.

And yeah, since the resolution of Studio 15 is higher than Director Ultra Plus, it will have lesser frame rate.


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## abhisheksohal (Feb 27, 2009)

I got a call from the dell support today in response to my mail that i had sent them. They told me that it;ll cost me 46k final for the dell studio 15..wid T6400 2 ghz processor,ati  radeon 4570,3gb ram etc. It'll be totally out of my budget even then...so im goin for zenith only...besides i personally feel tha nvidia cards are better in performance and also the regular driver support..


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## MetalheadGautham (Feb 27, 2009)

abhisheksohal said:


> I got a call from the dell support today in response to my mail that i had sent them. They told me that it;ll cost me 46k final for the dell studio 15..wid T6400 2 ghz processor,ati  radeon 4570,3gb ram etc. It'll be totally out of my budget even then...so im goin for zenith only...


Good.


> besides i personally feel tha nvidia cards are better in performance and also the regular driver support..


Lol, the brand does not determine the performance.
You should look at the model number, core clock, vram, shader count, vram clock, power consumption, etc instead.
And no, drivers from AMD are not that bad. They just have longer release cycles, but that doesn't affect performance.

Having said that, 9600GS is ANYDAY better than HD4570


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## izzikio_rage (Feb 27, 2009)

hey there are no benchmarks for the 4570 yet....and the sites have tentatively rated it as better than the 9600 ......Its still anyones game... ...


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## foruamit2004 (Feb 27, 2009)

@ abhi, if i were yuo and havn't seen the new dell then i wud have bought the zenith one, but after seeing the new dell studio, i wud rather wait for some days untill some benchmarks are out for ati 4570...but for 10k difference wud always prefer dell, offcourse with backlit keyboard, also 15.6" 16:9 led screen is really good for movies/tv shows..


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## abhisheksohal (Feb 28, 2009)

I saw this video on youtube..where this guy has an Asus F6Ve-B1 laptop with HD4570 512 mb ddr2 ,C2D T9550(2.66ghz) ,4gb ddr2 ram! And hes shown the benchmarks on 3dmark 06 ...its just 3521 on 1024x768!! while geforce 9600M gs easily goes above 4000 on 1024x768 on 3dmark 06   and even more depending on the processor..like its 4622 at 1024x768 withT9400(2.53 ghz) processor !! 
Heres the video..
*www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9MMpraU71g
So its zenith for me no questions asked!


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## prakash.gourav (Feb 28, 2009)

everyone has different needs and budget... go ahead for zenith...
in my case at 1 point i was also going for zenith but my parents refused to do so.... After all it is their money... 

In between 1k slashed on studio 15.... yipee...


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## izzikio_rage (Mar 1, 2009)

found the video that abhishek mentioned.....here are the results that it gives..for the ATI 4570 HD with 512Mb DDR2 Ram 

complete config
Asus F6Ve-B1, 13.3" WXGA, T9550 2.66GHz, 4GB DDR2 800, ATI HD4570 512MB DDR2, 320GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive.

3D mark 06- 3521 marks 
                 3166 marks 

i guess these are at different resolutions......so how does the Nvidia 9600 perform vis a vis this? that is with the processor that the zenith model has (2.26 Ghz one)


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## abhisheksohal (Mar 1, 2009)

Well the geforce 9600M Gs easily scores above 4000 like i said...and its 4145 with T5800 (2 ghz,2mb cache,800Mhz Fsb) processor as mentioned in the techtree review for the director plus ultra laptop...so with P8400(2.26 ghz ,3mb cache, 1066 Mhz FSB) its bound to be higher than that!!   So u can clearly see the difference...the guys at notebookcheck.net should recheck their ranking.....


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## izzikio_rage (Mar 2, 2009)

and the decision gets even more confusing......


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 7, 2009)

comparison of dell studio 15 and zenith director plus ultra in this month's issue of chip ....will upload their benchmark results soon


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 14, 2009)

in between ... ran gpuzon my studio 1555 
the memory is 512 mb GDDR3  (no typing errors here)


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 14, 2009)

god bless you dude.....please post a complete review of the laptop when you get time......there are a lot of people on this forum waiting for some real info...


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## comp@ddict (Apr 14, 2009)

> 1. Is it advisable to go for 512 mb ati hd 4570 instead of 256 mb. Means will it have any performance boost?
> 2. Should upgrade hard drive to 7200 rpm from 5400 rpm? What type of boost this upgrade will have?


1. Go for 512MB if it's GDDR3.
2. Yes, there will be performance boost, you must be talking about the 200GB Performance SATA Drive. But it will come at the cost of battery life.


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 14, 2009)

the 7200 is a 320 GB HDD ......the performance does get a boost but its not that noticeable ....


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 16, 2009)

Got the hard drive upgrade because when i made the draft, there was 1k price slash and i didnt wanted to change the draft amount.....
There was a 1k price slash even again after placing the order, but the hard drive upgrade now costs near 2k... 

k, i will try to post a review soon...


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## codename_romeo (Apr 17, 2009)

Hey guys
Going in for my mba n i need a laptop out there. I finally decided to go in for 
Dell studio 15
Core 2 duo 2Ghz 
3Gb DDR2
320Gb HDD
ATI 4570 256 ver card
I hope this thing can run games occasionally all i would be playing there is counter strike n call of duty 6 when it comes out. Apart from that is there any kind of problems with dell studio series which would deter me from buying it.??????

All suggestions are welcome


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## comp@ddict (Apr 17, 2009)

^^If there is any gfx upgrade, get it. A 512MB version wud do good too.


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 17, 2009)

Hey dude have you tried running XP on this machine ? The official website does not have any support for XP on this lap, (no drivers etc)...


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 17, 2009)

i installed xp sp2 on this but actually the cd was a bit damaged. got my install though but will have to reinstall.
Dell provides nearly 6 diff. drivers for studio 1555 on their website. So not unsupported...
dont know whether bluetooth etc will workor not...


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## The Sorcerer (Apr 17, 2009)

Go to support.dell.com and put the service tag of your laptop. Select the OS that you have installed and it will display the relevant and updated drivers for your windows xp.


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 18, 2009)

will check ......when I went to the support section of studio 1555 I got only 2 options for the OS vista and vista 64bit


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## The Sorcerer (Apr 18, 2009)

Just select vista 32 bit and see if they backwards compatible with windows xp 32 bit.


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 18, 2009)

found this link......*www.getpcmemory.com/drivers/download-dell-studio-1555-notebook-windows-xp-drivers/

@prakashgaurav....waiting for that review....


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 20, 2009)

went home on weekend.... exams approaching so a bit busy.. will post the review in 2 days max...

good link but many drivers are from dell site but not all....
here is the official link...
*search.ap.dell.com/results.aspx?c=in&l=en&s=gen&cat=sup&k=dell+studio+1555&rpp=12&p=1&subcat=dyd&rf=all&nk=f&sort=K&nf=19019~7~141294&navla=19019~7~141294&ira=False&spf=Studio+Laptop&ssysid=studio1555&ssysn=Studio+1555&~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False&~ck=anav


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 20, 2009)

in between ,the 3dmark 06 score for gpu is calculated by adding sm 2.0 and sm 3.0 score if i am correct...
 No need to add the cpu score ....?


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 23, 2009)

Here is the review... Exams approaching so couldn't get much time.. also writing a 
review for the first time so please dont complain.... 

I customized this model with these specs:
Backlit keyboard
7200 RPM hard disk (320 GB)
Ruby Red colour with black U trim
512 Mb Ati 4570 (GDDR3)
The processor is P8600. All the specs can be check on any site.
Got it at 51.3k as i got an addition discount of 5% being an IIT student.

I have currently vista 32 bit home premium.

Build: Build quality is good. Looks are all right. I will favour them against any hp model but will get beaten by dell xps series or a VAIO. 

Cooling:
This laptop is amazingly cool. I have worked on it for more than 12 hours at a go. Gets a bit hot near the touchpad and palmrest but that too on lower side and only to a small extent.
Doesn't get hot anywhere else. Many hp models in our hostel become a furnace even after 1 hour.

Noise:
Perfectly silent. Heat sink doesn't produce any sound. Slot load works like charm. However a bit noisy when a cd is being copied or played.

Audio:
Sound quality is not that good when compared to hp's altec lansing speakers.
However the subwoofer introdueced improves the performance from previous versions of dell studio but there is still scope of improvement. Haven't tried any hybrid drivers yet. However the noise isolation earbuds from creative which are bundled with laptop rock... above 25% sound they can make you deaf... 
the resolution is 1368*720 and the aspect ratio is 16:9 which is awesome when watching movies. According to me it is a very hot feature....!!!

Touch sensitive buttons have been removed unlike previous studio and have been integrated with function keys which can be configured in bios to have function first or F1 first. Would have loved them to be present though.

The cpu temperature under no load was 45 degree celsius at the end of a 12 hr run. Haven't tested much on full loads

In power saver mode the battery can go for nearly 4 hours. Never tested but won't go down before 3 hours while watching a movie or listening to music or doing day to day work

The 3dmark 06 score of the system was 4124
SM 2.0:1479
sM 3.0: 1734
CPU: 1943

Haven't tried a lot of games yet.... a bit busy... if you want any specific game to be tested, i will 
be happy to do so...


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## sam890060 (Apr 23, 2009)

SM 2.0:1479
sM 3.0: 1734

What does these two mean buddy ?


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 23, 2009)

yaar i don't know anything about these...
this was what the result showed.. may be shader model score of gpu....


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## The Sorcerer (Apr 23, 2009)

SM= shader model. 
*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shader


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 23, 2009)

okays...


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 24, 2009)

Zenith director plus ultra got a 3dmark 06 of 4350...
I think i can beat that... he has got a 64 bit system... while mine was 32 bit...


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## izzikio_rage (Apr 25, 2009)

my friend got the studio 15 yesterday ....

first impression ...the laptop is pretty compact...the button near the battery (on the bottom) to show the amount of charge the battery has left is pretty cool....the screen is amazing and the speakers have good quality even though they are not that loud....at 35% battery charge it was showing a battery backup of 1 hour (6 cell battery)...Really miss the eject button of the DVD rom drive ....The charger is pretty compact too and won't be much trouble to carry around ....

I tried connecting it to a laptop running XP but was unable to do so....any suggestions ...the LAN shows limited connectivity and on connecting via the ip address Vista asks for the name and password for access ....as far as I know there is no username or password..any suggestions?


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## prakash.gourav (Apr 25, 2009)

yeah there are some issues in that. one time i got it connected to xp . next time i was not.


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