Just my experience with the XPS 15z. It's nothing but a hunk of junk. While design looks great.

I suffered from excessive overheat, bad battery life, ~1.5/2hrs, it's a mediocre of today's technology, thinking its battery is too mundane for today's technology.

Frankly, there was a bad port on the USB 3.0, one didn't work. Replaced motherboard, everything worked but it screwed up my Licensed of Win 7 Ult. x64 SP1, had to call it in since a different board was replaced. After that was finished, it was running much hotter.

I opted to return it for a full refund while only using it for less then a week. I bought an old (3yrs old) Dell Latitude E6400, for a grand total of $220!!! I upgraded the ram to 4GB DDR2, 500GB 7200rpm 3GB/s (FREE - had it laying around for a while), plus, I get average of 4/4.5hrs of battery life!!! I am loving it!!! Cheap and gets the job done...

The Dell XPS 15 is a nice machine, using Aluminum case, same with the XPS 15z. However, I suffered defected systems. Dell did a horrible job testing for Quality Control.

Jeet - For me, IMO, 2.5hrs of battery is unacceptable, however, what is the cell number on the battery? 9 Cell, 8 Cell, etc...?

Mine's is 6 cell Rick. And to be truthful the nine cell does no more good except for adding weight to the laptop. I have experienced battery life around 3~3,5 hour (with keyboard back light on). Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with the XPS 15z. Till now mine's is working as intended, though playing games for more than 1 hour does heat the system. Let us see how it behaves in future.

Hi Jeet, thanks for your opinion, unfortunately, a 6 Cell compared to a 9 Cell makes a HUGE differences. Again, just my opinion.

I hear ya on the heat issues, but the Dell XPS 15z, on the first unit I got was extremely cool and venting out excessive heat, until I had a bad mobo on the USB port. They replaced it, then had more problems, next they sent new system. I noticed it was running hot, what's even worst is that I was not even playing games. How weird. I'm not a gamer but a Virtualizer type of guy that runs several OS at once.... I hunger for RAM and CPU, VRAM is not really all a necessity unless I get at less a 1920 x 1080 HD, then I am good.

I was tempted to get a Precision M6400... A good workstation, but am worrying about battery life, otherwise, Dell makes great systems, just need to get through Quality Control better.

Good luck with the system, XPS 15 is a sweet system...

Jeet my friend!!

I am the new owner of a Dell XPS 15 L502X and I have to tell you, I am amazed!! I'm getting 6hrs on average!!! WOOT!!! using a 9 Cell Battery... Time for you to upgrade to a 9 Cell buddy... I am living proof that I get an average of 6hrs... depends on what I am doing...

Cheers

I purchased my Dell XPS 15z in in Auagust 2011. I absolutely love it. Slim and totally cool looking with a soft brown cover, I bought it from Dell's Outlet. It does run hotter than my daughter's HP. The sound system is hard to beat I upgraded to a 9 cell at purchase and never regretted it.

But yesterday, I went with a friend to Staples to look at an HP g7-1310us Intel Core i3 (http://www.staples.com/HP-G7-1310US-173 ... a=CIRCULAR). Holy smoke it is sweet and only $399.99 until Saturday the 25th of Feb. It's not a lightweight but really a great option for a student or some one looking to replace a desktop, as was my friend.

can you please tell me how you use the system Uncle Rick? It seems I should highly consider 9 cell option !

Hey Jeet, greetings!!

I use VMware as a test bed for testing Forensics tools for Linux, Windows, and Apple. These are main stream OSs.

I download videos from YouTube and watch tuts, as I am more of a technical geek, not gamer geek... so VMWare uses more RAM/CPU... 8GB RAM should be sufficient...

This machine ROCKS!!! It's so much better then XPS 15z...

Definitely get the 9 Cell option.. you'll be happy for sure...

Apple @ VMware ? How Sir

pls help me out, my dell laptop turn off itself when it is switched on pls what can i do.

and pls how can i be a laptop mobo troubleshooter. thanks you are all appreciate

Yes, does Lion run under VMware?