Dell Inspiron 14 7447?

Discussion in 'Notebooks & Mobile Devices' started by atwl77, Sep 25, 2014.

  1. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    Anybody have details about this model?
    Inspiron 14 7000 Series Details | Dell Malaysia

    Strange that there's not much coverage on the web. Can't find important details like:
    • Ease of upgradability?
    • Maximum RAM amount?
    • Any M-SATA slot?
    • Comes with recovery disc?

    :confused:
     
  2. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    You won't find it on their sales website. You need to go into their tech support site. Check out the spec PDF here - Product Support | Dell Malaysia

    But the safest option is still to download their really comprehensive service manual and check out the location and number of available slots.

    AFAIK, Dell no longer ships the recovery CD because they use a recovery partition on the HDD itself. But you can pay for a copy of the Windows CD if you want.
     
  3. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    Had to dig through both service manual and specifications PDF in order to find all that stuff.

    Strange how there's so little coverage on this model, usually by now one of the mainstream notebook sites should have already done a review with more details available.

    And the Dell store is really dumbing down with each iteration. Used to be clearly stated whether you'd get a restore or OS installation disc, and the option to add it for (RM5? RM10?) for some models... now all that is completely gone.

    Would rather use a restore disc or OS installation disc for clean installs rather than doing drive cloning.
     
  4. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    You should be able to burn the recovery DVD yourself with the included Dell Backup and Recovery software. Or just boot to WinPE and copy the *.wim out yourself. :mrgreen:
     
  5. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    They usually keep the recovery files in a separate (hidden) partition, so you can still restore from it even after formatting the user partitions.
     
  6. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    Don't really like those recovery partitions that much.
    ... If your HDD dies, it's gone.
    ... While it's there, it does nothing and eats up space.
    ... When you change drives, you have to go through the drive-cloning shenanigans.

    Whatever happened to good ol' installation discs. Even better, separate OS and Driver/App discs, so you can choose only to install what you want, and not make one sweeping restore, complete with bloatware and all.
     
  7. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    It all comes down to ---> $$$$$$$$$$$$ :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
     
  8. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Cost cutting for the media (CD), after sales support since it is easier to do recovery now instead of the cumbersome CD installation.
     
  9. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Yeah, it's all about the money.

    There are ways around this if you must have a DVD.

    Just create your own recovery disc, as Dashken suggested, or clone the HDD to a DVD, so you can restore it if anything bad happens.
     
  10. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    Ah well, ended up ordering an Inspiron 15 7537 instead. I'll see how easy/hard it is to make a bloatware-free restore disc when it arrives.
     
  11. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    There were no configuration options, right? But I can see that it comes with 16 GB of RAM. :thumb:
     
  12. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    There used to be one or two other configs available when this series was introduced, and this current one was the best config among them.

    Only problems with this model is the single SATA HDD and possibly wifi reception issues; I'll probably replace the HDD when prices of 1TB SSDs drop in the future, and see if there's any need to replace the wireless card.
     
  13. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Really? What kind of reception problems? The Intel Wireless-N 7260 BGN should be quite good. From my experience, Intel WiFi modules generally outperform Dell's own WiFi modules.

    The HDD should be the 1 TB Seagate Laptop SSHD, which is surprisingly pretty decent for a 5400 RPM hard disk drive, especially when the SSD cache is just 8 GB in size.
     
  14. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    There were enough complaints about it on the notebookreview.com forums that it is a legitimate concern, and the suggested solution was to replace it with the Wireless-AC version of the card.

    In any case, I have an old Centrino card lying around in case I do run into wireless issues. Either that or source a new Wireless-AC card from the net.
     
  15. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    My laptop arrived this morning. Looks all fine and dandy. No problems with wifi reception.

    The thing comes with surprisingly very little bloatware - the big ones are just MS Office trial and McAfee; a few other small utilities like Dell software and some annoying facial recognition system too.

    Haven't looked at making a recovery/backup image yet. Not important for now, still need to go through updating hoop and then getting all my data and software onto the thing. Then figure out how to get the Spyder4 colorimeter to work with Optimus.

    Also, I wonder if everyone else is using a local account or their MS account to login? I've always used the MS login for tablets but not so sure for this one....

    (edit: NVM, did some research and discovered OneDrive integration requires signing in using an MS account... so looks like I don't have an option...)
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2014
  16. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    I hate the integration. Why must it use my MS account for my Windows login???!!!

    Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk
     
  17. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    I hate the integration too. I wonder if it's a way for MS to clamp down on piracy?
     
  18. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    Keyboard needs getting used to... keys are quite squishy, and I'm not used to having a numeric keypad at all. Keep hitting 4 instead of Enter, Num Lock instead of Backspace.

    At least the display is quite decent.
     

    Attached Files:

  19. ZuePhok

    ZuePhok Just Started

    i like the integration. sync the acc profile across all my devices. including the config for file explorer, cmd etc.. so I dont have to repeat the same steps over and over again

    working like azure AD :green:
     
  20. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Not sure I would want my desktop to work like my tablet... Thankfully the store is basically useless for desktops, but relatively important for a tablet without keyboard.
     

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