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Dell finally makes right, offers up-rated power adapters to close the Studio Throttlegate

Tim Stevens — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:12:00 EST

It's taken a long time, too long by most accounts, but Dell finally has what looks to be a proper, honest to gosh fix for the CPU throttling issues that have been plaguing some of its Studio laptops. Users were reporting that the machines, when faced with slightly elevated temperatures, would throttle themselves back by up to 95 percent, leaving some folks with 100MHz paperweights. Dell issued a firmware update quickly after we shed a little light on the situation back in December, a "fix" that helped some but, apparently, not all. We're just now hearing that the company apparently launched a program back in February to replace the stock 90 watt power adapters with more capable 130 watt models for anyone suffering this affliction. However, this doesn't seem to be a proper recall, as the reports we're seeing indicate only customers who call and complain have been made aware of this program. So, consider yourself made aware. The source link below will take you to the official site where you can order a replacement adapter, but if it doesn't like your service tag number give Dell support a call and mention this program. We're hearing others are having success going that route.

[Thanks, Kevin]

Dell finally makes right, offers up-rated power adapters to close the Studio Throttlegate originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell releases bevy of firmware updates to fix most of what ails some of you

Tim Stevens — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:34:00 EST

Remember Throttlegate, the epic saga of warmth-averse Dell laptops turning themselves into 100MHz clunkers whenever temperatures rose above freezing? The issue has been plaguing some users for months, but less than a day after we posted about it Dell had a BIOS update ready for its Latitude E6400 and E6500 series machines, timing that can only be explained as coincidence. Dell also released an update to quiet noisy Seagate drives in a number of its portables, seemingly the same issue that plagued MacBook Pros over the summer -- great news for anyone who hates disks that sound terminal. However, there's still no solution for the Studio XPS 1645 complaints we also reported about, and now we're hearing that the Alienware m15x may be similarly under-clocking itself. Oh how deep the throttlehole goes...

Update: It seems all still isn't well. Most are indicating an improvement with this BIOS update, but according to many in comments some machines are still not operating at full speed. At this point it looks like Dell is working openly with users to come up with a more final fix, so we're optimistic... for some reason.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Dell releases bevy of firmware updates to fix most of what ails some of you originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell facing massive E6400 and E6500 overheating and underclocking problem?

Tim Stevens — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:21:00 EST

All is not well in the land of the E6400- and E6500-series lappytops. What looks to be hundreds of owners of these machines have been complaining of massive performance issues, throttling themselves down by as much as 95% under what would seem to be normal operating conditions. Whenever the devices get slightly warm the BIOS automatically starts dialing down the performance until they basically crawl to a halt, some indicating that even when cool they won't go over 50% of maximum clock. Users have been reporting this issue since early in the year and Dell has apparently started censoring some posts on its forums, including a link to a PDF created by (now-banned) user Tinkerdude describing the problem in detail. It's entitled "Performance loss during normal operation in a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop due to processor and bus clock throttling", and if you think that's long wait until you see all 59 pages of analysis (at the read link). As of now there's no official fix provided by Dell, leaving many to call this Throttlegate, and we do love a good Stargate reference.

Update: Ibrahim e-mailed to let us know that these two series aren't the only ones being gimped. The Studio XPS 1645 is said to be having similar (but somewhat less drastic) issues according to this thread, seemingly thanks to an inadequate AC adapter. In this case Dell seems to be shipping replacement adapters to those who call up and complain.

Update 2: Dell's Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca dropped the following in comments, which is something of a positive step:

We're aware of concerns raised in this post and others like it. At this point, our teams are looking into the details. When we have more information to share, we'll update customers via a post on Dell's blog, Direct2Dell.

Dell facing massive E6400 and E6500 overheating and underclocking problem? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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