here<\/a>). After selecting 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a backlit keyboard, only one configuration remains, with a list price of $1659.99 and a sale price of $1409.99. Again, this has a faster CPU, memory and graphics but also the annoying flat-top keys and no internal optical drive. In addition, it lacks hardwired Ethernet (WiFi only), doesn’t support any mobile broadband options, offers no extended-runtime battery and probably has other drawbacks. It does have a higher-resolution screen than either the Studio 1558 or the Precision 7550 configuration shown above.<\/p>\nI’m picking Dell systems to compare with because they’re the ones I’m most familiar with, service manuals, parts and schematics are readily available, Dell doesn’t make you jump through hoops to prove you’re entitled to download drivers and BIOS updates, and doesn’t do silly things like having the BIOS only recognize officially “blessed” vendor-branded WiFi or other add-in cards. If you know of current non-Dell systems that are close to the Studio 1558’s configuration and reasonably priced, I’d like to hear about them in the comment section. <\/p>\n
As far as performance of the Studio 1558, it is quite reasonable. Microsoft still includes the “winsat” benchmarking tool, though it no longer displays the scores on the Control Panel \/ System page. But if you know where to look:
\n%windir%\\Performance\\WinSAT\\DataStore\\* Formal.Assessment (Initial).WinSAT.xml<\/i>
\nyou can find the scores. Windows 10 rates the system on a scale of 1.0 through 9.9 instead of the 1.0 through 7.9 scale of Windows 7. Here are the results for one of my Studio 1558 systems running Windows 10:<\/p>\n
Overall System Score: 5.1 (lowest of the following scores)
\nMemory Score: 8.5
\nCPU Score: 8.5
\nGraphics Score: 5.1
\nDisk Score: 7.75<\/p>\n
For comparison, the scores on Windows 7 were:<\/p>\n
Overall System Score: 5.7 (lowest of the following scores)
\nMemory Score: 7.7
\nCPU Score: 7.5
\nGraphics Score: 5.7
\nGaming Score: 6.3 (no longer rated in Windows 10)
\nDisk Score: 5.9<\/p>\n
That shows that a high-end configuration of a Studio 1558 makes a fine Windows 10 machine if you aren’t making extensive use of graphics. Just for comparison, this is the Windows 10 winsat result from a high-end (Precision 3630 with Xeon E-2286G CPU, 32GB 4-way interleaved RAM, Radeon Pro WX7100 graphics and a 1TB Class 60 NVME drive) workstation costing over $5000:<\/p>\n
Overall System Score: 8.7 (lowest of the following scores)
\nMemory Score: 9.3
\nCPU Score: 9.3
\nGraphics Score: 8.7
\nDisk Score: 8.9<\/p>\n
I’m happy with that.<\/p>\n
Please note that the above benchmarks and my “seat of the pants” performance opinion is based on a system with an i740-QM CPU (this was the top-end CPU offered by Dell in the 1558), 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and a fast 1TB SSD running Windows 10 x64 LTSC. As part of the research for this article, I used a 1558 with an i5-520M CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB mechanical hard drive, running Windows 10 Pro 20H2. Saying the overall experience was quite<\/em> unpleasant would be a bit of an understatement. Simply restarting Windows had the disk saturated at 100% for well over 10 minutes as shown by the Task Manager \/ Performance window. A SSD would certainly have helped, but the 4GB RAM certainly caused a lot of paging activity. Given the cost of the upgrades today, it seems silly to not upgrade a Studio 1558 to a top-spec system.<\/p>\nWith the computer running Windows 10 LTSC and Office 2019 Professional Plus, I felt it was only fitting to update the palmrest badges to reflect this. This is the original “Energy Star” sticker from 2010, but the CORE i7 badge has been updated to the latest style, the Windows 7 badge was replaced with a Windows 10 one, and an “Office 2019 Professional Plus” sticker was added to complete the display. The “Portable4” and “Backup PC” labels indicate the hostname on my network and that this is one of 3 identical Studio 1558 computers, one labeled “Real PC” that goes on the road with me when I travel, and 2 labeled “Backup PC” in case something happens to the real PC.<\/p>\n
![](\"PXL_20210228_225805343-crop-s.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nClick on the image for full-screen view<\/small><\/i><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve had a number of Dell Studio 1558 laptops for well over 10 years now. Occasionally people ask me “Why do you still have that old thing? You need a newer\/faster\/better system!” Actually, I don’t and I’m going to explain why. The Studio 1558 (as I have configured or built them) has lots of still-relevant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}