Dell XPS Tower Special Edition (8930) Review: A Coffee Lake-Infused Sleeper Rig
Dell XPS Tower Special Edition (8930): Software And User Experience
It has been a long time since OEMs preloaded a bunch of bloatware onto machines. Dell has been especially good in this regard with its XPS lineup. The XPS Tower Special Edition comes with Windows 10 Home 64-bit and boots to a clean desktop, with only the Recycle Bin present.
Somewhat surprisingly, our system shipped without a custom wallpaper from Dell. That may change when these systems hit the market later this month, but if not, it is up to you to swap out the stock wallpaper in Windows with whatever suits your fancy (and monitor resolution).
Dell does include a few handy utilities on its XPS Tower SE systems, one of which is a piece of software called SupportAssist. The company markets this as "predictive support technology," which is a fancy way of saying it stresses your hardware to root out any potential issues, such as a dying hard drive or some other problem. There is also an option to "optimize" your system, which entails purging temporary files and a few other low-level tasks.
Our configuration shipped with an upgraded wireless solution in the form a Killer 1535 Wi-Fi card. The software utility that goes along with this is pretty useful. Among other things, it provides a graphical overview of wireless channels, along with the wireless strength of any nearby APs. Switching channels in your router's settings can help avoid interference with other devices, which can lead to faster connectivity.
The XPS Tower SE delivers 5.1-channel audio, should you choose to take advantage of it (some headphones plug in via USB and have their own built-in sound card solution). You can tweak the onboard audio using the Waves MaxxAudio Pro utility, which gives you access to EQ settings and various other settings. This makes a difference in audio output, though to what extent depends in large part on the quality of your speakers or headset.
Somewhat surprisingly, our system shipped without a custom wallpaper from Dell. That may change when these systems hit the market later this month, but if not, it is up to you to swap out the stock wallpaper in Windows with whatever suits your fancy (and monitor resolution).
Dell does include a few handy utilities on its XPS Tower SE systems, one of which is a piece of software called SupportAssist. The company markets this as "predictive support technology," which is a fancy way of saying it stresses your hardware to root out any potential issues, such as a dying hard drive or some other problem. There is also an option to "optimize" your system, which entails purging temporary files and a few other low-level tasks.
Our configuration shipped with an upgraded wireless solution in the form a Killer 1535 Wi-Fi card. The software utility that goes along with this is pretty useful. Among other things, it provides a graphical overview of wireless channels, along with the wireless strength of any nearby APs. Switching channels in your router's settings can help avoid interference with other devices, which can lead to faster connectivity.
The XPS Tower SE delivers 5.1-channel audio, should you choose to take advantage of it (some headphones plug in via USB and have their own built-in sound card solution). You can tweak the onboard audio using the Waves MaxxAudio Pro utility, which gives you access to EQ settings and various other settings. This makes a difference in audio output, though to what extent depends in large part on the quality of your speakers or headset.
