E6400 question for owners

Yes it is possible that the trackpoint issue made everything seem poor.

 

I too have bought the E6400. My previous computer was a Dell 600m which surprisingly has lasted more than 4 years. I fear it is on it's last leg, so I chose the Latitude line again and went with the E6400.

I also am a trackpoint user. I was using the Thinkpad 700 and the Thinkpad A21m before switching to Dell.

I too am having this choppy and non-smooth action on the trackpoint. I've tried everything that I can think of. It's almost like there is a high priority interrupt in the system that is taking cycles away from the mouse/trackpoint driver and therefore it gets choppy.

Here are the things I've tried with varying degrees of success:

Installed Windows Vista:

Result:No change​

The rest of the list has been tried on both Windows XP and Vista:

Installed latest driver (the one that combines the 32bit and 64 bit binaries):

Result:No change​

Disabled all functions in the Alps trackpad/trackpoint Driver except all relating to the trackpoint:

Result: No change​

Removed Alps trackpad/trackpoint driver:

Result: SURPRISE! The default Microsoft driver works better. Hardly any choppiness. I have noticed that it gets freaky slow when I do certain functions in Adobe Lightroom (I think it was highly disk intensive) This solution isn't ideal because you cannot disable the trackpad. All mouse speed control is done with the Microsoft mouse settings.
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Hope this helps somewhat.

I'd like to change the mouse driver interrupt priority to be the highest. I hope to try sticking the mouse driver Affinity to one processor. I believe that I tried disabling one of the processors. I can't quite remember.

My best theory is that the hard drive is somehow messing with the mouse driver interrupts.

 

If disk activity can be the cause, try installing the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager (aka drivers for the E6400 SATA disk controller) from the Intel website or from the Dell support website. It significantly reduces HDD usage.

 

I do not use the trackpoint on my system, but it works fine. And the system is plenty fast. Your issues on a new system are most likely defective hardware and/or a poor install with buggy drivers. Disappointing on a new purchase but is the state of the industry.

Since the user must ultimately maintain their system, my first step would be to clean install the OS, particularly since these new Latitudes seem to desperately need their updated drivers for many devices. Sure, you could play with just the trackpoint install, but the Latitudes have multiple issues that benefit from the latest fixes, and your system should not be slow. My recent clean install of 6/1 using the latest software FINALLY feels solid.

Note that ordering an exchange may only address defective hardware, so be sure that is the issue before shooting in the dark.

GK