E6410 Owner's Thread

Sweet! I'm in Cumming, GA. I would be willing to drive/meet up. I PMed you.

 

What's the difference between setting up my laptop as AHCI or RAID?

I installed Windows with the BIOS set as RAID, but I am not using RAID.

Of course I cannot just change it to AHCI, I would have to reinstall everything.

I am curious because after I installed a 2nd drive into the media bay, the Intel RAID screen pops up during the boot process and adds extra time to the boot process which I think is annoying since I don't use RAID.

So if I change it to AHCI and reinstall Windows will that Intel RAID screen pop up anymore during the boot process?

Are there any performance benefits of using one over the other even though I will not be striping nor mirroring?

 

It looks like your requirements are close to mine: Good performance, but not to the detriment of extra heat and reducted battery time.

For a long time I had the RAID (IRRT) enables on my E6400, didn't like it and finally got rid of it when I read that it didn't work with TRIM. I used the guidance provided in this thread. See this post for my procedure with Win 7-64.

I've already set my E6410 to AHCI. The Dell factory installations of Windows have the drivers for the different HDD modes pre-installed so there's no BSOD if the user switches over.

John

 

Thank You John. You have been most insightful and helpful.

 

Has anyone looked at the Dell US Business outlet today, the day after the 20% off sale ended. There's almost double the amount of really nicely configured E6410s that were in there yesterday. Not sure if the BOTS had them all tied up and reserved or just what the reason might be. Really disheartening though.

 

I don't see how bots could work with the system Dell has in place.

I got a red i5-540 4gb 160b 1520 nvs wxga+ camera for a nice price when the coupon was available. i got lucky i guess.

 

Check out this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell/499644-dell-outlet-i-cant-get-past-script-bots.html

 

Be sure you have Windows 7 64-bit for the best experience and take full advantage of your computer.

 

I have question about the Windows 7 Professional product key that comes with each Dell Latitude. If you have a model that came with Windows 7 32bit and have a generic copy (legal) of Windows 7 64 bit, will that product key work? I know Dell charges $10 more for the 64 bit version, not sure why. I've read other threads here regarding other manufacturer's business computers where the activation code worked on either version. Couldn't find any previous posts regarding Dell.

 

There is no 10$ surcharge. The license fee is the same. It's probably a mistake. Call Dell Sales to order your machine to rectify the problem. If you plan to get it from the Outlet, than that could be that they need to get someone to replace the OS on the HDD.

The product key on the laptop is there as proof of purchase. It's also there in the case the OEM disk breaks and you need to re-install the OS. But the key is deactivated by default. A call to Microsoft Activation (free, phone number will be giving to you on the activation dialog, when the automatic activation will fail. The call takes ~1min.

For simplicity sakes, I would get the Dell Win7 64-bit setup. Call to order your system, you won't have any fees, and they might be nice and give you additional offers.