E6410 Owner's Thread

It might be a bit less than that with a dedicated GPU.

 

It looks like the E6410 is vulnerable to throttling. I've been running a single threaded application that takes days to complete and this happened at one stage.

The maximum temperature reached over 90C, which is abnormal because the usual temperature with that program running and maximum fan speed is in the 60 - 70C range. I have to assume that the BIOS had temporarily taken a comfort break and the fan speed didn't increase soon enough. Note that this happened when the computer was docked. The CPU (i5 540M) normally runs at 2.8GHz with a power drain of 19-20W under this sustained single threaded load. Ignore the maximum CPU power reading. HWiNFO32 clearly gets spurious readings under hibernation / resume.

But the real issue is that the throttling was not automatically switched off once the temperature dropped. I opened the ThrottleStop program which seemed to trigger a throttling reset without actually turning on the throttling control. This problem has only happened once. Strangely, there is nothing in the System Log which corresponds to this even but there are a couple of other reports "The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware" when noticeable throttling has not actually happened.

John

PS: I wonder if HWiNFO32 underestimates the actual power consumption. When running on battery I am getting about a 10W difference between the battery power drain and the reported CPU consumption (ie a battery power drain of ~30W). In comparison, give my E4300 a single-threaded task to run and the total battery power drain is about 20W.

 

So, i'm sitting on a e6410 config atm waiting for monday and an open small business sales dept. Can anyone give me a reason why the win7 home premium wouldn't work fine with a clean install of the 64bit version? I notice it's not even listed as an option but only see drivers on the support site categorized by 32-bit and 64-bit.

 

No reason.

GK

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm a little disappointed I paid premium. I had to get 32-bit and XP mode because of compatibility with some existing scientific and statistical programs we use at work that will go on this laptop. At least, that's what the IT staff at work said.

Our router is a Cisco Linksys WRT610N. No external antennas on this one although it's much better than our prior Linksys WRT 54?? a/b/g which had two antennas.

I got 5 yrs support because I usually replace every 4 yrs but sometimes it's 4 years and a month or two. I don't know how to fix most things myself and don't have the time to spend figuring it out. I need NBD since this is used for a consulting business and travel. The ProSupport 24/7 with NBD service or replacement has been a good deal on our E6410 because the integrated sound card had an intermittent problem turning itself off and requiring a reboot to turn back on. From that problem came over 12 hours of phone consult with remote configuring from Dell, and then a whole new motherboard, and then a whole new laptop, all within about 4 days. I'm not sure they ever figured it out but the new 6410 works fine and they restarted the warranty on that one from the new receipt date.

I did buy a separate box copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro elsewhere - for some reason they threw in the Acrobat Standard.

Will I be able to buy and insert at a future date a WiFi + WIMAX card? Or would that violate the warranty without Dell doing the install?

 

I noticed you mentioned you ordered Windows 7 Home Premium? I hope you realize that you can't run Windows XP Mode in Home Premium, only Professional and Ultimate.

As far as wifi and wimax cards go, I'm pretty sure they wont void your warranty

 

I'm not familiar with where such cards might install, or what antenna they might require. Worth investigating sooner than later, I suppose.

Dell understands that owners have the right to change their computer configuration. Just don't expect them to warrantee your work or fix something you break for free.

GK

 

I'm very close to placing an order for a 6410 but am stuck between two main things on my configs. The big one is which graphics to choose....I do primarily office work but do watch HD Youtube and maybe once a month I'll watch HD tv shows I've downloaded. So should I pay the extra for the NVIDIA or will the Intel integrated do just fine and help me save a good chunk of battery?

The other things I'm on the edge about are which WiFi card to get (leaning towards 6300) and whether or not I should pay the extra for the webcam (which I'm not sure I'll use, but for $30 why not?), and Bluetooth (I may transfer 1 file a month from my phone if that much)

 

I has been a week since I received my E6410 (Core i3, Nvidia, 3Gb RAM, 7200 rpm, WXGA screen).
Overall I am really pleased with the machine. It is fast, responsive and quite silent (not as my old LG P1, but acceptable silent). The construction is quite solid, apart from a minor squeaky sound in the left corner of the palmrest. Bloatware is almost absent and speakers are really nice, which is something always welcomed.
Linux (Ubuntu 10.10) works perfectly out-of-the-box and this is something that I really appreciate.
The screen is the biggest surprise. On the one hand, I love it to be 16:10, I really like its brightness and I adore the anti-glare thing. My office is full of lights and now I can say that I work glare-free. On the other hand, I find its vertical viewing angle quite narrow, maybe too narrow. This is a trade-off that I would accept but I wonder if it is a particular issue of my panel (CMO1462) or is it common with the rest of E6410 with 1280x800.
I would appreciate your feedback.

 

I compared an LG WXGA+ panel (E6400) with Samsung WXGA+ panel (E6410) and the viewing angles were very similar. I suspect it is a limitation of the technology.

John