E6410 Owner's Thread

hi, i'm considering buying the e6410 with the following setup:
i5-520
1440*900 res
4gb
nvidia 3100m
6cell batt

i have several questions:

1) i was really intrested about the e6410 wieght. i never had a laptop before, though i have been using some occasionally.
my best reference is an old IBM T41 which i have back in my office. when i lift it, it feels HEAVY for a 14" laptop.
specs on the net show that the T41 should weight 4.9 lbs, and here i saw that the 6cell configuration for the e6410 weigths about 5.25 lbs. does the e6410 is heavier than the old T41??

2) i have some doubts about the 1440*900 resolution, i'm afraid it would be a burdon on my eyes. can anyone post a picture of the desktop/browser in both resolutions?

3) is there an option to disable or shut down the gpu(aka nvidia 3100m) when it is not needed to save some batt life?

4) does the latitude on flash feature comes with all latitudes and works on all of them?

thanks from advance!

 

Don't trust the manufacturer's weights. Dell's E6410 "starting weight" is 4.26lbs / 1.93kg but actual configurations weigh about 1lb more. You may find an actual weight for a T41 in a review somewhere.

My eyes can handle the 1440 x 900 Recent displays are brighter than old ones, which helps.

Only such utilities as are provided by Nvidia. There's no option to switch to Intel graphics.

No.

John

 

It all depends how you carry your laptop. The closer it is to you back, the lighter it feels. My Latitude E6400 has even a 9-cell battery, and using my school bag laptop compartment, I can walk with it for over 1 hour without any problem, even with large university books. And I don't even go to the gym.

1440x900 is a perfect resolution for a 14inch laptop... not to big, not to small, good work area resolution for multi-tasking. Icons, text, objects are close to the same as a 17inch NON-wide screen 1280x1024 resolution, or 1900x1200 on a 24inch wide screen screen.

No, but the Nvidia graphic solution features a power saving feature where it dynamically set it's speed to reduce power consumption based on what you do. If you are in Windows then expect it to be at minimum speed almost all the time, or all the time if you barely move a window, and don't use 3D flip o switch between application (Win+tab), which requires a bit more power.

To increase your battery life even more, I am currently working on a software to allow you to control the graphic card speed based on what you run and if you are plug-in or not. This way you can essential tell it "Keep my graphic card speed to minimum no mater what when I am on battery. When I am plug-in, to reduce heat, still stay at minimum speed, BUT go to regular speed (or over clock, but not recommended, of course) when I run: the following games and applications. It's a little more feature complete as i make it sound, but you get the idea. it will be part of my Nv GPU Pro tool.

Anyway, if battery life is an issue, then I suggest to get the 9-cell battery. Also I beleive Dell has a 3 year life 9-cell battery (normally the battery last a year to a year and half, before it provide insufficient hours of usage for you) that might also interest you. Remember that your battery max battery life degrades fast. 6 hours (let's say) will quickly go down to 5 hours within a month or two, and so on. Therefor, I suggest to get more than what you need so that the battery last longer for you.

 

sounds like a cool feature!

the 3 year warranty that comes with the latitudes doesn't apply the battery(if it's 6cell)?

btw thanks for the fast reply, both of you!

 

The normal batteries have a 1 year warranty but Dell also offers a "long life" battery which is meant to be good for 3 years. However, I don't know how much capacity it has to lose before Dell replaces it. The normal battery is probably the better option. If it loses capacity then genuine Dell batteries can be found on ebay for reasonable prices.

John

 

Hello everyone!

I'm an E6510 owner and I saw you guys dealing with displayport issues a hundred pages ago without any clear solution and I guess it could solve my problem too as the E6510 is just like the E6410 hardware-wise. I'm using a quadro 3100m too.

I want to connect my laptop to my TV, using HDMI. Thus, I've bough a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, a quality, branded HP one. With the A06 video driver (I guess) it just did not detect it (nothing happened, the TV works fine when connecting something else over HDMI). I installed the latest official drivers from nvidia, then the A08 from dell but no change, it just doesn't do anything. I don't have any displayport devices, so things are kind of f-ed up.
Any tips how to make it work? Is there some kind of debug option in nvidia drivers?

Thanks

 

It has nothing to with your BIOS.

Assuming you have Windows 7. Press Windows key + P to tell it to use the external display WHILE the laptop is connected to the TV with your cable.

If you don't have Win7, or it doesn't work, look under Nvidia Control Panel for more options on how to set it up.

 

I didn't say nothing about BIOS, I was talking about video driver versions (they are using the same Axx naming scheme). The display doesn't appear in nvidia control panel, that's the issue. There is no connection/disconnections sound when I plug it in either (normally there is, even when you are plugging in a device in standby over HDMI). It's like the whole displayport wouldn't work.

 

The new drive was delivered today. Funny thing though. About two hours before the drive was delivered I got a call from Dell support saying the drive would be delayed due to extreme weather. I thought it would be more than two hours late when they called like that.

The new drive does vibrate less than the old drive, but I can still feel some minor vibrations in the palm-rest. I tried to compare it to my 3.5" external drive and the Seagate Momentus actually seems to vibrate more than my 3.5" WD Caviar Greenline. I was a bit surprised about this because I assumed 3.5" drives usually generates more vibrations than 2.5" drives. That assumption stands very well for my other external drive which happens to be a 3.5" Seagate Barracuda. I know my sample of drives is to small to draw any definitive conclusions, but I will not be in a hurry to get any more Seagate drives. I might even get a SSD for my E6410.

 

One reason which you feel any HDD vibrations is that HDD is rigidly mounted in the metal chassis. You can provide a little damping by putting some strips of electrical tape on the HDD where it touches the chassis. SSD is the way forward and will enable you to provide your E6410 performance upgrade. See my E6410 review which includes benchmark results for both HDD and SSD.

John