E6410 Owner's Thread

Hot Keys
o F2 boot to BIOS.
o F12 boot device menu.
0 Fn+F1 sleep/hibernate per power management setting.
o Fn+F2 battery charger ON/OFF.
o Fn+F3 DCP Power Manager Battery Status.
o Fn+F4 numlock ON/OFF for embedded Fn+numeric keypad.
o Fn_F5 scroll lock ON/OFF.
o Fn+F7 DCP.
o Fn+F8 display device.
o Fn+D display OFF/ON (conserve battery without shutting down entire system).
o Fn+Z reset fan temperature table and sensor.
o Fn+Right-Arrow keyboard illumination OFF/ON Auto ALS (lit upon input in dim lighting)/ON (lit upon input). Use DCP to set input device, brightness, and auto OFF delay.
o Fn+Left-Arrow display Ambient Light Sensor OFF/ON (brightness varies with ambient lighting).
o Fn+Up/Dn-Arrows override display brightness until boot to BIOS setting and/or power mananagement setting.
o Alt+Fn+F11 screen shot.

DCP System Manager has some controls.

For the battery, just perform a full deep discharge and recharge to recalibrate. Some use the BIOS running to finish off the discharge, since Windows will shutdown. You also might want to disable express charge in the BIOS to take it easy on the battery life.

GK

 

Just don't force the battery empty, else you'll break it.

Keep the battery away from heat as this will accelerate the aging process.
Don't have the battery fully charged for several days if you don't plan to use it. This puts straights the battery and make is age faster. Leave the battery at 50-40% and store it in a cool dry place if you plan to not use it for several days.
Not using the battery also ages the battery.

Lifetime of battery, based on usage, is about 1 year to a year and half, all depending on usage. After that time, the battery WILL STILL WORK, but should provide you with too few hours of operation to fit your needs. Like Maybe 2 or 1 or 3, or 4 hours, depending if your laptop is a 4, 6 or 9 cell
and your needs. If you only need 10 min of battery life, than obviously expect the battery last 3 years or so. The above time is virtual time, and doesn't represent any exact limitation, as it's based on your usage and your needs. I am mentioning this to prepare for a battery replacement which, the price can vary if you get a non-genuine or genuine battery and from where. Assuming you get it from Dell (most expensive place), and it's a 9-cell 90Whr. Expect to pay between about 130-150$ (assuming price will either drop by then, and negotiation skills, and who you are talking to at Dell).
Obviously eBay will be cheaper, and resellers too (as they order a large volume, or skips Dells and go directly to the manufacture of Dell batteries for them)

Only do a recalibration charge, as explained on the previous post, when needed. If you plug in/out a lot the laptop when the battery is not near empty, it might need a recalibration every 2 or 3 months, based on usage.

The above applies for all Lithium-ion batteries you encounter.

 

I think that any user is just better off leaving the battery in the notebook. As far as heat, if the notebook is getting hot enough to damage the battery, you'll soon be having more substantial hardware issues.

To prolong battery life, I simply just leave my notebook PC connected to landline power, when ever possible, always using a surge protector. Removing the battery is an unnecessary and inadvisable step, if only because of the likelihood of data loss if the user accidentally unplugs the notebook or falls victim to a power outage.

I totally disagree. I've been able to maintain as much as 75-80% of capacity on notebook batteries that were 3-4 years old. Why? I limit the number of charging cycles by leaving the notebook plugged in as much as possible. Notebook batteries do age, but I've never had one expire entirely. For much of my use, I'm plugged in, but I also go through cycles of heavy battery use, when I need at least 4-5 hours on battery power.

Goodbytes, I get the impression you are a heavy battery user who fully discharges a battery on a dailly basis, so I think your expectations are framed around your patterns of use.

However, I do suspect that some of your practices, such as removing notebook batteries, and deliberately maintaining partial charges, are entirely counterproductive.

 

Has anyone had issues with resuming after sleep on their E6410?

Mine's sometimes fails to resume after sleep. It would turn on, but the screen would remain black and the HDD activity light is usually off, and it would remain in that state. Numlock or capslock doesn't respond at all.

This doesn't happen with hibernate, though I prefer standby since the 5400RPM 160GB hard drive I have on mine is really slow.

I'm on BIOS A07 by the way, and running Windows 7 Professional.

 

Do you have Intel or nvidia graphic card?

If you have nvidia, download and install the latest driver (Version 266.58) from nvidia website. Just remember to uninstall your current graphic driver first and do a clean install when asked by nvidia installer and that should take care of the issue.

______________________________________
Dell Latitude E6410 | Core i7-620M | nVidia Quadro NVS 3100M | 128GB Samsung 470 Series SSD | 4GB DDR3 1066 | 1440x900 LED LCD | Backlit KB | Webcam | 9-cell battery

 

Mine has had that problem through all the different BIOSs and two fresh installs of Win7 64 bit. I finally gave up and went to hibernate instead of sleep

 

It's got Intel graphics, and runs Windows 7 Pro 32-bit.

 

Yup, same issue. No fix that I know of. I now avoid sleep mode under all circumstances.

 

My company is currently leasing E6410's, pretty nice, the standard they are acquiring are:

Core I5 M560 2.67GHz
4GB DDR 3 RAM
250GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Intel HD Graphics with ExpressCard
Windows 7 Enterprise 32 bit
6 Cell Battery
No Camera
Backlit Keyboard
14.1" WXGA(1280x800) Anti-Glare LED
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
SD Card Reader
Dell Wireless™ 1520 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini Card

These specs arent' bad for the average user, they don't need anything else, I just ordered mine with some Upgrades like

Core I7 CPU i7-640M 2.80 GHz
512MB NVIDIA NVS 3100M discrete graphics with ExpressCard
14.1" UltraSharp™ WXGA+(1440x900) Anti-Glare LED with Premium Panel Guarantee
9 Cell Battery

I'm wondering how much better is the Core i7 Vs the i5? I know I'll need the graphics, how well this NVidia works?

Thakns

 

I would remove this 32-bit OS and put Win7 64-bit, so that I could actually use 4GB of RAM, and not ~3GB