Latitude E series long term ownership thread

how do the hinges hold up over time on the E series? Do they develop typical dell "wobble"? That is one beef i've always had with Dells.

 

There's about 8mm free movement at the top of my E6400's screen when it is vertical, which is a lot more than when it was new. However, when the display is almost closed then there's no free movement.

But I've seen some wobble develop on most of the notebooks I have used, so I wouldn't say it is a specific Dell problem. The real problem is when hinges lose friction and the display starts to move by itself. There's no sign of that happening.

John

 

Well, when I checked Ideastorm no one had really brought up the screen bezel scratching as an issue yet....

 

That sounds like a typical Dell. Every single one i've used had the wobble going around 1 year mark. On the other hand, the asus g1s is still super solid at almost 2 years, as is Macbook Pro at 1.5 years.

I am very curious to see how will the t400 hold up to this dreaded screen wobble.

 

Heh, my G1s has terrible screen wobbling after 2 years.

 

For the hinges, have you folks tried tightening the screws?

Also, isn't the palmrest supposed to be magnesium, not plastic?

 

I got the same issues. But it's not a big problem for me at all.

 

So after almost a year:

-Battery 91% of original capacity (Is this too much of a drop?)
-Scratches on the bezel/in the corners above the screen
-Scratches above the keyboard where it says "LATITUDE | E6400"
-1-2 scratches from the screen on the palm rest
-Squeaking spacebar
-Finger oil on keys, and on the spacebar where I hit it.

I have the 3 year on site warranty, I plan to call about the scratches and possibly about the squeaky spacebar.

Mine came with 2 rubber pads just below the speaker grill but I don't think this helped that much.

 

I have been able to get Dell to replace the Bezel/Palmrest a couple of times so far just because I told them that they were getting really scratched up. No questions asked. try getting that keyboard replaced too.

 

What I did is raised the pads by putting a small black plastic peace under each pad, and one in the lock hole. In result, the plam rest is like new. The screen frame has some marking, but those where before I did the trick with the pads. The problem only increased by only a tiny bit, over 1 year, it's pretty good.
Yes the laptop pads does leave marks on the screen frame which sucks.

However, based on the crazy deal I got out of my laptop, I think it makes up for such downside. I always know that every laptop has 1 downside, and this one is this cosmetic issue. Which is pretty cool, in the sense that this laptop has no cooling issue by far (I overclock my GPU at insane levels when gaming on it, and the laptop cooling doesn't even struggle.. basically that prevents from overclocking even further my GPU is that the GPU memory has no cooling, and is under the keyboard near the escape key so I really can't do anything about it).

I already drop my laptop by accident above table height, but on carpet (cement under it), it hit the corner, and the laptop has no dent or anything. It's like if nothing happened.

I hope the next revision of the Latitude does have the palm rest/screen frame issue solved though. But, if I had to buy another laptop, assuming I similar deal as I got when I order this laptop, I would definitely buy it again.

Oh, the keyboard! keyboard is fine, I was expecting the keys to get smooth before I buy this laptop. I have yet to encounter 1 black colored laptop that doesn't have this problem (including MacBook Pro's). Even Lenovo has this problem, the only difference is that Lenovo plastic is more textured, so it just delays the inevitable.
I don't get however, why desktop keyboard don't have this problem.. why they can't use the same plastic?! Logitech/Microsoft should both make laptop keyboards. Now would be very cool.
I have my Logitech Illuminated keyboard (it's basically a laptop keyboard style with illuminated keys 0 white, very silent. It's over one year old and it doesn't even have glossy keys (well you can see a tiny bit under very strong light) and harder to see finger prints, despite having similar textured plastic than the Latitude E6400. And I game and program on this keyboard, so it clearly has significantly more usage than my laptop.