Latitude E series long term ownership thread

I've had my E4300 for 9 months now and everything is still pretty solid. I have the bezel marks like everyone else, but that's the be expected.

My hinges are still nice and tight, and my keyboard has been flawless.

 

the dell tech just came to replace the back cover, bezel, hinge cover (that says "latitude e6400") and the palm rest.

I was surprised in how much work it was, he had to remove quite a bit of internals to get access to everything.

All in all, everything looks new now, hinges are nice and tight because those got replaced in the process.

 

I haven't posted in this thread yet, so I'll do it now.

My first E6400 came with several problems, among them serious overheating while gaming (up to 105ºC!), a scratch on the lid, broken screen latch, a busted shipping box, etc. After replacing the lid and latch very soon, Dell and I tried several things for a few months until Dell agreed to give me a new E6400. This took so long mostly because of me (I was swamped with work).

My second E6400 is my current one, and it has served me well. It is almost 1 year old. The only (minor) problem is that the hinges got a bit loose, but I tightened the screws and now they are as new. I have no marks on the screen bezel. The keys and palmrest still look new despite my relatively greasy hands and daily usage. For example, no difference between WASD keys and the other ones.

Battery life still is as good as in the early days (around 5 hours with undervolting and Dell's energy saving features on Balanced mode, with Wifi and Bluetooth on, browsing the Net), but I use the battery very rarely (about once a month).

I just love the screen. At first it seemed too high resolution but once you get used to it you will never again want a low resolution.

I remember I thought the touchpad was awkward at first. After this long time using it I like it, although my previous laptop (Fujitsu LifeBook S6120) had a much better touchpad. Anyone but me who uses the touchpad says it isn't responsive, suggesting that it wasn't just me.

I haven't had the severe throttling problems mentioned elsewhere in this site. I can make my CPU throttle down under severe load (two MATLAB sessions running infinite loops + gaming, to ensure full CPU and GPU load), but once I stop loading the components they throttle back up in a few minutes, which I find good (it's good to wait a few minutes, to ensure you don't create oscillations in temperatures).

Also, my laptop does not overheat. While gaming, the GPU temperature goes up to around 80ºC. If the game also demands a lot from the CPU, it can go up to around 85ºC, since the cooling system is shared between these two components. I could probably do some mild overclocking of the GPU without risking anything, but its performance is actually rather good for most games I play (except AA3, which is known for bringing even high-end desktop cards to a crawl in some circumstances). While working, I routinely stress both CPUs for several hours straight. Absolutely no problem there, temperatures reach a maximum of 70ºC.

My experience with Dell's support is excellent. No matter which problems I had, they met or exceeded my expectations. I was especially surprised when they offered to give me a new E6400. I had only asked for a new one while they repaired my old one at their depot, they instead said I could do that or keep the new one instead.

There are a few minor cons to this brilliant laptop. The lack of a modular-bay caddy for a 2.5'' HDD is disappointing, but easily fixed since newmodeUS.com sells such a part. Users here at NBR say it is indistinguishable from a Dell part, and works as if you had two internal HDD (or SSD) slots. The choice of a battery slice that goes under the laptop, instead of a modular bay battery, is understandable but I would have preferred a modular bay battery (or both!).

There is also a major con, although it has little effect for me. Dell uses a non-standard implementation for their fingerprint reader, which effectively prevents you from using the fingerprint reader for anything other than BIOS, HDD and Windows logon. You cannot use fingerprints to store passwords for any other applications (such as website passwords, etc), nor can you use Windows 7's built-in biometric software. Also, a while ago, you could not use it with a 64-bit OS, although I'm not sure if that is still the case (Dell has released several new drivers since I last looked at this issue).

As a final advice, my father also has an E6400, although with slightly different specs (a T9800 CPU). His E6400 came in perfect condition, and has been serving him well since he got it (also about a year ago).

Hope this helps any prospective buyer (unlikely since newer models from HP and Lenovo are already out, and Dell will probably follow suit).

 

Has anyone noticed a slight vibration in the keyboard when typed on? I have noticed this more and more recently as it tends to make some noise when placed on a desk or something similar. Maybe I am just typing too hard haha...

 

This is actually, probably the bottom plate, not the keyboard. And, yes it's because you hammer with a hammer your keys, when you type

Seriously though, it does this, because the table isn't perfectly straight. You can fix that thought. Open the bottom panel, and you can stick some thin padding so that it doesn't move on a non-straight surface.

 

How is that every table is not flat apparently? And everyone else must type so softly...

 

LOL! Making flat tables is very difficult in this day in age

When I slide out the bottom panel, I notice I already had a black rubber pad on the panel.. a large one in fact (this was not there on my first build in Nov 2008 - my rebuild was in December 2008). So what I did on mine is, get out my trusty exacto-knife, and cut a small part of the large pad, and put it at specific identified locations. Now, my laptop is anti-non-straight-table-and-surface certified.

If you don't have that large pad, then that might explain why the laptop is very picky.

In any case, this was never a real issue for me, even with my first build, it only made a noise when I hit hard on my keys. If I type normally, I really don't hear them. What I did, is because I wanted to be fancy menchy, and I like doing simple mods. Heck I even painted my screws of my computer case glossy black, which matches the case design. My computer is a custom build system that I did, the case is the Antec SOLO (I also did 3 other mods to that case: here is one of them which I presented: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=155312&highlight=SOLO+GTX)

 

I hear you. I've built my own desktop as well. I guess I really do type pretty hard, though sometimes I just press down normally (at least what I think is normal haha) and it still makes a jiggling noise...

So are you talking about that pad on the bottom of the slide-out panel?

 

oh............ design..design..design......... it goes all the way to the speaker side and at the back ;-)

 

So the new keyboard they put in as result of my squeaky spacebar has way more flex than my old keyboard had. I guess I will give them another call/chat. Is there a specific model I should ask for that has less flex or could it be the installation of the keyboard?