Latitude E4300 first impressions

Now this is something I love to hear! =D
Finally some good news again, jeez, these days hard to find..

 

SSD is likely to be less warm than a mechanical drive.

 

I'm using my computer this evening for really the first time -- I've been too busy all week to really mess with it, and there may be a hardware problem with the dock (let the tech guys deal with it!).

I was going to take a photo of the whole setup, but here are a few thoughts in the meantime:

* I love the size -- exactly what I wanted. The weight with the 3-cell is 3 lbs., 11 oz! With charger, 4 lbs. 10 oz. (This compares very favorably with my old 14-inch T60: 5 lbs. 3 oz. (6 lbs. 2 oz. w/ charger)

* The screen is fine -- much brighter and sharper than the Thinkpad.

* The keyboard is also fine -- could be slightly quieter and more solid-feeling, but in the same ballpark as the Thinkpad.

* It does get warm. I'll have to live with it a while to see if this bothers me.

* I like the Thinkpad's touchpad more. But I will probably adjust.

Other than that, it seems fast, but I haven't really done much yet. All in all, I'm quite happy with it.

 

hi all, I've read in many posts that this machine feels very sturdy... can anyone compare it, in terms of solidity, to the apple macbook 13'' (new or old gen)?
Oh if possible I'm also interested in a comparison in terms of heat and noise...
Thanks!!

Simone

 

I have just received my E4300. Here is a little review, I have to say that I'm very demanding.

- the worst thing on this computer is certainly the screen. Contrast looks pretty bad (I'm not talking about luminosity) and it makes my eye suffer, whereas I never had this sort of problem before (on desktop screens). Viewing angles are quite good horizontally, but bad vertically; I guess it goes a bit the same with all notebook screens. Luminosity is not homogeneous : from gray on the botton to black on top (you can see this on pictures in previous posts) ... I have to say here that I'm not used at all with laptop screen, maybe they are all bad

- I would not say the keyboard is bad, but it looks a bit cheap, noisy as it was said before. It's the standard keyboard, and keys are pretty light. There is not much flex except on the botton right corner, where arrows are.

- CD drive is really noisy... but that's not a real problem

- My hard drive certainly has a problem, it's very noisy and with HDtune it's going from 89mo/s to 2mo/s periodically : performance are very bad, it took 2hours to install windows updates... It's not the samsung 160gb 7200, but a Seagate.



- Touch pad is quite standard, while I like a lot the trackpoint and its buttons. There is a problem with the two buttons of the touch pad : the one on the left is very noisy, crackling :x

- Concerning the finishing, it's the second big drawback... I thought I would be getting some sort of thinkpad laptop... In fact, except the outside metal screen cover and the chassis that are quite solid, it's all cheap plastic made. The outline of the screen is good except on the bottom center, where there is a 2-3mm space (very very thin plastic). It gets worse around the sound buttons (very hard buttons) : assembling is very bad, you can push on them and it literally crushes.

- The computer does get Hot. I thought it was OK at first, but after 1H30-2H the fan could not stop at all...

WELL, it seems I'm not quite satisfied... I know I can get a replacement for the harddrive and maybe some part of the computer, but it really seems I won't be happy... So I'm wondering, not sure I'm going to keep it, maybe I'll go for a MAC !

Here are the pictures : http://ziziweb.free.fr/e4300/

(sorry for my bad english)

 

Wow--that makes the E4300 look really bad.

I think we can now officially say that Dell royally effed up the launch of its two premium subnote laptops.

 

I find the E6400 not have such issue. The screen on my laptop was not configured in the sense that the colors look bland, but a little screen calibration software verification and Nvidia control panel (and some few minuted), totally fixed the problem.
Sadly I know the E4300 doesn't have the Nvidia/ATI video card option.

 

I am amazed by the number of people here who just hang around looking for negative comments to reinforce. Really -- get a life.

 

Well I am a little pissed. My mouse pad went a little heywire and my wireless card also went bad. I called Dell and they are replacing the machine. Should have it in 2 or 3 days so they tell me. I was pretty high on this machine when I first got it but now I am having second thoughts.

I am wondering why everyone has mentioned their machines get hot. Mine doesn't but I have a SSD. Could the spinning hard drive cause that much difference in the heating?

If this replacement machine doesn't work perfectly from the start, It's going back to Dell. I don't have time to mess with it.

 

Let us know if you decide to return your E4300, in case it gets too warm for ya thereby reinforcing my negative comments. In case you haven't noticed, the feedback on the E4300 isn't overwhelmingly positive in this thread, and the case is the same for the E4200. No one is dishing out negative comments for the hell of it. I have been using Dell almost exclusively for over thirteen years and I wanted this launch to succeed. However, we want to make an educated decision before we decide to part with our hard-earned cash which is why we hang around here. If you don't like my posts, please feel free to ignore them