Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Well, after much gnashing of teeth and looking at various other "lite" models (XPS M1330, Inspiron 13), I decided to pull the trigger on an E6400 from the Outlet, for a few reasons:

1. Yeah, it's heavier than I initially wanted, but not *THAT* much heavier than the others. And after dealing with underpowered netbooks for a year, I need the horsepower more than the lightness. The E6400 seems to have better infrastructure/core system than the consumer models. Good base to upgrade from.

2. 1440x900 pwns compared to 1280x800.

3. Backlit keyboard.

4. 3-year warranty standard.

Config:

Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz, 3M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows XP Pro with Vista Business License
160 GB SATA Hard Drive, 9.5MM, (5400RPM)
8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability
No Fingerprint Reader
Back-lit Keyboard
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
14.1 inch WXGA+ LED Laptop Screen
9 Cell Battery, Primary
No Camera
Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD With Express Card
Dell 1397 802.11B/G Wireless Mini Card

After 15%-off coupon and sales tax, it came out to $703 shipped.

My plan is to drop in more RAM and an SSD at some point.

 

Welcome. As someone who has looked at a few notebooks, what are your first impressions?

John

 

Reading around I got the impression that IRRT mode did not support hot swappable eSATA drives. But it sounds like that is not the case.

Ive tried both dell's intel drivers and Intel's new drivers and both give me random blue screens. This is very odd since the older dells here, d630.d430. 775, 745 all work fine with the Intel AHCI drivers (older drivers I believe) maybe dell needs to update their bios? (a09 is the latest still random blue screens)

AHCI also has native command queuing and Link Power Management (saves power when HD not in use).

But it looks like we are sticking with ATA mode until Dell/Intel work out their driver issues.

Note if you install AHCI you can go back and forth between AHCI and ATA if you edit the registery:
go to key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\pciide.sys
change start key to 0
then reboot and in the bios set it to ATA mode

 

URGENT- I just orderd a E6400 from the outlet. It has a standard wxga screen model Rk197. I can manage the res. , but the display quality is important. I heard some disturbing rumours... Can some one shed some light on this display? Should i cancel the order?

 

well, that is disappointing. the A10 revision of the e6500 BIOS was just released yesterday, and I was hoping it would solve my charging problem, but it hasn't. Anyone with an e6500 with the A10 (or a09) revision that doesn't have a charging issue?

and it also seems that flashing backwards doesnt solve it, so i am starting to think it is a hardware problem. tried two known good chargers, and at least one known good battery in addition to the primary one.

edit -- I think I might have been premature on the A10 bios not solving the issue, since flashing backwards actually DOES solve it. so the A09 bios is messed, will report back on the A10 when I conclusively determine one way or the other.

looks like A10 is working, although i havent tried it when the battery is really low, we'll see.

 

Things are settling in a little.

I don't like the Control Point Connection Manager. I didn't really like Thinkpad Access Connections any better.

I am having a lot of problems getting used to the placement of the Control, Alt, and Fn keys. I am a touch typist and I use these keys all the time. Since they are in a different position than the Thinkpads I have been using for many years, this is causing lots of problems. I spend a lot of time trying to undo the changes I am constantly doing to the ambient light sensor and keyboard backlight. There is also some really weird things that happen with combinations like Fn+D instead of Ctrl+D. I think it will take a few more days for me to adjust; I forgot about this sort of thing, but years ago when I was going between Toshiba and ThinkPad I had to deal with it, so I suppose I will adjust. Hint for Dell: Offer a ThinkPad compatible keyboard if you want to steal customers from Lenovo.

The other keyboard complaint is that the pointing stick has the wrong shape. Yes, I am using it, but it should have a convex top, not the concave top. I have used ThinkPad and Toshiba pointing sticks for years, this one really does feel "wrong". It works though. I suppose I will get used to it. But it's a lot more disconcerting than I would have thought.

I figured out how to turn on the GPS. Anyone know what applications can talk to this GPS? Also - can I use the GPS to set the system clock?

The 90W power adapter is nice and slim, and it fits easily in my pack. I would like a longer AC cord on it, but it will do.

The IDT audio driver is living down to it's reputation. Eventually a nice driver might come along. But I didn't get the notebook for multimedia, so it's not a big issue.

 

I don't think the E6400/6500 have GPS.

 

Mine does. It is part of the WWAN chip. And the GPS works - I can see from the network link status in the Control Point software, that it sees satellites and has a position. I checked the position (latitude and longitude) with google maps and it is the correct position.

Also - my IT guy figured out how to get the 802.11n to work. He just reentered the data, so maybe the problem was that the security key was incorrectly entered for the 802.11n network.

 

if you get one of the WWAN cards, it does. And you do NOT have to pay for GPS, at least with the ATT WWAN card.

 

Any tricks for eliminating the annoying creak/flex under the left palmrest?

Also, I did a quick search on eBay and did not see any aftermarket slot loading optical drives. Does such a beast exist?