Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks for the catch!

Yes, the half size version harder to come buy. Provantage has the best price (that I've found).

 

Color me silly for belaboring the obvious, but in my opinion these E6400s from the Dell Outlet are one of the best values going in laptops at $650-850 delivered.

 

I get 4-5 hours per charge using the Dell all day battery settings with WiFi left on. I find that at night any more than one step up from fully dark burns my retinas - that might be part of the reason.

Half bright is what I use during the day.

Great screen.

I've also done some mods to get rid of the squeeking I hear when I carry this thing around. A bit of foam near the HDD cover and in the battery bay makes this almost as solid as a MacBook.

 

What's this squeaking noise you are experiencing?

 

Do you have the nVidia chip and using DVI with the ePort Plus?

I'm not following you on the scaler issue, I have using these monitors at many resolutions between 1280x800 and 2560x1600. The issue is the Vista 32-bit OS not allowing me to select a higher resolution.

 

nVidia chip with DVI + VGA on the regular dock.

Which monitor do you have?

 

NVIDIA NV 160m Max Digital Display Support: 1920 x 1200
Max Analog Display Support: 2048 x 1536
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_nvs_notebook_techspecs.html

The chip cannot handle 2560x1600 and the ePort Plus will not alter that.

 

My E6400's battery was jumping straight from 104.3% charge to 95.9% charge on pulling out the power plug, so I disabled the critical battery action and ran the computer until the battery was fully drained. The battery now shows 99.1% charge when I pull out the power plug so the deep discharge may have improved the calibration.

John

 

High Quality Digital and Analog Display Support
Internal TMDS (single-link DVI) transmitters and 400MHz RAMDAC(s) deliver crystal-clear image quality for the highest resolution digital displays up to 1600x1200.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_nvs_notebook_fbs.html

What does this means?

 

That is in fact, the correct procedure to recalibrate a battery charge gauge. But the problem with it is the discharge. Deep discharges reduce battery life in all types of rechargeable batteries. So I recommend that they not be done unnecessarily. If the error in calibration is suspected to be minor, then I think it's best to leave well alone for as long as possible. Just remember to increase the low battery and the critical battery levels in the OS (Advanced power options in Vista) so that the computer doesn't switch off inadvertently because it sensed the remaining charge wrongly. This must be reset once the battery is recalibrated so as to be able to use its full capacity.

Edit : John being the earliest E6400 owner here seems to be the first to have such problems and usually the first with the solutions too! He's like a one man Wiki!


By the way, I suggest not express charging the battery during this charge/recharge cycle. Slow recharge is always best for batteries.