Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...etail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=430-3114

Under "Tech Specs":

Interfaces

1 x serial - RS-232 - 9 pin D-Sub (DB-9) ¦ 1 x parallel - 25 pin D-Sub (DB-25) ¦ 2 x keyboard / mouse - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style) ¦ 2 x USB - 4 pin USB Type A ¦ 1 x network - RJ-45 ¦ 1 x display / video - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15) ¦ 2 x display / video - DVI-Digital - 24 pin digital DVI ¦ 2 x display / video - 20 pin DisplayPort ¦ Audio

Do I miss something?

 

Well I had a second look in the outlet this morning and found:

P9500/2.53GHz/6MB Cache
4 GB RAM
250GB 7200rpm HDD
NVidia 160M
WXGA+ LED
Bluetooth/Intel WiFi 5300
9 Cell battery

all for £610 ex Vat

Which seems to be a 50% saving from buying new

 

I counted the pins in a Dual-Link DVI cable last night just to be sure I wasn't mistaken that this dock should be working. The cable had 24-pins + DVI-D C Pin.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/DVI_pinout.svg

 

E-port has the exact same specs, minus the number of ports.

 

So did you grab it? It's not there now.

John

 

The 'help me choose link' on dell.com under customize often lists basic option specs. The WXGA+ is brighter and has a finer pixel pitch (sharper image), which is why its native resolution at 1440x900 is useable. The image is small but sharp. For more visual comfort, you can bump the Windows DPI scaling 125% from 96 to 120 dpi. Note that you can only push DPI scaling so far before apps start having trouble displaying themselves... 125% has always been trouble-free for me.

GK

 

The connector should be dual-link (24-pins) but the graphics card must have support for dual-link also to make it work. As someone linked to earlier (http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_nvs_notebook_techspecs.html ), the nVidia NVS 160M supports only up to 1920x1200 for a digital display.

Intel Graphics (X4500HD) should be able to output resolutions up to 2560x1600 (at least through DisplayPort) according to this page: http://blogs.intel.com/idf/2008/08/displayport_technology.php

Örjan

 

Yes, yes I did

It lacks as far as I can tell a fingerprint reader and a webcam but I think those are fairly gimmicky anyways.

 

Well done and good luck. What's the bottom line cost? Does it include the standard 3 year warranty?

I have both the fingerprint reader and webcam and have never used them, so you won't miss much. The backlit keyboard would be nice.

John

 

Thank you orjan. After more experimenting, I have hooked a 22" monitor to the e-Port Plus dock with a single-link DVI and I was able to get it's native resolution of 1680x1050.

Until a DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter or cable is released nobody can get 2560x1600 out of the e-Port Plus and E6400 or E6500 via DVI. If you are planning a purchase of a DVI monitor get the 24" or 27" 1920x1200 and you will have full resolution with our available hardware. Otherwise you will need to step up to the 30" WFP3008 DisplayPort version to get the 2560x1600. Any monitor that uses Dual-Link DVI cannot display greater than 1280x800 due to the lack of a dual-link dvi interface with the Quadro NVS 160M.

If you want to have support for 2560x1600 over Dual-Link DVI right now you need to purchase a Precision series notebook with the Quadro FX Series GPU. edit: ..assuming that the e-Port Plus is truly Dual-Link DVI.

UPDATE

I don't think that any of the E-Series laptops have a Dual-Link Interface to the docking station.

All DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapters are Single-Link unless they are an active device. The DisplayPort pin configuration only has (4) data pairs, plus an AUX pair. Dual-Link DVI uses (6) TMDS data pairs. A simple pin/interface adapter is not physically possible.

Pin out diagrams:
Dual-Link DVI: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...en/6/65/DVI_pinout.svg
DisplayPort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort

It's pretty crazy that the PC shift to DisplayPort is going to make all 2560x1600 30" Dual-Link DVI monitors worthless piles of over-sized 1280x800. Time will heal all wounds. The active adapters will be released someday and 2560x1600 30" DisplayPort monitors with LED backlighting shouldn't be too far away.