Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

To be honest, I'm not sure how the Dell OEM Windows installation works.

I had my RAM and motherboard changed, did a complete reinstall using the provided Vista (32 bit) DVD and not once did it ask for the product key or activation. Everything working just fine.

 

Maybe the Dell OS installation discs recognize they are being installed on a Dell system and therefore don't ask for activation.

What's the best method to get digital video output with the E6400 without a docking station? I have an external monitor w/ HDMI and was thinking about getting this. It would be much more simple if Dell would have just made the notebook with a HDMI or DVI port.

 

That is the adapter you want. I got a 6ft DP->HDMI cable and a 6ft DP->DVI cable instead.

I remember reading something about a battery charge of over 100%, and I checked in RMclock and my battery is showing a 106% capacity when fully charged and 57720mWh. The designed capacity is said to be 57720mWh, while fully charged capacity is 54457mWh. Sounds like Dell spec'd some higher quality cells for the E series, perhaps because these laptops are enabled with ExpressCharge (which I don't use).

I've noticed some instability lately, but I think something is messed up with my Vista installation. I'm not all that concerned, since I plan on moving to the Win7 beta later this week.

Also, take a look at this new driver for the Dell 1397 and 1510 wireless cards. It mentions fixing crackling audio:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=339353

Greg

 

it does check, it wont allow you to install on a non dell computer.

 

But no mention of the backlit keyboard?

My battery appears to charge to 57720mWh but this is reported as 104.3% with a fully charged capacity of 55334mWh. However, if I pull out the mains plug and refresh the RMClock display the remaining capacity immediately drops to below 100% (54812mWh at the moment, but this seems to vary depending on time elapsed since the last top up charge).

John

 

I didn't check until now... but this happens to me too. It goes from about 104 to 98 percent. I haven't used my battery all that much, so I don't think it's a calibration error - at least not one due to battery wear.

 

&

Can you verify that these BSODs are actually caused by the driver? Also, to the "static" issue, have you made sure to do a clean install of the driver? It surprises me that I have still, to date, had not a single problem with this driver, and it is performing in every way vastly better.

 

Thanks Greg. Where did you find your cable? I think I might prefer a dedicated cable rather than a adapter.

Is anyone else having good luck with the 185.20 NVIDIA drivers? I'd like to get the best gaming performance possible even though I rarely play a game. But, if users are having issues I'll stick with the original Dell driver.

 

don't trust me, eh? . Just try the driver, and install with the modified inf using the update driver function, NOT the setup.exe. let us know if you have any issues -- i really have not experienced any issues to date. (and not that it is at all relevant, but my WEI went up noticibly with the new driver, too.) There IS a possibility that it will work well with the e6500 and not the e6400, because the two NVS 160Ms are different, but i doubt it is enough difference to cause BSODs, static, from one, and not the other. let us know what you see.

 

I can recommend the Revoltec Alu Guard 2,5'' eSATA HD case: It's hot swappable (AHCI mode) & no probs so far. You only need 2 extra USB ports for power supply. With the OEM Hitachi 5.400 HD (160 GB), I get a transfer rate of 63 MB/s. With a 2,5'' eSATA case (different chipset) from the German mail order Pearl, the E6400 wouldn't even boot.