Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Have not tried or seen that. I had WMP and IE stall too much for some reason, but that seems to have stopped since adding 2GB of RAM.

GK

 

Yeah I tried the windows personalization, fn+F8, and the Nvidia display configuration screen. The Nvidia Dualview claims to support "Two or more" screens but I have never been able to get a permutation that shows more that two screens to show up in the pull down options.
Anybody know if there are experimental drivers for the Nvidia card that can do this?
I'm running the 64 bit Vista Ultimate SP1 beta at this moment in time for testing purposes. Stables as could be thus far.
I verified the dual monitor only behavior happend in both XP and Vista (32 and 64 bit O/S).

 

I have 4GB. I am wondering if it's the CD driver or driver.

 

The GPU only supports two displays. If you need 3 or more displays use USB to VGA/DVI display adapters.

 

The performance page of Task Manager will show the total physical memory that can be used.

John

 

HDD
If battery life is critical to you and even a few minutes more makes a big difference to you, then SSD aside, a 5400 RPM drive is the one to pick. But the latest 7200 RPM models are almost a efficient as the slower drives and I prefer them since HDD tranfer speeds are important to good performance overall.
For 7200 RPM HDD, I recommend the Seagate Momentus 7200.5 or the WD Scorpio Black. Both 250 GB or 320 GB and with free fall sensors.
I had mentioned a review on Tom's Hardware in one of my previous posts. That will help you.

WLAN
I don't know how the Dell card performs compared to the Intel card, but I prefer Intel since they release drivers more often. Dell is usually quite slow with their driver releases.

HDD Light
The latest Intel Matrix Storage manager driver solves that issue. HDD activity is greatly reduced.

 

I have 4 GB RAM with Vista32 Business and it runs like clockwork. The few problems I've had so far are with drivers or hardware. Vista itself has behaved very well.

Maybe it's a quality control issue. Some people seem to have more problems than others.

 

Well for me, under Vista64, the system runs without any real issues.
And we have the same system from what i can see on the signature.

 

E6400 SYSTEM REVIEW:

I just wanted to say that my E6400 has been very stable and I am happy with my purchase. Sometimes it's nice to hear a little praise rather than all of our problems when you are researching a laptop. Here are a few of my remaining thoughts.
- I had to turn off wake on USB in the BIOS to eliminate some BSOD issues when resuming from sleep mode.
- I also think that some USB printers were causing a BSOD sleep issue, I am only using network printers now.
- The only Dell ControlPoint software I installed was the security, the rest is garbage.
- The WUSB is a waste of technology, I have disabled it. The company that makes our chip is out of business.
- I use a 16GB SDHC card for files, no more thumb drives sticking out the side.
- The e-Port Plus docking station is great, except for some extra fan noise.
- The DVI ports on the dock are not a Dual-Link connection to the Latitude or Precision laptops.
- I had to buy a 30" DisplayPort monitor to have 2560x1600 again.
- DisplayPort monitors take a little while longer to initially display video
- DisplayPort to DVI adapters are not Dual-Link DVI unless they are active devices (powered).
- Dell 3008WFP has a faint high pitch noise emitting from the display.
- I wish that I could install a remote power button so I didn't have to press the power button on the dock.
- SSD is very nice.
- I wish that I had another 4/6 cell battery to abuse while in dock every day.
- The auto dimming photocell changes the backlighting too aggressively, I had to disable that feature.
- I was switching from a Precision T3400 quad 2.4, 10k HDD, 4GB desktop to this laptop and it does not feel much slower.
- Video playback suffers the most because I think that GPU gets too hot which creates fan noise.
- I love the backlighting on the keyboard
- The keyboard shows finger prints too easily.
- The anti-reflective coating is pretty good, no mirrored display.
- The LED screen is crisp and the colors look pretty good.
- The LED screen is usable outside in direct sunlight.
- Sprint charges too much for a data only plan ($60/month)
- You can not transfer a cell phone contract to a mobile broandband device.
- USB/Bluetooth Phone-as-Modem works great with my HTC Touch Pro and is free in my plan.
- 14" Neoprene Laptop Case is perfect with the 9-cell battery and great protection at airport security checkpoints.
- Do not buy the blue E6400 if you want to be taken seriously, I returned it for a more professional black color.
- Optional hot swapping battery slice for up to 17 hours of power in the field.
- Standard 3-year warranty

All of those comments aside, this laptop is better than nearly everything else for sale to replace a dual 30" screen workstation and small enough for travel.

If you are considering a purchase you may want to wait for a Blu-ray. However, many Blu-ray movies include an extra Digital Copy disc that you can watch without a Blu-ray drive while traveling. The HD processing during Blu-ray playback will kill a battery very quickly.

If I was going to do it over again:
- I would get the Intel video
- I would not get the Sprint card only for GPS because there's few apps for tracking PCs.
- Bluetooth 370 would be fine
- Modem probably was not necessary
- I wish that I had the fingerprint reader for Windows login and password protection while traveling.
- Upgraded to North American-only warranty support!

 

Well I got my laptop back but Dell didn't fix the problem. Thy replaced the screw but it still won't stay in the socket. I think I'll just get the heavy duty black tape and just tape it down. The mail-in warranty is pretty pointless if they take the laptop for a week and don't fix the problem.