Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I should add that Dell's latest version is 1.3.2.919 which I am having problems with - draqula is that the version you are using?

 

My 64-bit Vista business has a fifty fifty chance of waking up to a black screen with lots of HDD activity and nothing else happening. Only options I can see is to hard reboot.

Annoying as hell.

 

Like I said, it's a Creative. They can't make drivers and that's final. No exception to the rule (well their early Sound Blaster card were awesome... but now no due to there drivers).
I think it's going to end up having Dell making Creative drivers for that webcam, or switch companies.

 

After months of looking and some intense competition here between machines in the past week, I finally pulled the trigger on an E6400 today (certified refurbished) after stumbling upon the 20% off coupon code in this thread.

Specs:
Core 2 Duo P8400
Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit)
2GB DDR2 Memory (800MHz)
80GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Ultrasharp WXGA+ LED Display
24x CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
Intel GMA 4500MHD w/PC-Card
Intel WiFi Link 5300 802.11a/g/n
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
9 Cell Battery

I can't underscore how much of a steal this came out at. The Subtotal was $599 with that coupon code and with Next Day Delivery/S&H/Sales Tax, the final price was just $715

I'm a commuter student and wanted something for alot of word processing, some Desktop Publishing (a lil Microsoft Publisher-type stuff) as well as music, movies and web browsing. This pretty much fills the bill, adding in good doses of durability and battery life to boot.

Est. ship date is 2/3 and it should be here by 2/4

 

How would you guys rate the Latitude E6500/E6400 compared to the Thinkpad T500/T400/T61/R500. I'm personnaly looking at the 15'' versions.

My needs : http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=343067

 

Depends what you do with the system. I never owned an Thinkpad... this Latitude I have is my first laptop.

The Thinkpad uses stronger plastic, it is resistant to carelessness, scratches, hits and such, great if you are not the type of person that don't like to take great care of things for whichever reason. Great for business environment and schools. However, you don't have any design what's so every. it's just a plastic box.

where style is also not important. And the type of machine you put on reverse and slide on any type of normal desk without worry. You can pile them up without issue.

I see the Dell Latitude series as a: solid but not as solid as a ThinkPad, and powerful system with easy access to all of the hardware compared to other laptops. The machine can get easily scratch if you are not careful, however you have this sophisticated original business class design (see it as probably the only one in your work environment with such laptop, I know I am at university.. and that's a lot of people right there. The idiot that steal the machine won't be hard to find... for now anyway...). For example, to me, this is the only machine (probably they are others) which having the 9-cell battery which sticks out, doesn't affect the design of the machine. I think this laptop is perfect for any computer enthusiasts that look for such machine.

Now I can't give you any different comparison between the Thinkpad and the Latitude. But all I can say is I just build the Thinkpad T500 on the US website of Lenovo, and it's more expensive than what I paid my Dell (I was able to negotiate a nice price and free upgrades)

 

I'm seriously considering purchasing an e6400 off dell outlet but i have a question concerning the noise level that I'm sure you guys can accurately answer.

1. How noisy is this laptop in terms of the fan and the hard drive? Does the fan turn on full very often and stay on? Is it easily noticeable in a somewhat quiet room?

I intend on getting a 7200rpm hd and just the onboard video and p8400 cpu. Should i get a 5400rpm hd for less noise or is that unnecessary?

 

My E6400 has a P8600, 7200 rpm 250 HB hard drive and dedicated graphics, and it is very quiet unless I do something demanding.

As for Latitude vs. ThinkPad, I never owned a ThinkPad but a friend of mine does and he has been plagued by driver issues. This Latitude still has a minor problem with the sound driver crashing occasionally (requires you to end the process, no reboot), but I will solve that one day by reinstalling the driver.

 

Regarding the sound driver issue I have (I decided to lose 1-2 hours fixing that today):

What happens is that occasionally (usually no more than once a day), a program called stacsv.exe enters what I presume to be an infinite loop and uses up 50% of the CPU (i.e. one core). I notice nothing wrong during the period when that program has crashed (i.e. sound works well anyway). What can I do to fix this?

I suppose the above issue happens because I didn't follow the installation order suggested by Dell: I just installed stuff as I needed them. I will try reinstalling the sound driver to see if that fixes the issue.

 

What I do for driver installation, especially the IDT audio driver : every time I install a new chipset, IMSM, Network adapter or graphics driver, I reinstall the IDT audio driver lastly. This usually avoids the crackling audio.

Try the latest IDT audio driver on the Dell site. It has worked for me. It's not yet perfect, but it's a big improvement. I had uninstalled the previous version and gone back to the original release because of the problem with STACSCV.EXE.

The driver installtion order seems to be quite important so try and reinstall everything in the recommended order. You may not necessarily have to uninstall the existing drivers. Do remember to restart the system after installing any driver that asks for a restart, before installing another driver.

Let us know if this helps. Good luck!