Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

FedEx was certainly quick with my E6400.....ordered Friday the 23rd and was here @ 8:45AM Monday the 26th (beating all the 'estimated times' I saw)!

Had a little bit of trouble connecting to my home network at first, but that was more my fault than anything else. That and the little bit of bloatware (Roxio CD/DVD stuff) I had to remove are so far the only cons I can find with this lappy.

I love the no-nonsense all-black design. When closed, I think it sorta resembles the monolith from '2001: A Space Odyssey' lol Does certainly befit a machine targeted at the business sector though.

So far, I've noticed the trackpad response to be excellent (as opposed to other E6400/6500 owners), but keep in mind this is the first laptop I've owned in 3 years. Have had no issues with the sound so far either. I haven't really done much other than listen to vids in my YouTube favorites list (waiting to get a portable HD before I install iTunes on here/bring my MP3 collection over), but I seemed to have been spared from the crackling sound problem as well for the time being.

Because it arrived earlier than I had expected, I was able to take this thing down to school with me yesterday which was a treat. In my backpack, it's lighter than many of the textbooks I can remember carrying and in class, is relatively unobtrusive compared to the small handful of MB Pros and the other larger machines of my classmates. Battery life is also great, though I have yet to really stretch the legs of this thing--so no specific times/tests yet. Overall portability is top-notch with this.

Performance is solid as well too. With Comodo & Avast running in the background, Firefox open (with 2-3tabs) and PowerPoint up and running, the machine hardly breaks a sweat. Using 'CoreTemp', avg. temperatures under load have ranged between 34-38C (on-the-go, without any sort of cooling solution).

So far the biggest thing I've done was install Office 2007 Professional ($90 at school--can't get yet another license copy ). This weekend I'm hoping to get a portable HD to fit, amongst other things, my music/movies/vids....then I'll snatch up iTunes and get more of a well-rounded performance picture. So far so good though

 

Oh and I also have audio problem. When I want to listen through the PC speakers, I have to use the IDT drivers. When I want to watch a movie using the displayport/hdmi adapter, I have to roll back to the Vista drivers. It's really god annoying. When I roll back to Vista drivers, my speakers don't work.

Also, when I try to watch a movie on my laptop, it skips every minute or two. It's like the HDD can't keep up or something.

I am currently escalating through Dell, I just want to return this thing and get something else. Problem is I don't know what else to get. I'm afraid the rest of the Latitude E series laptops are similar, at least with the same crappy touchpad.

 

They won't give it to me. I've tried to get the 64 bit Vista Business from Dell. Oh lord I tried! 2 emails and 2 chat sessions. They said they can't send me a version different than the one that shipped with my machine. But they'd be happy to sell me a copy. Any suggestions on how to get a 64 bit copy from Dell?

 

LOL.
I am wondering this too. But why not just wait and get W7 64?

 

Because I'm slightly regretting the decision to go with the e6400. It's not as responsive as I was hoping, plus the many little bugs are slowly driving me crazy (stuttering audio, audio driver eating up CPU, touchpad). So, if I can get the 64 bit and add an extra gig of RAM maybe that would make this purchase a little easier to swallow. This is suppose to be a happy time!

 

If you are comfortable with reinstalling Windows yourself regardless of 32 or 64 bit, I pretty much guarantee that you no longer have those problems.

Greg

 

you have to PM chris M at dell, he will take care of it for you, http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19029748/19163931.aspx?PageIndex=49

it is a dell global policy to give the disc when requested.

 

Reinstalling Windows hardly improves your touchpad

Also, I reinstalled Windows and have the audio driver eating CPU (very occasionally). Guess I'll have to reinstall AND install drivers in the correct order. No problem, I haven't put much stuff on the laptop anyway. Guess I'll take the chance to change to 64 bit (I have a retail Vista so I have both versions available).

 

There are two ways of improving the touchpad.
1. Install the latest iteration of the Alps driver/program.
2. Don't use it all and use Vista's native touchpad driver.

 

First of all, you will use the Vista audio driver, not the IDT one.

Using the latest touchpad drivers and setting "Touchcheck" to the second lowest setting saw a dramatic improvement in my touchpad.

Reverting to the older version of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager seems to have almost eliminated the audio stuttering for many people. (Version A02 or A03)

Greg