Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I updated to A12 and everything seems to be running normally.

 

OK so finally got around to play around with my new Dell. My hardware upgrades from Newegg arrived at the same time so I installed the 4 GB RAM and my 500GB 5400 hard drive in there, installed a new copy of Vista 64-bit Home Premium, and have been installing drivers and updates since.

First impressions are positive. Build quality solid all around except around the "speakers" which is understandable. The touchpad is ridiculously small, but I prefer that since I hate them. The pointstick is surprisingly comfortable to use. Keyboard pleasant to use. One annoyance is how the optical drive vibrates so much, even when the CD isn't being used--can't leave random discs in there.

Screen quality good, especially on the side angles. Sound quality (on external speakers) seems the same as I'm used to, except sometimes it stutters (not sure how to describe it). Do people know a fix to this? I have a feeling this can become very annoying if it persists

Temperatures--according to Speedfan, GPU seems to idle in the low 50s and rises to high 60s under duress. CPU and HDD temps idle around 40 and don't go beyond the 50s. To the feel, the palmpads are warm but not hot.

So yeah, seems aside from the sound issue, I'm quite content. Anyone know a fix for that?

 

Should I bother reinstalling ControlPoint stuff btw? Is it useful?

 

Try disabling the modular bay in the BIOS. It's not a permanent fix, but if it works then it's the same issue as me.

The major uses are getting screen feedback when you increase or decrease volume, screen brightness, etc, and some options to lower power consumption while on battery.

 

@Sadseh, what is the input rating of your optical drive.
When I got my original laptop I had a Panasonic 5V 1.6A drive, which does not make any noise (only when it reads a disk at full speed, which is to be expected for all optical drive). When my laptop was replaced I got a different one which was a 1.3A instead. But was VERY noisy, lots of vibration. Every time you came back from sleep or turn on the machine it did this vrrrt vrrt noise. I obviously keep the good one (swap the drive).

 

Well the CD thing doesn't bother me that much since I just won't leave discs in there. All I can find for the hardware info is that it's "HL-DT-ST CDRWDVD MU10N." I should probably mention at this point that I just got the CDRW one since I was getting tired of browsing the outlet store, and I can probably just swap out the DVDRW from my old Acer.

The sound issue is bothering me more. I did some searching on these forums and apparently other people who had a stutter connected it to using Dell's Power Plan, but since I never reinstalled that feature I'm not sure what can be causing it for me.

HerrKaput, how will disabling the modular bay feature fix my sound? :S Or was that in reference to the optical drive as well?

 

It is, unlike other laptops vendors, a very light program. Let me explain.
The porgram is split into 2 parts.
1- The main option program where you can change options like improve battery life by turning off certain components, changing the brightness and behavior of the backlit keyboard and more. This application is like any other application. I have it installed, but removed the startup run (as you can access it by doing Fn + F7 anytime). So really useless to have it run at startup.

2- The second part is the on screen notification for everything (volume, screen brightness, Ambient light sensor status, Send the request to Enable/Disable battery recharge and the other Fn keys). This application is very light. Ultra fast startup, very light on the system and memory. I must congratulate Dell for this. This one I left it as startup item, as I like.

These 2 software parts comes together from Dell Control Point software.

 

On a random note, just watched a new clip of That Guy With The Glasses and holy crap. The CPU temperature hasn't gone up beyond 40 (C) for either core, on balanced power setting. My Acer would be choking in the upper 80s within 30 seconds!

Gentlemen, this is quite the laptop, indeed.

 

They are several ways to fix it (if one doesn't work, try the other):
1- Use the older (or newer) Intel Matrix Storage thingy driver.
2- Use an older IDT sound card drivers
3- Disable power Manager for the sound card in the "IDT Audio control panel" found in Windows Control Panel.
4- Reinstall the IDT drivers.
I tried Windows default audio drivers... they technically work best and every time you come back from a sleep or shutdown or boot Windows you hear a VERY loud "TUCKP!" noise from the speakers. I have that in Windows 7 Beta due to a lack of official drivers.

 

Great question. It has something to do with the high latency that others have reported in this thread. Disabling the modular bay severely lowered my latency (by a factor of around 50) and my sound stuttering disappeared.

In other words: I haven't got the slightest idea...