Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

In theory, the screen brightness should only depend on the backlighting; brightness levels should be identical on the WXGA and WXGA+, though I'm sure the characteristics of the screen(s) could make either seem more or less bright.

6-Cell with a P-Series processor and the IGP... something like five to six hours. I recall someone saying something like "one hour for every cell on the battery" somewhere in this thread. This is, of course, at low-brightness settings; 80% will consume significantly more power. Maybe four to five hours instead?

If you're stingy, I'd say you could squeeze more than six hours in the 9-Cell, even with the Quadro.

 

Unfortunately I feel your pain with just about everything you mentioned relating to the touch pad. It is really the worst touchpad I ever used. My old Toshiba laptop- 6 yrs. old had the synaptics pointing device and it was incredibly responsive and ERGONOMIC.

I feel with this touchpad, because of it's location on the laptop (almost dead middle from left to right) and (to the very very edge of the bottom of the laptop) it's ergonomics are extremely poor. Does anyone else on here feel like they have to curl their palm/hand around to successfully navigate w/ the touchpad? I'm used to having my hand extended outward with my arms and shoulders straight... with this touchpad I have to bend my arms inward at about 30 degree angles to use the touchpad properly which puts a lot of stress on my shoulder.

Also the size of the touchpad is a joke, it is miniscule in relation to the overall dimensions of the keyboard/surface area. I can't understand why they didn't position the speakers elsewhere or move the keyboard up closer to the screen so the touchpad could have a little more surface area below it and along the sides so that you can actually rest your wrists while you navigate touch pad....after all isn't a wrist rest for resting your wrists? the way it's positioned now I need to hover my wrist over and navigate...

The keyboard is EXCELLENT in my opinion, i don't feel that is is flexy, i think it is quite responsive... and QUIET. i think it's a great keyboard similar to IBM/LENOVO thinkpads.

I really wish Dell could've improved their ergonomics on this laptop. Everything else is so pretty/sleak about this, but any picky/details-oriented person would notice that this touchpad arrangement and worse-off, its functionality/responsiveness are sub-par to POOR!

The best way to explain my gripe is to put out your left hand and reach out like you want to use a touchpad on the laptop, but just position your hand naturally to wherever it lands... doesn't your hand land out a few more inches past the touchpad and maybe to the left a little? mine does... and so do just about every other touch pad on the market... they are off-centered to the left more and slightly more toward the center of the keyboard.... Also... another weird ergonomic point is that the base doesn't gradually slant down from screen to front... in fact, it is slightly higher in the front by the touchpad area than the height toward the back by the USB ports, completely opposite of what laptops should be for ergonomics

what was dell thinking with this touchpad and its functionality, responsiveness, and the general layout and ergonomic considerations?!?!


UGH!! ---- very frustrated since i just got my laptop yesterday and i REALLY REALLY want to love this computer, but these few points as claphands also noted are giving me a huge buzz kill.


YOU WROTE:
3) circular scrolling is ALMOST what I'm trying to replicate (this is pretty cool btw and works almost smoothly, probably need to get used to it). I'll try to describe what I'm looking for:
- when you scroll normally with the e6400 trackpad it goes up chunk by chunk
- when you scroll circularly you are able to smoothly move up and down
- when you scroll the way I'm used to one flick of your finger doing a "normal" scroll causes automatic circular scrolling until you stop it. it makes the trackpack scroll mechanism feel incredibly responsive, as if you are gently rolling the screen up and down with a simple touch here and there

does anyone know what I mean?

circular scroll takes a bit too much work to engage and isn't as convenient a feature, to really be an adequate replacement imo




MY RESPONSE:

YES I KNOW EXACTLY What you mean!!! it's such a pain... on most keyboards when you scroll, whether with the touchpad or mouse, you can customize it to scroll slowly/smoothly without a choppy effect meaning have it go all in sync/incrementally the same, instead of big blocks of space, like 3 inches at a clip is what this thing does, versus other units where you can go smooth as fast or as slow as you want but it's very readable AS YOU SCROLL, versus this one you have to scroll in clips/chunks and then stop to read it... the only solution i've found, as you already mentioned, is to use a nice external mouse like a logitech where you can click down on the scroll button to activate the locking mode so then you can slowly move your move and have it 'smooth-scroll' but then that kills the purpose of owning a laptop if you have to start hooking up all these external components... grrr!

 

Yea, I thought I could've gotten more out of the 9 cell, but it seems to max out around 4/4.5 hours.... also i think this crappy 7200 rpm HDD is killing battery life, it is always on and LOUDDDDD....

the reason i'm asking these few points is b/c i got the 1440x900 wgxa+ yesterday from dell outlet and it's driving me crazy, feels way too small of font for my eyes, and if you recall in my other thread- dell e6400 outlet purchase, from yesterday, i mention how i tweaked the settings with dpi, etc. but still it doesn't look right... the main issue is the internet browser windows don't 'save' my changes of text size in view text size in IE or the + or - zoom option in firefox, and some web pages are static, and some change to resolution so it's really a pain using a system in a 'non-native' resolution, hence why i am feeling buyer's remorse and will probably return my lappy tomorrow to dell in hopes of getting the standard WXGA 1280x800 instead of the "+" 1440X900.


So anyone else know more about ACTUAL battery times on the 6cell w/ intel graphics card and P8600 2.2 or 2.40? sort of hoping to get the 'non-sticking out battery' haha. that extra 1 inch isn't much but it does kill the sleek effect of this beautiful machine...plus the 9 cell in this unit i have here is a little wobbly in the back.

 

What are you guys talking about.
on my system, I have 6 hours at 80% screen brightness.. and that is what Windows is telling me and not the real thing. If I attach my Logitech Illuminated keyboard (not only the LED are brighter, but has way more of them, and it's a full keyboard) and having the brightness at full, with a optical mouse, eSATA HDD connected, I have 5 hours with the same setup (again, this is what Vista is telling me).
And from experience Windows is not great at guessing how much battery life it will last. Well I don't blame windows, it's kinda impossible to know as it doesn't know what you have in your head and what you plan to do. But Vista always tells me less than the reality.

 

hmm weird, i am using xp pro and i thought xp pro should have even better battery life? maybe not? i also have the 7200 rpm HDD which even though i'm not sure it's supposed to make much of a difference in battery life, it sounds like it's always 'working' and could be cause of lowered battery life on my particular laptop, it just makes a constant sound.

my brightness may be closer to 90% too, 80% was an estimate and i just re-looked at it and i'd say it's closer to 90%

 

Oh come one now, the touch pad is not THAT bad. Try some Acer laptop touch pad, or some Toshiba Proteges... they always act up, it clicks non stop, always thinks you want to drag stuff. When you reach the "scroll" areas despite knowing you just navigate, it cancels what you are doing and switch to scroll.. it's always a content battle.

The size of the touchpad does NOT mater... if you KNOW how to configure it, it should allow you to move through all the screen no problem. Moreover there is nothing that Dell could have done.
Keyboard is perfect, perfect standard layout, which is rare on laptops. If they put the speakers on the back then what... nothing.. the laptop would look like that is all.. still no room for bigger touchpad. Move the keyboard up.. it will be to up, and the battery will still out more (for the 9-cell, and stick out for the 6-cell)
The ONLY fix, is to remove the touchpoint mouse, which will remove it's buttons, meaning more room for touchpad. MANY people like the touchpad, some only buy IBM's JUST because of it (like me with the non-glossy screens, I know I saw better laptops (specs wise, not quality, cooling, etc...), but they all had a glossy screen and that was a HYPER MAJOR down side for me. So, there is ABSOLUTELY nothing that Dell could have done, other than making the laptop bigger, which means people complaining how big it is for 14inch.

Ergonomic + design don't like each other. All ergonomic design I saw makes the laptop look like a 70's design and looks ultra cheap. Heck even Logitech, which you have to admit makes lately (thanks to Microsoft) awesome product design, tried with they ergonomic keyboard. It's the best one I ever saw, but it's still look like . One day a perfect deisgn will exist, for sure.. but expect miracles. This kind of comparision is like someone that say, I want a 2 Xeon CPU's, RAID 0 SSD, 1900x1200, 2 Geforec GTX 260 SLI on a 12 inch laptop and be ultra cool, and have 12 hours of battery with nothing that sticks out. Well I went extreme here but I included a bunch of examples into one to explain:
Performance vs Laptop Size
Performance vs System noise
Performance vs Battery life
Length of example vs quality of example.
and so on...

 

I'm actually extrapolating from my own experience with the 6-Cell and the Quadro. At the lowest brightness, with light internet use and a little undervolting, I could get somewhere between four and a half to five hours with the 6-Cell (of course, that was when it was new). Thus, I figure if you add three more cells, you'll get about fifty percent more battery life, hence my six to seven hour figure.

The same goes for what I said for the Intel. Five is easy to make, six is hard to make, so the typical run time is probably between five to six... so I said five to six. I'm pretty sure John Ratsey also quoted five to six in his original review.

I admit, my figures are with an SSD instead of a typical spinner, but I don't think the numbers for a good 5400RPM drive will be much lower. I dunno about the 7200RPM drive; the one in my old D830 didn't seem to pull battery life down too much, but generally I've avoided them.

 

You may want to read John Ratsey's excellent review of the E6400. He estimates a difference of almost 4 watts between min and max LCD brightness. So over 5 hours' use, that is a 20 watt-hour difference in energy spent. Looking closer at his plot, there is a 2W difference between running the backlight at a 3 setting (20%) compared to a 12 setting (80%) (0-15 is the total range). The 9-cell is rated at 85 watt-hours. Let's say you are getting 5 hours life out of it now, meaning you are using roughly 17 watts. Saving 2W will extend battery life by about 2/3 of an hour. For what it's worth, I use a backlight setting of 1 or 2 out of 15, and it is fine in a fairly well-lit room.

You can also save battery life by lowering the WiFi power. BT should be turned off if you are not using it. In Ratsey's review, he said he could get 6 hours life out of the 6-cell with the Intel graphics, in light usage.

Reading your posts, it seems like you had really huge expectations when you bought this laptop. Well, if you feel this bad about it, just return it.

 

It could be brightness, and HDD. Also XP battery life mechanism (to determine how much battery you have left) is based on NIMH batteries (remember XP is OOOLLLDDD) Back then, yes you had lithium ion battery, but Microsoft goal was not like the one Vista, it was to support everything extra old rather then new like Vista (which means dropping a lot of stuff). That is what I remembered... but it was MANY years ago, so I could be wrong. Well in reality, it all comes down onto what you use. For example, if I say I just use firefox... then what.. if you have 20 add-on that check stuff and defrag your HDD.. then yea it's normal you'll crap battery life. And also, let's nor forget services. Services and the rest of OS configuration, uses system resources...

 

Well said! There is no perfect laptop. that is why they are so many of them.
Sorry, form all of use, if we convinced you that this laptop was for your needs, we can only try to guess your needs. But it is you that must the ultimate decision. I took 4 years to pick my laptop, yup back in the days where the AMD Turion 64 and Pentium M were big I didn't get it because.. well it did not fit my needs. And even then... I was more looking for a laptop of the E6400 performance and feature but in tablet PC form (size of the machine did not mater as long as it was 14inch or smaller). Well a sacrificed had to be made, as I could not wait any longer (like I desperatly needed it), and now I'll wait until that day will come.. maybe in another 4 years when this laptop would be finished.