Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

depends on the module you want. the dell bluetooth 410 is 49.99, and the 370 (19.99) or thereabout. it is stupidly easy to install.

 

It would be helpful if you can post details of your system.

You can add the BT (Dell Wireless 370) easily. I bought one from eBay for $20 shipped. You can get a refurbished one from Dell for about $10 plus shipping, or about $30 new. Now that I am using Windows 7, the BT works reliably with the Dell BT mouse, so I am happy.

You can also buy a really tiny USB BT dongle for much less.

I have two E6400's, one with the Intel 5300 agn wifi card, and the other with the Dell b/g card. The latter works well, even for streaming HD videos. I also ordered the Intel 5100 agn card for about $20. We have a 11g/n network, but the overall feel is that the Dell card works well enough.

Oh, I also like the way Win7 654 bit is working out. Only problem for me is that the brightness slider does not seem to work reliably.

You should also install the latest audio driver. Makes a huge difference in sound quality for me.

 

You can't really tell how loud a drive is when it is installed in a laptop by reading specs. First of all, different vendors have different ways of spec'ing noise, so I tend to trust reviews where the tests were done with the same methodology. Second, the mounting system and the placement of the drive are crucial. Vibration can be amplified by the chassis.

Just reading this thread, at least three posters have commented that their 7200 rpm drive sounds like a second fan. That is data that you cannot ignore.

As far as power consumption goes, other things being the same, 7200 rpm drives consume more power because of the higher amount of energy required to spin the platters at that higher rate. Of course, the lowest power 7200 rpm drive today may use less power than an average 5400 rpm drive from 3 years ago, but that is a separate point.

 

Thank you for your suggestions...
I still have problem with this unresponsive TouchPad! any suggestion?

Intel C2D T9400 2.53
4GB Ram
Win Vista Business
250GB ,7200 RPM HDD Seagate
DVD writer 8x PLDS DU-8A2S... what's the brand
Quadro NVS 160M
Display LG LED 1440*900
IDT audio
PC card, I am not sure if this could be useful for me or not?
SD Ram reader
Smart Card Reader
Ricoh Credential Vault! what is the usage of this device?
BroadCom 4322AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-fi adapter
Battery 6 Cell ( Samsung SDI) does this Battery support Express Charging?
Price ~ 1600$

okay...cuz I really felt miserable that I haven't buy a one without BT device.

my E6400 wireless is neighter Intel, nor Dell it's BroadCom 4322AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-fi .
but I have no idea about it's performance in compare to yours!

so, this machine can run the Win7....

have you tried installing linux on this machine?

Thank you for reminding, I have just downloaded and installed the IDT 92HDxxx HD audio version 6.10.0.6159 A06 driver.

 

The laptop does support Express Charging but not recommended as you age the battery faster.

BroadCom is the bran that Dell does with. Take it as is if BroadCom did no name products for Dell. Same product but it doesn't say "BroadCom" on the box (well website in this case).

Your laptop uses all the new technology standards (ok every 2 month something new comes out... but get what I am saying).. so your laptop is able to run Windows Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 64-bit (when it will be released with the Win7 drivers) without any hardware related issues.

New is great.. but not entirely for Linux... not because the OS is limited like XP... not at all! It's just that companies don't really tend to make proper or any drivers at all for an extremely smart market. Ubuntu should run.. but don't expect 100% stable and the same great batter life. You MIGHT not have the video card drivers. I say this because under Windows, Nvidia official drivers can't detect this video card as it's own, as the video card is a special ID for Dell laptop. BUT you can go at laptopvideo2go.com to download the latest drivers and a provided modded *.ini file which you replaced on the setup will make the setup detect this laptop video card as it's own (which is really the case). Sadly, there is no ini file in Linux. So I don't know if the Nvidia drivers will work.

All I can say, is try and see... but don't expect a success at 100%, but DO expect that it will install and run, and you will be able to use it.

However, you can run your Linux distribution, like Ubuntu, under a virtual machine software, like Virtual PC, VMWare and many others, which allows you to run Linux under Windows in a window. (I recommend 3 or more GB of RAM when you do this).

If you JUST want a Linux terminal, than check out Cygwin for Windows.
Its literary a Linux terminal. The install package allows you to download extra software for itself in an easy fashion. No drivers needed. I use that for university when I need to program something under Linux (program it using a Windows editor) and use Cygwin to run GCC and compile it and run it under itself.

I saw some screen shot on the internet of people running KDE 3 under it.. but I have no clue how they did it...

 

Define "unresponsive" in details please. What do you do to have this ro come down to your concludion?

You know the DVD brand easily by removing the optical drive bay, and read the drive sticker.. Mine is the Panasonic 1.6A version... I know that Dell has a 1.3A from Toshiba and that one is not only a little slower to read a DVD but also noisier, and makes this strange "brzzzuuurrt" when you turn on the laptop or come back from sleep. Anyway...

PC Card slot, is a plug on the side of your laptop that allows you attach external devices like a sound card, TV-Tuner, input card, and more... PC-Card uses the PCI standard and is older one. If you have old devices it will work fine.

Express Card slot is like the PC-Slot but uses PCI-Express instead, and has the same devices you can attach on. PCI-Express is the new standard for laptop.

PC Card cannot work in Express card, and vise versa. If you don't plan to attach extra system peripheral via this card... then you should not worry about it, witch is probably the case... very few people uses such thing.. at maximum you just use the USB version of the device.

Read more about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard

 

I think I've made my point... multiple posts here and the specs demonstrate that the 7200RPM drives Dell is shipping can be very quiet when considered subjectively by hearing them and when considered objectively by comparing their spec rating to typical known noise levels. No need to debate mounting systems or other reviews of other drives... 7200RPM drives can be very quiet. I would not avoid ordering one in fear of getting a noisey drive.

The power consumption argument is much less subjective... just look at the specs. One of the 7200RPM builds consumes the least amount of power.

Simply assuming more RPMs equals more noise and more power consumption ignores the facts.

GK

 

It may be cheaper to order the crappiest HDD with your laptop and buy your own 7200RPM.. one that you know the specs.

 

Two questions:

1)on the SC reader on the left, is it removable? it looks like there are ridges on it that can make it removable. also, it makes noises when you move it around (almost like its not as solid as the rest of the computer).

2)Why is my audio slower than my video on the webcam? I could swear this didn't used to be a problem.

stupid webcam, giving me all sorts of problems! Hopefully I can replace it myself if i need to.

 

DELL LATITUDE E6400 Display Port to HDMI Adapter Question:
Hooking up my notebook to a Samsung 40" LCD HDTV

I currently am using the E6400 w/ 1440x900 WXGA+ LED screen. I have a 40inch Samsung LN-S4051D LCD HDTV which has a native resolution of 1366X768. When connecting the display to HDMI adapter w/ HDMI cable from notebook to TV, automatically the computer recognizes it and changes the resolution on the itself for some reason. It goes from the 1440x900 to 1280x720 and then when I go into the display settings it doesn't allow me to increase the resolution, only decrease from there.

The picture on the tv is superb, however, it is cut off slightly around the edges, so I only get about 90% of the screen showing, crystal clear, but not fitting 100% on the screen. I know this has something to do with the different resolutions between laptop and tv but not sure how I can fix this to show everything on the screen? When I move the resolution down on display options on the laptop it just increases the overall 'zoom' effect on the tv and still cuts off the edges on each side. Can you help me to configure this properly? Also, if you have been reading my posts, I am waiting from Dell on a laptop replacement which will be 1280x800 display instead of the 1440x900 since it's too small for my eyes... will this be any better or worse for hooking up to my tv? Also, when choosing an external monitor, what kind of resolution would I want? does it need to be as close to the laptop resolution or does it have to be exact?

Also, when playing youtube videos with the laptop hooked up to the tv, it looks crystal clear, beautiful, even at the lowest youtube video quality. This is how it looked on my old 2003 laptop I used to own. I noticed from the ghetto with this e6400 although it is SUPER BRIGHT, the video quality just doesn't seem to be there...even w/ the nvidia graphics card, it just doesn't seem that 'crisp' ... any fixes/adjustments for that? Finally, the sound is playing on my laptop when hooked up to the tv but it does not come through to the tv. I tried playing around with settings on the computer but couldn't figure out how to make it come from the tv? Is there a way to do this? Dell told me there was but when I chatted online the agent I got wasn't too knowledgeable in this area so I thought I would post on here...