Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

This is my big complaint. My D620 from work is built like a tank. The E6400, not so much.

 

Right now, the biggest complaint I've seen is the bottom panel. Some people don't like it.

When attached to the notebook, it feels extremely solid.

I just don't like the scratches, but I'm working on a solution for that.

 

Actually, I think these new latitudes are built very nice and are EXTREMELY easy to work on (swap parts/repair, etc)....

 

Well, at the very least the cooling system is quite strong. But, of course, that is because Dell doesn't trust nVidia anymore.

 

Thanks, I appreciate it.

For what it's worth, my experience thus far has not really shown a battery life improvement over the D610 at similar power settings in XP - both with discreet video and intel wireless cards. In fact, I'm getting about the same - around 4 hours max with bluetooth off and mild-moderate power saving measures, more typical in a corporate environment.

Using ControlPoint you can save more power, but you sacrifice a lot of functionality which you may or may not be willing to lose. Luckily, the panel makes it easy to change on the fly for users who understand the functionality and consequences. Your average business user won't, so IT departments will probably want to leave it uninstalled rather than flag calls about why an exec can't watch a dvd on the plane .

Also, it's worth noting that the D610's media bay battery added about 80% battery life while keeping the machine size the same, whereas the 9-cell extended battery on the E6400 only adds 50%, but increases the physical size of the machine. The battery slice is pretty much a joke, because it adds so much weight and girth to the machine that no normal user will want to lug it around. I miss the dual-battery functionality of both the C and D series machines.

Basically, all I'm trying to get at is that depending on you configuration and circumstances, your battery life may not really be better. But, at least for the 6-cell, it shouldn't be worse.

As for the other improvements... yup. In particular, what I was interested in was the newer processor, expresscard for future expansion, displayport for dvi and hdmi output, and esata.

cheers.

 

Actually, the battery slice is an 84WHr or 85Whr battery. And the E6400's 9-cell battery is 85WHr. So I'm not sure where you are getting the 50% figure at all. It should double the battery life.

I'm getting between 6-9 hours of battery life with integrated graphics, Windows Vista, and the LED screen with various patterns of usage on my 9-cell battery. The battery slice should, in theory, double that based off the Watt-hour rating.

As soon as you mentioned discrete graphics, all bets are off as far as battery life goes. Discrete graphics almost always take up more power than integrated graphics, and the E6400's options are no exception.

 

I was comparing the 9 cell to the 6 cell. The 6 cell is 56 whr. The 9 cell is a 50% improvement over that. Weight wise it's a comparable change to installing the old LiP media bay battery, space wise it's worse, so I see that as a fair comparison. I doubt the slice will be seen much in real world use.

I was, however, comparing battery life to a machine with a previous dedicated graphics chip, so it's a fair comparison. That's why I made sure to mention it.

 

Also, a D610 would use Pentium M's, which had a similar TDP to these new Penryns. C2D's shot the TDP back up to 35w. So a D610 would have better battery life than a D630.

Greg

 

True.

BTW, my comment about discrete graphics still stand. The newer stuff uses as much or more power as they used to. Intel, at least, tries to keep power consumption down. nVidia and ATI seem to not care at all.

 

Unless you get a new "P" series C2D. Those have a TDP of 25W - about the same as the original Pentium M.