Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Matt, when you say the LED cover is 'snapped', where exactly do you mean and can you explain that? I just noticed on my recertified laptop that on the top edge of the casing, directly behind the webcam, it is indented about .15 inches or so, not much, but noticeable if you look close... when pressing down on the cover behind the webcam square, you get a small crackling/creaking sound, almost like it's not flush and indented slightly about .5 inches wide right behind the webcam... is that what you have? or is yours something different, also does anyone else have this on theirs (an indentation behind the webcam)??

 

A Few Issues i'm having with my Latitude E6400
Hoping forum wizards can provide some guidance:


1. I'm using the Intel WIFI 5300 card and my connection goes from connected to disconnected intermitently, without a rhyme or reason. I can be in the same exact spot at my desk and have full connection signals and router working fine, and I will get disconnected for a minute or so and then it logs back on. Within 1 hour this could very well happen 3 or 4 times! I don't understand it, i rebooted several times and haven't fooled with any drivers to make it change from factory. I'm pretty sure I have the most updated drivers too as of end of february 2009... please advise.

2. "MCI Command Handset Error" upon shutting down or restarting computer. I've been getting this quite frequently lately. Sometimes it doesn't show up, other times it does, it's like 3 out of ever 5 restarts it happens. Any ideas on how to resolve this? I believe it happened after I installed the SRS Premium sound drivers, but not sure.

Thanks for your assistance!

On an off-topic note... I am outside in beautiful Southern California and it's about 80 degrees, I'm on my laptop at the pool and it is not heating up at all and the fan rarely comes on and the computer is like a work-horse with the intel integrated card versus the nvidia. When I had the other unit with the Nvidia card I couldn't even rest it on my lap because it would burn my legs! also i think lowering down to the standard hard drive instead of the 7200 helped this cause!

 

Based on you remarks:
- Uninstall the sound card driver (see if the problem goes away.. if yes good, else then it's not the problem)
- Restart your computer
- Download again the drivers from Dell (don't use the drivers already downloaded).
- Install the drivers and restart the computer.

One.. if you want kids... (if you are a guy) don't put the laptop on your lap, no mater how cold it is.
Two, normally the GPU should not heat up on battery mode... as it de-overclock at minimum speed (Core at 182MHz). The laptop was hot probably because the base and lid is in metal and had the sun light pointing to it. Like when you go inside you car when it was parked outside. However, I am NOT saying that it heat less then the Intel option. This is due that, from what I can see on pictures, that the Intel video card is inside the northbridge motherboard processor, and the Nvidia is it's own chip.

What I am saying is that the hot laptop scenario was not because of the hardware inside. Else your system would shut-down on you (overheating security system). As for your 7200RPM HDD. From my knowledge.. the disk slow down it's spinning when not in use. Sooo unless you were defragmenting your HDD, I don't think it is the case.

 

I tried uninstalling and re-installing the SRS premium sound driver, seeing if it did it without it, and that didn't do anything.

 

So then it's not the sound card drivers... Try the Intel matrix driver, if no help then contact Dell to know which driver can prompt such issue. Sadly I can't find anything the interwebs on your error message

 

something I found that may help those of you looking to hook up your laptop to an external display:

the Display Port to HDMI adapter is rather useless for most HD TV's... when hooking mine up I couldn't configure anything as far as changing the DPI settings, the computer limits your configuration because the TV won't recognize the output as a "PC" instead it recognizes it as just another video output and keeps all the settings the same, thus if your resolution is not identical on both your tv and your laptop you will get a muffled picture/blurry, or lose space/things cut off, or have image too small, etc.

I then tried hooking up a regular analog through the blue colored output on the laptop to my hdtv and that worked flawlessly as the tv recognized what was coming in was a laptop, hence allowing me more options on my laptop and then allowing me to switch the resolution on my laptop down to the native resolution of my tv which is 1360x768 and my laptop is 1440x900.

Long and short, don't bother buying the display port to hdmi adapter, it doesn't even look that much nicer than the analog, in fact I couldn't tell a difference in picture quality.

I also have an external display hooked up to my laptop for normal usage (samsung 19" lcd monitor) and i tried the analog hookup (blue output blug on your laptop on left side next to usb/esata port) and it looked very nice, i then bought the display port to dvi adapter and am using it now, it seems to be slightly better, but honestly i doubt that most people will recognize the difference. You can save yourself the money all-around and just go with the analog hookups that usually come with external monitors, or buy one at best buy for 25.00 for a measly 10 footer, or better yet find one on amazon or a tech store online for less than 12 bucks!

1 final tid-bit i learned today. A great cheap solution to cleaning your laptop is to mix 50% DISTILLED water and 50% White Vinegar. Don't use REGULAR tap water/bottled water because the minerals can whiten your lcd display. Also make sure you use a non-abrasive cloth- best bet is a microfiber cloth that has not been used on a car or anything before (brand new). and don't use anything like tissues or paper towels because they have fine chips in them that can scratch your display. Furthermore, don't use anything with ammonia or windex sprays as they can shorten the life span of your display and cause issues with the color on it.

 

One thing you guys must remember... a TV is NOT a computer monitor (it's for a reason why they are more expensive), no mater how good is your TV. TV's that offer you the best picture would be a computer monitor (the really expensive ones for their size, and even then)... however you need a computer to run with a good video card and TV tuner and input card... which is well expensive.

However, you should see a some level of difference between Analogue (VGA) and Digital (DP/HDMI/DVI). Because, LCD's is a digital device. Using analogue, means using a analogue to digital converter inside the TV or computer monitor and that reduces image quality, which is normal. VGA is best for analogue projectors or CRT monitors (The ones with the tube).

 

You are wrong about HDMI being "rather useless". You can get excellent quality running a HDTV from your E6400 using HDMI/Display Port. Here are the issues that you may be facing:

(1) You are trying to force the same resolution on both your laptop screen and the external HDTV. Obviously they have different native resolutions, so you will either have the HDTV blurry or your laptop screen blurry. Try using the HDTV as the ONLY display, and set the resolution to the native resolution of the HDTV, and you will see a fantastic image (assuming you have a good HDTV, of course).

(2) You did not mention what model is your HDTV. On my Samsung's, I can name the HDMI input "PC", and it will know that it is being used as a PC monitor. In that case, it turns off most of the video enhancement features (like 120 Hz motion interpolation, e.g.). It also turns off overscan, so that the HDTV shows 1-to-1 pixel mapping. I have clean edge to edge display when I use our HDTV's HDMI input this way.

(3) You can change the picture mode on your HDTV to force it to do a 1:1 pixel mapping so that there is no overscan. Samsung calls that mode "Just Scan". Other brands have a similar mode.

(4) Instead of cloning the display, you can set different resolutions on your laptop and your HDTV display. You have to choose whether you want the HDTV to be an extension of your laptop screen or not. In any event, it is possible to use native resolutions if you are not trying to clone the displays.

(5) In most HDTV's the HDMI is the higher bandwidth input. For instance, some HDTV's like the Pioneer's plasma's will not support 1920x1080 via VGA, while the HDMI input supports that. In fact, some cheaper HDTV's drop the VGA input altogether, so you have no choice but to use HDMI. Also, HDMI is capable of carrying multi-channel audio, so you save another set of cables when you use HDMI.

So bottom line is: HDMI is the better connection if you have a choice.

 

is there any difference between DVI and HDMI, i am going to buy a DELL 2209WA, its an eIPS screen, but it only has DVI input.

 

I'm actually not wrong because the issue is that the Display Port to HDMI adapter doesn't allow the TV to recognize the laptop as a "PC" as I mentioned in my OP. I confirmed this with Dell. When using Analog, it immediately is recognized as a PC and therefore allows you to match the Resolution between the laptop and the HDTV (as I also mentioned in OP). With the Display Port to HDMI adapter- you do not get the option to match the resolution of the TV AND the Laptop. That is the problem and why I said unless you have the exact same resolution on both your laptop and your HDTV you are screwed.

I am not an idiot and know what I'm talking about. I tweaked with all of the settings and spoke with both Samsung and Dell (3 different reps at each company) and the end result was what I mentioned in the previous paragrah-"When Using the Display Port to HDMI adapter it prevents your TV from recognizing the laptop as a "PC" and thus only recognizes it as a video and you are unfortunately left with the default settings and minimal opportunity to modify its settings."