Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I can't remember if it was mentioned earlier, but what happens if you just use Microsoft's default driver for the touchpad in Vista?

 

Guys, I think I might have found a temporary solution to the touchpad issues.

Whack it.

Seriously, if the mousepad is a little mousey...just give it a firm/quick tap of a finger. That should get it to work again. I've successfully gotten back my mouse three times thus far.

I'm positive this is a driver issue, given the solution that works for me.

Really liking the swirly scroll thing...I'm keeping the (slightly problematic) Dell drivers just because of this feature.

 

Lol, reminds me of the movie Armageddon where the Russian astronaut whacks the machine with the wrench to get it working and yelling "Russian, American (parts)... all made in Taiwan!!"

 

Sorry I have to say it!!

Careful you dont whack your mouse too much you might go blind.

 

The Microsoft drivers have no scroll capability, and the acceleration is much slower than with the Dell drivers.

FWIW, each time the touchpad freaked out on me in vista, I was able to get it back by opening the task manager with ctrl-shift-esc. Less violent than smacking it

I've been on XP for a couple days and I am having absolutely no major problems (with anything, not just the touchpad). Obviously the Vista drivers need work, as usual.

 

Well, outside of the terrible speakers, I love my E6400. The only other thing that is bothering me is the terrible Dell software. My old Toshiba stuff was far better. For example, whenever I set the brightness of my display to where I like it, I take a break and come back to my laptop. It has gone to the screensaver, when I move the mouse, I have to re-adjust the screen brightness again. Plus, I just don't think the Dell Control Point is very user friendly. I also cannot get the "wifi catcher" to work at all. I've done everything I can do. I believe it is directly related to the terrible Dell software. I also cannot get the Dell software to even recognize that I have a wifi card. It will not see it. I wanted to try out the wifi Dell software to see if it gave more information than the standard Windows stuff, but I cannot get it to turn on. I've went to the setup portion of Control Point and it will not let me check the wifi option, it is grayed out. Crazy.

 

The Dell connection stuff I think is for WWAN, though someone who has actually used it could correct me. WWAN is cell phone broadband, whereas WLAN is Wi-fi.

Do you have the ambient light sensor (als) enabled? That would cause the display brightness difference. Also, check the power save options in ControlPoint.

My Wi-fi catcher was disabled in the BIOS when I recieved the laptop, I left it like that, since I don't move around often.

Greg

 

I have the same problem...the ALS is off, Vista's been told to shut up, but my monitor brightness still changes.

I'm officially moving back to XP to see if this problem continues.

 

Is the option of "reduce display brightness during inactivity" enabled?

I would try uninstalling Control Point to see if that does anything.

Greg

 

My touchpad problems were resolved by reinstalling the intel matrix storage driver - not sure why, but it seems to have done the job.

Does anyone notice that the plug on the AC cord feels like it should sit farther inside the port in the computer? When I push mine in all the way I still see exposed metal - the plastic casing doesn't come flush with the back of the laptop.