Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I take it that remote ring and answer mean ringing in the headset and answering from it without having to use the mouse or keyboard. If so, this is exactly what the handsfree profile does. This should not require a separate BT dongle since the Dell 370 card supports this and other profiles too.
To check whether the headset supports it or not, check it properties once it's paired with the computer and check the services tab.

My Plantronics Voyager 520 supports both the handsfree and headset profiles.

This is what the Windows Vista feature pack for wireless has: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942567

 

Awesome, thank you very much! Looks like I'll be ordering a Voyager 520 today for trailing it with XP.

In the meantime I'll readup on if there is a way to get those new features in Vista, into XP, but by the sounds of it I doubt I will need it as it sounds like the unit itself will do the job, I'll report back my findings once I have run through some tests on it.

Thanks again!

 

OH just another quick question, when you mention "profiles" are they set in the plantronics software or the del 370 "profile"?

Cheers,
Cy

 

The Latitude E6400 can take any Dell 65W or 90W PSU. The only problem is if you are life me and have your system with the Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M video card, where the 65W WILL work, but your CPU will stuck at ~800MHz, and your GPU at minimum clocks, and will not recharge your battery (ok, I lie.. it will... but like 1% every ~20-25min). If your machine is at sleep or turn off, then the laptop will now recharge normally the battery.
I don't get why Dell does so much extremes with the Nvidia GPU. They could have the GPU at lowest settings and the CPU normally, or same settings as now but recharge your battery normally.

 

Was just told by Plantronics Support that without the dongle and their software running, these features apparently wont work.

So might order one with a dongle, and see if we can get it working without it, if not then we can always plug in the dongle in and use that.

 

What do people get here for temps on their northbridge (shows up under ACPI)? I've been running ORTHOS for a while now to test my new CPU's stability and the northbridge is running ridiculously hot - about 87C on average, with spikes up to 91C. Does anyone else's run that hot under heavy load?

 

I received new Latitude E6500 couple of days ago. Removed couple of components of Dell Control point software and tweaked few things and things are good so far.

However, there are couple of things that I am concerned about :
1) CPU usage shoots up to 40-50% and at times even to 80%+ with just simple scrolling web page in Internet exporer. In general, with very light operations, the cpu usage is going high. Is this normal ?

2) The touch pad gets sticky (esp. with minor moisture on fingers) and in general, the feel is not the same as my old Latitude D610 or Inspiron 8200. I am bit disappointed as I am a heavy touch pad user (no external mouse or track point). Is this normal ? I would expect a bit of matt finish for touch pad so finger movement is smoother.

3) I don't use track-point (pointing stick). Is there any way to enable use of the 3 track point related buttons for track pad ? Essentially use both set of buttons - the one above track pad as well as below. This is possible with my existing Latitude D610 as well as Inspiron 8200 e.g. hold the left button above track pad and then drag the corner of a window to change it's size or to move it.

Thanks in advance.

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System details :
Latitude E6500
Core2 Duo P8600, 2.40GHz 1066MHz 3M L2Cache |
2.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM | 250GB HD 7200RPM |
256MB NVIDIA Quadro 160M | 250GB HD 7200RPM|
Vista Business 64-BIT | 8X DVD+/-RW |
Intel WiFi 5300(802.11 a/g/n) | 6-Cell/54-WHr |

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Under Everest, when I perform a stability stress test for several minute on everything except GPU ('cause it doesn't do that, but no mater.. as this is not what is in question)

Chipset: 64C
CPU: 66C
RAM: 50C
Aux: 62C

 

For testing purposes:
- Download and install Mozilla Firefox
- Load a page result with google
- Scroll and see how your CPU spike.
- Now load the EXACT same page under Internet Explorer 8, and see the CPU usage.

On my side with a continuous scroll (meaning scroll up and down really fast for several second)
- Firefox 3: ~25%
- IE 8 32-bit: ~60%
- IE 8 64-bit: ~54%

Remember that the content of applications is rendered by the CPU, unless specified otherwise (ie: 3D Studio Max and a like software and games a example of GPU rendered application.)

Sticky? no... but it is harder to slide the finger, if that is what you mean (increased friction level)

Well... don't be scared... try
The mouse buttons of the trackpoint works, but the track pad does not work for about 1 sec. Normally speaking you are supposed to use the trackpad mouse and button with 1 hand. The index finger on the pad and the thumb on the button. Pressing both mouse button simultaneously (thumb on the middle of the two buttons) does a center click of the mouse.

If you use the touchpad in any different way, then it's wrong, and you should learn the proper way.

 

Thanks for super quick reply (you'r amazing).
My result :
Firefox 3 : ~25%
Chrome 1.0.154.53: ~40%
IE 7 32-bit : ~70%
IE 7 64-bit : ~70%

Wow - so it looks like this is a bit of browser performance related issue.

Ok. Tried on Fujitsu E8210 (this has Windows XP - intel core 2 duo, 2Gig RAM). I get as much as 50% CPU on IE7 scrolling. So may be the CPU usage is slight increased with Vista (and it becomes more obvious with Widnows Sidebar CPU meter ).

Interestingly, just try to resize any app window (back n forth) and the CPU usage shoots up to ~65%

On a side note, I prefer using IE7 (to IE8) - which runs as a single process even with multiple tabs (less resource hog in terms of memory and some cpu). The disadvantage of single process browsers is if one tab runs into problem, the entire browser session becomes unstable.

Hence Google Chrome came up with use of "one process per tab approach" and MS followed the same with IE 8
It looks like Firefox 3 is using a signle process with multible tabs (nice )

Yeah - I meant harder to slide. Thanks for helping out with describing problem more appropriately It looks like it will take some time for me to get used to this touchpad (It's a big problem at this point - putting lot of pressure/tension on fingers/wrist which is not good for a person using laptops ~12-14 hours / day). I am going to check with Dell Tech Rep if they have any solution (I managed to get PRO support (free upgrade) - let's see how good it is )

You are spot on once again about touch pad usage pattern. I am left handed and that might be the possible reason for my "not so normal" use of touch pad -> Use right index finger to slide on touch pad and Left hand for the button clicks (I know I can flip the button settings between left and right click buttons etc but it just makes it harder for other people to use my laptop/mouse in genernal so I don't prefer to do it).

In short, it looks like it's not possible to use press left button above mouse pad and then drag/resize windows using touchpad ?