Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I just measured the E6400 idle power with Intel 5300 wifi on, BT on, screen at 3 clicks from min, P8400 and Intel graphics: 11W with a Kensington ac adaptor and no battery. So the 10W number sounds right, given that the Kensington adaptor is not 100% efficient.

 

You are calculating it wrong though. The GPU doesn't draw 10w the whole time. There is still the processor, the screen, etc.

 

I get 11W with the Nvidia graphics (under power saver mode, and with Dell's battery saving options). You can do better than that since you have Intel graphics. Some users here (John Ratsey I think) report 8W, and some who did undervolting etc reported 6.5W I think.

 

1. John, I installed the RMClock utility and here are my results:

WHEN USING A/C POWER
Remaining Capacity: 57,720 mWh (107.3%)
Device Name: DELL NM6328B

Designed Capacity: 57,720 mWh
Fully Charged capacity 53,780 mWh

ON BATTERY POWER
Fluctuation between 14,730 to 15,962 discharge rate. Sometimes the rate goes up to 29,000, and then drops back down to 13,600.
Initial battery life states 5 hrs, 13 minutes, then quickly drops to 3 hours, 2 hours, etc.
The re-charge rate is at 31,646.

Finally, I let the default settings stand for system standby bs. hibernation or sleep. is that the best way to go? and what about selecting a power management profile--- home/office, dell maximum battery life, etc.. do you guys change this manually when you unplug from A/C power and then re-change when going back on A/C power?

So I am still getting a lowered battery life from when I first got this lapper a month and a half ago.
I know out of the box this thing was awesome with battery life, what can I do to increase the battery life back to what I was getting just over a month ago? I believe I may have tinkered with a few settings previously that changed the life, but not sure what. Please let me know if you know something I can set in battery life management or other area to amp up my battery life.


2. I installed the newest controlpoint, will see if that helps this issue.

3. For the USB power question, I went into device manager and unchecked the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
i did it for all 8 instances of "USB Root Hub"
Is that the right thing to do? Also, why is there 8 duplicates being shown, not sure how that works. FInally, by unselecting save power, will this hurt my battery life when using the laptop? Or is this for power saving in form of energy saving when I'm not using the computer? Can the USB device charge whether I'm plugged into A/C power or not, or is it only when plugged in? thanks.

 

Hi guys,

Its been 1.5 days since I have been using my e6400( certified refurbished from outlet).
It looks good so far , not much trouble.
The backlight works , so does the ambient sensor.
I ran the everest program as you guys had suggested.
There was lot of stuff in there and since I am a novice I couldnt intepret much.
I will post my battery and heat results here. Can you guys tell me if its normal?

Current Power Source Battery
Battery Status 56 % (Unknown)
Full Battery Lifetime Unknown
Remaining Battery Lifetime 11813 sec (3 hours, 16 min, 53 sec)

Battery Properties:
Device Name DELL MP4928C
Manufacturer SMP
Unique ID 1387SMPDELL MP4928C
Battery Type Rechargeable Li-Ion
Designed Capacity 86580 mWh
Fully Charged Capacity 85459 mWh
Current Capacity 48119 mWh (56 %)
Voltage 11426 mV
Wear Level 1 %
Power State Discharging
Discharge Rate 14663 mW


Sensor Properties:
Sensor Type Dell SMI (ISA B2h)
GPU Sensor Type Diode (NV-Diode)

Temperatures:
CPU 44 °C (111 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #1 40 °C (104 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 44 °C (111 °F)
Chipset 50 °C (122 °F)
Aux 44 °C (111 °F)
DIMM 45 °C (113 °F)
GPU Diode 48 °C (118 °F)
Seagate ST9160411ASG [ TRIAL VERSION ]

Voltage Values:
CPU Core 0.93 V

Is there any other important parameter to be looked at in the report??

which part of the report gives information about dead pixels??
This is under normal conditions.Not much stress(ie.gaming etc.) .
(graphic card Nvdia quadro)

 

Your system seams up and running perfectly at the hardware level.

 

thanks goodytes...

wat abt the dead pixels??

and I am sure that this is a question you guys must have been tired of answering??

how to find out if I have the proper WXGA+LED ultrasharp screen ??

seems to be brighter than the dell desktop computers in the college library at high brightness..

 

Everything looks good to me. The fluctuation is because your system power is never stable. This is 100% normal. Also teh program itself that calculate everything require resources to work, and when it refershes then your system uses a little more power. It's liek when you open teh Task manager, your CPU usage is not at 0% because it's beeing in used to refresh all the information on the panel.

It's up to you. For me, I always sleep the computer because I am 15min bus from university and I switch being classes I don't want to wait until my system power-up back. The only time I turn it off, is when I use my desktop computer.

Yup, manually.
Maybe Windows 8 will have it automaticaly (hopefully). But so far it's manually.

Normal. When I first got my system, the first tim eI power it up, I had 10 hours of battery life, the next day after using the battery a bit I got 9 hours then it stayed like day for a few days and starting to reduce itself. Now I have about 7 hours and a few minutes. However, something must be noted. Windows batery life algorithm can't predict the future.. so all it does is: "If you continue to use your system exactly as it is now, you have xx hours of battery life". But In class I turn off teh display by doing Fn+D every time I don't use it, I don't type all the time. So despite saying now ~7 hours, I have 8 hours in my case of actually usage. Of course if your surf the web with ads or listen to music or worse internet radio, have a USB device attached, then your battery life will be diminished. This is why I don't get people that buy computer in store that have 3 hours. 2 weeks after they have MUCH less of battery life. That is why you always want almost 1.5 the battery life you need when you pick a battery.
Lithium battery semas to have the behavior of having a super charge teh first time you use it, then it reduces and stabilizes a bit.. and after a year or so os using the battery every day about, then your battery is preatty much finished (MAYBE give you 3-4 hours at best).

Battery life of your system will be diminished. I don't get the point of doing this. You dont' gain any performance. That option is just there for compatibility purposes for one of the first USB devices, or if you want a Fan or light or something crappy like that.

No, I dont' know who's teh idiot that suggested that.

Normal. That's how it works. I can explain it to you, but it will take forever to teach you the internals of the hardware level and OS. Take a university course on computer system and software system, and the answer will be inside.

 

Normally speaking, Dell only replaces your screen if you have 10 or more dead pixels. UNLESS it's VERY bothersome and ready to go up the lather. OR, you can by-pass this by presenting a issue with the screen to Dell.

use everest and see the model name (display>Monitor), and look on teh internet.

Then it's most probable an LED screen.

 

So right now I let it go into standby which seems to be the default, you are saying, going into sleep mode will bring me up to speed quicker after 'resting' than letting it go into standby?

Ok so when switching manually, the battery profiles, when plugged in, what do most use, and when on battery power, what is the best setting for max life?

I was told to change the USB powered settings in the BIOS... i went into device manager and not sure if that is what was the right thing to do, I want to be able to charge my ipod when my computer is not "live" so that if I'm not in front of the computer I can just let the iPod charge on its own and come back... what's happening is it doesn't charge in the powered USB drive unless I am actively using the laptop, so that is what was suggested I do- change the BIOS settings, so I guess I didn't do the right thing? Please advise... also why are there 8 identical USB drives as mentioned in my previous post? If I'm not supposed to de-select the allow battery saving mode, what AM I supposed to do to allow charging of external devices in the powered USB slot?