Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

There were a couple of things that dell offers that were missing on the Z (on site warranty, accidental damage, Lo/jack built into the bios) that made it a tough choice, but that DRM policy they introduced was the deciding factor. I've got a lot of sony products but every once in a while they do something to really **** me off and make me not want to buy from them again. First it was the rootkit they included with a few hundred thousand music CD's and now they've instituted some incredibly restrictive policies on the playstation store downloads. Their policy is that if you once you download a movie, program etc. from sony online you cant download it again without calling them. So if you decided to download a movie rental from them 24 you would not be aloud to download that movie ever again. In the event that you deleted for more space, or you replaced your HDD you can call them and they'll allow you to download it again but thats a one time deal. This doesn't have a real big impact on me because besides watching bluray's my PS3's only other function is to collect dust. But if a company institutes policies that I have serious problems with on a fundamental level than I choose not to support that co with my money.

 

The power management features are accessed through Dell ControlPoint. You can download it, and other drivers / utilities, from the Dell download site.

The 7200rpm HDD might cost you 15 minutes of run time. in theory the HDD should go to sleep, but in reality I've never seen it happen - perhaps too much background file access going on.

The current unknown is how much a dedicated GPU will hit the battery life. The answer is probably somewhere in this thread (but I'm not inclined to look). It does appear that the latest generation of GPUs is more frugal on power, but in the absence of any firm info from E6400 owners with the dedicated GPU I would assume that it would take 20-25% off the battery life achieved with the Intel GPU.

If you are wondering what the Intel GPU can do, it is a fair match for the Geforce 7400, which was a respectable mobile GPU two generations back.

John

 

I can understand that - to a point, though.

I got a great deal on this computer so I wasn't going to let Sony's shady practices pursuade me.

DRM means nothing to me - I don't dl movies or music. I have a PS3 that is 99% bluray, 1% gaming

To each his own, right?

 

Hi, I just received my E6400;T9400, 2.53GHz,with the WXGA+ screen.does anybody else have any complaints on the volume level ?? I find it very low, even on the highest volume.The screen is also not as nice as I thought it would be but I could live with it, but the low volume is really bothering me .......

 

Those big grilles hide a pair of very small tweeters and Dell doesn't them to get overloaded. Make sure you have all the volume controls pushed up to maximum and you should get a reasonably loud but very tinny volume.

If you are connecting headphones / speakers to the headphone socket then go to volume controls > advanced and mute the internal speakers. Then you'll get the bass that Dell has disabled when the internal speakers are used and the audio is quite good.

John

 

The speakers are the only thing I truly hate about my E6400. I am going to replace them with some better ones. I am currently researching my options. I first have to look at the brackets to see how they will fit and check the area around the speakers to see if I have enough room to put some slightly larger speakers in. I will tear down my lappy this week to see. I've upgraded speakers before. I chucked some Toshiba Harmon/Kardon's in a Dell before for a buddy of mine. That worked out great! The hardest part was locating the best possible speakers for the thing. A lot of the sites I've seen don't offer any measurements for the speakers, so I have to kind of take my best shot, took two orders to get the right size Tozhiba Harmon/Kardon's. Seems it'll be the same way now.

 

Be careful, when I turn mine up all the way, the whole laptop vibrates...I would be nervous of installing better ones...

 

I was told from one of the dell representatives that the $299 battery was 9-cell battery slice instead of the 12-cell. Any idea if there is a 9-cell battery slice or is it just the person getting the wrong information?

 

i just received my e6400, which took 7 working days.

the LCD is Samsung (SEC5442), the color contrast is acceptable for me, at least it doesn't give me a grainy screen as my previous Dell Inspiron.

the DVD burner works fine for me (PLDS-DU-8A2S-AD12) without any failure. so far i have burnt 3 data dvd.

the touchpad is not as good as my Inspiron, but the pointing stick works fine without drift (windows vista business 32-bit).

the battery (6-cells) can last about 4 hours without changing any power scheme.

the ambient lighting sensor works fine, it did match with my environment.

the only bad thing is the battery cannot be attached as tightly as my Inspiron, i didn't expect this for a business laptop.

 

Dell representatives are idiots sometimes. There is the 6-cell battery, the 9-cell battery, and the slice. The 9-cell and slice have about the same WHr capacity, which might be part of the confusion.