Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I've had my e6400 for a couple weeks now.

The problems I've encountered for starters is:

Battery Life w/nvidia and 6 cell is not stellar by any means. I average 3.5 hours with wireless on, and brightness floating around the middle. I consider my normal computer activity to be average in terms of power consumption. I use my laptop for strictly business, no gaming, but I do some 3D programming occasionally.

Vista - I installed Vista over XP. I like the look, and took the time to tame the things that annoy me in untouched Vista installs - scheduled tasks, privileges etc. I had to do 2 installs of Vista, since my first install got messed up - I wrote about this in another post and it was fixed doing the second install. All of my drivers were successful except for the webcam. I still don't see it under Dell Control Point, so I'm still trying to figure it out.

Touchpad, I too experienced wierd things such as my browser scaling, lol... I thought my control key was being held down by a ghost, to later find out the left hand side of the touchpad controlled it. I turned the sensitivity to full for light touch to fix the lack of light response. My scroller still sometimes doesn't pick up, but most times it's because I don't have the browser properly selected to scroll.

My biggest annoyance of all, and I'm still going though it, is the Left Control button. It works 50% of the time. Dell support sent me a new keyboard, same problem. I ctrl+s, ctrl+shift+s, ctrl+x, ctrl+z, ctrl+shift+z, ctrl+v ctrl+everything...so, this is huge for me. I'm literally at the point of going nuts if it happens 3-4 times in a row. Dell recommended a fresh install of Vista, but I didn't know if it would help and have put it off so far. On a side note, the keyboard they sent me was a couple shades of gray lighter than my black one, and the keys were smoother. It literally did not match my computer lol, so I am sending the replacement back.

Even thought the Control Key has been the biggest nuisance of all, I'm still going to keep my computer. I know I'll get it resolved down the line, hopefully much sooner than later.

Lastly, I'm trying to figure out if the Dell Slice that has been and still is available for order with the e6400 for $399.00, if it's the same as the $299.00 model:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...s&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=312-0747&mfgpid=198276

If so, why would anyone actually pay $399.00 for it? If they are the same, I think I might pick one up.

 

1. Thanks for the info on the battery time with the nvidia GPU. You should be able to get past 4 hours with low brightness.

2. I Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V a lot and I haven't noticed any problems. if your third keyboard also has this problem then maybe the cause is elsewhere. Update to BIOS A03 if you are not there already in case it contains tweaks that aren't listed.

John

 

I'm considering the nvida gpu and I was curious about how that would affect battery life, so thanks for providing that info. If possible can you list the other specs of your computer, what processor (p or t), what type of hdd (7200,5400,SSD). I'm just trying to get a feel for what i can expect for a range of uses.

I do have a suggestion that might help with battery life. You mentioned you liked the look of vista better, If you are using Aero for your desktop that might have an impact on battery life since the GPU has to do some work to make all those cool transparencies and effects. So if you're using it turn off aero and see what kind of battery life you get.

 

So if all other things are the same, you lose about 45 minutes to an hour battery life versus the Intel card. That's roughly what I expected to be honest. Intel has been working to get power consumtion down to about the level of a wris****ch (lol) but it doesn't seem like nVidia has been doing the same.

I use Aero with transparency, and I get 4-4.5 hours battery life on 'Balanced'. I'm sure that I could get nearly 6 with some more power save setting and disabling transparency by using the power saver scheme.

I haven't had any problems with the ctrl key. I do some basic web development, so I can understand how annoying that would get.

Are you able to tell if the replacement keyboard is backlit? Perhaps that is why it is different. It might not be backlit.

Greg

 

My setup is a P9500, 4gb ram, 250gb 7200, intel 5300, bluetooth, vista ultimate. Everything I could buy minus the anywhere internet card, and the p series cpu over t.

If I do set my brightness settings to the smallest amount, and use Dell Power saving scheme, my battery reads 4:06 - 4:15. I'll check it out with non-Aero sometime. This is with only my generic startup applications open on a fresh boot up.

The replacement keyboard I was sent did have backlighting. I thought right off the bat after taking a look at it that it might not, so the backlighting was the first thing I checked for. The keyboard like I mentioned was really smooth, and matte, almost kind of a nice change lol.

I'm sending back the keyboard today, and gasp actually might try a reformat to get my ctrl key at 100%. I'm just pivotal about it since my last reformat felt good, since I installed a03 bios -> dell system software -> drivers -> then apps, except the whole webcam issue.

 

Any idea how long the wait for a E6400 with the P9500 and 9-cell battery might be?

I've been waiting much longer for this E6400 than I did the last, and it might lead me to cancel the order and buy elsewhere pretty soon.

 

I'm curious how many of you are using your E6400's for home use as opposed to business use. If so, what OS do you prefer?

I want this laptop for home and school use, so I'd prefer Vista Premium but it is not offered by Dell. My finger is still hovering over the "order" button until I get all my config choices ironed out--I'm still reading about your bad experiences and hesitating...

 

I use it for home use, I ordered with Home Basic and installed a copy of Home Premium I already had.

Vista Business doesn't have Media Center, but still has the Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. So you don't really lose anything with Business unless you need Media Center.

Greg

 

OMG!!

Technically I'm an owner of E6400 too! With just one "but":

DHL! It sucks big time! And I mean it...

9/29/2008 5:52 pm Scheduled for delivery Dublin, CA
5:45 am With delivery courier. Dublin, CA
9/26/2008 5:31 pm Scheduled for delivery Dublin, CA
8:51 am With delivery courier. Dublin, CA
6:21 am Arrived at DHL facility. Dublin, CA
1:32 am Depart Facility Fresno Hub, CA
9/25/2008 10:35 pm Processed at DHL Location. Fresno Hub, CA
9:59 pm Depart Facility Fresno Hub, CA
9:52 pm In transit. Fresno Hub, CA
12:00 am Shipment Acknowledged Sparks, NV
Picked Up by DHL.

What the .... !?

I just can't wait to start playing with my new E6400

 

Does Dell normally replaces unit with scratches? E6400 arrived last week. It's virtually a perfect machine except for a few scratches in the metal hinge base and battery. I already contacted Dell as well as the Dell partner. I wish they would replace it considering it's a very expensive machine...