Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

I'm sure that they will.

Say that your new laptop arrived all scratched up. Get them to send out a new one. You might be able to ask for them to not include the hard disk so that you can just swap it into the new machine when it arrives.

Greg

 

I really wish they would. I don't mind the hard disk as I haven't done much with it yet.

 

Yeah, but at least you can continue using the computer normally until the new one gets there, then you can swap the harddrive and continue without reformatting, etc.

You shouldn't have any problems getting them to send a new one.

Greg

 

Hello everyone, I just received my E6400 today and have been playing with it for about two hours. I had to decide between this and the Lenovo T400, but the great reviews from this site pushed me to the Dell.

The specs and then some things I like/dislike:

P8400 (2.26 GHz)
NVIDIA 160m GPU (512 MB)
2 GB RAM (1 DIMM)
160 GB 7200 RPM HDD
LED display
Bluetooth
XP Downgrade

Everything else is what was standard on the spec sheet. Now my comments:

Likes:

(1) I love this computer. After taking my Inspiron 9100 for 4.5 years, it is a joy to work with a battery that lasts longer than 2 minutes. I almost forgot what it's like.

(2) Many other reasons to love this computer, but they've already been covered.

Dislikes:

(3) Mine came with a file called "smtrace.txt" in the "My Documents" folder. I have no idea what this is and it's not up on google. Anyone know anything about it?

(4) Neither the F11 "PrntScrn" nor Alt-F11 work to take an image of the screen. Or maybe they do, but when I open up Paint I can't paste the screen image.

(5) HDD light constantly flickers, even when nothing is going on.

(6) Before installing anything, I already have to defrag the HDD. I thought this was strange.

(7) I also have a slight amount of flex right under the 0.3 MP camera, which pressures the LED display a bit when pushed. The obvious answer here is don't push it. But I hope it's not a defect...

I noticed that I wrote a lot of cons, but believe me I'm very happy with this computer. But I'm curious to know if anyone else has/had similar problems?

 

Oops, just figured out problem (4): I have to do Fn+F11 or Fn+Alt+F11 for screenshots.

SCRATCH ONE DISLIKE!

 

LOL! I went through that exact same thing the other day.

 

I too have wondered about this, mine is always flashing.

On a related note, I notice that when the HDD seems to be working such as loading webpages, opening files, etc., the pointer is very delayed to my finger movement on the trackpad with hesitations and skipping. It only does it say the computer is working and I am moving the pointer like after opening up a big folder or webpage still loading, etc. The nipple trackstick still works smoothly in these instances, only have hesitation with the trackpad. Anybody else have this or have a solution. I have already tried with my computer on max performance, etc. and doesen't change anything.

 

Hey I've noticed that too, but didn't want include it because I didn't want to sound too "*****y" with my comments (not that your comment is *****y...). Either way, I just deleted the partitions and will do a clean install of XP only. I plan on taking this thing to work tomorrow so I hope I won't be up too late, but I'll write back and tell you if the pointing stick, or any of my other problems, were solved by the reformat.

 

I use my E6400 for everything but I opted for XP.

Just let me know if I got anything wrong in my review.

Maybe this is related to the tracking and recovery option. I have also encountered a process call TracerHelp which sometimes doesn't shut down properly.

I'm surprised by the need to defrag. The HDD will probably settle down.

I don't see this problem but I don't see this as a problem unless you can put pressure on the display from the outside.

John

 

Okay so the reinstall was both good and bad. Windows now fully loads from power on in under 30 seconds. But...

The HDD light still blinks. All the time.

Certain Dell programs and system drivers cannot be re-installed because I "must install a new service pack that contains a newer version of the Windows Installer Service." What the heck does this mean?

As a result of missing certain Dell programs, I can no longer see my volume and LED brightness as I change them. The sound volume icon is still in the system tray, but when I change the volume I don't get the meter. Hopefully this will come in the Dell program pack once I figure out how to install it.

I've noticed that the vertical viewing angles on this are very small. I get a lot of light reflection on anything around from about 0-100 degrees. 110 degrees seems to be the perfect angle, but then say 115 and higher and its unviewable again. On my old Inspiron 9100, I could tilt it forever and still see just fine.

To be honest, my 9100, although very big and heavy, is solid as a rock and has only battery life problems, which are understandable after 4.5 years. I also do a format/clean install of XP on that one every six months or so. With this E6400, I'm starting to doubt whether it was the right purchase.