Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Hi applebook and veritas,

Just a heads up. I installed the Dell's Vista 64-Bit graphics driver and this seems to have fixed the issue. Display no longer goes completely dark/blank and neither does the screen flicker anymore.

 

recommend 5400 or 7200 rpm hdd? NVIDIA or integrated graphics? (little to no gaming, but would it be worth it to keep options open?) ... Also, What to expect for battery life with a 7200rpm and nvidia with a 9-cell?

 

The technician was here again today. He changed the bottom case and brought a new access panel.
After taking the whole notebook apart, here's the conclusion:

The good: No more snapping / clicking noise at the palm rest. New shiny laptop case.

The bad: The technician didn't put a blanket or anything on my desk to work on the laptop. Result: small scratches on the back of the screen lid (--> the top of the laptop when closed)
I'm a bit annoyed but they are so small that I can live with them.

The ugly: The LED cover (above the F1-F12 keys) is bent once again (I had this exchanged before because of the same reason.. doesn't look good at all, though it is just a cosmetic thing).

I do wonder know if I should write Dell and let them send me a new LED cover. I don't want to abuse them too much though.. I'm a bit in a pit here. :S

 

Yea, I had that. I called Dell about it, and replaced for free all scratch parts done by the technician.

Don't accept these things, have Dell replace them.
If you wait too long, then Dell won't cover you as they will say you did it, so hurry up and ask them replaced, it's your rights and Dell fault. If they don't like it, then Dell should have used better quality materials. That is final.

 

Received my E6400 from the Outlet yesterday.
It's a nice machine, the LED screen wasn't as bright as I expected but it's still very bright(I got the LG screen). The keyboard is awesome, the pointing stick is nice (I have not used a ThinkPad so I can't compare), but the touchpad is not something I'd want to be using for a significant period of time. The Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM drive is surprisingly very quiet and does not run hot at all.

Unfortunately, I have already encountered two problems with it =(
1)The power light on the outside doesn't come on.
2)Two FLASH-ON-ON errors. The service manual says that this indicates "A possible processor failure has occurred.".

My screen brightness also resets every time I reboot/wake from sleep.

Hopefully I won't encounter any more problems.

 

Yea, call Dell about that to get it fixed.

I don't know if this is a OS bug or a unsupported feature (brightness memorization), but under Win7 RC the problem is not there.

 

Chatted with Dell. They're replacing the hinge covers, palmrest and motherboard.

 

Another update from me: after telling Dell about the scratches on the lid and the bent LED panel they offered to either send a technician to exchange everything or to send me a new LED panel and a new keyboard. (They said it looks like my keyboard is also bent.. didn't notice that )
I went with the last choice, the few scratches are not worth the time I will lose with having a technician here.

 

Any significant differences in brightness, contrast quality between the 3 screen options ?






14.1" UltraSharp™ WXGA+ (1440x900) LED Display - Brush Metal Black [add $79]


14.1" Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) LED Display - Brush Metal Black [Included in Price]


14.1" Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) LED w Privacy Flexibility- Brush Metal Blk [add $99]

 

Yep. Especially when there is some bass the whole wave band seems to collapse and you lose many details. Uninstall the driver and it will be fine. The standard windows driver does a much better job.
I did that about a half year ago. Recently I tried the IDT driver again because I expected some improvements... but same old, same old. Simply awfull. The only con is that the windows driver seems not to notice when you unplug your audio system while the notebook is off or in standby. In this cause you get a lot of loudness with the built-in speakers...