Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Just placed my order for my new e6400 to replace my e4200. My estimated delivery date is September 30th... That sucks

 

Sorry for the noob question but... how do I execute this thing? I even tried enabling the execute bit, but still no dice.

 

If you stay with software packages provided by your distribution, installation is much easier. Downloading software directly often requires a more hands on approach. It is worth searching the inter-wibbly-wobbly to look for a step-by-step procedure in this case e.g.

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty#Graphics_Card

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7853897

 

Well again hats off to Dell Serivce, I dont know how much my company pays for it, but wow. The small metal clip that is to the right of the mic and web cam on the top of the LCD broke, snapped off when I went to open it a couple of days ago. A Dell tech has just finished replacing that small part for me under warranty. Not bloody bad if you ask me. I did ask him how much experiance had he have with the E6400 and he has replaced a couple of heatsinks in his time with Dell on E6400's. When I asked about the heat/throttling issue he just shrugged and told me to call support and see what they think. I have already had a heatsink/fan replaced due to the fan bearing die, so dont know if they will go down that path again. I really like the unit itself, even after the battery died, the fan died and the clip broke. Overall it does a good job, it is just when I really try to open 3 or 4 250-300MB Excel spreadsheets while having a dvd playing, while defraging my HDD and compiling code..... only then do I get the throttling issue, and I am expecting Dell to tell me to get a desktop if i want to do high powered activities, meh might wait to call them about the heat/throttling issue until it becomes a bigger impact, but for now, just wont try to have 50ty billion apps open at once

 

Yeah, I had tried that already. I have also tried EnvyNG. Both approaches give an error and mess up my display.

I think I'll use the computer without the Nvidia graphics for now.

 

as GoodBytes mentioned, you need to know which version of Ubuntu you downloaded and installed. They are labeled x86 (32 bit) and x64 (64 bit), and get the appropriate driver for your version. Then from a terminal

cd /directory/you/saved/file/into on my builds it's /home/username/Downloads
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run (or whatever your file name is)

enter your password and it will compile and install the Nvidia driver.

 

I think that's the second of those to be reported broken during the past year. And if that's all the E6400 experience he has had then it's an indication that they aren't loaded with problems.

John

 

Like I said, I already tried that and didn't work. Some problem about X running on the system.

 

Hey, would some be able to tell me if this would be a good computer for a commuter student. I would just be doing word processing, youtube hd, and some programming. I can't shuffle through all of these pages to read.

Are there any major problems with this model or did Dell solve them all already?

I was really contemplating this or the HP 6930p. Thanks in advance.

-Compsavy

 

I think you will find that a significant number of the E6400 owners are students with similar requirements to yourself. If you are willing to compromise on the exact specification then Dell Outlet is the place to go shopping. A 9 cell battery, Intel GPU and P series CPU will probably mean that you can leave the PSU at home.

Possibly the biggest remaining problem is the throttling discussed in this thread which affects a small number of E6400 owners. There is a rumour that Dell is working on this.

John