Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Hmmm... very well then, I should give it a try.
What I am scared is that if I undervolt too much, and then Windows doesn't boot (re-install wont' work, as the CPU is undervolt). Then I am screwed, as I can't restore the values due to laptop limited BIOS.

 

Don't set the software to automatically load until you are comfortable with your settings. also, the ultimate fall-back would be to boot in safe made. Note also that RMClock takes about 2% of the CPU time and will actually reduce the maximum battery life under light usage. In fact, the main reason I'm now running RMClock is to disable the clock throttling which my E6400 automatically does when I use the 65W PSU (totally unnecessary since the full load power drain with P8600 + Intel GPU is around 50W).

John

 

Hi Did anyone install X9100 , X9000 or Q9100 on E6400 ?
I try to install X9000 on my E6400 , after bios screen appear 3-4 sec everything turn off and BIOS log said like "Temp... High.. Shut Down" but my X9000 very cold.

 

So I've been working with Dell Tech support to resolve my frequent lockups on my E6400. They diagnosed it as faulty memory, but the irony of it is that the onsite engineer only brought 1 stick of 2GB RAM while my unit has 2 sticks of 2GBs (4GB total). He replaced it but I highly doubted the fix and sure enough it crashed shortly after he left.

Here is how my machine locks up based on a video I took from my phone.

(cant post URLs yet but you can figure out the link from the info below)

wwwyoutubedotcom/watch?v=lh61asdhkTI


I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now as after ~1.5 hours of Dell remote connect session from Dell support on my machine he noticed the same lockup symptom (it starts by disks activity ceasing). So a new HDD and a system board (with disk controller) is on the way for parts replacement. Its been a painful ordeal for me and my E6400.

 

if the RAM is suspected to be faulty, did you try running with just one stick of the new 2GB ram instead of 2x2GB (new and old)?

Could be conflicting ram modules or simply the other older ram is spoilt as well. If all works well with just the new 2GB ram, then you do not have to replace everything.

 

Well I finally received my Latitude E6400. I was really exited. This machine is very impressive, good keyboard I must say, not super ultra quiet, but quieter than the Tinkpad computers that I used. Their is ABSOLUTELY no flex even if you press hard on it (not super hard to a point in braking the laptop, of course).
I am impressed with the super thin DVD burner drive and the 9-cell battery size, oh and the power adapter. Bottom and top of the laptop is some sort of metal which is really nice.

The strange thing about this machine, is that the laptop is much heavier than the battery. Probably due to the robust design. Battery weight about the weight of an computer desktop optical drive, which is very nice.

Packaging was great, nicely laid out. No real junk on the computer other then of course Dell software, Roxio and some sort of DVD player software (and the drivers, Flash, and Java, but that is expected). Other than this there is really nothing in it. Big plus here. I was expecting trial version software inside or something.

I love the ambient light sensor as it smoothly changes the screen light with a nice smooth transition.

Wonderful screen! I must say. view angle is average as noted on reviews. Nothing fantastic here, but it's a laptop, for you... so it's not an issue. The Strange thing is that when the laptop is turned off the screen is blackish-green and not pure black... huh probably it's because of the LED board on the back or something. However, this is ONLY when the laptop is turned off. When it's ON, it's a nice black. Colors visually are close to my CRT monitor, which is very nice. Screen brightness is good, visible screen at minimum brightness. My system came with the nVidia Quadro NVS 160M.

Something I did not read on the review is that the keyboard light intensity is actually adjustable, very nice. You can also set a timer like close the keyboard light after X second/minutes when not in use.

After carefully looking at the machine I didn't find any downside. Someone here mentioned of a curved top, I must say that it is visually not visible at any angle. Very nice stuff.

Battery life was 7 hours with wireless on and screen brightness at near minimum (Aero turned on). Descent speakers for a laptop. I mean this is my first laptop, but I was actually expecting such quality from a business class machine. Attaching a good pair of big headphones the sound was pretty good. I would say something like the nVidia Sound Storm and even then a little bit better. Good mid-range too (using headphones). The volume is pretty loud for the speakers of a laptop compared to Toshiba protege that I tested.

Machine is quiet... no super ultra silent to a point where you really don't know if it's on or off, but for a laptop in a quiet room, pretty good.

Track pad worked great on my computer and I didn't have the audio problem. However I didn't have time to actually use the laptop.

System was very fast on general usage level. Vista Business 64-bit took 31 second to start-up until log-in screen (compared to 1min and 30sec for my desktop (7200RPM AMD AThlon 4400+ S939 (eq: AMD Athlon 5600+ on AM2 socket or an Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, with 3GB of RAM (it must be noted that my desktop has a webcam, X-Fi sound card, printer drivers and well several software). Too many start-up items on when loading an account, but that could be adjusted. My laptop is with a 5200RPM HDD, 4GB of RAM, Vista 64-bit and the Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, Nvidia Quadro NVS 160.

Now I must say goodbye to my machine, as it's being returned. Why you ask?
Because I hate it, you ask? Nha, because there is a dent on the freaking frame of the screen! the laptop was clearly hit somewhere at the manufacturing plant
It took me about a week and half to get it, so I imagine it will take 2-3 weeks until I get a new one.
Shame, it's a really nice machine, where I am genuinely impressed by it. I mean I tested many laptops, and non gave me the "wow" effect other than this laptop.

Quick tested machine:
- Dell Studio 15.
- Dell XPS M1330.
- Dell Insperon 14inch.
- Toshiba Protege series (at a store).
- Several Lenovo thinkpad old and new, from where I work.

 

My E6400 seems to have started running really hot the last couple of week for some reason. I can't think of any changes I may have made to impact this, according to Speedfan (I can't get HWmonitor to work) it is both cores are around 106 degrees Fahrenheit at idle. HD is right at 109 at idle. Temp1, I assume to GPU, is steady at 109. I have nothing running except sidebar, avg, winpatrol, and carbonite. I've turned all that stuff off and the temps still register the same. I noticed it was hot about a week back when it started burning my stomach and legs when it never used to. I am thinking of doing a fresh install of Vista Ultimate to make sure something didn't get screwed up.

 

It's not the memory, well it wasn't for me anyway. Techs diagnosed it as memory for me too but once we switched it out I received the same locking up. Get a full replacement, hopefully.

 

Oh yes I forgot to mention, I did say sometime ago that I order my laptop with "Latitude ON" even thus it wasn't on the E6400. Well I didn't have it as expected (it was free so I didn't care, and in reality I only took it as it was free when I asked, but I really don't care about it).

 

I received my E6400 (with Windows XP) today. It seems to be a solid build and stays cool and quiet most of the time.

My E6400 came with the following drives:
Hard drive: Hitachi 7K320 160GB (HTS723216L9A362)
DVD burner: MAT****A DVD+-RW UJ862A

The drives seem to differ a bit from what other people have got. The hard drive is a one-platter design and should theoretically have better performance and generate less heat and noise compared to two-platter 160GB Seagate Momentus 7200.2 Dell used in Latitudes before.
The DVD burner is also a different one from the TSSTcorp drive most people seem to get. Time will tell if this drive is better or worse.

I ordered my computer with the fingerprint reader but so far I am not very impressed with the software needed to use fingerprint logins. It seems to be slow and unstable.

The touchpad doesn't work very well but I remember reading in this thread about a solution and I will dig it up.

I guess I will have more comments later when I have tried out the computer more.

orjan