Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks for the review. It may be worthwhile having the review posted seperately on a different page.

I agree with all points although you really should re-install the Alps driver using the latest one available for the e4300. It made a huge difference to how responsive the touchpad was.

The other option is not to use the Alps touchpad driver altogether (e.g. after a clean install of Vista, don't install the touchpad driver). The default Vista driver is also very responsive which confirms Alps really need to do their work properly.

It may be worth-while doing a clean install of Vista using the supplied DVD and then only installing the drivers and Dell ControlPoint modules you want.

 

Last week I placed an order for a e6400 and finally dells status page tells me it is in production. Hope I get it soon!

 

Order status page is slow to update and doesen't give you any details.
The next status will be when Dell has completly shipped your laptop. At this stage, it will give you a tracking number where you can check where your machine is in the shipping process or Dell selected carrier.

 

Problem with IDT audio driver.

I installed the latest IDT audio driver recently and I noticed since yesterday that "stascv.exe" a IDT audio driver service is using 50% CPU. I killed it and it seems to have no apparent effect.

There's one thread on the XPS forum about this issue but nobody has found a solution yet. Any thoughts or advice? Anybody else have the same problem?

 

It's stacsv.exe. I'm sure read about this problem somewhere in this forum a few days back, but I can't find it.

Are you running Vista? If so, the generic Vista audio driver seems to be the best option.

John

 

Yep. Uninstall the Dell IDT audio driver and let Vista take care of the audio. I went through this last weekend and it fixes the problem. Sounds great, less filling

 

Hi all,

I just got my E6400 a few days ago. I love this laptop, but I do have one question.

My E6400 comes with the Intel graphic chipset and has a native resolution of 1440 x 900. The problem is, I find this resolution makes everything too small for my eyes, and after using the laptop for a short while causes eye strain.

When I clicked on Control Panel -> Display -> Settings to change the resolution, it seems that this laptop only has ONE widescreen resolution which is the native 1440 x 900. If I move the slider one notch, it will go straight down to 1024x768 (which is fullscreen and very very fuzzy), and slide further one more notch and it goes to 640x480.

Surprisingly, there is no lower widescreen resolution (e.g. 1200 x 800) in this laptop other than the native resolution.

Is there a software / driver / or any way I can change and lower my screen resolution to, say, 1200 x 800?

 

LCD technology only has 1 resolution and that is the native one due to it's grid which each slot contains liquid crystals. You will NOT find any LCD on this planet that supports 2 resolution, that I can promise you that.

Technically speaking, 1440x900 is the ideal resolution for a 14inch wide laptop screen. If you are young with mighty eyes, then you should get used to it, you probably are used to everything big on your good old terrible CRT monitor. If you you don't have these mighty eyes and you are young you should see an optometrist for some glasses. If you consider yourself old and really have a hard time with this size object you can increase the DPI from 96 to 120. That will make almost everything (some applications don't supports that, yet) extra big, by keeping your wide work area, and keeping the sharpness of your display.

To increase the DPI in Vista is simple. Save all your work and close all applications. Right-click on the desktop (not on an icon), a menu should appear, from there select "Personalize" (last item at the bottom of the menu). A window should open, with several items you can select. From there, you can see that on the left of that window there is a blue/green/teal side column with selectable options. On that left column select "Adjust font size (DPI)". You will be prompted by UAC (User account control), click on "Continue". Then another panel will open. From there, select the radio box (circle) called "Large scale (120 DPI) - make text more readable". NOTE: YOU WILL NEED TO RESTART YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE YOU SEE IT AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. Then click on the "apply" button. If you want it even bigger, on the same place that you select the 120 DPI, there is a button called "Custom DPI" where you can select other sizes, and if you want to use XP engine or not (Not using XP (not used as default) will make the text and icons nicer, however you may fall onto some unsupported applications where the font will be blurry or cut).

Enjoy!

 

Thanks, I'll try that out. The screen is pretty bright and crisp, although it has a bluish cast to it. Is that normal for the Samsung screen?

On another note, I am looking to upgrade my desktop monitor. My current monitor is a Dell 1704 FPV that has a 1280 x 1080 resolution--lower than the screen on my laptop(!). Also, it is standard format, not widescreen. Do you anticipate any issues with the laptop transferring picture to a screen with lower resolution or with a different format (standard vs. wide)?

I was eyeing this monitor on Dell's website. It's a 19" widescreen with 1440 x 900 (same as my E6400), and it's on sale for $164.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&sku=320-6138&redirect=1

Will 1440 x 900 be enough for a 19" monitor, or do I need more? I really don't want anything bigger than a 19".

 

As GoodBytes say, there is only one native resolution for an LCD screen. You should be able to use 1280x800 on your screen but it will be a bit blurry and not necessarily easier on your eyes than 1440x900. There is button called "Additional modes" or similar in the Graphics properties for Intel where you should be able to add 1280x800.

I don't agree that 1440x900 is the ideal resolution for a 14inch wide laptop screen. I think 1280x800 is. 1440x900 with the default font DPI setting in Windows will cause text to be displayed in very small size causing strain to the eye. The same goes for web pages that are displayed in default font size. You can change the DPI setting but there are a lot of applications that don't display fonts nicely with a non-default DPI-setting.

I have 1280x800 on my E6400 and I am happy with the resolution. For 1440x900 I think 15.4" is the minimum screen size. I considered getting an E6500 with 15.4" 1440x900 but I dropped it because it was to expensive.

ÖRjan