Latitude E6510 Owner's Lounge

Those numbers make more sense. A fixed-pixel object will appear 17.1% bigger on 1366x768, and 14.6% smaller on 1600x900.

GK

 

why does the 6410's owners lounge thread have twice as many views, comments and pages ??!!

do they not know that Size DOES matter !!!!



*size of the 'unit' that is

 

I agree that size does matter. The E6410 is much more portable.

John

 

if it wasn't for my eyes going on me i would have a 14 too lol

 

Agreed, the brief period I had the 6410 with me makes me conscious of the 6510's (+9 cell's) bulk everyday.

 

Can anyone help me figure out what cable to buy for a dual monitor set up? The plug in the back of my docking station for this laptop has a unique pattern and so far nothing is working that fits in the "straight" long pin area of the unit, any suggestions?

 

You mean this one, the same on the back of the laptop next to the battery:


Real life picture:



This is Displayport. It is a new digital port that is slowly replacing DVI. It's like HDMI, but no royalty fees (so cheaper cables, and devices), the plug hold better with a clip system, and designed to insures color accuracy is pass through. Color accuracy is something that is important for computer displays, not TV's, as you don't use a TV to be up-close to it, nor drawing or viewing pictures.

Also, most TV's don't have color processors, to treat that information. Hence why TV's are cheaper than computer monitors in term of size. Let alone that the pixel density of a computer monitor is higher and each pixel smaller than a TV, which makes production cost more expensive.

You have different versions of Displayport. You have:
- 1.0 which is video only.
- 1.1 video and audio (audio can be optional)
- 1.2 (very new): carries video, audio, USB and can be daisy chained. This means 1 plug from your system can connect up to 6 monitors, assuming you have the monitors that support it.

Display Port is backward compatible via a simple inexpensive adapter down to DVI or HDMI.

The Latitude E6xxxx series has Display Port 1.1 with audio support. Today, their is no Displayport 1.2 devices yet.


Just for your knowledge, while we are on topic of monitors:
They are essentially 3 main types of LCD technology. TN, IPS, and PVA.
Almost all IPS and PVA computer monitors have color processors, hence why they are much more expensive, let alone that the panel technology cost more to produce, and has other factors due to the market share it aims (people who likes colors, but necessarily graphic artist, all the way up to complete professionals), which means that the monitor build quality and back light lamp is of higher grade, than most TN based panels.

TN panels, a technology used on all laptops as they are thinner and consumes minimal amount of power compared to IPS and PVA panels, and most people prefer them on as their desktop due to their laughably low price, and don't care about anything else.

I mean TN panels, are only 6-bit panels (red, green and blue, are all a channel each), and not the traditional 8-bit colors like we have on IPS, PVA panels and even our dear old CRT monitors (remember those! The one with the big tube on the back). So in term of progress, people preferred to go backwards for the lower price tag.

What that 6/8-bit color means. Simple:
6-bit panels can only produce 262,144 colors
8-bit panels can produce: 16,777,216 colors.

"What are you talking about SillyBytes. My monitor box says TN, and says 16.7million colors! What are you talking about?" you ask.
Very simple. As your computer sends a 8-bit color signal (or more on select advance desktop Quadro graphic cards and a like), it needs to show it some how. It uses a temporal dithering technique, where it takes 2 colors it can produce form it's pallet, and switch between them really really fast, up to the speed of the mentioned response time (usually 2 or 5ms), all in the vein hope to trick you in seeing the correct color. Sadly for your wallet, your eyes and visual optical lobe of your brain, can process several billion colors, and is super ultra fast in doing so, so these trick don;t work. Bring any TN panel next to a descent CRT monitor, or IPS/PVA LCD monitor and the difference is very noticeable (it's also noticeable when you are used to a CRT monitor or IPS/PVA LCD monitor, as you remember how things are supposed to look like: i.e: near real life).

IPS/PVA feature additional benefits such as 178 degree view angle in all directions, and that no mater how you rotate the screen (landscape or portrait, you still get the same excellent image quality, all by staying equally sharp. Something that TN panels can't do. In addition, they provide minimal back light bleeding, and what leaks out, doesn't alter the colors.

As IPS/PVA panels are aimed at a higher end market, they also feature a high-end CFL lamp, which is able to produce a nice white. LED's, while they have 0 warm up time visible, and consume minimum amount of energy, true white LED's don't exists. We have light blue (blu'ish white), or light yellow (warm white), which neither are true whites.

So what's a good IPS or PVA monitors. PVA are usually found on real professional grade monitors, and cost A LOT, as they have crazy feature like uniform back light, and technology to minimize even further the already low back light bleeding. IPS is sitting between both worlds. It's downside for some, is that the back light CAN (depending on the model), be visible to some extent (which is minimal compared to TN panels) on all 4 corners of the screen on pure black. A wide screen movie, doesn't make it visible.

You can find Display Port on these PVA/IPS panels. Dell has several interesting IPS panels for a low price (compared to the brand name from the manufacture of the actual panel), the U series. The popular ones are the U2410 (which I have, and love), and the U2311H, which has less inputs, not as good as the U2410, is 23inch instead of 24inch, but the price is significantly less. Then of course you have the U2711, and the U3011 representing the 27 and 30inch models respectively. As you can see.. not as cheap as a TN. But you have features like a nice true white, 1787 degree view angle, solid build quality, metal stand with a metal full motion stand (except for the U2711 and U3011 due to their size, but still height adjustable)

Anyway, this

 

I would have to guess your talking about the DVI-D Dual Link Port. Either a DVI-D cable or a DVI-D Dual link cable will work depending on how high the resolution is. DVI-I cables will not work.



DVI Cable/Connector Types Reference Here (Scroll to bottom of page for comparision)

 

I'm a happy camper....

I received my replacement E6510 this morning from Dell:
i7-640m
2 gigs of memory - I installed 8 gigs
Backlit keyboard
512mb NVIDIA 3100M
Fingerprint Reader
Intel Centrino Advanced N+WiMax 6250
Full HD 1920x1080 panel
Windows 7 64 professional
Bluetooth
Modem
dvd-rw
Webcam
6-cell battery

I'm quite happy with the results with going from a quad core back to the dual core, especially with heat and battery life. I still feel that the i7-740qm was lacking compared to the 640m.

As luck would have it, I'm now having issues in my work truck when using a power inverter. I currently use a Dell D830 (company) with a TrippLite 700w inverter to power the laptop, MiFi card and a printer. When I unplug everything and have my E6510 plugged in the touch pad will not work. If it's on battery power or plugged into a house outlet it is fine.

Any suggestions on what that could be?

 

The quad core CPUs tend to have lower maximum clock speeds and will therefore run single-threaded programs (still the majority) more slowly.

I assume that is 70W, not 700W. In which case it is struggling to meet the E6510's power needs. However, why the touchpad loses out is a mystery to me. Normally, the BIOS will throttle the CPU if the PSU is inadequate. However, if you have plugged a 90W PSU into the inverter then the BIOS will think that the power is enough but, in reality, the inverter can't deliver enough power which is then confusing the hardware (perhaps a voltage drop). The power board isn't clever enough to split the load between the PSU and the battery. I would suggest that you invest in a bigger inverter or just use it for charging the battery when the computer is off.

John