Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

can anyone post the dimensions of the standard power brick in inches? thank you! my m6400 is on its way to me, but i thought i'd try and make a hardshell case for it before it arrives

 

It's a temp drive for chatty files to keep them off my SSD. I use it as a compile target for .net work files, it makes quite a difference when compiling web applications.

 

Wel, my standard developer build takes 3 days to set up, so I imaged and tried the upgrade. It worked out great. My vista install was new and very clean, I'll bet a junky old mess would just have evolved into a junky new mess on Win 7.

I had bsod's over the ramdisk driver, and it lost my firefox profiles, some outlook settings, but everything else made it. SQL server, visual studio (2 revs) all games and supporting apps. I give them a high five over this, this is the easiest upgrade ever.

 

Okay, a caveat about opening up the topside of the M6400: the cable connecting the fingerprint reader to the motherboard is very fragile! Last night I popped off the hinge cover to blow the dust out of it, and following reassembly I could no longer authenticate with my fingerprint at power-on, and Windows detected its absence as well. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to re-seat the cable, I went to Dell Support Chat...

... and the obviously confused tech thought I had damaged the palm rest (thinking that's where the FPR was) and quoted me for a new one, as it's a "field-replaceable part." I asked for confirmation that the flex flat cable was part of the kit, and after inspecting it thoroughly, he couldn't find it (surprise!). So I provided the part # for the cable and he ran a quote for that... $14 with shipping instead of $106.

Sigh... 3 year ProSupport and Complete Care, and that's the service I got. I'll be sure to forward my order confirmation to the tech with a little note that the FPR is part of the hinge cover, not the palm rest!

 

ok... how can i say this to get the message across clearly on the webz...
see a nice household red brick? it's bout 3/4" wider...

dude, you're so right about the fingerprint reader cable...

i installed 4 new rams on my m6400 and firstly... removing the speaker/led grill was easy but was worried that it was held by plastic clips...

then i pulled ever so gently on the fingerprint reader cable, which is flat and 4mm wide... and that black clip just flings off...

that teeny weeny black clip was the toughest to put back... plus, i had to guess which way it went in...

and the "hi-res" images on dell website guide don't help... lol...

took me bout 45 mins to get that back on... and for me, it did stay on... so i'm happy... and i was able to register my fingerprint in the system...

now if i can only figure out how to set it up so i can swipe my fingerprint for the websites also...

funny thing... got a fingerprint reader but it does not ask me at all if i want to log in with fingerprint...

help?

 

I'll let you off with this

 

Hi guys,

I'm finding that Aero is suspiciously choppy on my E6400 on Vista x86. I went with the nVidia chip over the Intel chip. The animation when a window fades in or out is not smooth at all. My Aero score is normal for my configuration from what I can tell (3.3-3.5). I just installed Windows 7 x64, and the problem still persists with a totally clean install with the latest nVidia drivers.

Is this normal behavior?

 

You're barely above the requirements so I'd expect you'd see a bit of choppiness.
Best advice is to disable the fading.

 

Ok guys...who's running Windows 7 RTM on the M6400 and what games are you playing etc.
My notebook is running smoothly but I want off Vista and onto Win7 x64.

So post a list of games and apps you're running.

 

running win 7 x64 here........

only occasional games i play on M6400 are second life and live for speed.
both work fine! (using 190.56 driver)

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/24736-v19056-windows-7vista-64bit-nvidia/