Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

[yousof]

I am thinkg of buying my new and first laptop.What I had in mine at least till yesterday was to buy a Vaio Z570:

2.53GHZCore2DuoP9500 3GB DDR3 320GB SATA LED 13.1"WXGAXbrite DVD+/-RW DL 1GBGeForce9300MBGS+1GB Intel4500MHD 1.5KG V-Business for about $2500 mostly because of portability and design and because it is VAIO.

Today I started to have second thoughts to buy a dell because a friend telling me vaio will die easily and can not handle hard work.
So I ran to the Dell store here and found The new E series and specificly E 6400 With the config:

2.8GHz Core2Duo T9600 4GB DDR2 160GB SATA 14.1" WXGAXbrite DVD+/-RW DL 256MB QUADRO 2.6KG DOS for about $2200

And

2.53 6M cache 4GB 250++ 14.1 WXGA 256d NVIDIA NVS160 VB32 Europe made FingerPrint/ 9cell / Backlit for about $1920

After reading some pages of this thread I started to fear buying E6400 because of lots of part replacements and dvd driver, sound, noise,..... problems .

So can you help me and tell me reasons to buy Dell(because here is delll thread) and save $300 and loose portability or not buy it.(I am not in direct contact with customer service in my country to change parts one after another)

Thanks

[ccdean100]

I'm on the verge of buying a E6400 from the dell outlet site to use for engineering applications such as wildfire pro engineer, following spec -

2.4GHz
4GB RAM
250GB HDD

Has anyone had any bad experiences with this or a similar setup - eg. I believe the hard drive to be seagate, not particularly good - any problems with hard drive, overheating or anything like that??

Any feedback on this laptop model will be welcome.

[John Ratsey]

I'm on the verge of buying a E6400 from the dell outlet site to use for engineering applications such as wildfire pro engineer, following spec -

I see that's a 3D CAD package so you should be looking for the version of the E6400 with the nVidia GPU. If you want even more graphics power then look for the Precision M4400.

As for the HDD, 250GB could come from several sources. Someone here has the WD 250GB. If you are worried about the HDD type, then look for a computer with a small HDD (ie lower price) and do a DIY upgrade to a HDD of your own choice.

John

[clcorne]

I'm working on a clients Latitude E6400, See did not want vista on the computer. So I loaded windows xp, every thing loaded good. the question that I have is the keyboard lite does not come on.

I push FN + arrow to the right and the keyboard does not come on. I looked online for the user manual and could not find it on dells website (that's crazy!). Does this have anything to do with me loading windows xp and does it need me to load some drivers?

Thank you!

[draqula]

I'm working on a clients Latitude E6400, See did not want vista on the computer. So I loaded windows xp, every thing loaded good. the question that I have is the keyboard lite does not come on.

I push FN + arrow to the right and the keyboard does not come on. I looked online for the user manual and could not find it on dells website (that's crazy!). Does this have anything to do with me loading windows xp and does it need me to load some drivers?

Thank you!

As far as I know you must have "Dell ControlPoint System management" installed or atleast the drivers (there are 2 downloads with the same file name, the one containing drivers is smaller in MB).

I just recently did a clean install of XP (using a generic WinXP install CD, not from DELL), have the keyboard light working and did not install any drivers specifically for that.

Did the backlight work under vista? (They do sell E6400 with or without it).

[John Ratsey]

The backlit keyboard works fine with XP - I've been using it for 4 months. It is an option which costs extra. Put the service tag into the Dell support site to check if the configuration includes the backlit keyboard.

The Dell ControlPoint software includes a button to enable / disable the keyboard backlight.

There is also an option in the BIOS to enable /disable the keyboard backlight.

John

[afhstingray]

also, an easier way to check if u have the keyboard backlight is to look at the keyboard. there should be a sort of rectangular shape on the left arrow key...its an Fn function to turn it on/off/auto

[veritas72]

As far as I know you must have "Dell ControlPoint System management" installed or atleast the drivers (there are 2 downloads with the same file name, the one containing drivers is smaller in MB).

you don't need this installed. it is a BIOS controlled switch, the DCP software just adds extra "functionality"

[batdams]

Hey guys. I'm very close to replacing my aging IBM R51 with an E6400 with:

P8600, 2gig, NVS 160M, camera, fingerprint, 6cell, LED WGXA+ for £989 exc. VAT (£1137 inc)

Just a couple of questions really. I won't be using it for gaming much but if I were to play World of Warcraft or some older games like Sim City 4 would it be capable?

And if I were to phone up Dell and order would it be possible to get some kind of discount from the sales rep in the UK. What's discount's worth asking for?

Edit: Oh and one final thing, how poor is the 0.3MP camera? Anyone have a jpg they can post of the quality?

Cheers

[Lack]

And if I were to phone up Dell and order would it be possible to get some kind of discount from the sales rep in the UK. What's discount's worth asking for?

10-20% would seem reasonable. Did you consider the outlets offerings?