Latitude E4300 Owners' Corner

[monakh]

Viva la Dell, may Michael prosper in Heaven forever more for giving us the wonderful place called the Outlet--where you can pick up elite laptops like the E4300 and Latitude XT2 for under a grand with nary a scratch on them! And God bless America for making all this possible. Take that ya European suckas! We got what no one has (yeah the Brits have their freaky version of the Outlet that takes 60 quids off on new/returned systems but that ain't as grand).

So! I thought I would start a thread on the E4300 since I was in for one last week and its on its way to me here. Will take a week or two since I am not in the US. The E4200 folks have their own thread but the E4300 thread died without a warning a few months back. Let's keep this one alive, shall we? I scored one with a 3 cell battery (I wanted to swap the 6 cell with my E4200), 4GB RAM and SP9300 (trying to lower the TDP here) and 3 year NBD warranty because I travel quite a bit internationally. I am planning on upgrading my HDD to a Samsung SLC SSD and will post the scores here.

So to give credit to cof who started the first impressions thread, it's here. Next, there is a known issue with those of you who use standby on some Latitudes and it appears to freeze when going to sleep. The issue has to do with the newer webcam driver, the fix is to roll back. Here's that thread. And finally here's NBR's user review. I hope we will have a better experience and I hope to be satisfied with my unit since I only paid a third for it than what it goes for in retail.

Note that the E4300 has gone through at LEAST one hardware revision with production halted in February/March for a couple of weeks. Anything built after that should be OK. I believe many, many mainboards were exchanged and swapped out by Dell. Here's hoping!

Any new owners, please post here and let's make this the definitive thread for E4300 issues or comments. There isn't enough information on the two smallest Dell Latitudes on the internet. Also, the RC1 of Windows 7 is due to the public in a couple of days (May 5th). Anyone who installs RC1 on their E4300, please post your experiences here, as well. Thanks!

[kuchu]

[edit] My post was a complaint about a specific issue so I don't know if this was the appropriate place for it.

[HRUNTING]

My e4300 arrived from the outlet a little more than two weeks ago and I couldn't be happier with it. Maybe it's cause I got a fantastic price from the 20% latitude coupon... I probably don't think my machine is worth the $1400 it would have cost originally.

I was aware of all the freezing issues watching streaming videos, etc, and I expected the outlet's supply to be enriched for these faulty units. To my surprise my unit doesn't exhibit any of these problems. The only things I don't like about it are the things I knew it would have already, a.k.a. weak speakers, poor vertical viewing angles, and less than stellar contrast and color reproduction.

All in all, even with the basic setup I ordered this machine is powerful enough, small enough, light enough, and has good enough battery life for my needs, so it is what I'll be taking with me next year to grad school. Very happy I gave Dell a try.

[monakh]

Originally Posted by kuchu

[edit] My post was a complaint about a specific issue so I don't know if this was the appropriate place for it.

The whole idea is to have a single place for complaints, laudable benefits and anything else in between. Please post here, I hope current and future owners can help.

Edit: I replied to your thread, that's some awful stuff. The Dell units are supposed to go through the same quality control checks as the original units but clearly some folks down in Round Rock or wherever the Outlet warehouse is, are doing round-the-clock shots of tequila instead of focusing on quality. Man, I hope my unit ain't a dud. Anyone else have a terrible Outlet experience? I have bought from the Outlet many times but haven't had a problem yet.

Fingers crossed!

[kuchu]

I just didn't want to hijack your thread with my sob story. Thanks for your response, btw.

I'll be posting updates about my E4300 in this thread once I have this issue resolved.

[monakh]

What is that thing they say in team-building exercises? There is no 'I' in team? Hehe, it ain't my thread, it's our thread.

Good luck to you, I hope you are able to resolve the issue to your satisfaction.

[snowbrdkid]

Just checking in . Ordered last Saturday, got it yesterday (friday), but I havn't used it yet because of screen issues. Bascially, its super dark, much darker than it should be. talked to Dell, will be getting replaced. I'm contemplating 'upgrading' to on-site support so it will be fixed faster...
I love the look and feel, seems solid. From what I can tell, it seems very fast to me. I'm planning on running vista business x64 if I can get it from Dell, and trying out windows 7 rc1...

[runtohell121]

i might order mine tomorrow >.> i would love to see some pictures first though

[kuchu]

Ok, quick update. I'm now posting this from my E4300 because I was able to finally log in after 10+ attempts. I decided I wasn't going to give in so easily so I kept restarting it and scanning my fingers and all of a sudden...voila, I'm logged in. I rebooted it and it took another 5-10 attempts to get it right but now at least I know that I'm not completely locked out. My #1 priority right now is getting this stupid POS biometrics system disabled. I went through the bios but there is nothing about the fingerprint reader under the security tab. I'm going to call Dell and ask them for instructions on disabling it.

Now, for my review of the notebook.

Specs
Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz SP9400
4GB Ram
64GB Ultra Performance SSD
Fingerprint Reader
Wireless 5300
Bluetooth
DVDRW+/-
Integrated Wecam
6-cell Battery
XP Pro with Vista Biz License (currently running XP)

Display: I'm sorry about your screen situation, snowbrdkid, and I really hope that they will replace it for you asap. So far, I don't think I've seen a brighter screen on a laptop or a desktop yet. The laptop comes with 15 levels of brightness and I don't think I can go any higher than 4. At 10, it was way too bright for my eyes and by 12 or 13 I was squinting. I'm sure people have different tolerances for brightness so it's really nice that it can go to that level of brightness. By the way, the computer comes with some ambience detection feature that will adjust the brightness of your screen based on your surroundings but I have disabled that feature for now. I'll post my impressions if I ever get a chance to play with that.

Keyboard: I am completely in love with the keyboard and I say that as someone who has never had a non-thinkpad laptop. Thinkpads have generally well regarded keyboards and I think this one is just as good as any Thinkpad keyboard I've seen. I love the back lit keyboard and assuming it's not draining up my battery too quickly, I intend to keep using it (currently set to come on to go off after 15 secs on inactivity).

Build Quailty: Build quality is very impressive and the brushed metal top is simply gorgeous. Everything feels very sturdy and built to last. I had mistakenly ordered an M1330 which looked much more futuristic but this laptop is also very chic without losing its professional look. Unlike the M1330 which felt much more plasticy this one looks like it's built from quality components and it eeks of German engineering (Ignore that if you're not a fan of German cars).


Weight: The laptop is also very light compared to the M1330 (which came with a 9-cell battery). Speaking of batteries, my battery feels a little loose whenever I touch it but I'm not worries it's going to fall out anytime soon.

Security: The security features have been a the biggest problem for me so far. If you're a thinkpad user and this is your first time getting a dell be very careful about getting the fingerprint reader. The Thinkpad fingerprint reader operates in the background and gives you the option to either scan your finger or type in your password at the windows login. The Dell reader is nothing like that. THe moment your computer turns on and dell latitude screen loads your screen changes to a rather dull looking which has some black text informing you that this computer is protected by xxxx security software and requires your fingerprint for further access. You can load your operating system only after you've authenticated yourself. This was a problem for me because I don't want to have to scan my finger AND type in my windows password too. As if that wasn't bad enough, it appears like my fingerprint reader works only when it wants to so I've now made it my priority to get it disabled (that's not very simple from what I've seen so far so I suggest you think very carefully before you activate this feature).

My laptop also comes with the NO Intel vPro Secure Advanced Hardware Enabled Systems Management. I don't know if this is a standard feature or not. In any event, I noticed when I went into the BIOS that it has support for hard drive passwords and what not. So basically, you can set up security around your hardware so people can't access it even if they take it out of your computer. I'm not sure I have all the details but something along those lines.

Heating: This has been an issue for me so far. My laptop seems to heat up within minutes and I'm a little surprised by this because my wife's inspiron e1405 (which I assume is a lower end machine compared to this one) almost never heats up this much.

Noise: Laptop is one of the quietest laptops I've ever used but that may partly be because of the solid state drive that came with it. I can hardly hear anything when I'm using it. I'll have to get back on this after I've used the dvd drive a few times.

I'll try to share more impressions as they became available.

[monakh]

Thanks for your impressions, kuchu, I am glad you were able to log in. Some comments on your excellent write up:

You should definitely be able to disable the onboard FP reader. The new Dell BIOS uses a GUI with tons of options, I think this option is under onboard devices or Security. I don't have the FP reader, so I cannot tell you for sure. Secondly, in terms of security, I am quite sure you can disable the FP login for the BIOS screen. IIRC, you can select one of four options at the BIOS screen: 1) You need to enter your password to go past the screen 2) You need to use your fingerprint to go past the screen 3) You need to use both to get past the screen 4) Or you don't have any security at the BIOS level. One or two of those may be combined. I do know that these options exist, however, so please check out the biometric reader guide for more details. This was the case with my old D630. Wish I had this reader too!

Wow, you went all out with the UP SSD. Great! Can you post the CrystalMark or HDTune results? I agree with you on the keyboard and this is high praise coming from you as a ThinkPad user for so many years. The E4200 keyboard isn't exactly the same but it is quite similar and I love it. The backlight doesn't at all drain the battery. That's quite a feat on Dell's part and one of the things they have done right in all their new laptops. The E-series build quality is also excellent although I am not sure if it is up to ThinkPad standards. What do you think? I am also concerned about the heat, I don't know why Dell is unable to design proper heat dissipation systems in their enterprise laptops. The E4200 is an absolute heater with tons of noise so I am glad at least the fan doesn't whir that much (unlike in my E4200).

All in all, I hope your experience keeps getting better! Please post some pics. Looking forward to mine.