Dell E4300 Questions from a New Owner

Some of these may seem rudimentary, please bear with me..

1. What does the button to the left of the Power button do? Nothing happens when I press it.

2. How do I turn on the backlit keyboard?

3. I'm did a clean Windows 7 install. What drivers do I need for the mousepad scrolling-shortcuts to work? No "trackpad" drivers are listed on Dell's drivers page.

4. What do the battery icons on F2 and F3 mean?

5. When I play music with the volume all the way up, I hear a lot of static. This is normal for laptop speakers, right?

6. How do I utilize Latitude On?


That's all I got for now

 

1) That is the Latitude ON Button. Press it when the notebook is off.

2) FN + Right Arrow key

3) As there are no drivers listed by Dell yet, it's just a waiting game. Sorry.

4) FN + F2 stops your battery from charging when plugged in; FN + F3 brings up battery information in Control Point

5) The speakers on the E4300 aren't that good. I suggest headphones or external speakers for music and videos, ESPECIALLY at higher levels. For low volume stuff they do the job, but quality degrades as volume increases.

6) Latitude ON is an as of yet unfinished product from Dell. It will be offered as a firmware upgrade sometime in the future. Again, just a waiting game. You can however leverage the email capabilities if you use MS Outlook. Just open the Latitude ON setup tool and it will walk you through the setup. Again, you must have MS Outlook installed to access Latitude ON as of yet.

Hope this helps!!

P.S. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y40Z1mvGOt8

short promo video about latitude ON.

 

Thanks for the link.

+rep

 

I'll give it a go lol

1 and 6. That button activates Latitude ON. Latitude ON is a quick boot environment that lets you access select things like a calender, email client, etc faster than booting into Windows 7. At the moment, Latitude ON is only available in a software only "reader" mode. This means you can read, but not edit things like email. However, in late 2009, the full version of Latitude ON will be ready. It involves a linux based hardware component that kinda acts as a "mini-computer" within your laptop that has it's own storage and processor. This version will let you do a lot more stuff like surf the web, send and receive email (and not just read what you've gotten already) etc. It'll also let you do corporate Microsoft Exchange email if your work will let you. Now this hardware component is most likely not in your laptop yet, but when it's made available at dell.com, you can most likely order it and install it yourself.

The button might not be working because you did a clean install. Look in your system documentation for the Latitude ON software disc, or get the Latitude ON reader software from dell.com: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...0&servicetag=&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=-1&impid=-1

More info about Latitude ON: http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/15/dells-latitude-on-instant-os-detailed-screenshooted/ and http://www.dell.com/content/learnmo...er&~series=latit&~tab=topic&~lt=popup&ref=CFG

2. Hold down the FN key (the key between the "CTRL" and "ALT" keys on the left side of the keyboard) and tap the right arrow key. You might need the Dell ControlPoint software to activate the backlight functionality. If you did a clean install, you might not have installed it. You can always get the latest version of ControlPoint on dell.com: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...ystemID=LAT_E4300&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid= (click the "controlpoint" section to expand the list)

3. Dell lists touchpad/trackstick drivers under the "Input Devices" section of the drivers page-here's the one you need: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...0&servicetag=&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=-1&impid=-1

4. The battery icons on the F "keys" perform actions through Dell ControlPoint-You'll have to install it to make those keys double as battery function keys when you hold down "FN" and tap them. I have a D630 so I don't know what the key on F2 does, but on my system, when i hit "FN" and the "F3" key, it opens Dell Battery Meter, which shows the current health of the battery, the amount of charge it currently has, whether it's charging or not, and whether Dell Extended Battery Life is enabled. I should mention that this is on a D630 using the latest version of Dell's "QuickSet" software (the predecessor to Dell ControlPoint on Latitude E-series and up, but is still being developed for the consumer line) so what you see once you install Dell ControlPoint may be a tad different.

5. Yeah that's pretty much standard. Most laptop speakers are mediocre esp. ones on business systems. Your best bet, turn the volume down to lower the distortion or use headphones! Just be grateful you don't have one tiny mono speaker like myself! lol

Hope that answers your questions, sorry I couldn't be more helpful, I just haven't seen an E-series close up and in the flesh, and Control Point doesn't work on a D630.

 

Haha, darn it, I got ninja posted! XD

That is too cool, wish my D630 had that!

 

Thanks for the response booboo! Very thorough for not even owning an E-series!

+rep!

 

im so tempted to get an E4200 or E4300 for the office if i can get a grant to buy one lol. this latitude on thingy is one of the reasons why. hopefully when its released someone will write a review on it

 

Haha, almost embarrassingly thorough lol!

Same here, but they keep pushing the launch of the Latitude ON hardware further and further out, now the site says late 2009......heck we might not see it until F-Series (wow that's going to sound odd: "You mean the truck?" "No, the computer" ) comes out at this rate.

 

F series should be quite a while away right? they always do incremental updates e.g. D410 D420 D430

ther will probably be a Exx10 out when intel has a platform refresh next year.