Dell Latitude E4200 Info

It is definitely NOT possible.

You can't upgrade it yourself... and my Dell guy tells me that even Dell will not be able to upgrade E4200s from regular keyboards to backlit-keyboards... as it requires a whole different version of the machine (skeptical).


An update from me.

After waiting 2 months for the backlit keyboard, and being told I could order one a week ago.... I am yet to get an "estimated date" from my premier.dell.com page.


I rang today... and my account manager told me they've stuffed up.... and cannot deliver the backlit keyboards yet.\

They don't know when.... but it doesn't sound like soon.


So. We have:

- No small 45w power bricks for asia/australia

- No 12" laptop bags in asia / astralia

- Both E4200s I've seen (for other users)... have had noisy fans when doing simple desktop tasks

- No latitude ON hardware


This laptop is COSTING ME $3804 US DOLLARS


(Yes, we get ripped off badly in Australia)



... anyone would think this was going to be a premium product. I'm angry... but haven't lost all hope, yet.

 

In Italy we have a similar situation, however:

1. The adapter is 45w
2. The neoprene sleeve is included
3. No idea about the fan. I will tell you.

Anyway, I'm very disappointed about the keyboard issue; I also dislike the Latitude ON non-working-policy.
It's not that polite to claim for this features, not really having it....

Cec.

 

Another question, guys...

Anyone of you has any linux experience on this machine? I would like to install Debian instead of XP2 SP3 but have no idea about hardware support for fingerprint reader, wifi5300, ACPI, ecc.

Any hint? Maybe other distribution such as Mint, openSuse, Ubuntu, will work out of the box?

C.

 

My new E4200 (with backlit) will ship today, woot! I had them send me XP with it as well...I'm going to load that and hopefully see a speed increase. I understand how hibernate works, but the sheer power difference of this notebook should make up for it. Also, these tests were done on a fresh boot, only Vista and Dell drivers will be chewing up the RAM, shouldn't be more then 1GB...although to be honest I didn't look.

Erik

 

Well, looks like the BL keyboard is shipping, at least in the States. Still no sign of LatON. Perhaps it will show up at the same time as Santa.

 

Congratulation to the Backlit keyboard! I am still waiting for it to appear for selection in Sweden before I order mine.... (And a proper ON-functionality).

Regarding the memory usage. Hibernate need to save the entire RAM size to Hard drive (not only the what is actively in use by Windows). Check the c:\hiberfil.sys (Hidden System file), its size will match the size of your RAM. This is the file that Windows use for hibernation.

I do agree however that the E4200 should hibernate faster with its faster CPU and faster SSD-drive. That was the reason for me asking if the waiting was the waiting for going from Windows Desktop to the progress bar.
The going from Desktop to the progress bar is more of a Windows problem (Drivers unload, DLL-hell, Regular Windows shutdown problems, etc) whereas the Progress bar is when the actual "save memory to disk" takes place and that should be quick because of the fast SDD-drive (even if it is 2GB that needs to be saved).
So if the progress bar is quick, a reinstall of Windows might solve the slow hibernate.

 

Hi,

when I looked at my Premier Page, I recognized that the Latitude On Feature is no longer "available" in my last config yesterday it was available....

I`m quite amused about the Dell marketing..... One of the KEY FEATURES of the e4200 had never been "shipped" or even shown to cusomers....

Further the price is NOT reduced...

For me the e4200 was a real oppinion for our new NB in our company, nice, small, "over-priced ", but with nice EX-features....

for this machine (64gb ssd) 2000€ is way to much...
it is even not a silent machine...

Regrets
Marcel

 

About 99%.

I had them exchange my backplate because it had some small but ugly manufacturing faults. When the repairman unpacked the new backplate he discovered that it only had three antenna cables when my old one had five so he had to come back the next day with the correct backplate.

(On my old backplate three of the cables were for my Intel 5300 and the other two were for WWAN.)

My old backplate had wings which were about 5mm wide but the new one which only had 3 antenna cables didn't stick out at all on the sides (although it has the same "wing design".)

 

I just noticed that the swedish Dell site lists the E4200 with DDR3-800 memory and the US dell site lists it with DDR3-1066.

Is there any difference in these machines in terms of performance and memory speed? Or will the memory run in the same speed? (800MHz)

Looking here it seems the memory speed is 800Mhz:
(Sorry for the broken URL, add "." and remove the spaces)

en wikipedia org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors#.22Penryn-3M.22_.28ultra-low-voltage.2C_45_nm.2C_Small_Form_Factor.29_2[/url]

 

You usually want the CPU FSB to match the Memory Bus to optimal performance, and prevent bottleneck effect (meaning having the CPU no do anything as it needs to wait for the memory to finish it's task). However, on a non-gaming laptop, this is not critical. Unless the task you perform is very memory intensive.