Dell Latitude E4200 Info

My E4200 came with XP on a CD and Vista on DVD. XP was pre-installed, upon my request - but I ran the Vista installation a week later anyway. There is no obvious way to go back to XP, i.e. the XP CD will not allow installation once Vista is on. Would probably just have to flatten the hard drive.
Vista runs well on the E4200 - at least with the fast SSD and 3GB memory. No need I think for 64bit up to 3GB anyway, but I do not know of the Dell 64bit options.
Some other experiences after almost one month of daily work with the E4200 - nothing over- or underwhelming. The one fantastic new thing is the speed of the SSD - I am running the 128GB MLC and it is so far performing without faults. I speculate that if I would put this SSD in my 4-year old Latitude X1 (the Samsung Q30) under XP it would be just as fast -which is kinda sad. In almost everything the 4-year old X1 is as good or better then the new E4200 - same size and weight, runs just as long or longer on its 1.1Ghz ULV processor and didn't need a fan to misuse battery power to heat the environment. Not sure what went wrong in Laptop development over the last four years to fail to produce any tangible feeling of progress beyond the new and fantastic SSDs.
Final other thoughts and comments on topics touched upon repeatedly in this forum: yes, the keyboard is very loud and has a cheap, clunky feel. So does the whole chassis. Also surprisingly non-ergonomic - the hands rest on the sharp corners of the machine, the keyboard is too far down (i.e further away from the screen). My touchpad is glued in non-straight, looks and feels extraordinarily cheap. And, yes, the fan runs almost all the time, even when reducing all power options (power max <50%, no wifi, etc...). This is not fixed in last weeks new A04 BIOS upgrade. Noise? No, it;s not really noisy, just a normal fan sound that you'll hear if there are no A/C or other sounds in the room. I think it is simply sad that there is a fan at all.
Power consumption: in max. power-preserving mode the small battery runs the laptop for 2.5-3 hrs, real values. The extended battery runs 6 hrs. The small power adaptors (see pictures in previous post) may be the singly only Dell-proprietory new positive revolution that comes with this laptop.

 

You should not be afraid of Vista, in reality Vista is fine OS. One that surpasses XP. If you have the computer power that is. Basically anything newer than 2006 will run Vista perfectly smoothly. The only reason why company did not adopt Vista, is because they have older system, and most of the employees uses Word... so no need for a fancy menchy multi-core CPU with several GB of RAM.

What I do strongly recommand, is if you don't have any old peripherials, like a USB printer or something (meaning no Vista 64-bit drivers exists), Vista 64-bit is a wonderful OS compared to it's brother 32-bit, which frankly, was a last minute thing. In fact most issues reported only affected Vista 32-bit and not the 64-bit version. It's also more than RAM. With Vista 64-bit you unlock the full potential of your CPU. Granted on 32-bit application there is nothing visible, but anything helps, especially when gaining battery life. Also, it allows you to install 64-bit codecs for 64-bit multimedia player (like Windows Media Player 11 for Vista 64-bit edition (not set as default player (32-bit is)). This allows you to watch movies, HD content with reduce CPU usage, which translate to more resources free for your system, and longer battery life. No miracle here, but every few minutes adds up. And of course allows you to run 64-bit applications which are starting to appear.

Moreover, technologies such as SuperFetch in Vista, preloads your most used applications for you into the RAM at the time it knows when you run it. This allows to reduce HDD access, and see your software open significantly (up to 6 times visually) faster than under XP. The interesting thing about this, is that let's say you open Firefox many time during the day. Firefox dll and its system files will be loaded onto your RAM, so every time you open/close/open/close it won't use much your HDD. So that's increase battery life right there. You should definitely check it out, and switch to 64-bit.

 

Thanks for the replies on the XP downgrade, guys. Yeah, I would prefer 64 bit Vista, as well. I ran it for six months without a hitch on my M1330 until its GPU fried. Very stable OS.

Thanks for the info, it's too bad this is not a real zinger, so to speak. Why spend over two grand on a machine nowadays only to be not blown away? I suppose this is perfectly plausible in corporate environments and not when the money is coming out of your pocket.

I am still surprised that no major publication has done a review on a shipping e4200. Not even LaptopMag which is usually pretty good with ultra-portables. It's been almost a quarter of a year since the e4200 has been shipping.

 

Vista is junk and you are a noob. Your credibility is officially shot.

 

Dude, kill the flaming, no need to get nasty. Your credibility is pretty suspect, at 5 posts, to begin with.

 

This is very disrespectful on your part Danm123. If you don't agree with me, they are better ways in saying it, and you should develop your points. Saying "It sucks", simply shows that YOU don't know anything about computers. Which I imagine is not what you wanted to present.

Vista sucks when you do not have the hardware to run it. The main problem with Vista is that it drop support for old technologies. Which is the main cause of a large group of problem. Today, systems are not affected. The second problem is Vista 32-bit. This last minute peace of crap, is what tainted Vista reputation to the garbage as you know it now. It's pack with bugs and issues. HOWEVER, Vista 64-bit is galaxies away compared to the 32-bit version. It's actually a good OS, better than XP. As this was the original OS version developed by Microsoft (which is one of the reason (they are other reasons as well) of the delay of Longhorn in 2003. I think, the only desktop aimed consumer level 64-bit CPU back then was the AMD Athlon 64 which cost over 1 000$ Can. It's not going to sell much. Most issues reported on Vista 32-bit did not affect the 64-bit version. And yes, another problem is the speed of the OS and stability at it's early stages o both OS. If I recall correctly there was NO DRIVERS for both version of Vista, which explains the lack of speed and stability. Kinda Microsoft fault for naming the OS NT6, when they should have called it a new name, as it's a new core, and of course present documentation and pushing companies to make drivers for it. So company thought that XP drivers would work, and the the 64-bit version of Vista will be like the 64-bit of XP (which is peace of crap and very few company somewhat support it). In result no driver existed. After the first week it was sold to the consumer (so now businesses don't like Vista because it sucks, as well it doesn't run properly (no Vista drivers, forcing XP 32-bit drivers in (so using the crappy 32-bit Vista)). After we got finally drivers for Vista, what did we get? Basic drivers to make our hardware work. In results disgusting performance on both edition of Vista. Since then, Microsoft released proper and complete documentation of Vista, witch allowed companies to adapt their software and drivers for the OS properly (think server on business) which is kinda too late, and businesses don't really care now. So basically, about the time of SP1, proper drivers and software was released in Vista. And now makes Vista 64-bit a fine OS at all levels. Another problem is that Vista is too different, and the lack of documentation from Microsoft early stages, suggests that IT in companies was unable to configure the OS properly or even, not at all, as they didn't know how to do it, as they try and do it the same way as XP. Another issue, is review site that benchmark the OS speed. They, again, optimize Vista the same way as XP. heck, to a point of even using XP tools like BootViz to optimize the XP Boot onto Vista. And disable critical services and technology that makes Vista what it is being not what it is (i.e.: disable superfetch and prefetch technologies). So they end up with a crippled OS which they are tested. Me too I can see who races faster between you and me. I'll cut on of your leg, let you bleed to death, and start the race. Chee, I wonder who will win?

If you can recall correctly. When Windows 2000 was out. It was a terrible OS, despite now saying it's the best OS from Microsoft thanks to it's stability over Windows 9x. The main problem with Windows 2000 is that virtually no applications worked on the dam OS. After 1 year and half later (about), Microsoft repackage the OS, perform minor tweaks and calls it XP. Windows XP was usable because all it needed is time to have Windows 2000 drivers and software (as you remember Windows 98 was using MSDOS as its core, and Windows NT, well NT core). In reality all XP drivers works under windows 2000, and vise-versa, it's the same OS (NT 5.0 to 5.1). So now that XP is usable, proper driver exists, you had worst complaints than in Vista. Here are some: Abysimal memory management, which make Windows a living joke (remember that one? nothing was touch by Microsoft on this issue), today it still has terrible memory management. Another one, was not stable, poor driver support, require a monster computer to run. Poor battery life on laptops, bugs with USB, doesn't remember window view settings and no way to fix it, poor wireless system, and more. 5 years later, after SP2, this is when XP was being accepted as not only you were forced to use it, but that companies learned to make work around onto the system problems. And even now, it doesn't support and doesn't take advantage of new technologies. Example, muti-core CPU's. The OS through it's processes and it self, on one of your core processes, but don't use several at the same time. Only Vista does that (on the desktop level OS). Now I would like to note the following, as I didn't mention it, Vista 32-bit is now actually significantly better after all the updates released, and SP1, of course.

If you think that Windows 7 will be all nice and great, because people say it's all nice and great, it's like Mojave experiment. It's Vista (well server 2008 actually (which is nearly the same as Vista kernal, with some improvements, nothing drastic here) core, with improvements, yes, but still the same stage. And such early stages it's very close. But how come people like it?

If you are willing to share your experience of Vista, go ahead, however be specific on the issues you found. Don't base your opinion on some Mac/linux fanboy, or idiots that tried the OS on a 200$ Dell computer which can't even run XP properly. YOUR experience. And again, the 64-bit version.

 

GoodBytes, dont take things some nbr newbies say about your posts personally. It is apparent you know what you are talking about and i agree with your points.

 

Thank you. Thanks for the advice.

 

I agree, GB, on the right hardware, Vista is pretty good especially x64. And all indications are that e4200 runs x64 very nicely. I was just looking for options on XP in case I ever wanted to try it. Good to have a license.

For people who have (or had) D420/430s, do you find the build quality of the e4200 on part with the D4x0 series or better? I really hope it's not worse!