Dell Latitude E4200 Info

Jason, can you take some pics? I don't think anyone has posted any pics yet. Also a screenie of your Samsung SSD with HDTune if possible. That would be great. Thanks.

 

I took two pictures when I unboxed it but I haven't pulled them off the camera yet. To be honest, it looks exactly like Dell's photos, though mine now has fingerprints all over the lid.

As to HDTune, here you go. I ran that in safe mode just to make sure that there wasn't any indexing or other background tasks going on but the results when booted normally were virtually identical. The results are reproducible; about 2/3 of the disk is 2x as fast as the other 1/3, though even the slower portion is blazing fast. I wonder if that is a problem with HDTune and SSDs as my disk is just about 35% full... I'd bet that the slower portions of the test are those where the disk already has data on it.

EDIT: Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the SD card slot does support SDHC, though it seems to have a maximum transfer rate of 15MB/s (tested with a Sandisk Extreme III 16GB SHDC, 30MB/s version, previously tested at about 26MB/s on a different reader).

 

A larger problem for me is that the TPM & fingerprint reader seem to have flaked out.

I enabled the TPM in the BIOS this morning and went through the process of enrolling my fingerprints. It worked for all of 3 reboots until on the 4th I got a message right after POST telling me that the TPM had failed to start and would be disabled. Booting into Windows confirmed that it was indeed disabled. I rebooted and entered the BIOS to enable the TPM again, shut the machine off, and then turned it back on.

Once in Windows I confirmed that the TPM was enabled but the fingerprint reader was no longer working. I rebooted and entered the BIOS to clear the TPM to see if that would help but it didn't.

Anyone got any ideas on this?

 

Has there been a BIOS update for the E4200? Maybe try that? I just think that the hardware remains untested and perhaps--unstable.

 

No, no BIOS updates yet. I really wouldn't expect one for at least a few weeks since there haven't been all that many actually delivered.

I don't particularly care about the TPM & Fingerprint reader (my security measures involve not keeping anything important on a notebook and not letting it out of my sight) but I did pay for it and would like to get it working eventually. I'll get in touch with support on Monday and see what they say.

 

Dell will take care of you so it's not a problem but it's annoying that these nagging problems persist in the E4x00 series. I don't recall similar debacles when the D-series took over from the C-series. That was almost a different age though..

 

I fixed this on my own. I forced the driver in Device Manager from "Broadcom USH CV w/o Fingerprint Sensor" to "Broadcom USH CV w/ Fingerprint Swipe Sensor". It looks like when the TPM flaked out and I let Windows boot without it, the driver was changed and then refused to change back, even after being deleted and letting PnP bring it back up.

We'll see if it does it again...

 

I rebooted a few times and it kept working fine. As soon as I suspended the machine and resumed it broke again. The device in Device Manager is still correct too so I'm just going to say screw it and leave it off.

 

I am hoping that there is a bios update to make the fan a little quieter. It seems to always run on high, or what I hope is high.

After using the it for a weekends worth of work, I have to say I like the thing. I ma still not used to the keyboard, but that should change, as the key thing is that there is no flex. The buttons on the track pad are still annoying in that they have a lot of travel, as it below the bezel. I don't know if this is standard on the D-Series, but the X1 has very little travel.

My only real concern is that the frame for the screen doesn't seem the strongest, but that is why we have the 3 year accident care option.

 

Strange, the Dell website HAD a bios update before (A02), I'm running it since last week. However, when looking at the website now, it show A00 again ?!

I myself don' have that many problems with the fan, only hear it every now and then.