Dell Latitude E6500 Owner's Lounge

I got my E6500 a few days ago. I played it around for a few days. Now, I try to start this thread another way. Instaed of writing a post giving my own mpressions, please ask questions and I try to answer. Like this I guess it will be more helpful to you guys.
I list the main spec here:
P9500 CPU
4G RAM
250GB 7200RPM HD with FFS
Intel 5300 Wireless
BlueTooth
Modem
nVidia NVS 160M display card
WUXGA screen with webcam
Backlit keyboard
6 Cell and 9 Cell battery
90W power supply (new design)

I noticed it has both PCMCIA and PCMCIA Express.

I installed Windows XP SP3.

 

What remaining battery time do you have with "Dell recommended" energy plan and 50% display light and WLAN?
9 Cell?
6 Cell?
What frequency and voltage do you have with an maximum energy saving plan without load? You can use e.g. CPU-Z Version 1.40 to read the frequency, the bus speed and the voltage.

 

In the Vista 'power saver' mode and 6-cell battery I get lucky if I get 2 hours - WUXGA, P8400, 2.26GHz, 2GB DDR2, Quadro 160M, 160GB 7200RPM HD. I am also on about 50% brightness when using battery. I can usually get about 1.5hours before Vista tells me I really need to plug in.

I haven't checked my CPU speed and voltages yet while on battery. But hope this info helps.

Other than battery life and some other little annoyances I am liking this laptop better than my initial impressions... which were not that great.

 

Which Ram to get....

a got a 2gb single stick and want to add in 2gb more.

What do you guys think...?

thanks

 

I have 2x2GB.
6-cell gives 2 hours on 50% light, with medium-high disk activities as I was installing programs and transferring files from my old laptop. WLAN on occasionally when I need to download some updates, but just 10-20 minutes I think.

 

How on earth do you tolerate WUXGA with WindowsXP?

As for battery life eger, I tried out a 6-cell on my D830. It was equally horrible, only about 1.5 hours. But the 9-cell is dramatically better (a little over 3 hours). Amazing difference what 3 cells make, if you move to the 9-cell battery, you should see almost double the run-time if the 6-cell vs. 9-cell relationship is similar on the E6500 as it is the D830 with WUXGA.

 

My workplace got some of us lucky ones a brand new E6500. I have some initial thoughts on it:

1. It's got a nice finish on it.

2. The keyboard is much better than my MacBook Pro and D820.

3. The screen is much brighter than the D820 ever was.

4. The mouse driver's suck. It takes about 3 swipes to move the cursor across the screen. I even set the mouse pointer speed to "Fast" but that didn't help. The little rubber track point in the center of the keyboard works well though, and I could end up using that instead. Just need more practice with it.

5. The speakers are better than the D820. They do not match up to the MacBook Pro, but most of the time I intend to use the headphone jack anyway.

6. I was hoping that the IS department would load up Vista on it, but the company isn't all that ready to move to it with half our tools non-Vista ready.

7. The unit I got has the 9-cell battery which according to XP, says that it'll last a good 6 hours on high brightness and wifi-enabled with medium load of applications running (Visual Studio 2008, Office, Sql Server 2005, etc.).

8. It's heavy, but still quite manageable. The extended battery sticks out the back side but I'm ok with that. I don't intend on moving the laptop too often.

 

They are rubbish compared to the D800 speakers, the top-mounted position is better to allow the sound to get out, but they have almost zero bass.

If you're using external speakers select the "disable internal speaker" tickbox under advanced options, this seems to bypass the bass filter, that way your external speakers don't sound rubbish too.

 

With the touchpad drivers, open up the touchpad properties (double click the icon in the taskbar) and adjust touchpad settings, and disable touchcheck. Makes a huge difference.

Greg

 

I'm curious if any of your E6500 owners have been able to confirm the system weight (including the 6-cell battery) and a realistic battery life for 6-cell.