E4310 Owner's Lounge

I would say no, it's probably not worth the upgrade unless you can sell your M1210 for a good chunk of cash to cover most of the E4310's cost. DDR3 1066 vs 1333 makes very little difference.

 

Well, I cant believe I have had this laptop for 3.5 years & theres nothing better out there (for what I do). Im a little bummed & was getting excited for a new laptop. I went through this exercise 1.5 years ago with teh faster C2D's & basically had the same result.

The benchmark data suggests the I540 should be much much faster than the T7200 2.0 C2D. Granted the OCZ SSD in this machine does fly pretty fast, I figured that the faster processor, the faster ram (mine has 667mhz I think) with the same speedy SSD would result in a good upgrade.

Not that I had money burning a hole in my pocket but the OTD price on the Outlet pretty loaded was under 700.

The benchmarks here:

Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist - Notebookcheck

with the 540 vs the T7200 show a huge gain.

Superpi
7200 - 26 sec
520 - 16
Dhrystone
7200 - 18153
520 - 35587
Whetstone
7200 - 11683
520 - 27734

It seems like the benchmarks are way higher but I am more concerned about real world experience.

I do tend to have 25 tabs in Chrome & 15 tabs in IE open at once, with email, folders, etc open. The M1210 does handle it like a champ. I just figured the E4310 would be better at it.

 

No significant difference. The 1333MHz RAM that I put in my E6410 is downclocked to 1066MHz. However, putting the memory controller next to the CPU means that the memory bandwidth is nearly double that of the previous Intel platform.

Benchmarks such as PCMark05 or PCMark Vantage show that the SSD improves overall performance more than the new CPU.

If you want something with power + light weight then look at the Toshiba R700.

John

 

Ok... hopefully I won't have buyer's remorse since I just purchased an E4310 and didn't put as much thought into it as I normally do. I was actually set on buying an HP 8440p this morning, but came across a deal on a fully loaded unit in Dell's outlet

core i5 540m
4gb ddr3
128gb SSD
intel centrino wi-max 6250 + WWAN + bluetooth
DVD burner
webcam
finger print reader
6 cell battery
Windows 7 Professional

$719.25 (before tax)

I don't plan on keeping the 128gb SSD, since I already have a Corsair F120, so it should bring the price down even more when I sell it (anyone interested?)
I still can't believe how cheap these are going for... kinda worries me a bit since ya know... "you get what you pay for." Brand new configured costs $2,492 (before $368 instant savings)

Couple of questions though...
- what batteries are compatible with this? I thought I read that the E6410 was compatible, if so... wouldn't that mean the E6410 9 cell battery would work with this?
- strange... I paid via paypal and got the "order acknowledged" email stating $790 (with tax). But right after that, I got another email "order confirmed" and it shows $760 (with tax). Obviously, cheaper is better... but why the price decrease?
- how's the sound quality?

 

That's a pretty good price for a decked out E4310. I'm not sure that the E6410 battery is compatible. It may be, but there looks to be a size difference between it and the 6-cell for the E4310. And Dell's website doesn't list any compatibility.

Not sure about the price difference.

Sound quality is what you'd probably expect from a machine of this size/purpose. Very tinny. Also, it's pretty easy to cover up the speaker grilles when you're using the laptop in bed or on your lap. This muffles the sound significantly.

 

It's difficult to get buyer's remorse at that price unless you find the same or better spec tomorrow at $100 less.

I don't think the E4310 battery is compatible with the E6410. The E4300 has a different battery from the E6400 / E6410. Comparison of the battery dimensions listed in the Setup Features documents indicates that the dimensions of the E4310 battery are different to any of these. It's unusual for Dell to create yet another size so perhaps someone who has access to an E4310 and another E series can make comparisons. Dell has trouble weighing computers correctly so maybe they also get battery dimensions wrong.

John

 

That looks like a great price to me. I cant seem to find any E4310's with a webcam in the outlet. That feature is greyed out for me. Is there some other way to see the webcam option?

edit: I am guessing when the microphone is an option, then that includes the webcam too?

 

Its tough to stay away from this laptop. It looks like 615 with the coupon for a 540, 4gigs, fingerprint, bt, microphone (assuming thats a webcam option too).

Think its worth getting the complete care option too?

 

I would actually say that it is an upgrade, just depends on what you want to spend. I think the Sata on the 1210 is 1st gen, so its limited to 150mb/s. Your SSD could run up to 300 on the E4310. Also, the wireless reception on the 1210 is not great on the ones I see around here. CPU speed and virtualization support would be better on the E4310 so Windows 7 would be snappier. Still, for what you do, I would probably wait until the 1210 dies.

 

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