E4310 Owner's Lounge

He actually said the weight was 4lbs 5.6oz on his new E4310. I have an E4310 and a coworker has an E4300 so I will try to see what the weights of our two machines are. The E4310 feels really solid. I could easily imagine them beat up after 2 or 3 years on the road and still running well. I also wonder is the battery is heavier. 6+ hour run times for an extra 6 ounces might be a good trade off.

I used the E6500 extensively before I got the E4310. We also have E6400's here in the office. If I were you, I would base my decision on whether you need the discrete video card in the E6410 along with the larger display. Since I also use an M6500, the E4310 made a lot of sense for my workflows.

For me, the E4310 works really well for air travel. Its small enough to open and use in Coach. The rapid charge means a 30 minute layover can get you enough juice for your next flight if you were running low.

On a side note, I was offered the use one of the Lenovo X201 tablet computers here in the office. The Lenovo only had the standard battery which meant just over 2 hours of run time. On top of that, the battery takes OVER 6 hours to charge when the computer is running! The keyboard is cramped as hell, but had a good key feel. The trackpad on the Lenovo is very tiny. The Core i7 640LM on the Lenovo was slower than the i5-540m in the E4310. I liked the grippy finish on the X201, but it also felt less well built. I suck at using the tablet's pen, so at the end of the day I couldn't come up with any reason to use the X201 when I already had the E4310 for meetings and travel.

 

Yea I'm wondering if his 4lbs 5.6oz weight is with the 3 or 6 cell (if 3cell thats disappointing!). I'll have my E4310 tomorrow if Fedex makes it on time. I'll weigh both my E4310 and E6410 and see what the weight difference is.

Like you said for me its a matter of:

weight (E4310)

VS

13.3" 1366x768 -> 14.1" 1440x900 res screen and nVidia Quadro 3100m graphics (E6410)

All other specs are almost the same (extra USB ports notwithstanding).

 

Ok, my E4310 without battery is 53.25oz or 3.328 pounds. The 6 cell battery is 11.85oz or 0.74 pounds. So the whole thing weighs 4.068 pounds. Otherwise known as 4lbs and 1oz.

So my E4310 weighs 4lb and 1oz - which is 1.4 ounces more than the E4300. Not much of a weight gain on my system.

Not sure of why yours weighs 1/4 pound more than mine. I have a traditional hard drive, dvd burner, 2 sticks of ram, wireless, and cell cards installed in mine. Should be a worst case weight scenario. My case cover is Blue, so maybe that could have something to do with it.

I would also guess that with the 3 cell battery the weight would be around 3.75 pounds. Not sure of what that would do to battery life. I can get 5-7 hours from the 6 cell.

 

Pitviper45 says his E4310 is 4lbs 5.6oz, not me

I haven't even gotten my E4310 yet (supposed to get it tomorrow) so will weigh it when I get it. Mine is coming with the 6cell, traditional HDD + DVDRW drive, 2 sticks of RAM, wireless, and Bluetooth (no WWAN).

I probably should have gone with the 3cell as I value low weight more than battery life (the lower weight is the sole reason I am considering keeping the E4310 over the E6410 which i am liking a lot thus far. The 14.1" -> 13.3" width/height dont really matter to me).

 

The reported weight increase of the E4310 relative to the E4300 is of interest and concern. The extra width is likely to result in some weight increase, but how much?

I would suggest that those with scales weigh something that be can used for comparison. For weight differences between two E series then it is best to weigh both on the same scales. Otherwise weigh something of known weight such as a couple of bags of sugar (for which the packaging weight is negligible).

John

 

I have the 6 cell batteries on both systems and a standard HDD, optical drive, bluetooth, backlit keyboard, and wifi card. The systems are spec'd identically. Aside from the new Arrandale chips...

For reference, I just weighed two items on the same scale that I used for the laptops:

A bag of coffee marked 8oz measured at 8.4oz
A box of sugar marked 1lb measured at 1lb 1.1oz

Allowing for the weight of packaging, that seems to be relatively accurate but perhaps a little high? It's hard to say. Both items were unopened, coffee is in a plastic bag (it is from Intelligentsia) and the sugar is in a thin cardboard-y box (it is Domino).
The scale seems to be pretty accurate. So by my measurements there is a 6oz weight increase in the E4310.

Aside from being wider than the E4300 (by 1/2 inch) and shallower (by 1/8 inch), the E4310 also feels noticeably sturdier. The keyboard has less flex and feels sturdier. The keys themselves are less squirrely and feel more dampened (reminiscent of the D630 keyboard). The display casing and bezel are also a lot sturdier (on my E4300 the bezel below the display was quite flimsy and not held in place by much, it did not sit flush with the display really, this is nonexistent on the E4310). I measured the lids and the lid on the E4310 is slightly thicker, maybe 1/16 of an inch.

I speculate that one other thing that may be adding a little weight is the heat sink (I haven't opened the E4310 up so what follows is speculation based on evidence collected ). The fan exhaust is wider on the E4310 (by 5/8 inch) so the heat disperser that sits right by the exhaust is probably bigger. The fan is also probably wider, not that this would add much weight being plastic. A benefit of the wider fan is that you no longer hear it. I have not yet been able to hear the fan from a normal seating distance (maybe barely if at all) even when it is running fast. On my E4300 I could hear then fan when it kicked into high gear (yes, I have latest BIOS installed, in case you are wondering).

Another nice thing, the E4310 touchpad is multitouch enabled so you can do 2 finger scrolling But I do seem to be having some problems scrolling with the trackpoint and middle mouse button combo, it is kinda laggy for some reason.

 

I agree with you on the build changes being for the better. I really like how sturdy the machine is. Light years ahead of the D series. I ended up with a blue cover and it holds up well to normal wear and tear, but is easily scratched by sharpish objects. Heat seems to be on par with my old E6500. It produces less heat than the E6400 (w nvidia gpu).

I also recommend you get a fast hard drive for it. Mine came with a 160gb 5200rpm drive and it held the machine back. My current 500gb 7200rpm drive is still holding it back. Hopefully SSD prices will fall as much as we are expecting in the 4th quarter when Intel's new fab generation hits the market.

On the measurements, I used my wife's digital kitchen scale that zero's itself every time you turn it on and is accurate to 70 ounces. I found some weights that came with an antique set of balance scales and the 1 pound weight measured 15.98oz. I pulled the battery, hard drive and optical drive and when weighed in pieces the total was within 1/10th of an ounce of the weight of the laptop fully assembled.

Also, my wife thought I was absolutely crazy.

 

Ok so I just got my E4310 from Fedex. Here's some weights I just measured:

E6410 (6cell): 5lbs 2.8oz
E4310 (6cell): 4lbs 5.9oz
Difference of only about 13oz

So my weight for the E4310 is similar to pitviper's (his was 4lbs 5.6oz I believe). Disappointing that the difference is only about the weight of a can of 12oz soda but keep in mind this is with a E6410 with the smaller 6cell battery that doesn't jut out the back (versus the bigger 9cell) and a E4310 with the bigger 6cell battery that juts out the back (versus the flush 3cell). So if I got a 3cell flush battery for the E4310 the weight difference would most likely be over 1lb which is significant enough for me to consider keeping the E4310.

Lol anyone want to trade their 3cell for my 6cell battery (for E4310)?

Ah yes here are the specs of my 2 Latitudes so you can see the specs are about the same for weight consideration:

E6410: Core i7-620m, 4GB RAM (2x2GB), 500GB 7200RPM HDD, Dell 375 bluetooth, Intel 6200 WiFi

E4310: Core i5-520m, 4GB RAM (2x2GB), 250GB 7200RPM HDD, Dell 375 bluetooth, Intel 6200 WiFi

 

Yeah my girlfriend was here when I was measuring the laptops and she was like "what are you doing?"

My E4310 came with a 250GB 7200RPM Scorpio Black hard drive but I have since upgraded to an 80GB Intel G2 SSD. I also bought a hard drive caddy from Newmodeus to replace the optical drive and put the 320GB drive from my old E4300 into it so I am running a dual HDD system. The SSD is amazing, boots in under 30 seconds and the system is so responsive and snappy. The only downside is that the HDD caddy + 2nd drive bumps up my system weight to 4lbs 7oz. So my new setup is half a pound heavier than my old setup (granted I now have dual HDD) which is a little annoying.

 

Hellfire88 between your 2 latitudes which one do you like better as the specs are close to the same. I have to replace my xps m1330 notebook and was looking at these 2 models.