E6420 Owner's Thread

It seems that only price (of ATG) is more "rugged" ?!

 

The original question didn't imply per se that ishtiak had popping issues with the E6420 ATG. It's an open question whether anybody has had the issue, not if anyone ELSE has ALSO had that issue.

 

I just tried this, making sure to secure the hooks underneath the front side first, and it appears to have fixed the issue. Still think I'm going to return it though, due to the overall bulk of the laptop.

 

Do other people also have the pixellating issue with the internal screen around moving windows? It almost sounds as if there is some kind of mpeg compression going on internally from the sounds here, but that would be extremely weird.

 

omg... just ordered my e6420 a few days back and stumbled across this thread...

coming from an Latitude D830 and you're telling me:

a) the keyboard and screen brightness is manual
b) there are build quality issues?
c) battery has no charge indicator no more?
d) screen might has some pixeling issues?


WHAT? You must be kidding me. I went Dell again, because of the superb build quality and the standard features like ambient light sensor and battery charge indicators... and now they are replacing all that.... for what? They don't supposed to be cheap! I'll happily pay 100 or even 200 bucks more for these to be solved. X_o How could dell throw something like this on the market?!



Okay, enough rambling.


Can anyone verify whether the HDD is connected through the SATA 2 or the SATA 3 port? I'm thinking about a Vertex 3 so Sata3 it must be.

 

Can anyone tell me the dimensions of the shipping package?

Will it be more than 60*40*20cm³ and 10kg?

 

Also there seems to be a issue with the memory card controller drivers. It was causing me some series DPC issues and after i disabled both of them in device manager my system is now running smooth. FYI.

 

The Fedex label reports my shipping box at 11lb/5kg, with only one extra power supply and no extra batteries. I got measurements of 44x36x22 cm (rounding up), which is considerably under that # of cm^3 but slightly over in one dimension. Hope that helps.

 

Sorry to be that guy, but I'm very content, if not thrilled, with this machine.

As stated, as long as the front edge of the underside panel is put into place first, there is no popping of the chassis. I can't make it pop no matter how I manipulate the machine. It's pretty obvious how it needs to go together, really.

Here's the deal with the backlit keyboard: you select whether you want it off or at 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% brightness. By default it will turn on automatically when you type or use the touchpad. It will then turn off after a moment at idle. You may also manually turn it on and off.

I'm using a C300 at SATA III speeds. I confirmed this with Dell before buying. SATA III is inherent in the Sandy Bridge chipset.

The 1600x900 screen looks quite nice to me with a decent viewing angle. I'm on Intel HD 3000 graphics and playing Starcraft II smoothly (~30 FPS in 1v1 battles) on low with medium shaders at the native resolution. Oh, and it gets only mildly warm while doing so. Not bad!

The laptop feels solid to me, not bulky. I compared its weight and dimensions with my (relatively slim) Vostro 3400 and they're nearly the same, give or take a few millimeters.

The speakers are plenty loud! I mean, I'm not giving presentations or anything with this laptop, but I can hear things like Youtube audibly and clearly at 30% volume. It is not an entertainment notebook, after all.

The Dell power profiles are useful. I was using the Extended Battery profile last night and the system predicted about 6 hours on a fully charged 6 cell battery. I was using WiFi and downloading at 2 MB/s at the time. Can't say whether the estimate would have been perfectly accurate but, even so, 4-5 hours is still just fine for my uses.

After memory and SSD upgrades, Windows Experience indices were all at 7.0-7.1 with the exception of graphics performance, which was 5.9 on the Intel HD 3000.

Have a nice day!

 

^I also love the laptop too all besides that damn corner that pops out. I have made sure over and over that clip was in there but it simply doesn't hold due to flex on the bottom panel where there cd player is located...What type of drive do you have in the modular bay?