E6420 Owner's Thread

Once I removed the 943 screws it all came apart easily. Now I have a laptop with a stable base, no nicks/dings on the silver casing and a fingerprint that works. Only took 3 replacements and 6 weeks!

 

Posted and confirmed on 2 of the replacement units I got. That tape is really tough and gone through a few disassemblies on my part. Still there and still sticky. I would not worry about it too much....unless you are taking the bottom off every other week.

 

I'm sorry to hear that but I have found as well that, often, it is necessary to take matters into one's own hands, especially with Dell.

Thanks for the report.

 

Isnt there any way to switch off charging when in a power outlet? What about using it on planes then? There must be a way.

 

Fn + F2 should let you switch off charging until the next reboot. IIRC airlines didn't make a fuss about batteries charging while the computer is on but didn't like charging when they were off, perhaps because the latter may be unattended.

John

 

Fn + F2 works for E6410 but for E6420 it is used as Num Lock!
It seems that the option to switch off charging is unfortunately removed, since I can't find it in BIOS either.
It was a useful feature and I don't see why Dell has decided to remove it.

 

Got my E6420 this past week and liking it thus far. I actually don't mind the aesthetics and like the rubber coating on the palmrest (but who knows how long the coating will last). As other have said the speakers have really low volume on this model, the E6410 I had was definitely louder. I'd say the speakers are probably the main thing I have to complain about the E6420 (that at the lack of native USB 3.0 ports). Everything else is OK. It is noticeably heavier than the E6410 but the power the 2nd-gen Core i series CPUs brings is also definitely noticeable coming from a 1st gen Core i7-620m (have a Core i5-2540m in my E6420).

One thing I'm interested in doing is that I read somewhere (maybe in this thread, as I literally read every single page from 1-42 before I purchased this E6420) that one of the MiniPCI slots in the E6420 actually supports mSATA? I think the WWAN slot? If so, can't we buy those Intel 310 mSATA SSDs (40GB/80GB) and use it as a boot drive, then use the default 2.5" HDD bay for a large storage HDD, and keep the DVDRW bay as well, in effect having a "3-spindle" computer in a chassis of a "2-spindle"? Anyone try this? Thanks in advance.

Also, like some of you the front corner of my bottom cover/plate also rattle so already have a replacement bottom cover/plate coming to me in the mail

 

You are correct. While I haven't done this with the E6420, it has been great with my ThinkPad T420, which also supports it.

 

Ah! I'll not familiar with the newest Latitudes.

However, in my experience the recent Dell BIOSes do a competent job of not overcharging the battery and the batteries have lasted very well so I never used the charge disable facility.

John

 

Could you guys give me an idea of what kind of temperatures your E6420s idle at? Mine hangs out at about 52 C on the balanced profile while plugged in. I'm using an app called RealTemp, but the BIOS seems to agree.

Thanks