E6430 Owners Thread

Hi,

I placed an order for this laptop.

3rd gen i7, 8GB RAM, 750 HDD, 14" and so on.

Hope, it will be good enough.

 

My Outlet order comes tomorrow. I can't wait!

 

I should have waited. I got it and it was missing the fingerprint reader. Order sheet says: Dell ControlVault, Fingerprint Reader, Smartcard Reader and Contactless Smartcard Reader, Dual Point.

Call Tech support said it didn't come with it. Uh....it says it does. Ordered Outlet machines many times before and that means fingerprint reader. That was after I called, got out of warranty support in Canada, then transferred to regular support, then to Customer Service who could not find my order, my account, etc. Then they transferred me to another Customer Service department. That was the wrong department as well....so one more transfer. Finally got the correct department after 5 transfers and an hour on the phone. Told me that what I ordered was probably not there so they shipped me the next closest thing. Said they would check the inventory next week....Uhhhhhh not quite. Had this happen before on a warranty replacement where it was missing a part....they just sent a tech with the part. So she calls technical support for the palm rest part number. Since it is the day before the Labor Day weekend I guess it's a skeleton crew. 20 minutes on hold, no part number. I tell her to just return it and I'll order another one. She didn't like that, said I should just wait until next week. No...I'm annoyed. Process a return. Tells me I have to pay for shipping. No, I didn't get what I ordered, you pay for shipping. Then the line drops. Are you freaking kidding me? Calls me back about 8 minutes later, processes the return and is sending me a FedEX slip. Already ordered another one while I was on the phone with her. Used a 20% coupon and got more laptop for about $2 less.

There is a 20% coupon (N1HGGFX0SRVFWZ) if anyone else has a couple of hours to kill on the phone. LOL

 

Yes it dose. I just put my in and it looks and works ok and was sold for e6420 (however it's not original dell part)

And to answer my own question from a while back about 16gb ram sleep problem:
I had either broken or incompatible RAM, after exchanging to other manufacturers dimms everything works great.
For any one interested in 16gb I can say that ADATA AD3S1600W8G11-B works fine and I had problems with Patriot PSD38G16002S (don't know if model was at fault or just that dice).

 

Anyone have the Windows reinstall guide for this? Doing a clean install on this over the weekend.

 

Hello,
Could you give me the reference of the display (with Astra32 by example) ?

 

Just got my E6430 / i7 -3730QM w/fingerprint reader from the Outlet. It's just a flat surface on the spot where the fingerprint reader is supposed to be. Bill of matls shows it's included (CPW62 -" Module, Palmrest, WO-RFID/FP,Dual,E6430") matching the original order. SMartcard reader area also has no marking , perhaps it's not there too (per drawing). DOes this mean I don't have both?
If Dell will give some money back, I'll keep it (as I don't really care to have either one). Havent even turned on laptop, maybe I should to see if anything else is missing.

Ace28

 

HAH! You got screwed too! Send it back. Their Outlet specs show the fingerprint on there....and it should not. All the other ones will say NO fingerprint, but no matter what, the E6430 shows it on there. It's very aggravating. I had to add it to the cart, go to detail view and check the part numbers to make sure it had a fingerprint/smartcard reader.

 

Please,
Can anyone give me the reference of 1600x900 screen.
I would like to read the datasheet of the screen to compare the specifications .

 

My new company uses this model now and I can't say I'm overly impress by it. First though I am comparing it to my M17xR2 and old Vostro 1700. The screen by far is the worst. The contrast is so high on it everything looks bright. Unfortunately I can only turn down the brightness and not the contrast. Icons are washed out because of this and small texts are tolerable. Compare to both Vostro and R2, it's a let down. Do you guys have this issue?

The speed of the laptop is nothing to rave about either. They gave me a 320GB hard drive so I had no choice. Boot up and application start up takes longer and if running multiple programs becomes even worse. Part of this problem, I'm sure of it now, is what our IT has going on it. They are restrictions on the use of the laptop like no other company I've been with before.

The build quality is nice but for the size it has enough room for a larger screen. The keyboard is very good for my taste. The touchpad is pretty bad because of how I type. The driver didn't have an option to disable it while I use a cordless mouse so I had to turn it off completely in the BIOS. The option in the BIOS didn't work either.

I barely use this laptop because of its shortcomings. In fact, I only use it to access the network drives and only that. The screen quality is by far the biggest issue and letdown. I am left wondering if this is normal or not for this model. I mean, compare to my R2 at brightest setting the E6430 is at least twice as bright and the contrast makes it even worse. My eyes cry in pain using the E6430 for too long. I have it at half brightness now which makes it more tolerable.

Just curious of what your E6430 is like.