E6520 Owner's Thread

Will be an owner shortly. A few questions if someone can be kind enough to answer.

-anyone use the touch screen? Will the overrall display quality take a hit with the touch screen? I've never used a touch screen before, but it seems like it would be so much easier than using the touchpad.

-Someone mentioned a price drop on may 10 (or 11) - is this known or speculation

- finally - why does dell charge so much for the Ram upgrade? I think in total they're charging around $300 for 8gb when you can pick it up anywhere for under $100.

-Thanks!

 

simple question as I'm new here - should all posts regarding questions on the E6520 go in this thread or should I create separate threads?

 

I received my Latitude E6520 in the mail. I really like it, it's very fast and the keyboard with the built-in numeric keypad is very comfortable. The backlight looks really good and illuminates the keys well. It's also very configurable.

I installed the Super Talent CoreStore MV 64GB SSD drive. I have yet to be able to get the drive to work. My trials and tribulations are over at the Super Talent forums on their website. At this point I don't think it's the Latitude, I think it's the CoreStore MV. I've tried it in two different computers and it worked in neither. I don't know if it's just defective, or just doesn't work in these two particular computers.

Along the way, I did discover that the full-length mini-PCIe slot in E6520 is in fact Gen 2, and is capable of 5Gbps.

I also got in touch with Dell; they don't have any more technical information in regards to the E6520 other than what's posted on their website right now. I really wish they would post a list of compatible mini-PCIe SSD drives; the fact that one of the half-length slots is labeled "SATA Flash" implies that something must be compatible. Unfortunately, the rep I spoke with could not find any information on this subject.

I'm going to continue working with Super Talent in regards to the CoreStore MV. I really like the E6520, and if I can get this thing to work, it would be the perfect computer for me.

 

I highly recommend you don't get the touchscreen. The reason is because it's only offered with the 1366x768 resolution display.

1366x768 is a rather low resolution for a 15.6" laptop. Plus, Dell's 1366x768 screens are known for their awful quality compared to the higher resolution options.

Skip the touch screen, instead get the 1600x900 (or 1920x1080) screen. They're much brighter, items on the screen aren't as large so you can fit more on the screen, and you'll probably never use the touchscreen anyway. It's not worth sacrificing something truely useful (such as resolution) just to get a screen that does stuff when you touch it.

Avoid the 1366x768, whether touchscreen or not, unless you absolutely need the touchscreen for something that realistically requires it. Dell really should have offered the touchscreen on the 1600x900 display.

 

Hah! I had the same questions - just got my E6520 last week, and once upgraded to 4GB (2GB = too much swapping), it is working very nicely. I have a thread here: Flash SATA that wonders about that internal slot - it would be great to pop a 32GB card in there and use as a boot drive. Alternatively, I also have a post here: Boot options which questions whether we can boot from the ExpressCard slot or not... anyone know?

 

<Moved to another thread>

 

Notebookcheck.net just reviewed 2 configurations of the E6520 - 1 config with 1366x768 which they say is bad, the 2nd config with a 1920x1080 MC6JN-156WF1 which they say is excellent.
Does anyone know who makes the MC6JN-156WF1 and where else it's fitted or reviewed ?

 

As an aside - I waffled between the 1920x1080 vs. 1600x900 resolutions. On my i8600 with 1680x1050 I wound up using the DPI scaling because the native resolution font size was just too small for me. My primary use is Office and windows explorer navigation and I just couldn't see things that well without squinting and developing eye strain before changing the DPI. However,, I also found that DPI changes created problems with certain programs and dialog boxes not showing all the options and clickable buttons, etc...

So, I decided to go with the 1600x900. I still had to increase the DPI slightly, but I feel it is a good compromise between resolution and being able to see things without just scaling things up anyway. I've had mine for a couple of weeks and am very happy with my choice.

If all you're doing is watching HD movies, go for the high resolution. But for office productivity and using other programs that may not deal well with DPI scaling or other things (if you have to) then I caution against just blindly getting the highest resolution possible.

Oh, and if you're not a teenager, take into account that you're not getting any younger, and neither are your eyes!

 

It all depends on the person.

I tolerated and welcomed the 170 DPI on my 2048x1536 15" T42p screen. 1920x1080 in 15.6" is only 140 DPI. I never use DPI scaling, when things are tiny it just feels normal to me.

Of course I had "training" by using my 133 DPI 1600x1200 T42p screen before I swapped the 2048 panel in, but that was a jump up from 90 DPI (1024x768 in 14.1")

My first laptop was 800x600 in 12 inches (Thinkpad A20m I got for free), at 83 DPI, and even 1024x768 felt like heaven compared to that.

But both 1600x900 and 1920x1080 are good choices. Good idea to stay away from 1366x768 though, because Dell has a reputation for having some of the worst 15.6" 1366x768 screens, and that's certainly proven to be true for the Latitude line.

 

I see Dell's configuration options allow upgrade to 4GB RAM as either a single DIMM $105, or as 2 DIMMs $85. I forget: does the Sandy Bridge/chipset architecture use a dual-channel for faster memory bandwidth - in which case 1 DIMM in each channel best ? I get impression from Dell's option pricing, this architecture does NOT use dual-channel memory