E6520 Owner's Thread

some more comparison shots with the T60 plus WEI and CrystalDiskMark.

 

So there's some pics. Here's some text.

First off the specs:
i5 2410m
4GB RAM
250GB 7200rpm HDD
1600x900
Nvidia 4200M

Early Impressions:
It feels quite a bit heavier than I expected. I knew I was upgrading size from my old T60, but (without a scale) seems to be about 20% heavier.

The fit-and-finish appears to be good, though, like many have said about their e6420s, the bottom looks like plastic. The lid cover shows fingerprints. I do wish it looked more business-like or even more dramatic, but as it is, it looks like a $500 plastic Inspiron. Then again, I'm not going to buy a MBP just for the looks.

The keyboard is solid (no flex, good feel), but it, nor the Dell trackpoint, are quite like the Thinkpad's set. The trackpoint is sensitive (I turned it down to about 20% on the sensitivity slider) and the push to click is sensitive too. Multifinger gestures of the pad work well as much as I've used it. Very weird to have a num pad on this and the offset, but I think I'll get used to that in time. Not a fan of the flattened [Home, End, Ins, Del] row as I use them a lot in code editing and would prefer [Ins, Home, Page Up] on 1 row and [Del, End, Page Down] on the next. The backlight seems fine though it bleeds between the island keys, unlike the chiclet backlighting setups I've seen. But it is a big set forward from my Thinkpad keyboard light.

The screen is a far brighter panel than the Thinkpad's. The backlighting is also much more even (which I imagine is partly the LED backlighting setup).

The palm rest has a rubberized texture that's comfortable.

Tomorrow I'll compile some code on it beside my workstation which is a Fedora 14 desktop running Q6600 quad core, 8GB Ram, 64GB SSD, and a WD Caviar Black...but it's a little apples and oranges I think.

So far I do like it...I do have some early buyer's remorse in that I think I would have liked the e6420's size a little better, though the vertical size of this screen is already pretty short.

 

I received mine yesterday and my initial impression coming from an Adamo is WOW!!!
This thing is heavy but I'll get use to it.
LOVE the number pad. I work on a lot of spreadsheets for work so a plus for me.
Offset keyboard is strange but again I'll get used to it.
I've got the FHD screen and my photoshop work looks GREAT!!!!!
I think this things just going to be fun.....
Mark

 

Can someone tell me that the can I use DDR3 1600 Memory in E6520

 

I was asked for a pic of backlighting. Here is is...from my Droid2, but gets the point across

 

Sad to see an old 4:3 ThinkPad and a new 16:9 Latitude...

 

Look for memory specs in an online manual on Dell.com.

GK

 

A couple notes about my experience with the e6520:

Build quality: As was noted in the e6420 Owner's Thread, I have movement of the bottom panel on the front two corners. A little bit more on the right side. The total movement is probably around 2 mm.

As for performance, this stock 7200rpm hard drive is okay, but, after trying to build from my source tree on my workstation and this, I think that it's really holding it back and I'm looking forward to upgrading to SSD at some point soon. The workstation is a 250GB WD Caviar Black for data, SSD for apps. Maybe one of the new Intel 320 series, but we'll see. I may try to build into a RAMDisk to see if it helps with the differences I saw because this 2410m is supposed to be somewhat comparable to the desktop Q6600 in a few benchmarks I've seen.

I am getting more used to this keyboard and can type as quickly as with my Thinkpad, but, subjectively, I still like the Thinkpad keyboard a little better. I still feel very uncomfortable with the Dell trackpoint though. Not a fan.

 

I am using the 2720qm, my first Quad Core in a notebook -
and I now can recommend it based on the Sandy Bridge powersavings features.

My powersaving review:
5 minutes easy surfing over Wi-Fi (6300) in Google News with the Quad Core
without load, reading brightness to minimum OS-power mode to save power
with a Samsung SSD. Energy souce: the normal 9-cell battery.
Results:
Well 15 hours remaining.
Based on the 97Wh battery just under 6.5 watts of total system (with wireless internet).
Only 3.8 to 4.2 watts consumed by the quad core CPU at 800MHz, according to TS!
15 hours even without the 3-cell bay battery
"Power saving is the most environment-friendly energy source"

I can not recommend 1600MHz RAM as it rund only on 1333MHz in my E6520.
SPD caused it to rund with CL7 instead of CL9 but one od two kits of 8GB resulted in errors (BSOD) and the performance increase of CL7 or 1600MHz is 0% in most applications (up to a rare maximum of between 2% and 4% in bandwidth applications like Winrar).

 

The specs at Dell.com state: "DDR3 SDRAM (1333 MHz)"

GK