E6540 Owners Thread

Prime95: In-place Large FFTs
Kombuster x64: Default Custom Run on AMD chip

 

Looks like yours throttled down to 800MHz as well..

Edit: user from the Dell forum who sent his machine to the depot spoke to a team lead who said that the product team weren't aware of any issues with this model. I find that interesting as the Twitter guy said the engineers were aware and we're working on a solution

 

I don't think it's the panel, but the bezel seems to have more 'give' than usual. I've compared it to a E6410 unit - that bezel feels much firmer and solid than the E6540 one.

I have to say that I do enjoy the machine - primarily the keyboard and build (something that Lenovo has nearly flushed down the drain with the new ThinkPad line) but some issues such as panel quality and heat really do spoil a good user experience.

With regards to Dell support I have had a good experience so far by talking to someone from the business support line; I got through to a very helpful Scottish guy (I'm in the UK) who was prepared to make a NBD service if I wanted. When I said I would arrange it later - he did a callback a week later when I forgot. I will report to you guys when I get the HSF and hopefully the panel sorted as well.I guess the support teams seems to drastically vary in quality depending on whether you get though to a local business support team or the outsourced one (India?).

As for the display, here's a test everyone can try with their E6540. The stock Debian 7 has a gradient to it; a bad panel cannot render the gradient properly, resulting in banding and 'ripples' that move across the screen (from my testing so far).

http://www.debianart.org/cchost/people/Adau/Adau_-_Joy_1920x1080.png

My result:

http://i.imgur.com/GiuMqKT.jpg

Please do report back on what you guys see, I'm interested to see if this a common panel fault.

 

First response from email support - send off to depot for 7-10 days. At least they didn't want "further diagnosis"

 

Seems to be what they want all of us to do.. I'd rather not unless I absolutely have to. I'm glad a few are able to send theirs in though to see what kinda response everyone gets.

 

Something tells me that their push to send in the machine to a depot is indicative that they really want to test these more thoroughly than what can be done during a 1-2 hour on-site call. If they had a definite fix for this problem, it wouldn't take 7-10 days to fix...

 

They can make them anytime they want to so I doubt they need to test them since all of them will have the same issues. It is certainly not the right response for something marketed towards business users. How many of them can go without their machine for 1-2 weeks? Granted my main work machine is a desktop, but you can be sure I wouldn't be able to go without that for more than a couple of days and that is only if things are slow.

 

I don't think they'll be doing any testing of my machine. I bet he has the tech repaste and clean out my vents which is a waste of time. Maybe they'll replace the hsf assembly. Idk, he hasn't contacted me since I gave him my address and phone #.

I don't see why they aren't jumping on the issue. They make the dang things. Why can't some Tech's order a dozen for testing and put them through their paces?

I realize that in reality, the handful of us aren't even a blip on their radar. And it's like the many users who had issues with the last gen xps machines. They didn't rush out and swap everyone's machines, they brushed everyone off until they pushed out a handful of BIOS updates and supposedly found a fix by upgrading the power supply. I understand that. Why spend money to replace what can be reasonably fixed? Our issue seems to be different in that it's 100% heat related and even with the computer running max fans, it can't keep up. The only fix I see for this is a redesign of the thermal system, but given that the product is halfway through its life, I know they won't do that.

In the end, the amount of time and money they're going to spent just on us isn't worth it. They could swap our machines for similar models and be done with it. This wasn't a wildly popular machine to begin with..

Their policy in swaps is that they aren't allowed to downgrade you. This means that their only option really is the M4800 since the M3800/xps15 don't have optical drives, only offer a lower level processor, and don't have ethernet ports. If they came to me with the option, I'd take the xps15/m3800 as long as they gave me the 91Wh battery. The m4800 is a nice machine, just a bit bulky and doesn't get that great of battery life. On the downside, it seems there may be some heat issues in the xps 15/m3800 models as well.

 

My 6540 refuses to wake up from hibernation. It just stays on the "Resuming Windows" screen forever. Is this someting everyone experiences too?

 

Can't say I've experienced that. Sorry. Windows 7 or 8?