Early reactions to my dell Latitude E6500

So I got a Dell Outlet Latitude E6500 at the end of last week, and I've been playing around with it for a few days now. Thought I'd share my initial reactions, but first let me caveat that I'm nowhere near as technologically competent as many on these boards, so this is more of a laymen's assessment:

Specs:
Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU
Dedicated GPU (NVIDIA 160 something)
WXGA+ LED screen
backlit keyboard
DVD-RW
2GB RAM
XP currently installed with option to upgrade to Vista Biz
no modem
webcam included
Dell Wireless 1397 b/g
Bluetooth
6-cell battery

Pros:

• Very quick--fast boot time, quick shutdown time, and quick response time (although all I've done so far is play around on the Internet)

• Beautiful screen (love the brightness and sharpness of the picture)

• nice solid keyboard

• solid build (very sturdy)

• like that it has XP--don't really want VISTA

• Like the standard 3-yr warranty, even though it's mail-in service only

• The sound is fine (afterall you're not buying a 7 channel surround sound system, so what do you expect)

• Lots of good ports

Cons:

• touchpad is too small

• Neither touchpad nor trackpoint seem to be as responsive as I'd like (they sometimes jump further than I want, which is frustrating)

• Don't like Dell Controlpoint--I'm not used to it, and it just gets in my way

• Keyboard layout is slightly off (spacebar is slightly offcentered--most keyboards have the spacebar run from the "C" key to the end of the "M" key. Look at pics on these forums and you'll see this one is shifted slightly to the right.

• front of laptop is a sharp angle from keyboard, rather than smoothed out, like many consumer notebooks, so it gets a bit sore on my wrist if I've been typing for a while.

• Couldn't connect to wireless network initially--should have connected automatically, but after spending about an hour with Dell Technical Support this is resolved

• DVD optical drive has a piece of plastic that broke off when computer arrived (will send back to have replaced/repaired)

• Heat vent has a few pieces of metal missing--will have replaced.

• A bit bulkier than I realized when I ordered (probably no more so than any other 15" laptop, but this is my first widescreen laptop, so I didn't realize how big it actually is--which is both good and bad (nice size screen, and I'm not very mobile with the computer, but still bulky if I plan to travel with it in the future).

Overall, the computer has a ton of features and a good specs. I'm still debating whether to keep it though.

Would love to hear of other experiences.

 

I've been using my e6500 for just over three weeks now and I've been meaning to post some of my reactions as well. This seems to be a good place to do it.

I agree with a lot of your comments. Here are some of my thoughts:

Pros

• I did a clean install of Vista Business 32 SP1 as soon as I got it. The performance has been snappy, responsive, and rock solid. Sleep and Hibernate are fast and totally reliable.

• I did not reinstall Dell Control Point Software and I haven't missed it in the least

• Build quality is very good. The laptop feels very sturdy and should make it through it's expected service life of three years.

• The LED WSXGA+ LCD is awesome. Super bright and easy on the eyes. Also easy on the battery.

• Size is good for a 15". It feels slimmer than my old Inspirion e1505. I work with too many spreadsheets to go with a 14" screen.

• The built in webcam and microphone are very good. I can even use Skype to make business phone calls with the built-in mic and still sound professional.

• Battery life is great! I am using the standard 6-cell battery and regularly getting over four hours of usable time on the machine (thanks to the LED backlit LCD).

• Keyboard is solid and truly full-sized. It's taken a while to get used to it coming from the slightly smaller keyboard of my old laptop. (I don't have the backlight)

Cons

• I agree that the touchpad is a little lacking, but I'm getting used to it. And, I'm comparing it to the Synaptics touchpad on my old laptop which is probably one of the best touchpads out there.

• At first listen the speakers sound pretty bad. I am getting used to them now and I find that they actually do a very good job of playing music at low levels, like when I am quietly working at my laptop. But, when I try to turn them up they sound pretty darn bad. The only problem with this is that I occasionally use my laptop for simple sales presentations that include video and sound. It's tough to hear unless the room is quiet.

• There are some driver issues that cause latency spikes and can affect audio playback. On my config, reverting to an older Intel Matrix Storage driver seemed to fix the problem, but I feel that it is more of a workaround than an actual solution. Yet, I am confident that driver support will improve over time and this will get better.

Overall, I am very happy with my E6500. I spend several hours on it everyday for work, mostly using Outlook, Excel, Google Chrome, and Word, usually all at once. It handles every task that I throw at and always remains responsive and reliable. It is a real workhorse of a machine. Oh, and I think that it looks pretty cool, too.

 

I turned up the speed and sensitivity of the touchpad in my E6500, and turned off the tap function since I always use the separate buttons. This helped it quite a bit.

 

I definitely agree about the touchpad settings. They definitely help a lot. I still wish it was a little larger and that scrolling was a little smoother.