Is anyone NOT experiencing some touchpad problems on E6400 or E6500?

On my laptop, the touchpad/keyboard problems get really bad when its on battery. When I'm on AC power, the touchpad freezes probably once in an hour or so. Another strange thing I noticed is that when I plugged in my ac adapter, the screen went dim and when I plugged it out it was bright. It should be the other way round. Now I'm using an adapter from my previous dell laptop and I don't seem to have this issue. I'm still testing my laptop with this old adapter, lets see if its really an adapter problem. The ac adapter that came with this laptop acts wierd. Three receptacles in my house stopped working after I plugged this adapter whereas there are 5 other laptops in my house and I never had this problem with them.

I've tried ubuntu as well but its the same. Yet, they seem to be in denial that its a hardware issue.

 

Have you checked if the laptop is set to have a different brightness depending on whether you are on AC or battery? That would explain your bright/dim situation.

 

It's not a bright/dim situation. He was saying the touchpad acts worse when it is on battery than it does when it is plugged in.

I have noticed that a little, but I usually use a mouse when it is plugged in so I can't jump to conclusions.

 

I have an E6400 and the touchpad freezes completely (not the buttons or the nipple) with the latest Dell drivers. In addition, things get unresponsive every so often.

I have not had a single freeze with the Toshiba drivers, and I *think* the responsiveness is higher:

http://askiris.toshiba.com/ToshibaS...md=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2184201xml

 

My cursor speed magically resets itself everytime I reboot. That's both in XP and Vista.

 

I also have a Dell E6400 and bought a few of these and 6500's for the company. Because of this touchpad problem as well as some frustration with the dell control point connection manager and security center I am being convinced to buy Lenovo or HP next time. The problem with these touchpads make such a nice laptop very hard to use and sometimes useless. There are problems like the mouse becoming unresponsive, tap to click not working on touchpad and like someone mentioned before some users loose settings after every reboot.

The reason I will no longer order dell is because not only did these expensive laptops have problems out of the box but I am sure Dell is aware of these issues and is trying so hard to be competitive that they are releasing products of inferior quality without troubleshooting and debugging. When one of the employees here complains about their touchpad and I have to tell them that's the way it is its embarrassing for me since I was the one that purchased these laptops.

Dell has really gone down in quality and customer service. I hope they turn around.

 

I feel your pain. This is my second Latitude and I think my next notebook will be an HP or Lenovo as well. WAY too many issues for a business machine.
I did discover the issue with the touchpad losing settings. It has to do with the Setpoint software included with Logitech and some Dell mice. Here's a link to the discussion on the Dell forums.

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19268076/19472619.aspx

 

Just saw this thread and I can't deal with the touchpad. It's inaccurate and herky-jerky and it completely ruins the ergonomics of the laptop. The trackpoint knob is also oddly shaped and unusable for fine movements. It is far far worse than a lenovo. But Lenovo has a horrible screen.

 

The problem with the e6400/e6500 touch pad is that its a Alps touch pad.
Why in the heck Dell chose to go with the crappy Alps touch pad on the Latitude line is the question? The Synaptics touch pad is much more responsive and would have been a better fit for the Latitude.

 

Using the latest driver, it's not that bad. Certainly not great either though.