Latitude 5450 Owners' Thread

Yes some E7450 come with 840M but cost more.. Im on a budget!

 

I been reading this forum for a while but never posted, this is my first post ever. The reason I've never posted is because I'm not a "computer person", I'm a business person and use Dell Latitudes for my business. I'm not rich enough yet for an IT department so I've had to learn on my own. I'm starting to see a lot of fairly inexpensive E5450's and E5470's online and I thought it might be time to replace the E5440's I currently have. I went and got myself an E5450 with a 5600u, 16gb's of ram, a 240 SSD and the 1080p screen.
I've had my E5450 now for a few weeks, and I love the computer but there are some drawbacks;
1) Battery life isn't enough to last a whole work day. These are supposed to be business computers, so 5 or 6 hours of battery life for a computer that does not have a swappable battery or a slice battery is unacceptable.
2) No mSATA ( or similar ) RAID option. Since these computers are all SSD and there's no mSata I'm worried that data might be lost in event of a hard drive failure.

Has anyone tried out the E5470 battery in an E5450? One of the downsides of the E5450 vs E5440 is the inability to attach a battery slice. I find myself having to charge my E5470 any chance I can in order to get it to last a 8 hour work day. Can someone point me to a reputable battery I can buy online and try it out?

Other then that I love the computer but might go with another option just because of the battery life issue.

 

Have you got the 38Whr (3 cell) or the 51Whr (4 cell) battery? Dell claims "With up to 14.5 hours of battery life with the optional 4-cell battery" but that's for the unrealistic condition of no significant CPU activity, display on minimum brightness and wireless devices turned off. However, my experience with the E7450 which, with a nominal 54Whr battery did well over 6 hours video playback with display at half brightness suggests that 8 hours of light usage at around 1/4 brightness should be feasible. In reality, few people work solidly for 8 hours or more.

I would add that the E7450 does have a swappable external battery (but the newer E7470 has an internal battery).

Modern SSDs have good reliability but I would encourage the use of external backups, which also guards against theft or other loss of the computer.

John

 

Thanks for the tip, I've ordered a new 51WHR battery... let's see if that does the trick. Absolutely love the screen on these computers. It is far ahead of the E5440 in that regard.

 

Just an update. With a brand new 51whr battery the E5450 now has enough battery life to go a full workday. To say I'm impressed is an understatement.

 

Thanks for the update. I am always mystified why the manufacturers keep shrinking the default battery size for this type of notebook rather than give people the all day + more capability which we would like.

John

 

TL;DR:
battery and chassis flex may have been the cause of random "thermal overheat" shutdowns (M1004).
My solutions:
Replacing the battery with a new one, and rescrewing ALL of the chassis screws (in this laptop, you'll have reached all of the relevant screws when you can remove the heatsink).


Thanks!






Since the owner's lounge is closed?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/latitude-5450-owners-thread.779709/page-5

I will post this here.

I bought my E5450 in sometime around the 2014 --> 2015 New Year. I bought it specifically to replace a Sony Vaio S13 with a failing monitor. In the absence of Sony's Vaio (I remember Sony selling the division around then), the Dell was the smallest, normal looking laptop I could find with any sort of dGPU. I remember the laptop feeling very solid, compared to my Sony, when I first picked it up.

I had ordered the laptop with the hope of upgrading the 51Whr battery to the promised 62Whr battery - the battery did not become available until late ~2016, long after the "Spring 2015" date in the spec sheet. As such, I didn't treat the 51Whr battery very well, and I experienced some battery degradation. Alongside the battery degradation, numerous M1004 thermal overheat errors came up, randomly, suddenly shutting down the laptop. I narrowed it down to the battery, largely because the shutdowns only occurred on battery power (and the battery was already reporting poor health).

In late 2016, I bought the 62Whr battery (which was for a later model, but it still fit and worked in my 5450 [EDIT: it is R0TMP, and it claims to be an E5450 part]), and the random overheats and shutdowns ceased. Battery life was also improved by quite a bit. Yay! The rubber trim surrounding the screen bezel had fallen off around this time. It started near the webcam. I believe it started there because I open the clamshell with my thumb in that location. A minor oversight from Dell. I hope they got rid of the rubber trim in newer laptops.

Recently, the random shutdowns started coming back. I had taken quite a bit of care this time around to not harm the battery (never let it drain to empty; battery charge limit set to 80%). I noticed, this time around, the shutdown (sometimes accompanied by the same thermal overheat warning! M1004 - but not always) mostly occurred when I lifted the laptop. There was a bit of flex in this laptop. Maybe all of the screws had worked themselves loose due to the thermal loads, it's position in my backpack (no suitcases, though, I haven't traveled nearly as much in recent years), etc. I thoroughly disassembled the laptop, applied new thermal paste, and screwed in all of the screws appropriately.

Now the laptop feels amazingly solid, invoking memories of the day I got it. The random shutdowns have stopped.

Overall, I still like this laptop. It still gets decent battery life, the GPU still powers the occasional game (I only play when plugged in!). The new battery has lasted longer than the old one, due to better care (and the larger capacity allows me a bit more leeway in how I want to use the laptop. I don't have to be constrained by the ~3 hours of useful life the old battery had). The 62Whr battery gives about ~4 hours of life under the same conditions (80% capacity, never discharged to empty). Performance is still decent, though I am aware newer SoCs are much faster at compiling, multitasking, while granting almost twice the useful battery life!

Whatever my next laptop may be, I'll have to seriously debate whether or not I want the dGPU. I really like having the option, but I haven't really used it enough to justify the downsides (limited laptop choices, usually a weight penalty, too).

Thanks for reading. I suppose I should update my signature. Though I traveled the world with that Sony, so I don't quite want to strike it off the signature. I guess my "rep/like" ratio is a telling tale of how long it has been since I last participated in the forums. Have fun.

 

I suspect that the E5450 thread was automatically locked because it hadn't been used for over a year. I've unlocked it and merged your new thread.

Loose screws can allow movement of components and connections. As a precaution, whenever I've got the back off my computer for some reason (cleaning, repasting, .... ) I always check that all the screws are tight. If any screws persistently work loose then a hint of Loctite should sort any problems.

John

 

Ouch, part of why this laptop started getting loose was the upper right side (viewed from the POV of using the laptop normally) of the KB had a missing screw mount. I never found the piece or if/when it broke. Given that I still have a full account of all the screws, I suspect it was never there in the first place (though it's clearly meant for one, and the service manual depicts one in that location).

This became more noticeable recently, since a few of the plastic clips holding in the top KB tray didn't survive disassembly/reassembly, and it's angling up near the power button. This is exacerbated by the missing rubber trim (which could hold down the top tray corner when closed). Even my old Sonys didn't fall apart this quickly, though this laptop is a bit larger than my old Sonys. The larger size of this laptop makes by laptop pouch add a bit of orthonomal pressure to the LCD backside. This pressure has resulted in the screen bezel leaving a few marks on top of the KB tray.

I also noticed, under heavy fan loads (which the laptop usually never reaches - recently, some websites have been causing my web browsers to ramp to near 100%, likely a glitch in the Chromium codebase that will be resolved sooner or later), there is a tiny bit of airflow from the area of the QWAS keys. Having taken apart this laptop, I thought it wasn't possible for airflow to go from the KB area to the main fan, but the airflow was nevertheless felt. An interesting design choice for a laptop that originally had a rubber trim piece around the bezel, which had an advertised job of keeping out dust when the laptop was closed. Though I suppose it was not intended to run with the display panel closed, unlike my old Latitude C840.

I also bought the E-port II docking base when I bought the laptop. Just in case if anyone is still, for whatever reason, contemplating one, don't buy it. It's clearly designed for older laptops with an external battery, but with the E-port placement on this laptop, the dock basically doubles the effective footprint of this laptop. The only benefits are: Displayport support (which is important for my 2560x1440 display), and you can power on/off the laptop with the external power button on the dock, when the laptop is closed. My old C840, after the display assembly broke, was used in this mode as a desktop for many years (the c840 dock was a slide-in type, with a Dell monitor stand that perfectly fit with it, meant for "up to 45kg" CRTs). The placement of the newer dock's power button is not optimal for this arrangement, however (the C840 dock brought the controls near to the front of the laptop).

While I don't always type with the wrists on the laptop, if I do, the laptop now creaks in the lower right corner. It's due to the missing clips in the KB tray. Their non-presence allows the KB tray to warp up along the edges slightly (not as bad as the corner near the power button, upper right). The KB tray really wasn't meant for removal. A shame, since the CMOS battery replacement procedure requires removing the KB tray in this model. I noticed in the newer models, Dell now puts the CMOS battery in a more accessible area. I'm glad someone noticed and moved it into a better location.

A number of recent school projects involving MASM/PWB x86 assembly drove me to bring my old, old Win98 IBM Thinkpad 310ED out of retirement (apparently, I could have fared as well with pre-Service Pack 1[or 2] XP, but I don't have a surviving laptop that can run XP). The trackpoint in that is still quite a bit better than the E5450. It crisply tracks movement, and the joystick itself has none of the mush and deflection of the E5450. I also recently had the luck of chancing upon a Lenovo Thinkpad X1C 6th gen demonstration station in Costco today, and the trackpoint in that is every bit as good as the old, 310ED (along with a middle button scroll feature that consistently works, unlike the E5450).

Eh, if the E5450 can survive another two years (bringing the total to 5 years), I'll be happy enough.It seems a lot of classmates have moved onto gaming laptops. It makes sense, people no longer use desktops at home, and gaming laptops usually have a lot more power and expandability than the usual mainstream "ultrabook." Red backlit KBs are probably easier on the eyes than the usual blue/white (white LEDs were typically blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor layer ). It's a shame that these otherwise great laptops usually have tacky exterior designs. The least offensive is a specific 15" Acer, and I see a Dell Inspiron variant (also 15") is also making rounds (though it's more obvious with a proclivity of oddly placed red accents). Too bad about the death of decently built and specced 13" laptops, The macbooks are usually close, but have always missed the mark by just a little bit (IMO), and Sony was the last holdout. But they no longer manufactures laptops, and the current Vaio Corp is a pale shadow of the old Sony.

 

@jeremyshaw could I ask the part number of the battery you used? I just got my hands on a E5450 and I tried a battery of type 6MT4T with D/PN 07V69Y and the machine will not recognize it. It refuses to charge it and says it is not a Dell battery.