Latitude 7450 Owners' Thread

That could be a solution for me, with my "old" E7440. Thanks for this information.
But the problem is still there for the E7450 until these SSD are available with M2 !?

 

I don't get anything at all...

Another question as well: I'm not very familiar with laptop hardware, could I install the 1TB HDD from my Lenovo U410 in my new Latitude E7450?

Thanks

 

1. I don't know which Dell software provides the pop-up. I took the easy route and upgraded the fatory Windows installation to Windows 10 before cloning onto my 1TB SSD. The two software packages I have on my computer that most likely to provide the OSD functionality are (i) Dell Foundation Services and (ii) Dell Command | Power Manager.

2. The maximum 2.5" drive thickness that can be squeezed in is 7mm (officially 5mm but 7mm works - I've put one in for a friend)). You should get the 2.5" drive caddy (the part for the E7440 works fine and is easier to find) to hold the drive in place but there's no need to get a new cable.

John

 

Thank you for the reply,

1. Hmm, interesting. I have both of those installed. I actually quite like Windows 7 but I might do a fresh install of Win 10 to see if that would fix the problem.

2. Okay great, so only thing i need is the drive caddy and then it'll work well?

And also, what "battery plan" do you run on your e7450? I'm currently on balanced and getting surprisingly bad battery life. Currently only have Chrome open with 4 tabs, brightness on 50% and 36% of battery, telling me that I have 41 minutes left... ???
EDIT: As it is on "Balanced", it now went up to over 2 hours. I am still curious to hear what settings people run for maximum battery life.

 

1. Check the thickness of the 2.5" drive you are planning to put in. Most recent SSDs are no thicker than 7mm but many HDDs are 9.5mm.

2. I normally use the Balanced power profile (locking down the CPU speed (which power saver often does) means that the CPU remains active for longer ). Run BatteryInfoView to monitor the power drain and see what affects it. 5 to 6W is achievable under very light usage but maybe Chrome adds a couple of Watts. You will also save 1 to 2W by dropping the display brightness down to 25%. Windows' prediction of time remaining is sensitive to the recent power drain. You can do your own calculation by dividing the battery capacity (Watt-hours) by the battery drain rate (Watts). However, Windows will hibernate before the battery is empty and occasion spikes in activity will temporarily increase the drain rate but you should be able to manage 80% x capacity/drain rate.

John

 

Thank you again John,

1. Okay I will check. The HDD from the Lenovo U410 is not a SSD, so it might not fit then...

2. Thanks for the tip on BatteryInfoView, I will look into it for sure.

EDIT: Upgraded to Windows 10, my original issue with the on-screen volume and brightness scale is now resolved.

However, a problem I have been having both on windows 7 and now 10 is that the mouse pointer lags, say i move it back and forth in a fast motion, every other second or so it will freeze for a very short time and then continue moving. Kind of just lag behind a micro second... I'm fairly certain I have all the newest drivers

 

Re the HDD: I looked that the notebookcheck review of the U410 and see that it has a Hitachi ZK500, which is a 7mm drive so you may be in luck. Feed the model number of the HDD (Divice Manager will tell you this) into your favorite search engine and you should soon find the specifications. However, running an HDD in the E7450 will be like tying its shoelaces together. Start saving your money for an SSD.

I've not noticed any mouse pointer lags. Perhaps the first thing to check is whether there are similar keyboard entry lags so quickly type a load of garbage into notepad and see if there are any delays in the characters appearing on screen. If there are then it's probably something causing some nasty latency spikes (you can run dpclat to check), if not then the problem is probably related to touchpad, pointing stick or any mouse you have connected. If you have installed what Dell calls its Unifying Application then uninstall it.

John

 

I am on the hunt for a new ultrabook. I'm kinda done with consumer machines, I've had way too many trouble with those kind of machines. So, I have narrowed my choices down to the ThinkPad T450s or the Latitude E7450 (w/ Intel graphics). I think the Latitude will win because it is around € 250 cheaper with better specifications.

However, I've read the Intel HD Graphics models have issues with crashing drivers. Is this a widespread problem? Is there any solution, like a BIOS or driver update from Dell? I need this machine to be 100% stable.

Thanks!

 

I had an issue with the Intel graphics crashing when running one of the components of the PCMark 8 benchmark for my recent E7450 review. Dell offered no updated driver, Windows 10 didn't suggest anything better but using the Update Driver facility in Device Manager found a newer driver which went through the benchmark without any glitches. I would also note that the graphics driver crash didn't affect the other open applications and there was a message that the driver had recovered.

John

 

Thank you! So you would say that since installing that new driver, you haven't seen any issues while playing online video for example? I don't play games on my notebook, but it would be nice if it doesn't crash while watching YouTube videos.

Other than that, the reviews are looking good and the experiences in this topic also look good. I think this will be my next notebook.