Latitude 7470 Owners' Thread

Hello everyone!

I was about to buy a 7470 from the putlet, but I just noticed that the specific one I was about to buy, comes with a "simple" keyboard.
Do you know if it is possible to replace a non backlit keyboard with a backilt one?

Thanks in advance!

 

Follow the instructions in the E7470 Owner's Manual. I'm 99.9% sure that the keyboards are interchangeable, if only because incompatibility would double Dell's mainboard inventory (ie having to have different verrsions of mainboards for with / without keyboard backlight).

John

 

Possible, yes.
Looks like you have to remove practically everything from the laptop (including motherboard!) to do it.
Check the manual for instructions - if you are comfortable doing it, then go ahead. It looks like a nightmare, imho.

 

Battery wear level of my 7470 has strangely come back to 7% after a few more discharge cycles. However, battery life seems to be quite short. I get less than 3 hours (mostly around 2.5 hours) on browsing, youtube watching, documents editing...so nothing intensive, with the screen brightness set to 75%.

Also as I mentioned in my last post, from time to time battery percentage suddenly drops from 15% - 20% to 6% when Windows displays the low battery warning.

Does anyone else have the 3 cell battery ? What battery life do you get with it ?

 

Some suggestions:
1. Run BatteryInfoView so you can see the current battery drain and then test the effect of changes, such as reducing screen brightness. I wouldn't be surprised if reducing the brightness to 25% will give you another hour.
2. See the difference in power drain between the web broswer being open and closed. If this is significant then look for ways to reduce unwanted browser activity. I use Firefox with FlashBlock and AdBlock Plus for this reason.
3. Try recalibrating the battery by letting fully drain at the BIOS screen and then fully recharging it. Windows always shuts down / hibernates with several per cent remaining which is good under normal conditions but prevents recalibration.

John

 

I finally bought a 7470 with backlit keyboard for almost the same price, so no need to buy and install a new keyboard.

After just a few hours of usage, and coming from a 7440, I have to say that the 7470 feels much more premium than its predecessor. The keyboard has no flex, like it had on the 7440, but it seems to be more noisy. Other than that, and taking into consideration that both laptops belong to the premium category, there are no significant differences between them (but this is just my point of view).

The only thing that I don't like, is that the left click is very sensitive.

Just one quick question. I tried to install Windows 7 and I get asked during the installation steps for a missing driver and if i don't provide it, installation can't go on. Is this something usual?

P.S. @john thanks for your fast reply!

 

I wonder if this is the Intel storage driver. Windows 7 is a few years old and won't contain all the drivers. It may (or may not) make a difference whether you have the storage set to RAID or AHCI in the BIOS (Dell's default is RAID).

John

 

Hi John,

I thought the same, so I changed from Intel RAID to AHCI, but I got the same problem. I also downloaded Intel Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise driver and Management Console from Dell's site, extracted it and during installation I provided the needed driver, but then I got another error (that I should contact my provider or something like that).

I'll keep on searching that, but if someone has downgraded from Windows 10 to Windows and fixed this issue, it would be great if could inform me how!


EDIT: The whole issue was cause by USB 3.0... So just for reference, you have to download the latest USB 3.0 drivers from Dell's site, extract them, and during the OS installation provide the path to the specific drivers.

 

Thanks for the update. I must try to remember this gotcha.

John

 

Hi guys,
I'll soon be getting my new Dell Latitude E7470.
Intel Core 6th Generation i7-6600U Processor on it.
It was cheap, and one of the reasons was it's ssd, a 128GB ,2280, Samsung PM871.

I'd like to upgrade with an NVMe PCIe. For example, the Plextor M8Pe M.2 2280 256GB/512GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive.

Three questions in that regard:
1. Can a PCIe SSD be mounted on this laptop and do I need to buy additional brackets?
Dell Latitude E7470 Owner's Manual - Installing the optional PCIe SSD

2. If indeed a PCIe ssd be installed, is there enough room for the original 2280 ssd to work concurrently?
3. Can the E7470 take full advantage of the 4 channels rather than 2 channels?
Not sure if it has anything to do with it, but is says on Intel's i7-6600U specifications:
PCI Express Revision 3.0
PCI Express Configurations ‡ 1x4, 2x2, 1x2+2x1 and 4x1.

Thanks guys!