Latitude E-Series Anticipation Thread

The card should be locked.

If your laptop supports WWAN cards, there should be a SIM card slot in the battery bay.

 

With regard to the DDR2, I noticed that upgrading to 4Gb or ram is $210 while at newegg you can get 4Gb of DDR3 for $225. Is upgrading from DDR2 to DDR3 as simple as just snapping it in, or do you have to upgrade BIOS settings or something? And do you think the DDR3 will make a noticable difference over the DDR2 800?

Also if it is just a simple mechanical install does anyone know if the new motherboards will support both DDR3 1066 and DDR3 1333?

Thanks!!

 

I have the feeling that it is really DDR2, not DDR3 ram, otherwise they would be gouging the price much worse that ~$25. 4GB of DDR2 is only ~$90 from Newegg.

As for switching to DDR3, I doubt it. DDR3 has 4 more pins and is keyed different. Electronically, I'm sure there is something special in the chipset that sets DDR2 or DDR3. You would have to modify that somehow, then unsolder the memory stick holders and replace them with DDR3 ram holders, followed by adding a few extra traces to the motherboard to the chipset. Good luck

From what I've read so far, DDR3-1066 doesn't offer that much performance increase over DDR2-800 due to the high latency. Basically, no one can make ram fast enough to benefit DDR3. I'm sure in a year or so, when DDR3 picks up, Dell will make a revision of the laptop and include it--while frustrating aftermarket memory companies. Plus, consider that Dell is most likely sitting on a huge inventory of DDR2 SODIMM ram. What better way to reduce stock in preperation of the new XPSes than push the "old" stuff off on the business crowd?

 

DDR2 and DDR3 use different pins and so, like Chevy95ZR2 said, you cannot simply swap out the DDR2 modules for DDR3 ones. While Montevina supports both, DDR2 800 and DDR3, the motherboard has to be one that accepts DDR3 modules. Dell obviously picked on that only accepts DDR2 RAM.

Also, I don't think Dell would be sitting on a huge stock of DDR2 800 RAM. DDR2 800 support was only added with Montevina and a lot of laptop makers are choosing it over DDR3 1066 right now, probably because of the price difference.

 

And probably also because DDR3 offers no significant improvement in performance over DDR2 800.

 

My mistake, for some reason I thought they were throwing DDR2-800 in the XPS laptops, but I just checked and it is 667.

 

its really disappointing about the DDR2 rather than DDR3. DDR3 is supposed to be much more energy efficient, and since the motherboard supports ddr3, it seems ridiculous to be offering ram which is already going to be outdated shortly...

edit :: something doesn't make sense about the specs for the e6500 -- why on earth would it have such limited harddrive options?

edit2 :: is bluetooth not available?

 

They might not have gotten around to including everything - the laptops haven't gone "official" yet.

The E6400 has a 250GB 7200rpm drive, so I think the E6500 will definitely get that at some point. But an 80GB 5400rpm in the base config is quite atrocious.

 

I hope so too.

Hmmm, that's gonna be a disappointment for me...


My friend's D630 has the SIM card slot, but doesn't have the module. By any chance does anyone have any information whether the D-series, and perhaps the upcoming E-series have the WWAN antennas built-in, just that the WWAN module isn't installed?

 

Perhaps DDR2 is cheaper compared to DDR3 (but the upgrade prices seem to disagree with this - you pay $170 more just to go from 2GB to 4GB).