Latitude E4300 first impressions

In the dell forums, under "Latitude E4300 Frequent Disk access", I got a response indicating the frequent disk access could be associated with Seagate drive. With a Hitachi swop, problem disappeared. Im interested to test.....

 

Just how you want to test? I am still wondering if calling for a dell supporter to replace mine~

 

Could anyone provide some pictures of the backlit keyboard? Preferably in the dark of course to see how it works.

Edit: Found some links on page 17. Sorry for not searching enough.

 

Hi zoryfl
I called Dell Tech support in Germany on friday eve and they are looking into replacement drive - guess thats the only real test .... then the fun of re-installing from an XP disk whick I need to find as XP was installed on the machine and a Vista CD was provided with machine. Ill advise if I have success.

 

If you have the OS disc, try reinstalling Vista. Also check the Dell website and make sure the BIOS and all drivers are up-to-date. Vista is entirely solid if it has good hardware and good drivers.

 

I must hand it to Dell...

My E4300 was freezing continually...next day an engineer comes round replaces the motherboard, HD, memory and reinstalls Vista Business.

The E4300 is great IMO, I would recommend it!

 

After having read here all and whatever about this machine, I would like to share some of my experience about it.

Firstly, I have to precise that despite I am not a computer engineer I am more less the tech specialist in my service and that I have been ordering and fine tuning our dell laptops for around 4 years (mostly D410, 810, 620 and 430). So I know how former Dell Latitude D work and how to compare with this new machine.

Secondly, the machines ordered and received a little bit more than two weeks ago are 3 E4300 with all options (S9400, 4Gb RAM, 250Go 7200rpm, fingerprint reader, backlight keyboard, webcam and bluetooth), of each of the three colors available (blue, black, red).

This review is a two weeks experience of my blue E4300.

Keyboard: the backlight keyboard is just a must have option. I am actually typing in the dark without light and it is just great. This is perfect especially if you travel a lot and have to use your laptop in the plane. The touch of the keyboard compared to my former D810 is great. I have nothing to complain about it and the feeling of the keyboard is great. The difference with the former Dxxx design is that the touch are much larger and the texture of the keys is no more plastic but have a more rubbed finish which made them less slippery. So I don't see the point of people here telling that this keyboard sucks. The only comment I agree is that it would have been great if the function keys have been coloured and the volume buttons backlighted too. But if you dismantle your E4300 you will notice that the keyboard is directly plugged in the laptop using a connector placed at its bottom and that it does not include the volume buttons which are independent of it. So the good point is that changing of keyboard or dismantling your E4300 is made easier as there is no more cables to fix but just a plug to put in a port - like a kind of usb.

Screen: if you wonder where the screen comes from, it is a LG display (marked in the back of the screen). Anyone that ever saw a screen of a tiny computer (10 to 14'') noticed that they were some problems of colours display. Especially the screen of the D4x0 series do not have very colourful output. Forget this problem with the LED display: the colour are much vivid (this is just perfect, better than on my wuxga screen of D810 and as good as my 24'' Iiyama) and the brightness is just - incredible! I use my screen with by default 1/3 or less of the brightness available. I think (we should ask our southern hemisphere friends) that this screen should be bright enough to display a visible screen outside in a sunny summer day - or to use it close to the windows of a train despite a strong sunlight. Regarding the viewing angles, they are better than in my D810 and much better than the D430 screen.

Battery life: if you do not plan to lower the consumption of your laptop, the battery, without any fine-tuning and using wifi and office software (so no games or video) can last a little bit more than 5 hours (6 cells battery). But if you enable the power saving scheme with the dell controlpoint software, that will turn off the unneeded part of your laptop in a meeting (such as the DVD drive, firewire, etc) and put your windows in a power saving mode (16 bits, no aero) then you battery will last around... 7 hours! If not more. Knowing that the screen is very bright you can use your screen at level 1 or 2 without problem. So this is a laptop you can use without plugging it if you have a one day meeting and are cautious the way you manage your battery power.

Touchpad: the integrated touchpad is neither better nor worse than those of the Dxxx series. To my point of view it is working quite well for this kind of material. The good point here is that you are getting an extra middle button.

RAM: it is fast and effectively clocked at 1066Mhz. It reach the highest score (5,9) available on the Vista performance index. And for maybe the first time, Dell is not overpricing it.

CPU: Fast! 2,4 Ghz dual core is perfect for this kind of laptop. For an office use it means especially that the file search engine integrated in vista works fine. That was terribly slow on my D810 clocked at simple core 1,8Ghz. That means more productivity, and instant retrieval of your documents and mail. That is very useful when like me you have to deal daily with a dozen of mails and documents. Regarding CPU demanding applications like hdtv video, no problem to display them, even 1080p x264 or VC1 encoded ones.

Heat: for an office use, I didn't noticed any heat problem. Compared to my D810 it is way more cold, no problem to use my laptop on my knees in pyjama.

Intel GMA4500HD: I had no time to see what the real capacities this video card in 3D has - at least standard applications like Google Earth works. But what I noticed is that there are - of course - no codec installed to use the hardware decoding capacities of this videocard for h264. That means that you have for the moment to rely on your CPU for this kind of videos - which it can do without a doubt but is power consuming. And for the moment - to my knowledge - no such codec using hardware decoding exists (coreavc is announcing hardware decoding for over a year but nothing made so far in this direction yet). At least my external wuxga screen works fine with this video card and now the hdmi of the E4300 even know how to transmit the sound, which appears in the sound bar as a new (hdmi) sound device.

Security devices: for my business security is important so since I am using a Dell laptop I have enabled the crypto system. What I am using now is the fingerprint reader. I have not ordered the encrypted drive as I preferred to have speed instead (hardware-encrypting drives are only available at 5400rpm speeds) and only encrypt the sensible data. So well I like the fingerprint reader, even if sometime the detection is not so easy to obtain (you have to be slow). The good point is that you can enable the fingerprint reader before the boot. So when you turn on your computer, you have a dos-like screen asking you to swipe your finger and once done you are automatically logged in your windows session. Hopefully if your finger is not recognised after 3 tries, you can enter your password. Alas, if you enable password for your drive too, you will have to enter a password as the fingerprint reader is not possible to use there. What you have to know is that encrypting a file (unless you have the hardware-encrypting drive) will slow down the access to you files (the access speed will be like a networked drive if this comparison can help). So if you have to make backup of large files (>1Go) that you wish to encrypt, you have to know that it will take more time that if they were not encrypted. Otherwise the software solution shipped by Dell to manage the security system has been really improved and is more user-friendly. But there are still some bug, such as the "vault" which once created cannot be turned off and take automatically the Z drive letter, even if you had something else there, or the fingerprint reader that do not work if you want to use it to unlock your system (you have to enter your session password with the keyboard, how quaint!). Otherwise just know that if you connect an external fingerprint reader, it will only work under windows and not at the boot level (according to the doc, not tested yet).

Assistance: when my blue E4300 arrived, I noticed that the webcam was not working. I reinstalled the driver, etc. but noticed that it was obviously a hardware problem - much more my other dark and red ones where working fine. So I called the support service (call rate: local ones so cheap), and the technician made me go through several steps to be sure that I was not telling whatever, took control on my machine via the website of dellconnect.com (which works really great and didn't had any problem to work despite the office's firewalls), even ask me at the end to swap of hard drive with another of my E4300 to check if effectively it was not a driver problem and after one hour finally decided to send me a technician - than came the next day and changed my webcam. So I have nothing to say, this next business day support is a reality and is working fine. That is something to take into account when you see the price of this machine as you have this service and the guarantee is of 3 years. I am doubting to see any of this kind of service in "normal" laptops.

Installed software: so if there is something where maybe I can tell Dell sucks is regarding the software shipped, which I think are a little bit cheap:
- Roxio Creator is shipped with v 9 and not 2009 -which is in fact an old but slightly updated version which is very basic. Why not including the 2009 version which is much more complete or ship with Nero??
- Power DVD is as well shipped with a basic version - but which should be enough to use on a laptop
- The drivers of the E4300 which were installed where those of a drivers pack dated of last July... Quite old version if you consider it was made in November. So I had to update all the drivers and dell utilities which were installed and where outdated, including the update of the bios (A04) and of the security chip (for which I had to create a bootable usb drive, which is not a one click task). Frankly, I don't understand why Dell do not have a system that auto-update its software and drivers - or I missed something?? This is really where I lost most of my time to configure my laptop. I could have done nothing as my outdated softwares where running fine, but using up-to-date software are always better to my point of view.

Well, nothing more for tonight. I have pics but cannot put them yet as I am new to this website and I am not authorised yet to post them yet...

 

The hdmi of your E4300? I thought that the E4300 doesn't come with an hdmi port.

 

tizz> I think you get the HTMI through the docking station. It's not in E4300, at least my doesn't have it as well.

 

Indeed - I forgot to tell it was through the docking station (DVI). The E4300 only has a vga port. To what I saw regarding the fact that there is a vga port in the E4300 and not a Display Port is that when the E4300 was designed, the adaptator DP to VGA was not existing. And as this machine is professional oriented, the choice was taken to fit it with a vga rather than an DP to be more compatible with the existing machines. I think indeed it is a wise choice as the only use I have of this port is to connect a video projector, which only have in most of the case a vga port. By 3 or 5 years it will be surely different, but for now it is ok. Note as well that the docking station comes with two hdmi/dvi ports (I guess that in fact it is two dvi/hdmi port rather than 2 dvi and 2 hdmi) and a vga.