Latitude E6400/E6500- questions about display and color choices!

In person it looks OK. I think the silver part should have been black, or maybe even better make it the same color as the cover, but it's not that big of a deal as it is.

 

yea, it dosent look ugly, but it looks weird like someone threw components from 3 different laptops together

 

Dell's display definitions:

So TrueLife is glossy. My E6400's WXGA+ is matte.

In return for its bigger size and weight the E6500 gives slightly bigger pixels at WXGA / WXGA+ or there's the WUXGA option. The E6500 may also have bigger speakers (there's more space each side of the keyboard) but most of the hardware is the same for both.

The nVidia GPU in the E6500 has DDR3 graphics RAM whereas the corresponding RAM in the E6400 is DDR2. I don't know why they made this difference.

John

 

Thanks to all you guys for taking the time to find the picsc/links and posting them!

The Regatta Blue is brighter than I would have expected, especially for a business notebook. The Regal Red is basically what I pictured. It looks pretty similar to Dell's other red hues- Crimson Red (XPS), Cherry Red (Vostro 2510) and Ruby Red (Studio). Both seem a little out of place on the Latitude, though. Not to mention the Quartz Pink option offered on the E4200!

What really surprised me (and the reason I'll be sticking with the standard Black) is the underside of the casing is also colored. I was only expecting the lid to be in red or blue and the remainder to be identical to the Brushed Metal Black standard units. I'm also put-off by the silver rear portion. The silver hinges look okay from the top, but the view from underneath isn't pretty.

The best part about the Regatta Blue/Regal Red E6400 is the standard features- WXGA+ (1440x900) LED, nVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M, Backlit keyboard, 7200rpm hard drive, DVD RW (all features that I want)! A Brushed Metal Black one can be ordered with all the same hardware, but it ends up costing $73 more. As I'm digging through the Dell Outlet inventory, I'm not having much luck finding a Black one with ALL of those options. It looks like I may have to decide which of those features are most important to me and let go of a few of them. Then again, I can't remember the last time I burned a DVD and I could always upgrade a 5400rpm hard drive to a 7200rpm model down the road. The LED display and backlit keyboard are my "must haves". I could probably even live with Intel integrated graphics if it had everything else I wanted....and was cheap!

 

I'd grab the blue one if the other specs are correct. I would have no aversion to getting a computer that is distinctive. Light-fingered people may think twice before walking off with it.

How often do you look at the bottom of your computer?

The bright blue second and bottom photos are the result of using the flash gun on the camera. The top and second to bottom photos might be more representative.

John

 

320GB 7200rpm drives are like 90$ right now. I'd say order it from the third party and focus on the features. DVD-R/W is easily replaceable, but might be hard and expensive to find, so I suggest you stick with that.

 

3. E6400 and E6500 doesn't differ much except for screen size. Because of the bigger size, E6500 could have had room for a bigger fan and cooling system but it doesn't appear to be the case except for maybe better cooling for the nvidia graphics card. E6500 has slots for both the older PC Card and the newer Express Card standard. With E6400 you have to select one of them.

4. Heat management is good in general but unfortunately fan noise can be a problem because the fan is programmed in BIOS to kick in at quite low temperatures. On my E6400 with Intel graphics and P8600 CPU the fan will start at slow speed (3000 RPM) when one of the temperatures (which I think is the chipset temperature) as measured with I8kfanGUI reaches 45 C. It will go to the annoyingly noisy fast speed mode (4800 RPM) when this temperature reaches 50 C.

When doing light work on the computer (web surfing etc) the chipset temperature is approximately 21-24 C above room temperature. So if your room temperature is below 26 C (50-24) the fan will very seldomly run at the fast speed. I have the Intel graphics and with nVidia graphics you might have to a add one or two degrees to the chipset temperature because of heat spreading from the GPU to the chipset.

The fan noise in low speed mode is not very high. A 7200 RPM hard drive might be noisier depending on the hard drive model because the hard drive noise is not very well insulated in E6400/E6500. If you care about noise, I would suggest a hard drive with one platter as it reduces noise. My one-platter 160 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi drive is not very noisy.

Örjan