Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

I bought my mom her first laptop as a birthday gift last month and I wanted to find a refurbished E6400 (from Dell Outlet, not Dell Financial Services, so it would have a 3yr warranty not the 100-day warranty from DFS). But I ended up getting her a Scratch/Dent E5400 instead. It arrived in pristine condition, neither dented nor scratched!

It has a 1-year warranty at least. I'm sure it won't be quite the "built-like-a-tank" workhorse that my E6400 continues to be, but she will be a far less demanding user than I am also. I only paid $249 for it from Dell Outlet and it has Win7 Home, 2GB RAM (which I upgraded to 4GB) and it had an 80GB 5400rpm hard drive (replaced it with a 320GB 7200rpm drive. It also has Bluetooth, Intel Wireless-N, dual-pointing keyboard, webcam and DVD-RW. It even has the 9-cell battery. The processor is the only low point- it has a 2.0GHz T7250 (Merom) but after the upgrade to 4GB RAM and the 7200rpm hard drive, it's actually a bit snappier than I expected! It's more than enough for her needs.

 

THings really havent changed in terms of performance. That's why sales are down. Like from E6410, it only makes sense at least to upgrade to quad core i7 ivy bridge. So any upgrade doesn't really worth it unless I go to the precision lines.

 

Glad you're happy with the Dell Outlet purchase. They have a lot of good deals out there.

That generation of Latitude seems pretty well vetted, in my opinion. I've been using an E6400 at work for three years now, with nary a problem (knock wood). It's quiet, well built, and reliable.

For home use, I went with an off-lease Precision M4400 from the DFS Sales site (basically it's the same as an E6500, with a slightly different motherboard, a distinctive upper case design and the discrete Quadro FX-level graphics.) Not as quiet, cool, or portable as the E6400, but I am happy with it.

FYI - The DFS off-lease models can be upgraded from the standard 100-day warranty to 1-year factory warranty, for about $50. I think you can even extend it further, but I haven't bothered (since mine is only about 8 months "new" to me).

Right now, I am happy with the M4400, but when I need more than 4GB, RAM, I will upgrade. Not only are the newer models are much cheaper to upgrade, due to the DDR3 memory, they support 8 or 16GB, which almost seems "massive" right now. But it won't in a few years.

 

I'm a big fan of the Dell Outlet and I've purchased at least 10 laptops and four desktops from them in the past seven years for myself, family and friends. My E6400 was actually a "Previously Ordered New" (PON) unit, not a Certified Refurbished or Scratch/Dent. I have a buddy that I met on a forum for Mazda enthusiasts (Zoom-Zoom) who worked at Dell for years. He left in 2011 to start an IT business with a co-worker. He has shared lots of interesting information with me since leaving.

PON units are described as shipped but returned unopened, orders cancelled prior to shipping and similar situations where the system is literally new and never used. But they also do what he called "inventory dumps" when sales weren't up to projections or when they needed to stimulate cash flow. They would build thousands of units with various configurations and sell them thru the Outlet. They also would do this leading up to technology/model updates or replacements. If you don't find a new version of the model you want in the Outlet and you have the luxury of waiting a bit, there's a good chance that they will have one (or many) in a month or two. I've also ordered several Scratch/Dent units and I've had to thoroughly examine each one under direct light to find the scratch (none were dented).

I almost bought a Precision M2400 instead of my E6400. The M2400 was the last 14.1" Precision model and, other than the lid, it was an E6400 twin in appearance. I've also read that it ran hotter than a Hibachi, so I'm glad I dodged that bullet! If I needed the graphics power, the Precision would be my pick also!

I've never purchased anything from DFS, but I have considered it. My biggest issue with them is that they don't list display resolution, so you could get an E6400 with 1280x800 or 1440x900 and having the higher-res is very important to me! I was also considering the 15.4" E6500 at one point but it might have the 1280x800 display or, if luck was on my side, the 1920x1200 display that I would want! I even called them and they were very blunt about it- "We get these in by the hundreds and our techs don't have time to look at each screen to see which one it has!" You'd think they would have a system with that information for each individual system from when it was sold new....oh, wait, they do! They're called Service Tags...why they can't get download the specs by Service Tag for them is a mystery...

I've noticed that DFS and Dell Outlet don't have a lot of overlap in products the way they used to. For instance, the Dell Outlet has the E6420 and E6430, but not the E6410 or E6400. DFS has the E6400/E6410 and only once in a while has the odd newer model. But DFS pricing tends to be a little high on the newest models that they have (currently, well spec'd E6410 is in the low $600 range from DFS, but $425-500 from legit reseller on Ebay with 1-year warranty). But the older models are priced much lower and, when they run a sale or have a coupon code, you can get an E6400 or E4300 for dirt cheap! If someone only had $250-$300 to spend on a laptop, they'd do much better to buy an E6400 from DFS than anything Newegg sells for $400 or less...


It's a lot like shopping at Costco, there are some great deals and sometimes you will save a lot by buying dog food by the ton. But EVERYTHING in the store isn't a great deal, so resist the urge to buy that 100-gallon drum of Windex...it's cheaper by the bottle at Target! And, of course, nobody needs 100 gallons of Windex and, even if was a lower price per unit, you'd need to live until the age of 210 to use it all and it probably expires before that...sorry, I'm getting sleepy and I tend to get off topic when I'm tired.....and I took a Valium earlier because I had to take a phone call from my mom, that would explain why I'm tired and also if I'm not making a bit or sense.....I'll shut up for now.

 

Hey,

I purchased a used e6400 recently. It arrived in pretty good condition, a scratch or two on the lid but there are no signs of heavy use. I have noticed that the battery charges REALLY slow, well in 2 hours in it went from 10% to 33%. Then something stranger happened. I decided to unplug and plug in the charger again, after a few minutes the battery was fully charged in the bottom right. The battery lasted for about an hour when I uplugged it. (6 cell)

So just now I tried updating the bios from A13 all the way to A32 but it told me "A battery is not present" so I tried updating the BIOS again and it worked.

I'm a assuming all I need is a new battery? Just now I booted into Windows 7 and the battery was at 55%. Then, the battery jumped up to 100% AGAIN. I checked the estimated battery life remaining and it said 6 hours and 13 minutes. I thought the battery was fixed, then it dropped to 98% and said the estimated battery life was 3 hours 6 minutes. The battery has now dropped to 96% and the battery life is 4 hours 13 minutes.

It is now 9:46 PM and it's telling me there is 4 hours 15 minutes left. I'll edit this post and tell you how long it lasts.

Does anyone have some advice? As I noted previously buying a new battery will fix it?

Thanks!

 

Use the laptop and let the battery work a few cycles before you decide if you change it. You can also use the battery gauge indicator to check battery health. Dell Official Site: Laptop Battery FAQ | Dell

 

I replaced the 9-cell battery in my E6400 with one from Ebay for $28.99. Here's a link to the seller- LINK

I've had it for eight months and no complaints, works fine!

 

Thanks for the fast responses, wasn't expecting that! The battery lasted from 9:46 PM to 10:57PM, while performing tasks such as watching YouTube videos/browsing Facebook.

I checked the battery health. The battery charge level light showed 5 lights, so it WAS fully charged. However, when I did the battery health check 3 out of 5 lights were on, so It's a little bit worn out.

I'll go few a few charge cycles, if I'm still getting weird results I'll invest in a new Laptop battery. Thanks.

 

Hey guys,

Bluetooth is not working for me on Windows 8 with the Dell Wireless Card 370.
There is no Bluetooth Icon in the W8 notification area.

Bluetooth is activated in the BIOS and the bluetooth sign is glowing.
I tried installing the W7 drivers provided by Dell with compatibility mode,
but that did not seem to work.

 

I installed the BT drivers for win8 from E6420 I think. But in sometimes I don't have the icon, then I have to look in the vharm bar right for BT devices.