Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

I am trying a recalibration as we speak. if that doesn't help... I'll try to see what Dell can do for me, with some luck on my side.

 

Ok so I have done a recalibration... I got about 5 hours of battery life during calibration... But, sadly, the problem is not solved. I tried removing all power source from the laptop, removing and putting the battery back within beeing in Windows while plug-in, nothing. :/

 

Ok, I contacted Dell.. and well nothing can be done, sadly. I tried pushing it, but they said if it's a few days off, they can, but a month is impossible.

I have asked if I took the extended battery, would my issue with the battery be covered under it, and they said: yes.

After calibration I noticed I still have good hours, so I guess I can hold on, onto the battery.
I am in Canada, what do you guys suggest I should do, buy a battery from Dell at 199.99$, or look on eBay or something? Does anyone had good experience with a company that does battery replacement for system, are they precautions I should be aware of, any tips or tricks?

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

1. You can try a manual deep discharge by leaving the computer running on battery at the BIOS screen until it turns off. This may be the same as Dell's calibration.

2. You should be able to find people selling genuine Dell batteries on ebay for less than Dell charges the end users.

John

 

I had the same battery issues.
After about 4 months it went down from 100% to ~70% in few seconds.
It still gave me enough working time so I did nothing.
After another 2 months it went down from 70% to 10% in about 5 minutes.
So I guess you cannot trust the battery meter.

I called Dell and they told me to hold down the button on the battery. The battery was fully charged at this moment and it showed 5 lights, which means the batter is ok. So Dell said that nothing is wrong with the battery. I connected it back to the laptop and after few seconds in went to 70%. Then I hold down the buttons again and it showed only 1 light...
So I guess you cannot trust this as well.

Anyway, Dell replaced me the battery with no charge.
Good luck.

 

Now I can check the order status with DELL, and the delivery date is 9 Feb
I hope this is a crap, like in many of your cases...

regarding the ongoing battery discussion, I wonder if I should buy extended battery service... It looks like the 9-cells are pretty fragile.

 

Yes plastic but a matte finish instead of the smooth finish of the first generation.

Well, I find that if you know something is bad and want a replacement when you contact tech support you tell them what they want to hear so they send you a new one.

If you capacity that is is really low you tell them its dead.

I have to do this with motherboards and other things that are clearly bad so they dont keep me on chat or on the phone for 20 troubleshooting steps for over an hour.

 

Couple of general random questions:

1) Is there really a point to running more than 4 gigs of RAM on this notebook? Even with a x64 bit OS, would there be any gain at all? Or would that depend on what program you're really running?
2) What are people's general experience with running SSDs? This is about the only possible upgrade I can really think of that might be worth it...

 

1) It really depends on what you're doing. With just browsing, music, and video, I can't even use up 2GB - and that's without a pagefile - but if you're running just a couple VMs, I'm sure you could easily hit 4GB or 8GB.

2) So good I gave up on booting from mechanical drives on all my machines. Completely satisfied with the X25-M G1 in my E6400 right now, but any decently fast SSD should offer the same experience. After a certain point, it's hard to tell faster from fast.

 

My E6400 says 'get a new battery' after about 13 months of use. Judging from its declining behavior, I'd say it's about dead. The button and five blue LEDs on the battery indicate full charge, but that charge does not last long. Page 27 in the Setup and Quick Reference Guide specs 1 year life span (approximate).

I rolled the dice on eBay.com today for a new Dell battery, $59 + $5 shipping... we'll see how that works out.

Happy New Year, all!

GK