Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

It's a huge step in increase in real world performance. XP is optimized for very slow system with 128-256MB of RAM (ahh good old days), when you put it in any 2006 or newer system, it's behavior restraint the full potential of the system. Vista/Win7 is the opposite, and the same will repeat with Windows 8 (or whatever it will be called).

My recommendation is Everest, it nicely supports this laptop, Win7 64-bit. Sadly, you have to pay. I use it a lot, so it was worth it for me. There is a 30 day trial. Alternatively, people tend to like HWmonitor, which is free. On idle while plug-in, it's normal that the fan kicks in. It's also normal when you play Flash videos (youtube, Hulu, etc..), as Flash is currently 100% CPU rendering, which you CPU sucks at doing - that is why we have graphic cards .

Side Note:
For code pack, I strongly recommend Shark007 codec pack. It comes in 2 parts.. the first, the 32-bit pack, and has the 64-bit component that you add. This codec pack is not super well known today, as it emerged during the time Vista was in public Beta stages, as a alternative to KLite, CCC, and other codec pack optimized for XP, which fails to configure (even to this day) properly under Vista/Win7, and are only in 32-bit. Also, as Vista and Win7 comes with built-in 32 and 64-bit codecs, Shark007 doesn't interfere with them, but instead just completes the missing codecs of less used video formats (and thumbnail preview support for those videos formats). Oh, and it also allows you to enable Windows Media Player 64-bit, to be able to use the 64-bit codecs, which means battery life increase, as it's much easier for your CPU to render, what the GPU doesn't take.

Sound card with SRS support drivers: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=344329

And attached is the cursor not animating fix (occurs after Dell Toucpad/tarckpoint Alps drivers installed). Use it after the touchpad/trackpoint drivers is installed. Restart computer after applying it. Thanks to ps89 for the fix. See his post for doing it manually: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5242086&postcount=6
The attachment does method 1, which allows the touchpad to continue to work correctly, minus having the cursor changing wen you scroll/zoom with it, but still works.

Enjoy your system.

 

That's also my impression from making the same step. I often wonder whether the extra incompatibilities of the 64 bit OS more than offset the benefit of being able to access an extra 0.5GB of RAM.

John

 

64-bit CPU has more operation codes over the 32-bit. So it can do thing much more efficiently. Just having an Operating System, [which is a very complex peace of software that takes several university courses to pass through it at an up close level (not at detailed level) that you start to appreciate your system more how you see how complex things are and how these 1-2k engineers made it all possible.] that is able to use longer instructions also using these new instructions helps a lot. 32-bit software benefits from 5 to 15% performance increase, including 32-bit games. Moreover you have Win7 new memory management which uses memory FIRST then HDD (pagefile) when it's full/near full, rather than XP behavior where it's dump in everything on pagefile, as you are low in memory (4GB is still treated as low memory, as the OS is design for 128-256MB of memory).
Plus add, Superfetch technology, auto-maintenance systems in place, ensure that your computer doesn't slow down over time, and prevent the requirement to flush the pagefile and memory by rebooting your computer. Then add GPU interface rendering (Aero) allowing your CPU to be free to actually to be used for what it was designed for.. software and not drawing, provides even more performance to your software, and save quiet a bit of battery (~15-20min for me.. using Aero Basic (XP engine), I lose that amount)

We, usually don't notice speed increase, but put back XP and use it for several month, and you start to notice how Win7 was fast. I did. However, I did see and calculated the big speed in performance.

 

Also the sleep functionality of Win7 64bit seems to actually work, unlike XP

I am sure it is a better OS GB, I am not trying to bash Win7, I am just looking at it from the end users perspective, seat-of-the-pants-o-meter.

Also I have not found one business related app that does not work without issues in Win7, which is great.

I am glad I skipped over Vista, just like I skipped Windows ME

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Speaking of Windows 7:

I currently use Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, but my research lab has a Windows 7 Professional license available to all employees. Should I make the switch? I am asking in two respects:

1) I am quite happy with Vista, are there any advantages of 7 over Vista?
2) How is driver support for the E6400 under Windows 7?

 

I can only comment about:

I have just done a clean install of Win7 and all the drivers worked perfectly and I have had zero issues with any hardware or drivers.

 

There is a good selection of Windows 7 drivers for the E6400 on the Dell download site. All my hardware seems to be working OK.

John

 

new bios ver. a19 is released for e6500, ver a20 for e6400
Fixes/Enhancements
------------------
1. Updated Intel(R) Active Management Technology firmware.
2. Updated PXE OPROM
3. Updated TPM MA/MP driver.
4. Updated Nvidia VBIOS.
5. Showed LOM MAC address in BIOS setup.

 

Great! What about advantages of 7 over Vista? Any big things I should be aware of?

Translation?

 

I'll be doing this in May when the unit returns from campus.

Were there any devices/drivers installed with Win7 that you elected to not update with drivers available on Dell.com?

GK