Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

I'd like to share my latest experience with Dell's Support, this time in Portugal (I moved back from Finland).

I called them because the 130 W power adapter for my docking station has been making a clicking noise, which has been getting louder and louder in the past few weeks. Recently, it has become loud enough to become annoying, and of course it get me worried it might fry itself sometime or damage the docking station.

So I called them Thursday at 16h53 (they close at 17h ). Even though the call lasted until close to 17h30, the man on the phone was very helpful. After confirming that the ownership transfer went well (I'm the original owner, but my location is different now), he asked me whether I had tested another power adapter, which I had. After this single question, he dispatched a new power adapter to my home.

The only slight disadvantage relative to the service in Finland is that they no longer guarantee that they will come in the morning or in the afternoon, I have to settle for one full day. They came at 12h15.

Score another for Dell's support

 

Dell have got round to posting an updated Intel graphics driver for Win 7 / Vista.

John

 

@ John:
Would you say these fixes and enhancements are Dell's job, or should they be also coming with the standard Intel driver which comes with Windows update? Since my version is higher, I am hesitating to downgrade because I'm not experiencing any problems (except the usual brightness-regulation thingy).

 

If you can life with the brightness control issue then don't downgrade. Dell's updates tend to be several months behind, presumably because of compatibility testing. The new update is dated 25 Jan 2010.

John

 

Hello everyone.

Is it possible this driver to increase my graphics performance?

Im thinking about upgrading to a Patriot Warp v2 ssd
What are the pros and cons?
Is there a risk of incompatibility like having to install intel matrix storage to make native seagate work properly?
And i think they are better for shock and impact resistance , vibrations right?
Also will there be any shuttering?

Simply put will i regret spending around 150$ ?

 

Also I heard they get really hot.
Will it be hotter on the palmrest than my current 250GB Seagate ?

 

If you have the Quadro NVS 160M in your laptop, yes you can.
Check out my signature for a full guide. I was able to increase the performance quiet significantly out of mine, but your result may vary as every GPU is different. It is said that more your GPU is at the center of your silicon plate the more stable and overclock it is. The solution I provide to overclock your GPU, in the guide, is using Nvidia very own overclock tool which you can get for free at Nvidia website, called Nvidia System Tools.

 

- SSD's are very fast, and have 0ms access time, as their is no mechanical part that needs to move to a location to the request data onto the disk.

- SSD's are non mechanical, so no need to power a motor to turn the disk to have the HDD ready to be accessed when you request anything form your computer, so you save power.

- good SSD's is faster than RAID 0 with normal 10 000RPM HDD's, due to their no access time delay.

- As the SSD has no mechanical parts, you can successfully access your data during and after a car crash .. assuming that the you and your computer is well and alive.

- SSD don't need defragmenting.

Downside's:

- Currently SSD's power management is not great, when you access data on it, it fully turns on, and off after. It doesn't have the ability to turn on only the needed chip's and turn them back off.

- You need Windows 7 to take full advantage of your SSD.

- XP has 0 support for SSD's.

- SSD has short life span due to their very limited number of writes. It is estimated to last up to 5 years, some claims 10 years, but as SSD's are way too new to actually know in real life, we can only guess.

- Today, it is expensive and low in capacity.

- It is important to read reviews on SSD's before purchasing one. You want to look for the chip technology used, and controller used. Some are good, other are not (slower, shorter life span).

huh?! No mater the HDD it is recommended to install the latest SATA controllers to ensure proper support of power saving features and proper function of any eSATA ports, and in the case of Intel also support IRRT technology from Intel, which I find it to provide no advantages over the standard AHCI in a personal day-to-day computer usage .

Depends on what you do with your computer.
Many are happy with the standard speed of a 7200RPM HDD or even a 5400RPM. Others desperately seek for faster drives. Also seek to check reviews for HDD's. Some 7200RPM or 5400RPM are faster than others, thanks to a faster head movement motor, faster processor built-in, and/or more cache (aka buffer).

 

I have intel graphics
not nvidia
i thought it was for intel

I read in a review about shuttering is this a problem with ssds? or is it like hdd, when you overload it you get a delay
I thought that it havint 0 acces time it would be next to impossible to overload it

Do they get hotter than hdds? I hate when my palmrest is hot. The only thing good about my current hdd , besides working , is that its not too hot
mine is marketed as extremely power saver

Thanks very much

i have already decided that i need one, even though i wouldnt take full advantage of it- using often intense programs,
except i have to see if this few things will stop me.

And there is the Volcanic cloud over europe.
Planes cant fly
Things dont reach the destination.

 

just check some reviews of SSD drives

samsung base ones and newer indilinx ECO ones are supposed to be the most energy saving ssds (lower than 2.5" hdds in any case) and very solid performers

List of some proper drives:

Indilinx:

Ultradrive GX (supertalent)
Crucial M225
OCZ Vertex; Agility; Core2

Samsung:

Corsair P128
OCZ Summit
Super Talent Ultradrive GX
OEM drives

intel drives consume around 1 watt more in idle and the same under load but are faster than both samsung and indilinx drives

the highest performing drives are Sandforce 1500 and 1200 based ones but i have no clue on power consumption of these drives

(= OCZ Vertex limited edition; Vertex 2 (Pro); Agility2)