Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

The Dell E6400 is quite expensive, my college has partnered with Dell but only the consumer line

I could not find any coupons for E6400 online...any idea?

 

It's still expensive when it's starting at $879 rather than the previous $1139?

 

AFAIK all the European models are assembled in Ireland. Keep watching your order status. Mine was in production breakfast time on 26th and in my hands on 28th. However, since it is now weekend yours may not ship until Monday.

John

 

Do you have access to Dell EPP? As a student, you should...regardless of if your school partnered with your university or not.

It is less 'more expensive', I'd say the price is darn good...comes close to the T400 and I think the E6400 is better anyway.

 

Anyone having problems burning dvd images? I keep getting errors after writing the lead-in.

 

Yes. At the moment there seems to be about a 75% probability of a successful burn and then a 75% probability that the burner can't verify it's own burn although the disk is readable elsewhere. I'm about to go travelling and wondering whether to put my LG GSA-E50L into the bag.

Liteon normally produce good burners but this one needs a firmware update as a matter of priority.

John

 

That is scary...had I known about this problem from the start I would have purchased the DVD/CD-RW to avoid this.

I'll be sure to check this as soon as I get my E6400. If it doesn't work, I'll keep demanding a replacement of the DVD burner until it is fixed...or they swap me for a DVD/CD-RW and give me a $50-60 credit to my account (since that is about what I paid for the upgrade)...

I won't have my E6400 for a little bit, but the moment I get it I'll report in.

 

First question: Is everyone who is ordering the DVD burner getting the PLDS DU-8A2S DVD burner?

Second question: Is everyone who got this burner encountering problems burning or even reading?

There's not a big choice in 9.5mm (3/8") high optical drives and I don't want to end up with a Matsh!ta! They are also fussy eaters.

John

 

I'm getting the PLDS DU-8A2S burner as well, and this thing really vibrates!

Have been installing software from original copies of DVDs and they read fine. I haven't attempted burning anything yet though.

 

01-Sep-2008: Order received and released to manufacturing
03-Sep-2008: Ship from Factory and loading for export
05-Sep-2008: Arrived and dispatched to Local Courier
05-Sep-2008: Delivered


Unpacked my Dell yesterday and was only rather pleased with the overall build. There's some slight warping here and there and the hinge unit is slightly off alignment. Factory staff not that familiar at putting a completely new product together yet?

The 6-cell battery isn't a tight fit (although I heard from my friend that the 9-cell fits snuggly). Might consider requesting for an upgrade to 9-cell if it's possible.

I feared for the worst and true enough, the 7200rpm drive I got was a disappointing Seagate Momentus 7200.2. I would rather go for a larger yet cheaper 320GB WD 5400rpm in it, which can offer better performance! I'll probably call Dell to get me something else. To make things worst in the storage department, either the mounting of the drive wasn't done well, or the drive simply vibrates too much - I'm getting a very soft yet noticable hum when I put the laptop on my desk.

Got around updating Windows and installing softwares, battery life is estimated to be around 3+ to 4 hours? WiFi off, but connected via Ethernet. Screen is a WXGA, set at about 50% brightness, ALS off, keyboard backlight off. My estimate is about 5 hours under normal word processing and some light surfing?

The speakers are rather sharp sounding and the volume is pretty average. I'm okay with them.

Operating temperatures are very acceptable. The fan doesn't come on most of the time. And even if it does, the sound is not noticable (probably 'cos I haven't full loaded it for long periods of time), and the hum from my drive is louder than that.