Latitude E6500 Owner's Lounge

- metall base and lid vs plastic
- 4 horizontally aligned USB ports vs 3 vertical
- eSATA port
- built-in smartcard reader
- better layout of PCMCIA and ExpressCard slots (if you insert a card with thick external part into the lower slot, the upper one becomes incaccessible in T500)


But I absolutely agree that Dell should provide 2.5" media bay.

 

@Yura80: The Lenovo R series is made of plastic, while the T series is made of magnesium alloy just like the Dell LatE/PrecM series.

 

Hmm... but all reviews state that T400/T500 has plastic lid and overall plastic exterior.

 

Hmmm, really? Might not have read those reviews enough carefully, always thought that with the T series you'll also get magnesium alloy on the outside. But anyway, that is only the outmost shell. Inside, you'll still get a sturdy metal chassis. The main difference the outer shell makes is appearance, and that's surely a plus for the new Dells.

 

I agree about e-SATA, that's a nice feature of the E6500. Yes, the T500 doesn't offer LED, at least not for a while, and then in unknown resolution.

VERY GOOD NEWS (which will probably get lost as this thread develops

These guys returned an e-mail saying: Yes, they are planning to manufacture a media bay caddy for the new E/M series, and it will be designed for 2.5" drives!!!

It's currently still the design/testing phase, but by contacting them you can be placed on an e-mail announcement list once the caddy is ready for release!

IMHO the real world usability of the E6500 just want way up.

 

Important note regarding the E6500. There is apparently an issue with one of the chipset or video drivers that causes intermittent freezes.

I received my E6500 from Dell several weeks ago and experienced the crash with nothing but the core build from Dell. I worked with support and performed (and passed) all hardware diagnostics, re-loaded the Dell Build, loaded Vista 64-bit from CD, loaded Server 2008 from CD all with the same results. The support technician sent an in-home tech to replace the motherboard for lack of other options, which did not resolve the problem either.

I'd normally attribute this to a singular "lemon", however my company ordered 4 of these and they are all currently exhibiting the same issues, each with various OS & applications. Searching online shows many other with the same issue, so it appears to be driver issue of some sort.

Those considering this platform may want to hold off until the drivers are updated to address this. It's unfortunate because the physical architecture is very solid, the display is beautiful, it's screaming fast w/ 8 gb of ram (when it's not freezing that is...)

ADDITIONAL NOTE: FYI the freeze shows frozen screen with a series of vertical rows of horizontal black bars, which would usually indicate a problem with the video driver.

 

Oh god not you too

 

I take it that you have an NVidia graphics chip on the E6500? Lots of people have had issues with NVidia in the past few months regarding their graphics cards failing due to unexpected overheating. Not sure if your problem is from the same reason...

Now I'm worried for the E6500 that my workplace gave me

 

Actually no, we all have the intel graphics card (much to my chagrin.)

I have a personal XPS M1530, so I'm no stranger to the nvidia issues as well.


(Edited for spelling. It's late and the road we're traveling on is bumpy.)

 

Have you tried out the drivers from Intel directly instead of the ones available on Dell's website? I remember way back when I had a Gateway laptop I got all the drivers from Intel's website and never looked back.