Latitude E6510 Owner's Lounge

Yeah Ebay is the best bet and with some personally additions like SSD or quad core.

 

There are a few good options on ebay but the cost is making me hold out. After RAM and SSD upgrades it comes to about 850~900. Which is a little hard to swallow for a 3 year old laptop. (This is because I'm looking at Quad core FHD display ones)

 

Looking to pick one of these up used as it is in my poor college student budget. The only think is I am in school for computer engineering, and concerned I will need additional gfx power (which is outside my budget atm...)

If I do get one I would upgrade it to an i7-720qm, and turn the DVD drive slot to a second HDD (ssd going in the main slot, second HDD for VMS). Is it possible to upgrade the motherboard to a precision m4500 down the road? I haven't really found an answer for this yet... So either no one has tried or my google-foo is weak

Sent from my GT-P7310 using Tapatalk 4

 

I think you will need to replace the entire base. At the very least, the heatsink is definitely different, even between the M4500 and a dGPU E6510. The M4500 palmrest also looks like it has a heatspreader for the topside RAM, but I don't know how critical that is.

 

Thanks for the reply, shortly after I posted this, I found one in my price range on flea-bay. So I will be going with the m4500 out of the gate.

Sent from my GT-P7310 using Tapatalk 4

 

Hi all. I will be an owner of an E6510 in a couple of days (once it arrives). I am primarily a ThinkPad user so I do have questions on which Dell programs would be helpful. So far from Dell Support I have downloaded the NVIDIA driver (my model includes a dGPU), Control Point (not sure if this is an absolute necessity), audio driver, multitouch touchpad driver, Intel turbo boost driver, and Control Point Security Software.

What are the functions of 'Dell Latitude On Flash Software' and 'Dell Reader 2.1?' I could not find much description on either programs. Any other tips for Dell programs that are helpful and would contribute to a pleasant, productive, and secure user experience?

 

Apart from the Drivers for the hardware, I would avoid installing other stuff. YMMV.

 

@powerflave12r. Thanks for responding. I do have another question for you and anyone who might share their experience.

Is there a way to generate a bootable CD to update my BIOS? My version (according to the pictures) shows A05. The latest BIOS revision is A15. Instructions on Dell's site advises to update to A09 first then to A15. I am a bit reluctant to update via an EXE (windows executable) file. I often have read of bricked systems using this method. If you or anyone has updated their BIOS via the EXE file (found at Dell Support) has the experience been reliable?

 

I've always updated with the executable and I've never had a bad flash... YMMV, of course.

 

Disclaimer: if you do not have any issues with your current BIOS you should not update. Also if you do not feel comfortable doing the update you should not proceed as well. A bricked laptop does not equal a happy laptop...or owner!

Now for my run-through with my BIOS update without a windows installation.

1. Downloaded and ran Unetbootin
2. From the 'Distribution' box I chose the distro Freedos 1.0 and installed it to my USB flashdrive
3. Unetbootin asked if I wished to reboot afterwards but I chose 'No'
4. Put the boot exe E6510A09 and E6510A15 on the same USB drive that Freedos was installed to
5. Made sure my battery was charged on the Dell E6510 (power interruptions=BAD BAD BAD)
6. Connected the USB that I had installed Free Dos 1.0 (that also contained the BIOS exe)
7. Pushed F12 when the Dell splash screen appeared to boot into 'Boot Select' mode
8. Chose USB Storage
9. The Freedos menu showed up and I selected 'FREE-DOS Live CD only'
10. command line appeared
11. typed in c:
12. followed by typing in E6510A09
13. Dell BIOS update menu showed up
14. It will ask if you want to proceed with BIOS update
15. and BIOS update will run the flash
16. On the next reboot the BIOS version that was flashed will be reflected on the Dell splash screen

In my case I followed the directions to flash A09 first then A15 (the latest BIOS for the E6510) afterwards. The process was quite easy although it did make me a little nervous! Installing W8 now