Latitude E6510 Owner's Lounge

I had the same problem on the second E6510 I ordered. For some reason Dell Webcam Central was not installed at the factory, so I installed it from the Dell Webcam Central CD that came in the box and it fixed it.

 

I seemed to have misplaced that disk and don't see where to download it from Dell's site. Hope there's an easier way than having to call support.

 

I doubt you will notice the speed difference unless you do a clean install.... It's SO much faster... You can remove ControlVault software from Add/Remove programs but it still leaves a trail.... Biggest thing is to remove the software so it doesnt run in the background.

However - once its installed - it does modify your Windows Login screen. You would manually need to revert these settings (I haven't done this).

 

I can't vouch for the link, but I found it googling "webcam central 1.40.06" which is the version I have on my Win 7 64-bit. HTH.

http://ftp.us.dell.com/app/DellWebcamSW.exe

 

some pics of my E6510:

Here are some pics of my E6510 next to the power brick and some objects for scale.

http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz184/fatsquatch/P1030919.jpg

http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz184/fatsquatch/P1030922.jpg

http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz184/fatsquatch/P1030928.jpg

The last picture is to show the smudges on the keys. I never thought of myself as a particularly greasy person, but the often-used keys do get this...deposit.

EDIT: the smudges are really exaggerated by the flash, however, in bright daylight they are noticeable.

this is after 2 weeks or so.

in other news:

I'm having a weird problem with my SD card reader. It wont read one of my SD cards. It reads another similar SD card, a SanDisk SDHC 4gb Class 2, but not my Lexar Professional SDHC 4gb Class 6. My girlfriend's older pavillion reads it fine and so does my usb card reader adapter. But not my E6510 card reader. I've reformatted it, and still nothing. Computer doesnt even detect that a card has been inserted. reinstalled Ricoh drivers and updated bios to A03. Nothing.

 

First check BIOS and make sure you camera is enabled- If it is, and you are still having problems, then proceed.

I just had this same problem- Reinstalling Webcam Central did not fix the problem. Did you recently update the firmware? (Patch P02 + A03). I had done this prior to installing webcam central and running into problems. What I did was shutdown, unplugged AC & pulled laptop battery. I then pulled the back off and reset the BIOS by unplugging the the mini-plug for the battery, and plugging back in (see attached). Restart and check the BIOS--> Sytem Configuration --> Misc Devices. I found that my Camera was not enabled....even though I had checked this numerous times before.

I re-enabled camera and upon restart, it was installed and recognized immediately. Before you attempt this, you may want to make a note of important settings in BIOS, like SATA operation just in case they get reset as well.

 

Question about heating

I got an E6510 today with the following configs NVS-3100M, Intel i5-520M, 250g 7200 RPM, 4g RAM.

The issue is that the fan runs very frequently and system gets hot even if I am not doing anything. Can this be because of NVS-3100M?

My friend has the exact same config but with Intel graphics and his system runs cooler than mine. Another problem I have seen is playing 1080P has higher CPU consumption on my machine than his, which really should be other way around.

Any ideas, please throw some light!!

Thanks!

 

The nVidia GPU will run hotter than the Intel graphics. I would look a bit harder at the temperatures using HMmonitor.

Also, Task Manager will show the CPU utilisation which can enable you to see if something is unnecessarily loading the CPU.

John

 

When your system is plug-in your system goes under full power (especially if you set the power management profile to high performance, I recommend to keep it at Balance). When on battery, the system should be near the same temperature with near the same battery life (give or take ~30min) - I recommend to use Dell extended battery profile, with Aero, for a cooler system and longer battery life (it turns off optical drive, media card reader, firewire, set the screens to 40Hz instead of 60Hz, and set the CPU and other component to minimum power.

As for CPU consumption. Your should be LOWER than his. As the Intel GPU uses the CPU to render about everything, while Nvidia does everything on his own GPU (it's a real GPU, hence why it consumes more power even the low end GPU models from ATi/Nvidia).
My guess is that you play 1080p videos with FLASH, which doesn't use the GPU to render but rather the CPU, which could explain what you are seeing.
- Ensure that you have Flash 10.1 plug-in installed in your web browser (Adobe - Adobe Flash Player)

As for playing normal video's, I recommend to use Windows Media Player 12 64-bit (default is set to 32-bit under WIn7 64-bit), as you can use 64-bit codecs, to boost battery life a little (depending on the codec used, video compression, and format).
I recommend Shark007 (Shark007's FREE Codec solutions - Windows 7 codecs) codec pack. for several reasons. But first, just to inform you, you need to install the 32-bit one, and follow by the 64-bit component version.
Reasons why it's a great codecs pack:
- Comes with a control panel which allows you to change some codec setting which are common on all codecs it comes with for easy setup.
- Has a built-in tool to change all file association and shortcut from Windows Media Player 12 32-bit to 64-bit in a mouse click.
- Doesn't override Windows 7 excellent codecs
- Provide thumbnail support for all it's supported codecs under Win7/Vista 64-bit.
- Plays about everything you can throw at it, including 1080p MKV movies.

 

detailed review now available at notebookcheck.net. It scored pretty high:
Notebookcheck: Review Dell Latitude E6510 Notebook
One minor issue: They claim a weight of 2,5 kg for the 6 cell battery configuration (as Dell does). This figure wasn't confirmed in this thread, i think someone mentioned it's at least 2.6 kg?