Latitude E7240 and E7440

Hey guys - unfortunately don't have time to make a video now, but I just snapped a few quick photos, which are at E7240/E7440 - Imgur. The last few show the IPS 1920x1080 panel in the E7440.

I haven't had them long enough to really make a judgement on battery life, but my guess is around six hours for the E7440 with moderate use. I have the 4-cell batteries in both of them, and both fit flush with the bottom of the machine, so they are only different from the 3-cell batteries in terms of weight.

The keyboards are a bit different from previous Latitudes but not by much. The keys seem to be wider and there is a bit more space between them (subjectively speaking; I haven't measured). Same goes for the pointing stick (E7440 only) and the trackpads...they are about the same as recent E6xxx models were.

Build quality is good...I would say on par with the 6430u, although without the rubberized cover. Not quite as good as Lenovo build quality in my opinion, but better than recent Latitudes have been. They operate quietly...I used the E7440 all day for a few days last week and did hear the fan occasionally, but it was pretty unobtrusive. Most of the time they are silent.

It looks to me like you could have both a 2.5" drive and an mSATA drive...take a look at the last picture in the album, which shows the internals of my E7440 (also shows a build quality issue...note the wrinkled plastic toward the bottom center, which is how the machine arrived). You can see the factory 128GB SSD in the HDD slot in the upper left, and then an mSATA slot next to it. I unfortunately do not have an mSATA drive to test with.

 

Thank you for the pictures and answering the questions. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks!
6 hours is disappointing although way better than my old M4400. The MacBook air has a 54Wh battery , the same should have been offered by Dell in my Opinion.
Still waiting to see if I'll get a Premier access, chances are I won't because my company is not big enough.

#begin rant
It is very frustrating not to be able to configure an order without having being Premier.
I have been a Dell client for about 15 years because it was next to the only one to give the possibility to configure a pc as needed.
I am shocked to see that nowadays it is the complete opposite and you can better customize computers nearly everywhere else: Sony, Lenovo, HP...
I hope that some Dell guy will read this. Dell if you want to sell computers the very first step is to give true configuration options again. Second stop selling super crappy options such as ultra lowres 1368x768 screens or at least do not make it the standard option.
The standard should be 1920x1080 WLED (1920x1200 even better but it seems.impossible to get nowadays), with options for 2560x1440/1600 & 3200x1800.
Also wifi ac pls.
# End rant

 

Honestly, we purchase nearly a million dollars of equipment from Dell annually (not a big deal as far as enterprises go, but still a good chunk of change) and we can't configure an order either, even with Premier.

We've seen a lot of things disappear from our Premier page this week due to changed SKUs, so I have a feeling that their product and website revamp is still causing some fallout. Don't give up hope!

That said, their top-end standard configurations for the E7240 and E7440 are really bizarre in terms of what they omitted...

 

According to the user/service manual that is a miniPCI slot for the 3G card, and as such is unlikely to me wired for mSATA :-(

My i7 E7440 is on it's way. I take it the gorilla glass on the screen is only for the touch version, judging from your pics?

 

The E7240 only comes with msata ssd, and the E6x40 series seems to support msata ssd as well, so it's a good possibility dell has added the lines/etches needed to support msata in the E7440 as well. One of the service documents I ran into last month also mentioned msata ssd in the E7440.

Look at the pictures linked by fuscob. the last picture shows the mpcie slot label as "MSATA/WWAN" so there should be no doubt that a MSATA SSD should work in that slot.

 

You can take the msata drive out of the 2.5" adapter and install it in the mpcie/msata slot and see if it will work. Given that the sticker in that slot says MSATA/WWAN I would imagine it would work.

 

Thanks for the review!

I am considering about buying this laptop, but I am really obsessed with a good keyboard because I am a programmer.

I have never used latitude-style keyboards (only used to chicklet style that is in currnet inspiron series), and I am wondering how they feel compare to traditional chicklet keyboards.

Would you be a more specific about keyboard in E7440?

By looking at pictures, it definitely seems to have more spaces between them, and I want to know whether the keyboard is better or worse than other latitudes, and how do you rate it in general.

Thank you!

 

I think it is slightly worse than older Latitudes...it seems to me that it has slightly more flex, and the spacing of the keys is a bit strange. That said, it's not really too bad...it's acceptable for a business notebook. It is definitely worse than a ThinkPad keyboard...I would definitely prefer either the ThinkPad chiclet/6-row or 7-row varieties over any Latitude.

Personally, even though I am impressed with this machine as far as Dell notebooks go, I will be sticking with ThinkPads. I will be placing my order for a T440s as soon as it is possible to do so

 

Had a chance to look at the E7240 and E7440 thanks to our Dell rep.

The E7240 looks like it can do 2 mSata drives if you are not using the other full sized slot for WWAN. It looks like Dell is making the full sized mpcie slots work with mSata across the whole Latitude line.
The E7440 can do 2.5 and mSata.
The 14" 1920x1080 ips touchscreen on the E7440 is very nice.
I think they will both also work with the 97Whr Extended Slice (E-Dock) battery. This should take battery life to 20 hours.