Latitude E7240 and E7440

I found a refurbished configuration that I like for a good price, but I noticed it didn't have a backlit keyboard. I was thinking about buying a keyboard and doing a swap too.

 

I found the configuration I wanted with a backlit keyboard on eBay. I contacted the seller, and he told me that the keyboard swap is plug-and-play.

 

You'll have to let us know if it works. I have also seen eBay listings for backlit keyboards that say they will not work if you don't have the right motherboard in place....

 

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the why the touchscreen version of the E7440 is not available with a dedicated graphics card? Dell's website does not offer this configuration, and when I chatted with the Dell sales rep, they also confirmed that this is not possible to do.

Is it a hardware limitation/conflict that prevents a touchscreen with a dedicated graphics card? Or does Dell simply think that Latitude owners don't have a need for this?

 

If you want an ultrabook with discrete graphics, get the Precision.

I don't miss discrete graphics at all. I can power 2x 24" LCDs at 1920x1200 + the built-in LCD on my E7440. Perfect.

 

The Precision M3800 is indeed nice, but I would greatly miss the docking station capability that the Latitude line offers.

I also do heavy HD/4K video editing, and an iGPU would be a tremendous bottleneck. My hope is that Dell will release a version of the E7000x series with a touchscreen and discrete graphics. I'm just curious as to why this option is not available right now.

 

It would be great if some of you who own a e74440/e7420 with a full HD display could try the Langsom Inversion/pixel walk test Inversion (pixel-walk) - Lagom LCD test and post their results. It does't take much time. My result was that image 1 had slight flickering, 3 had strong flickering, 4 a and b have ghosting. Seems pretty bad to me. Should I consider a replacement? Also, does anyone know what notable problems a display with bad Inversion/walking pixel would have in everyday life or work? Does it mean that "normal" images also flicker slightly? I really didn't get it even after reading the explanation of the test

 

E7240 with FHD touch. Only saw flickering on 3. Everything else looks fine to me.

 

Does anyone here have problems using the USB pots with some 2.0 USB devices? For example the only way to connect my Nexus 5 to the E7440 is to switch off USB 3.0 in the BIOS. None of the ports work otherwise.

 

None of the E7x40 series have an option for dedicated graphics card. Its not just limited to the touchscreen version. It's a thermal constraint. They just could not pack enough cooling/airflow into such a small form factor to allow a dedicated GPU to be added. Even the CPU uses the lower 15 watt version instead of the 28 watt version. I don't know why they did this. The previous generate (E6220 and E6230) were able to use 35 watt cpu in a similarly small chassis. So one would think they could've handled at least the intel 28 watt cpu or a 15 watt with dedicated graphics.