Received refurb E6500 - some questions

I just received my E6500 from the outlet after having returned a new studio 17.

1. Was I supposed to receive any sort of owners manual with this thing?
There are a handful of disks but no manual save for a small warranty booklet.

2. It has XP on it and I think it came with the ability to put vista business on it. I am not particularly wedded to xp, should I just go ahead and put vista on? Is vista closer interface wise to whatever the next generation of windows is (windows 7)?

3. This E6500 has the 1440x900 led screen as did my studio 17. The screen on the 17 was absolutely brilliant but the screen on this E6500 seems more fuzzy or dull. Not as sharp and vibrant as the screen on the 17. To be perfectly honest, the screen on this E6500 doesn't seem that much nicer than the one on my 2001 Latitude.

4. Refresh my memory on how I increase the pixels to get bigger text.

5. When I hit the function key and the "auto" screen brightness key the screen goes very dark. Is this supposed to be the ambient light/brightness deal?

Thanks
Andy

 

1. There should be a PDF user guide somewhere. You might have to download it. Also get the service manual if you want to see how the E6500 is put together.

2. You are welcome to try Vista, but current enthusiasm is for Windows 7.

3. Check that the display driver is installed and you are running at the correct resolution. The display should not look fuzzy. Put your service tag number into the Dell support site to get a list of all the latest drivers (and check the hardware configuration).

4. I'm surprised you want to increase the text size. First sort out the quality issue.

5. Fn+ <- controls the ambient light sensor - you should get an on-screen message. I use the ALS only for the keyboard backlight - it caused too many fluctuations in display brightness.

John

 

Thanks John,

I'll get the drivers updated. I had to set the E6500 to the side as it would not shut down properly. The machine is very slow to boot up and shut down.

After having a perfect 'out of the box' experience with the studio17 I'm discouraged by this 6500 so far. The 17 while being too big for my needs and having a squishy keyboard did work well. Booted up and shut down very fast, found our home network right away and never dropped connection. The 6500 disconnected twice during the short session last night.

I realize the 6500 is a used machine but dell claimed that they are tested before they leave the outlet and should perform as new. For now I'm back to the 2001 latitude until I have time to work on the 6500 again.

Andy

 

Ok, I went to the driver page and it says there are 49 drivers amongst the various categories. Some say recommended, some say urgent, some don't look like they apply to my hardware, some I'm not sure... some are dated 2008.

Do I need to go through each category, try to figure out what applies to this machine then download all of them? There must be an easier method?

When you download the drivers do you usually put them in a specific directory or download them to the desktop? Then what, just run the executable file? And what happens then?

If I had purchased a new machine instead of a refurb would it have come with all the proper updated drivers?

Thanks

 

If you are going to use Vista, just download all the updates to a flash drive and install them after a clean OS install.

 

There should be two tabs on the driver list: One for your hardware and one for the all the E6500 options.

You can learn a lot about your update status by looking at the dates and contents of the C:\Dell\Drivers folder. Each update will have its own folder numbered Rxxxxxx. I don't know how often Dell update their factory installation images. Perhaps every month. What is the date of the main Windows folder?

John

 

If you mean the "created on" date for the directory under properties, the main Windows folder is April 25,2008 and the video folder under drivers is April 27,2009.

The drivers directory has folders for video, audio etc that are labeled Rxxxxxx as you say but the drivers on the dell website are labeled "version 7.15.10.1637, AO3. How do I cross reference the two to see if have the latest?

I don't see the two tabs on the drivers page, it just lists E6500 and then has my service tag number. The drivers list seem to have drivers that are not for my specific configuration such as the video drivers which list drivers for nvida and intel on-board (which I have). Actually I still have not figured out how to print my configuration from the dell site.

Wayne

 

studio i think has glossy screen
latitude has matte sreen
latitude is soooo unstable on XP if not installe on properly - or just out of the box
your way off better at vista or win 7
ambient light sensor for the LCD is sooo moody. i leave it off
my e6400 brand new from the box didn't have a manual.. just a user's guide - which is a two-page small paper

 

A few clicks on one of those drivers will lead you to the download page which has the file named Rxxxxxx. Slightly tedious, but i am used to it. You can also go into Device Manager and look at the driver version numbers. That should show the A03, or whatever.

I can't explain which I get two tabs: One for my configuration and one for all flavours (of the E6400 in my case). You should have menu doen the left side of the screen. System configuration brings up the order details.

John

 

You would have to go to each folder and open the ReadMe or the Version file so you could compare the versions that you have to the one's on the site.

Hope this helps