thoughts on a new E6500

I recently purchased an E6500 for work to replace an aging desktop. I usually buy Thinkpads and still use my 5 year old X40 (the best notebook I've ever had) as a travel notebook/netbook, but my company is now exclusively Dell. I got the T9550, LED 1440x900, 7200rpm HDD with free fall sensor, Bluetooth, modem, and lighted keyboard.

Here are some initial thoughts:

Pros:
1. Nice screen and can get very bright
2. Generally feels well constructed although bottom plate seems thin
3. Stays cool enough to use on lap, CPU fan rarely comes on during normal use
4. Runs fast (after a clean Windows XP install)

Cons:
1. HDD exhibits a noticeable constant hum and fairly significant vibration transmitted to the left palmrest (and hard surface underneath the laptop). I noticed this immediately after turning it on, and it gets annoying after extended use.
2. Keyboard and palmrest showing finger oil immediately
3. Touchpad can be jumpy and the pointing stick is not quite as good as Lenovo's version

All in all, I'm fairly satisfied with this machine and the only major issue is the hard disk vibration. Is anyone else bothered by this? Mine is a Seagate 7200 with the free fall sensor. I will be contacting Dell to see if there are any alternatives but I would like to stay with the 7200 rpm drive and keep the free fall sensor if possible.

 

I had that drive in the E6400, and I found it noisy. The 5400 rpm drives are better, and the new ones, like the WD Scorpio Blue series, give comparable performance to the 7200 rpm drives.

But it your company is willing to pay for it, go for the SSD's. Guaranteed no vibration or noise.

 

Re the HDD noise, I suggest you pull out the HDD and put some small pieces of adhesive tape on its sides, then replace. The tape will provide a limited amount of anti-vibration mounting. Without it, the metal of the HDD is in direct contact with the chassis. I used electrical tape which is thicker and more rubbery than normal adhesive tape.

John

 

John, thanks for the tape idea. I was thinking of cutting some foam inserts to place between the screw hole and the notebook chassis but tape sounds much easier and I'll try that first.

The other thing I forgot to mention was that the speakers on my machine are pretty poor. I wonder if it is a driver issue as there is no bass at all (when I try to change the bass equalizer on Winamp, there is no discernable effect on the sound). I haven't had any problems with the jack output as I've read, though.

 

I agree about the keyboard showing finger oil easily. This is a majorly annoying con. I wonder if Dell knew about this or could all their engineers/testers not have oily fingers that this issue missed them. The keyboard though is great to type on and better IMO than the D620 (the D620 did not have this problem) so I guess it's a tradeoff.

 

The internal speakers are very poor.

There is a SRS premium sound application on the Dell website but it doesn't make much difference.

John