What would you change on Dell Latitude E6400?

The out-of-box experience. Granted, it's a pretty nice effort by Dell relative to the state of the mobile computing industry, but I sense that way too many customers are having to troubleshoot way too many functional issues with their new systems starting from the minute they turn them on. Dell compensates for this by offering generous support and trouble resolution, but this does not resolve all of the issues nor come close to compensating customers for their lost time, energy, and productivity. Clearly, we should all want this to change for the better.

Is the E6400 any worse in this regard than previous generation notebooks? I'm a typical PC consumer moving toward mobile computing as price and desktop replacement concerns permit (including support overhead), so I do not have a lot of past experience with notebooks to compare. But, my feeling with the E6400 is that although it is a more capable latest generation platform, it does seem to also be a more troublesome product... certainly more troublesome than it should be. Although perhaps no different than the competition, regardless, we should want better. I, for one, do not want every progressive notebook purchase to include so much system dysfunction and require so much maintenance overhead before I can settle down to just using it.

I'll distill this down to, 'Is the E6400 generation more troublesome than previous generations?' If so, then the trend is not good. Even if 'no difference', then it is still not good enough, imo.

Sure, this may be the natural state of affairs for bringing complex personal computing systems to market, requiring so much consumer involvement in resolving the product's final development and integration. But still, this needs to be changed and not allowed to become worse just because the consumer base grows technically more capable and able to bear more of this imposition.

GK

 

Very good point. I also get the feeling that we (customers) are becoming more and more the real "beta testers" of laptops (and not only laptops -- computer games also fit this description). And I did have to do some tweaking to get the laptop in order -- remove IDT driver (because it hung up using 50% of the CPU) and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.8 from Intel's site (not available at Dell's site yet).

That is a very valid point indeed. I took the liberty of adding it to the first post.

 

There are two factors I can think of:

1. Intel was late in shipping the hardware so the development time was compressed.

2. Dell is trying to have one family of drivers and software which cover all the new E series + the Precision workstations. There is a sensible reason for this: Ease of support both by Dell and within companies, but the diverse hardware configurations and operating conditions make the "one size fits all" approach doesn't give each customer the optimum result.

My biggest annoyance in this respect was my E6400 refusing to be fully functioning with a 65W PSU. Fortunately, Dell saw the error of their ways and told the BIOS that 65W PSU + Intel graphics can co-exist.

John

 

The Intel wifi cards (5300 and 5100) seem to be an issue: too many complaints of dropped wireless connections. Although this may not be a Dell problem, still it is a huge annoyance to many owners.

The E6400 that my son is using is plagued with this problem, and he is running Vista 64. He has to reboot his laptop often to get wifi (Intel 5100) to reconnect. I have the E6400 running Windows 7, and I don't have any problem with my Intel 5300.

 

Switchable graphics would be really really nice on this machine. I know all of the official press saw that all of the laptop is made up of magnusium alloy, how come the bottom plate feels different? The palm rests/screen top kinda feel like more like plastic to me than metal.

 

Sounds like a faulty Intel wireless card. In my case, at university, I get the best signal with this laptop. I get connections where other laptop (without that wireless card) just don't have it. Maybe Intel released a new revision which you don't have. Contact Dell for a new card.

 

Allow means a mixture. So magnesium allow, means they took magnesium and fixed it with unknown things for us.

The base, base panel, and screen lid (not the frame of the screen, just the lid) are in magnesium allow. The hinges, screen hook, screws, are in metal. Finally, the speaker grids are in aluminum.
Don't believe me, get a screw driver and perform a deep scratch on where you want to see metal... and you will see metal on those parts.

As for keyboard, palm-rest, screen frame (bezel), trackpad, touchpoint, both mouse button set, latch button, power button, wireless switch, plastic part of the USB plug, headphones/mic plug, optical drive panel, cover ups, battery, silver color cover-ups next to the battery and HDD side panel are all in plastic.

You probably have a hard time identifying these metal and plastic part, as the the paint job on this laptop, not only has a prime paint coat but also has a think paint layer (maybe several thin layers or one thick one), so that the paint doesn't remove easily.

 

Ah, that makes more sense now. Either way, it is a tough laptop and has met my expectations in that regard.

 

Is the back of the battery silver like it is in the E6500? I would make it black to match the keyboard surround.

I have no other complaints about my E6500.

 

Yep, it's silver like the silver backing that surrounds it.