Test Drive Windows 7 on Dell Latitude E6400
One of the news for today is Windows 7. The beta version was released to MSDN. People in the business IT world have been arguing whether they should skip Vista and upgrade directly from Windows XP.
Nevertheless, I jumped the boat. DVD ISO download from MSDN subscription is close to 3G, a little bit smaller than Windows Vista . The Guinea pig is my Dell Latitude E6400.
The upgrade process is rather painless. After popping the DVD into the Latitude, I was prompted about a couple of different options – update or clean install. As planned, I chose to upgrade from Vista. It took about 30 minutes to complete the whole process.
The startup screen is a little bit fancier than Vista’s. Performance wise, I feel it is getting better (very subjective though). I like the new taskbar, which feels like Mac OS X. You can “pin” an application and its instances on the taskbar, which eliminated the need for lauch bar from Vista/XP. However, I was disappointed at the desktop composition feature (the new name for Aero). When I enabled it, my screen display literally went corrupted. I am not sure whether it is with my video card (Intel GMA 4500) or not. Other than that, everything seems to be fine.
What’s your experience?
I did the same thing, W7 beta build 7000, did x64 on E6400, but did clean install.
It is bodacious. Vista how it should have been. But some small things.
bluetooth was detected but never moved (mouse)
still can’t burn a CD/DVD
I think the CD/DVD issue is these E6400’s may be crap or perhaps something else, as we had the same issue on Vista 64/32
I did an upgrade install and things seem to go well, however I ran into some system freezes when running VMs using WMWare Workstation with a drive connected to the E6400 eSATA port. I reverted to Vista, but I miss the Win7 enhancements.
Maybe you could try VirtualBox from Sun. I have been running a couple of Ubuntu distros without any problem so far.
I installed Windows 7 (both 64 and 32 bit) and have experienced numerous bluescreens and system restarts. Has anyone else had any issues with their 6400?
We have several of these E6400’s deployed with a mix of XP, Vista and Windows 7.
The only issue we have run across is burning CDs and DVDs…. we can’t.
Vista and Windows 7 work beautifully with the exception of the burning drive.
I am running Win7 on my Dell Latitude E6400. I haven’t had too many issues. I am able to burn CD & DVD’s using CDBurnerXP (a great free tool).
My only issues yet to be resolved are:
1: Bluetooth mouse does not scroll, have not found a way to manage the settings. I’m contemplating installing the Dell Bluetooth manager, but expect that it will either not be compatible or cause too many errors.
2: Fan runs a lot… so much that it’s annoying. I’m worried that Win7 doesn’t read the bios correctly and that my system may overheat. The price of being a beta tester.
If I find anything else, I will post an update.
Marty,
This article should help you get your bluetooth mouse working. The drivers that are installed by default do not work with your Bluetooth adapater even though it looks like it does. Use the drivers on the following length. The reason your mouse doesn’t scroll because it is just a generic mouse to windows. If you double click the devices “devices and printers” more than likely you will not see your mouse in there. You need to install the latest bluetooth drivers and then it will work. If this doesn’t run under your windows 7 please make sure to right click on it and run it in compatibility mode. After running scan for devices and it will install your bluetooth mouse and your scroll wheel will work.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=297416
Overheating of Dell Latitude E6400 is not an issue with W7, but with E6400 itself. There’s a HW design problem – that is OS independent, with no solution as of today (after a year!!!). Stay away from E6400 at all costs.
I am working with Seven 32bit, from 14th of August. Some problems with Explorer – rearry crashes. Will wait for renewed drivers, and guess this problem will be solved. Computer works faster, fine. And all the programs I need is working perfect. Very good posibility to have emulation of Windows XP.
I installed Win7 on my E6400 and it works good (better then vista)
cant say I have heat prob’ and overall it’s ok
I am running a Full release of Win 7 32 bit on a E6400 and the only issue seen so far is having a bluetooth mouse, the scroll wheel does not work. Dell have updated drivers as of 10/19/09 which I have not tried yet but I have not had any other complaints. Win 7 holds promise…