Latitude E6440

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tlmiller
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Latitude E6440

Post by tlmiller »

So, since I had nothing at work to use, I bought myself a Latitude E6440. i5-4300M/8G/320G/1600x900. Going to ditch the 320 GB HDD and replace it with a 500 GB WD Black (not scropio black), and put the 128 GB mSATA in the mSATA slot. / will be installed on the mSATA, then put a few partitions on the 500 GB. Probably end up playing with it for a few weeks and flip it, but I'm ok with that to be able to do dual hard drive and an optical drive in a laptop.
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crosscourt
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Re: Latitude E6440

Post by crosscourt »

You are quite the laptop hopper but the E6440 is a nice system and very popular among many of my business friends.
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tlmiller
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Re: Latitude E6440

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Strangely, I've used many many E5440's, and I've owned a couple E7440's and used many others, but I've never had a E6440. We had one at work but it was so badly damaged that I stripped it for parts (ram was basically all that was any good) and got rid of it.
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crosscourt
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Re: Latitude E6440

Post by crosscourt »

If I wasnt a desktop user id probably use a E6440.
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Re: Latitude E6440

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According to USPS it's supposed to arrive today. I'm hoping it does, but I don't think it will (doesn't show an update for "out for delivery"). Ordered a killer 1420 wifi card for it (Atheros 802.11AC (ath10k) instead of Intel 802.11N (iwlwifi) that's in it). Wanted 802.11AC, but really didn't want another Intel chip if I could avoid it. Not because I've had bad luck with them, even though the 7260 did have a really bad birthing it was mostly on Windows where it had teething issues, it's always worked pretty well on linux. But simply because of the sheer number of Intel chips I have. And then of the 2 existing Atheros chips I have, 1 is going away (when the 9260 comes in for the 7490, taking that Atheros and putting it in the Acer since it has BT 4.2 instead of 4.1, and that can't be used in this E6440 since it's pcie instead of half-height mini pci). So that'll keep me with 2 Atheros cards. I have, thus far, REALLY been impressed with the Ath10K Atheros cards. In the 2 machines I have, they have worked FLAWLESSLY. Had issues with some older Atheros cards, but gotta admit I like these.
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tlmiller
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Re: Latitude E6440

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Yup, didn't arrive. My 9260's did, though.
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tlmiller
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Re: Latitude E6440

Post by tlmiller »

It's in.

Good things:
It's in surprisingly good shape for a 5 year old used laptop
The mSATA drive is recognized without a single issue
Dell released the Spectre/Meltdown bios for it, so got that installed

Bad things:
It was advertised as HD+/1600x900, it's not...it's 1366x768

I'm going to have to talk to the seller, I already know I can't tolerate using a 1366x768...unless I can swap in the E5430's LCD since I'm only going to sell that machine...

I'm thinking I might use that E6420 from work as a donor. I looked and it appears they have the same wiring harness connectors (mobo side), so I think I can just pull the lcd out of the E6420, pop it into the E6440's bezel and install it. I need the whole harness because the HD LCD has a different connector (LCD side) than the HD+/FHD LCD's.
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crosscourt
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Re: Latitude E6440

Post by crosscourt »

They were clueless as the E6440 is sold with both the 1366x768 and 1600x900 but the E6420 will work as Ive seen posts on swapping them in the Dell forums.
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tlmiller
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Re: Latitude E6440

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So I played around with it here at work running the 128 SSD (/ & /boot/efi) + 500 HDD (/var, /tmp, /home & swap). It was quite usable, but there was a noticeable lag when unlocking (since it had to read /home directory) compared to pretty much any other time. Decided that I'd rather have the pure SSD experience, going to install it with / on the 480, and /home on the 128.
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Re: Latitude E6440

Post by crosscourt »

Youve been spoliled as Im running standard drives on all my systems, no SSDs at least for now. Im happy with the performance, its not limiting at least with how I use my systems.
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