Did you ever investigate this further, perhaps with Dell? Mine’s so bad that I’m almost ready to dump the dock altogether..

Thanks for your 2 cents.

I’ve been assembling PC’s since 286’s. In fact, I had an original IBM AT (the 6 MHz one!) in my junior year of college. So it was a little sad when they started omitting serial ports from laptops. Of course, this was merely sentimental, as I haven’t used one in over a decade. Obsolete for the end user, but definitely still needed for certain types of work with hardware. How do the USB/Serial adapters work for you? Just another thing to have to carry around? Or do they not perform as well as the real thing?

eSATA seems like a sloppily executed standard. Just look on Newegg at user tales of woe with various external drive housings. My USB 2.0 drives serve my needs without any hassle.

Someone commented above that the extra switch is a “WiFi Catcher”. Shrug.

My touchpad has worked fine, actually. Really, coming from ThinkPad experience, with their dual-pointing and solid keyboards, I’ve had as good an experience with this Dell, except for that one broken key early on. Oddly, under Ubuntu, the top left-click sometimes stops working, but resumes working if I press the bottom left-click button. Quirky, but no big deal.

Agreed on the backlight and display. Yes, quiet, especially after I replaced the original SATA drive, which had that periodic clicking issue people frequently comment on.

As stated in original post, the ethernet port was broken both in Ubuntu and XP. By testing with the Ubuntu Live CD is how I convinced the Dell tech that the motherboard needed replacement.

As far as audio, I’ve used many “business” laptops over the last 15 years, mostly ThinkPads, some Toshiba, Sony, HP… I’ve never had an issue with audio quality until this laptop. I don’t mean professional quality…just general use. My E6400 (not necessarily ALL E6400’s) exhibits such poor audio quality (in XP or Ubuntu) that I leave it off entirely. Granted, my standards are higher as a musician, but I’m talking about an acceptable standard for listening to MP3’s, watching videos, etc. without detrimental distortion and RF interference; not anything pro level such as audio mixing, mastering, and so forth. I’ll comment on my friend Josh’s E6400 when I have a chance to test his in the same environment as mine. For now, I’m commenting on my particular E6400 alone, which could be a lemon or have components from different manufacturers or any number of variations from other E6400’s. Safe to say, though, it’s hardware-related, not operating system or driver, or certainly not user experience as you imply.

I’ll also not be rude by not being rude. Cheers!

You expect premium audio??? upgrade to premium audio!!!

You ethernet port works with ubuntu but not with windows xp? XP is the problem!!!
took you had DELL replace your motherboard to find out that it was a software issue, not your actual board? Unbelivable!

I own 3 E6400 two with Vista and one with windows7 professional. Never had a problem with none of this. Not to be rude, but you should learn how to use your computer before you post something negative about it.

Just so you know, this laptop is designed to meet business users needs, not extreme multimedia demands, but it can be configured to do so if you know what you are doing.

My thoughts:

1. Lack of serial port. I’m an IT professional. I configure stuff. Routers, SANs, phone systems, switches. I want to go to a customer site and …. er, do some work. So wait, the Latitude line of laptops isn’t designed for an IT Pro?

2. Latitude D series was brilliant for onboard sound. (Okay, brilliant for a laptop. Not actually brilliant, per se.) E series sounds tinny by comparison, lacks bass, not to mention static on the ‘phones output. Shame.

3. Did I mention, there is an eSATA port but NO SERIAL PORT? Rubbish. Who cares about eSATA?

4. Pointless button by the wi-fi switch with an RSS icon: WHAT?

5. No right-click button on keyboard. I LOVED that button on the D series.

6. My current Latitude E6400 has a crap touchpad. Randomly stops working just after coming out of standby. Never ever had a problem with touchpad on D series.

On the plus side:

1. Backlit keyboard: boon. Generally, keyboard is gorgeous, tactile, perfect spacing.

2. Lovely display.

3. Unit looks very cool, nicer than D630, D530, etc.

4. I like how the unit is built. Very much. Runs cool, quiet.

Let’s hope future revisions are better