Dell Latitude E6420 is the best second hand PC in 2020

Core i better than Core 2 Duo for long-term

I just bought a second hand E6420 for US100 including taxes and postage from USA. It costs around RM440. It appears to be the same as those found in Malaysia that costs around RM600 with hard disk. Mine doesn't come with a hard disk, but everything works, including its fingerprint reader.

My version doesn't come with a camera and backlit keyboard, so I regret it but at this price, it is the cheapest second hand laptop. It comes with 4Gb RAM and i7-2630M processor. Price is US50 with postage via courier also US50 arriving in 2 weeks time, including tax. No need for SIRIM approval because its price is too low and not complete. No hard disk or power supply.

The cheapest laptop is US30, the Intel Core 2 Duo processors, limited to 2 cores, i.e. less than US20, compared to the E6420. Why E6420, not E6410 that is abundant in Malaysia at prices less than RM700 for a complete set?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude will explain.

The E6420 supports the 2nd generation Intel Core microprocessors. It supports 16Gb while E6410 only supports 16Gb RAM for i7 and dedicated graphics chip. My cheap E6420 only comes with 4Gb RAM in dual channel, but can be upgraded to 16Gb. So far, 4Gb is fast enough for typing this blog.

Core 2 Duo are good enough for students

Even the Core 2 Duo like T60 and C700 are fast enough if upgraded to T7500 for T60 and T7700 or T8300 for the C700. According to literature, the C700 can be upgraded to a maximum of T8300 but is compatible with T9550 which I had ordered 3, to try on 2 of my C700. They all have around 40 points according to Userbenchmark.

I had use these Core 2 Duo laptops. Despite having only a maximum of 3Gb of RAM, they are still useable. I can even upgrade them to Windows 10, without too much penalty. However, a lot of devices have no drivers despite working. They may work but not properly. they should have a performance penalty but I do not seem to notice them just browsing the internet. Probably playing games will have reduced performance, but these processors are already too slow for modern games. They are still useful for older games that have difficulty in running in 64-bit windows.

I tried both 32-bit and 64-bit versions but I do not seem to notice much difference in performance. The problem is compatibility with recent software. The latest software only works in 64-bit. The E6420 will have less problem compared to Core 2 Duo processors.

If you are desperate, students should be able to buy laptops for RM300.
https://shopee.com.my/Dell-laptop-Heavy-duty-budget-laptop-for-students-and-office-use-refurbish-ready-to-use-i.1154905.2631421494

This is a Dell Latitude, a business-class laptop, better than C700, which I bought for my daughter, so students should not be ashamed. Similarly for the Thinkpad T60. These are business-class laptops that costs more than RM3000 when new. They are more rugged and reliable than consumer laptops, that costs RM1,000 new.

Anti-virus is the real virus

I bought a netbook, Toshiba NB305. It was useful for displaying power point slides during lectures with little degradation in performance. It is also very light. Later on, I used even cheaper Windows 10 tablets using even better Atom chips but costs around RM1000.

To protect my PCs, I installed Malwarebytes and Avira anti-virus, but I noticed that my slowest PCs become even slower. So slow that they are difficult to use, such as the NB305, especially after I upgraded to Windows 10.

Only a few weeks ago, I realised that when I uninstalled them, my PCs became noticeable more responsive. Malwarebytes are useful in detecting malwares that infests browsers. You should install it to check for these malwares but uninstall after this. Avira has so many functions that it burderned a small microprocessor. It was not noticeable in larger PCs. I uninstalled Avira and change to Microsoft Sentinels or just use the Windows 10 antivirus.

I cannot detect them when using benchmarks such as Userbenchmark and Windows Experience Index because they became inactive when we run large programs.

Benchmarkings

The best benchmarking software is the Userbenchmark. We can compare our results with others and find out if our system is damaged or not. Unfortunately, it does not work for Windows XP and cannot give us the response time for daily use, compared to gaming use. Windows experience index is better at this, but without a database of other users, very hard for us to compare.

Windows experience index uses Winsat.exe. It is used to display performance results displayed in Windows 7 but not Windows 10, but we can display the results using wei.exe, from winaero.com. There are other programs that can do this as well or just run "winsat formal". The results are stored in a folder called C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT.

However, not available for Windows XP.

Do not upgrade to Windows 10

I realise that it is a mistake to upgrade to Windows 10. The display drivers are not available. This makes the graphics performance low as shown by benchmarks. The graphics processors, GPU cannot be used. Displaying simple texts are possible without the GPU drivers but performance should suffer. I do not seem to confirm this, but my gut feelings is that it is true.

There are other issues. Drivers for other devices are also not available. Although it appears that drivers for older OS can run in Windows 10, they can be broken. In fact, I thought my hardware was faulty. The rule of upgrading is just that, if you cannot find drivers for Windows 10 on the website of our laptops, then do not bother to upgrade. The manufactures will never develop drivers for Windows 10 after more than 5 years. I waited for a long time hoping that they will provide upgraded drivers such as the case for Windows 7 from Windows XP but not all are provided.

My bad experience was in installing Windows 10 for the E6420 and NB305. The NB305 was new but there is not support for the graphic chips in the Atom N455. The device manager does not show any error or missing drivers but they were replaced with working drivers but not at full performance or reliability.

The same thing happened to E6420. I used Windows 7 drivers to install to Windows 10, 32-bit and finally managed to remove all the missing drivers in device manager, but my SD card reader and Fingerprint scanner didn't work so I thought they were faulty. I even wanted to replace them by looking for parts at the ebay.

I tried installing Windows 7 where all devices have drivers and when I tried the SD card reader it worked. Even the fingerprint reader worked despite some problems early on in installing drivers. The internet guides from users are all faulty and incomplete because they refer to different versions of Dell Latitudes.

The finger print using Windows 10 Hello program seem to work but I pressed my fingers too hard and it did not show a good picture, only half of a picture despite so many tries. The Windows 7 showed full pictures sometimes but finally, I managed to get Windows 7 to work by following the instruction of swiping gently by starting at the edge of the finger. No need to press hard.

Installing Fingerprint scanner for E6420

There is no complete instruction on how to install the fingerprint driver. I am installing to the Windows 7Ultimate 64-bit version.

1. Go to Dell support, https://www.dell.com/support/home/my/en/mybsd1/product-support/servicetag/0-eFZPSTNzaTE5VkZxa3VYYzhxY0Mwdz090/drivers

Search for All and set your operating system.

For Windows 7, 64-bit, install:
2. Dell Data Protection | Access -- Driver Package
3. Reboot
(The next step is missing from many user support comments. However, I can see that there is no driver for the Broadcom USH device so naturally we should search for this driver.)

4. Install Broadcom USH driver from:
 https://www.dell.com/support/article/my/en/mybsd1/sln129590/download-the-broadcom-ush-drivers?lang=en
Use this for E6420, not the ATG and XFR versions.
CV_Drv_Setup_RDYG9_A11_64bit_ZPE.exe

5. Reboot to Bios setup.
Use the Bios to clear the TPM, under security menu. Press F12 to select bios setup.

6. Install the Dell ControlVault Firmware Update.
 I used this file because it is recommended by the Dell Support and it worked.
 CV_Setup_TJ9CD_A29_ZPE

But the boadcom-ush driver recommends:
ControlVault_Setup_DKKN9_A31_ZPE
which is a later version.

You need to manually run from its extracted directory at:
C:\Dell\Drivers\TJ9CD\firmware
Execute by double clicking ushcv64
The readme file instructs us to run ushupdate but it does not work for Windows 7-64.

7. Reboot to Bios setup

8. Activate TPM in bios setup.

9. Install Dell Data Protection | Access -- Driver Package

10. Go to the Windows 7 menu: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\User Accounts
Click the menu: Manage your fingerprint data.

There are precautions in registering your fingerprints.
Do not press too hard as instructed. And slide the finger slowly.
Start above the scanner, not at the centre of the scanner. There is supposed to be a marker for the initial position of the finger, but it is missing in my E6420 so it confused me.

I did not have much problem with Lenovo W520 fingerprint scanner.
This E6420 is slower and less responsive.

11. At the logon screen, you need to choose a fingerprint logon, instead of our username with space for password.
I forgot how to setup the initial logon. I remembered trying to scan my finger and was warned to setup the fingerprint logon first. I just tried to switch user and saw the prompt with fingerprint picture. Click it first before we slide our finger.

It is different with Windows 10 Hello. No need to click special logon. Just slide our finger, Windows just detected that we want to logon using fingerprint.