Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

[iieeann]

Nope, screen brightness is default at half when running in battery mode. I am not sure why the battery life is so short. There are more m4600 owners coming and should be able to compare later.

[Dell-Mano_G]

so to confirm, is it for sure that the dual core processors have only 2 DIMM slots? If that's the case I might have to reconsider and get a quad core.

Just to sent the record straight, the M4600 and M6600 both have 4 memory DIMM slots no matter what CPU is ordered, 2 under the keyboard and 2 under the bottom door. If you order a dual core CPU only the 2 under the bottom door are used due to the fact that dual core CPU's do not support 4 memory slots.

[hhuerta]

hhuerta,
Thanks for detailing the coverage. Where's your localtion?
In Hong Kong, Dell sells a weird "keep-Your-Drive" service. In essence, the technician will remove your drive(s) if your M4600 is required for factory repair. Not sure why Dell charges it.

I am in México
With the Gold/Pro support they come to your location (wherever you are at the momen) and then repair in site your laptop (basically they change parts, no questions asked).

One time I had a defective hard drive (it was making noices and generating a lot of heat) and they gave me a new one and I kept the defective one with all my info

They have a great service here, it's one of the reasons I am loyal to the brand

[armsys]

hhuerta,
I'm amazed by Dell México allowing to keep the defective hard disk.

[someone153]

My M4600 came yesterday. I just have two questions:

1. Does anyone know what type of screws are used to hold the minipci cards and where I can get one?
2. I did not order one with the internal bluetooth module. Is there anyway I can buy one and put it in myself?

Thanks!

[MrGordon]

What is the battery life with the 9 cell battery and the FirePro GPU? In the massive thread about both the M4600 and M6600, havoctex said it should be 5-6 hours, but in this thread, iieeann said it's only 2.5 hours of browsing the web. Which is it? I need around 4 hours of web-browsing; 2.5 is completely unacceptable.

Pushing 2.5 hours here with default settings doing web browsing, installing a few apps and a couple of restarts. Config is below.

[afhstingray]

i'm getting just over 3 hours with mine, brightness at medium, just surfing and chatting

[afhstingray]

anyone know what the advantages of using UEFI mode are? This is my first laptop that has it

[Althernai]

Thank you everyone for the battery life estimates. It looks like the machine only gets 2-3 hours. Does anyone know why? Sandy Bridge is really efficient so I expected more. Here's a 17" laptop with a 2820QM and a 71Wh battery getting 7 hours with heavy web surfing and here is the Lenovo W520 with a 2920XM and a 94Wh battery also getting about 7 hours. The only obvious difference between these and the M4600 is the FirePro GPU, but a difference from 7 hours to 3 hours would mean that the GPU is using more power at idle than the rest of the system put together. Is it really that bad or is there some bug in the settings?

[someone153]

Thank you everyone for the battery life estimates. It looks like the machine only gets 2-3 hours. Does anyone know why? Sandy Bridge is really efficient so I expected more. Here's a 17" laptop with a 2820QM and a 71Wh battery getting 7 hours with heavy web surfing and here is the Lenovo W520 with a 2920XM and a 94Wh battery also getting about 7 hours. The only obvious difference between these and the M4600 is the FirePro GPU, but a difference from 7 hours to 3 hours would mean that the GPU is using more power at idle than the rest of the system put together. Is it really that bad or is there some bug in the settings?

I don't think it is limited to the FirePro GPU. I have the Quadro 2000M and it looks like I'm only getting about 3 hours of battery life during web surfing. I do have the 6 cell battery though.