Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

[Aluminum]

yea i know, but its still interesting to see how software will adapt to make life easier for 16:9

like horizontal banner ads are disappearing and vertical ones are replacing them to avoid annoying people too much

A banner ad, whats that?

16:10 withdrawl is painful but theres no choices left with this generation of models. Instead I've decided to not settle for anything less than an excellent panel, basically IPS-class or bust.

[Dionysios]

I received mine this afternoon to replace a M4400 - almost two weeks ahead of schedule (2.3GHZ i7, 8GB 1333 Memory, Nvidia 2000, 128GB M-SSD, 500GB HD Combo, RGBLED Screen). Haven't had a chance to do extensive testing but the first impression is somewhat mixed:

• Boots and feels really fast with the 128GB M-SSD, there's not much stuff on it though, so I'll have to see in half a year.
  
• The Keyboard is a bit mushy compared to the M4400 but still ok. It being off to the left doesn't bother me.
  
• The Touchpad is nice, especially since it's a bit larger than on the M4400
  
• Screen quality is good, looks a bit less brilliant than the reflecting surface of the M4400 and appears to be darker. I'll have to see how it holds up in bright light. The colorimeter confirms the 100% Adobe RGB color space. It appears to be a lot more neutral for software that is not color profile aware like the desktop background and much less dependend on the viewing angle which is a pain on the M4400.
  
• General build is good, feels a lot more solid than the M4400.

What irks me the most is the 16:9 screen. It just feels wrong, I miss the vertical screen estate :-(. I was hoping that the slightly larger pixels would compensate for a bit of the missing pixels, but no luck so far. I've reduced the text size from 125% as on the M4400 to 110% - let's see if I can get used to it especially with applications like Lightroom being just right on 16:10.

I guess I'll have to go through the usual process of configuring everything to my liking, get all my software on etc. before I can say more.

Joe

Thanks for your first impressions Joe. Waiting for your further feel of the laptop. Is there any flex on the display lid and on the keyboard as some reviews have said about the M4500? Are temps/noise OK?

[ksna]

Is there any flex on the display lid and on the keyboard as some reviews have said about the M4500?

Though possible, I would imagine any issues with it's structural stability are irrelevant to the M4500 as the entire form has been changed to that of the M6500's. Would love to get some photos

[joe-blow]

Thanks for your first impressions Joe. Waiting for your further feel of the laptop. Is there any flex on the display lid and on the keyboard as some reviews have said about the M4500? Are temps/noise OK?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by flex, I also can't compare it to the M4500 as I cannot afford to replace machines every year :-) As it's partly built for weight, the display lid can be bent a little, but less so than the M4400. The keyboard appears to be less sturdy than the M4400 one, if you press down on a key, it will actually bend a little. However, I probably would not have noticed if you hadn't asked :-). It runs much cooler than the M4400, probably due to the dual fans. Under normal workload (presumably with Optimus turning the Graphics card off), the fans are inaudible. I did a quick run of 3DMark 11 (base version) here at the office with your typical office background noise. Running the demos will get me a faint fan sound that I can only hear when I put my ear close to the machine similar to the sound the M4400's fan makes when it's idling with the Windows screen saver on. Only with the combined GPU/CPU test of 3DMark did I manage to get it to speed up the fans some more though they still are much quieter than the M4400's under load. All in all I'm very pleased with the temperature management. I haven't figured out yet, how to make it use full power on battery. So far it will always throttle CPU and presumably GPU when it's on battery or on a weaker power supply than the 180 Watt one it came with :-( So much for being able to reuse the plethora of old Dell power supplies I have even if it means slower charging time :-(

Though possible, I would imagine any issues with it's structural stability are irrelevant to the M4500 as the entire form has been changed to that of the M6500's. Would love to get some photos

I'll ACK that. As for photos, the thing looks exactly like on the Dell product photos so I don't see any point in creating inferior ones :-) If you want to know any details not visible there, just ask.

Cheers

Joe

[iieeann]

Item received today morning. Using it to browse this forum

Not yet done any benchmark on it.
Going to destroy the first and second partition first before doing the rest, wasting unnecessary space.

General comments:-

1) Keyboard touch is not as smooth as M4400, but still considered good.
Offset keyboard made me press the arrow key wrongly sometimes but i think can get use to it later.
2) Touchpad is ok, seems slightly bigger than M4400
3) The 16:9 screen is really @#$^&xx... There has been many threads/complaints on that.
A lot of space wasted on the LCD panel. The laptop size could have been made smaller if not because of implementing numpad.
4) Unable to overclock with throttlestop, need someone to hack the bios zzz...
5) The 256Gb SSD is Samsung PM810 (another name of 470).
Performance is slightly weaker compared to X25m but acceptable.
6) The laptop felt heavy as earlier model. The brick is heavier.
7) Battery 9 cells doesn't extruded out as earlier model. No battery level indicator this time.
8) Overall build is sturdy. I like this type of classic design.


Might be taking out the WWAN card and order mSATA SSD instead, not sure if Dell accepts that.

[afhstingray]

NICE! i'm receiving mine today as well

[5150cd]

I'd love to hear more about the IPS display from those that have received one.

[afhstingray]

I'd love to hear more about the IPS display from those that have received one.

i wonder how much it would cost to buy the parts and upgrade mine myself. probably need display+back panel+bezel

but would the BIOS be ok with it? in the other thread havoctex said that the m4600 with IPS dont support the bios switch to turn the graphics off..


im increasingly feeling like i might as well just be happy with the config they're sending me...

[5150cd]

in the other thread havoctex said that the m4600 with IPS dont support the bios switch to turn the graphics off..

This is something that concerns me. I personally don't care of Optimus as I've seen it cause a few issues and I like the ability to just manually disable the card in the BIOS. The W520 I have has this feature and I just turn the card on or off as I need it. Sure it takes a bit to reboot, but with a SSD it's a small inconvenience.

[afhstingray]

i'm not too bothered about battery life myself, if i'm going to be travelling to remote areas (which i sometimes do in india and sri lanka) or if i'm going to be chilling at a cafe or something i'd bring my X201, not the precision. heat is more of a concern because i'f im watching a movie in bed with the laptop i want it to run cool