Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

[Jarhead]

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.

Sorry to hijack, but how would you compare the W520 to the M4600? Especially what are your opinions on the keyboard, how heavy it feels (subjective, I know), and battery life on a M4600 with the FirePro card?

[5150cd]

Sorry to hijack, but how would you compare the W520 to the M4600? Especially what are your opinions on the keyboard, how heavy it feels (subjective, I know), and battery life on a M4600 with the FirePro card?

I wish I could tell you, I don't have a M4600. The W520 is very nice, the FHD screen is the best I've seen on a 15". The keyboard is pretty good, the volume buttons feel cheap and creak when you press on them.

[afhstingray]

Sorry to hijack, but how would you compare the W520 to the M4600? Especially what are your opinions on the keyboard, how heavy it feels (subjective, I know), and battery life on a M4600 with the FirePro card?

i'll be able to tell you when mine arrives tomorrow, i'll defo post a mini review comparing it to the W520 (i dont have the W520 with me at the moment, but i used one last month for a while)

[5150cd]

Well, my order finally got confirmed now that they fixed the problem with the website (or created, depending on your outlook). My estimated delivery date is 06/23/2011

[afhstingray]

for those of you who already received your systems, where was it assembled?

[ksna]

I feel like I'm the only one waiting now. Still in production. I called them up and they were saying fingerprint readers were holding some systems up, but mine wasn't configured with one, so they said they would expedite the order (but my rep already said he would).

[afhstingray]

i'm still waiting....hopefully it gets here tomorrow...

[joat_mon]

@ksna - You are not the only one. Mine was ordered the 6th and only went into production sometime this past weekend. Est delivery is still the 9th for me and of course I will be out of town when it arrives.

[iieeann]

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.

Continue:-
9) Bottom case is difficult to open (2 screws and need to remove battery first) compared to 1 attached-screw M4400. The beauty is no sign of single screw at bottom case.
10) USB 3.0 port doesn't work . My USB stick is treated as USB 2.0. Connect using USB 3.0 expresscard and i get the normal result. Weird, looking for more tests come from other owners.
11) Ordered 210W power adapter for the docking station. Now using the default 180W adapter and working fine still.
12) M5950 gaming result so far only tested FF14 benchmark, 2570 on low res. Stuck at USB 3.0 issue and no mood to carry out more benchmark.
13) Slot DVD drive (No tray type offered here). Not very responsive on feeding, need to push in until 3/4 of the Disc. I hate slot type, I used to bring with me all 2.5" disc to save space and now not able to use.
14) Battery lasts only about 2 hrs 30min for normal use, browsing internet, no gaming. 9 cells battery, Dell default power plan.
15) GPU temperature 58C at 99% utilization for 15min. (AIDA64 reading)

[joe-blow]

Continue:-
10) USB 3.0 port doesn't work . My USB stick is treated as USB 2.0. Connect using USB 3.0 expresscard and i get the normal result. Weird, looking for more tests come from other owners.

What kind of stick were you using? I get the impression that only a rare few reach speeds beyond USB2 anyways and implement the USB bus quite differently. I've tried both a USB3 Stick from Transcend and a external USB3 disk drive and wrote a couple of gigs onto them. The stick gets about 35 MB/sec on the USB3 ports on the right side and only 20 on the left ones with USB2. The drive gets 80 MB/sec on the USB3 side - similar to what I see when I connect it via ESATA and a whopping 45 MB/sec on the USB2 slots - close to the maximum possible speed.

13) Slot DVD drive (No tray type offered here). Not very responsive on feeding, need to push in until 3/4 of the Disc. I hate slot type, I used to bring with me all 2.5" disc to save space and now not able to use.

That's weird - I ordered mine with the slot-in drive because I didn't like the flimsy mechanics on the older ones where I always was afraid, I'd break tomething by just putting a CD onto the spindle. They delivered a tray one - go figure.

Joe