Buying a new laptop: E6500 vs M4400 (same price)

I'm thinking about buying an E6500 or M4400 the next week.

I know that the differences between two machines are (e6500 vs M4400):

GPU: Quadro NVS 160M vs Quadro FX 770M
Touchpad: 2 buttons vs 3 buttons
LCD Back Cover: Brushed metal vs Wave lid

Well... I got the same price for both machines with the following configurations:

M4400
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9400 (2.53GHz,6MB L2 Cache 1066MHz)
Windows Vista® Business SP1 original WITH Media
15.4in Widescreen WUXGA (1920X1200) with 2CCFL
4GB, 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel (2*2048)
250GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive (Free fall sensor)
Discrete nVidia FX770M Graphics Card (with 512MB dedicated memory)
Internal Spanish (Qwerty) Backlit Keyboard
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
EMEA Intel Pro Wireless 5300 (802.11a/g/ Draft-n 3x3) MiniCard
EMEA Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth 2.1 MiniCard
Integrated 0.3 Mega Pixel Camera with Microphone for 2CCFL LCD Panel
UPEK® Fingerprint Reader (Swipe)
Primary 6-cell 56 W/HR LI-ION Battery
Custom Hard Drive Partition - 60GB Primary/Rest Logical

E6500
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P9500(2.53,1066MHz,6MB)
Windows Vista® Business SP1 original WITH Media
15.4in Widescreen WUXGA (1920X1200) with 2CCFL
4GB, 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel (2*2048)
250GB Serial ATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive (Free fall sensor)
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M, 256MB
Internal Spanish (Qwerty) Backlit Keyboard
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
EMEA Intel Pro Wireless 5300 (802.11a/g/ Draft-n 3x3) MiniCard
EMEA Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth 2.1 MiniCard
Integrated 0.3 Mega Pixel Camera with Microphone for 2CCFL LCD Panel
UPEK® Fingerprint Reader (Swipe)
Primary 6-cell 56 W/HR LI-ION Battery
Custom Hard Drive Partition - 60GB Primary/Rest Logical

I work in IT Department of my company and I’m a student of Telecommunications engineering. I use my laptop about 10-14 hours daily (job and home/university), so it’s important for me that the laptop will be cool and quiet.

The tasks which I do are: programming and web developing (Eclipse for PHP/JAVA, Zend Studio, Dreamweaver, etc...), a bit of Photoshop (for adapting web designs), surfing a lot (for testing web sites...), UML programs, running Virtual Machines...

Which laptop I would have to choose if both have the same price (m4400 about 50 € more expensive)? What is your opinion?

Thank you!!

 

if they are the same price, go the M4400! I would invest in an extended battery also if you can, you dont know when you will be away from the outlet working so much on your laptop.

Try save money by lowering your HHD and ram, buy them after market from a tech store it works out WAY cheaper. put it towards an extended battery or warranty - all the best

 

Pros/Cons (as I see them):

M4400:
Pros- Wavy lid looks cooler, more graphics "horsepower"
Cons- Quadro FX 770M will generate some additional heat, GPU will reduce battery life compared to E6500

E6500:
Pros- P9500 & Quadro NVS 160M will run cooler than M4400; battery life will be a bit better
Cons- weaker GPU

If the 256mb Quadro NVS 160M (GDDR3, by the way) is sufficient for your needs, it comes down to a question of looks...and heat. The M4400 looks pretty cool, but the E6500 isn't unattractive by any means. I'd be inclined to go with the P9500 and cooler running GPU in the E6500!

 

For your needs, I'd say the E6500 is a better choice - it will run cooler and have a longer battery life. If you do not plan to play games or run graphically-intensive programs, the M4400 does not have any benefits for you.

 

Do they have the same warranty ? Typically precisions have 3 year onsite warranty and lattitudes 3 year mail in.

Are you attracted towards the RGBLED screen in the m4400 ?

 

Both have 3 year onsite "Next Business Day"

RGBLED is more expensive and I think I don't need it for the tasks which I do.

 

Certainly, the combination P9500 + NVS 160M would be more cooler. However, I can get a "Precision" machine with the same price as a Latitude...

I'm worried to if NVS 160M is sufficient for all my tasks, including photoshop and virtualization...

There are many problems of "heat" on M4400?? By the way, how do you use "the third button" on m4400? Is the trackpoint (with the 3 buttons) comfortable??

 

I would go for the M4400 as the GPU is much better than the E6500 and well worth it. Undervolt the CPU, in the end the difference in TDP in the CPU is nothing - especially since you will hardly ever run it on max TDP while away on battery.

 

Checho-keep in mind that the Latitudes have very low Nvidia-GPU thermal thresholds. DELL purposely sets the fans to kick in at a relatively low temperature.
This translates to a noisy fan that will run quite often.
Its the reason I am returning mine...

 

I think it ultimately depends on what you're looking for in a laptop. If you're looking for GPU power, then the M4400 is pretty much the right choice, hands down. Personally for everything else, I'd get the E6500 - with the Intel GPU as well. If you've got the E6500 and the M4400 at the same price, there's pretty much no reason for the NVS160M to be there - the graphically inclined should lean towards the M4400 and everyone else should lean towards an IGP E6500.

Photoshop and virtualization don't depends on GPU power (though they do have that desktop Quadro that's specifically meant to accelerate one of the new CS versions), so not only would the FX770M offer little to you, you'd get a small performance boost from the P9500 over the T9400.