Dell Precision M4400 Review - After 3 Months of Usage

the hard drive does not use mechanical shock padding because of the inclusion of a free fall sensor

the touchpad on mine is fine, i just tweaked "touch check" turning it off completely makes it a lot more sensitive.

i dont know how you can call the blue lights too bright. in daytime sometimes the power button is hard to see because it is so subdued!!

certainly does not annoy when watching a movie with the lights off. its a very "stealthy" blue, unlike the glaring blue on the inspiron 1525

agreed, the DVD drive is sensitive, but not horribly so, mines the matsua one

 

Not all hard drives come with free fall sensors. My 500 GB, for instance, does not.

I did mention that the status lights are indeed less bright than regular glaring blue LEDs, but I did find the power light to be somewhat of a distraction in a dark environment. Your mileage will vary, of course, and it's not that big a deal.

I still think white LEDs would've been a better choice; they would better match the white backlit keyboard. Like on the newly-released Toshiba Satellite U505; I think it works very well and is less distracting in the dark:

 

agreed, however, you have to admit that it is a lot more subtle than the majority of notebooks out there.

that shade of blue was specifically chosen because it is difficult for the human eye to focus on it, so it is not a distraction.

if the keyboard was using this colour, it would be hard to read the keys.

conversely, if the indicators used the white light as the keyboard as you mention, it would be much more glaring.

i suppose it might just be your personal preference, to choose the white back lighting instead.

 

Im considering an M4400, what worries me is the palm rest, for heavy use i worry it becomes dented or something else happens to it, as M4400 users is it made out of cheap material ? will it withstand as for example a T400 ?

 

Yes, the palmrest is very sturdy; it doesn't squeak, it doesn't bend and it doesn't give when pressed. In fact, I believe it is much sturdier than the T400/T500 palmrests; they have been known to squeak and give when pressed.

 

The palm rests are definitely more reinforced than the newer Lenovo, specifically the T/W Series. I have used all of the above... However, I do appreciate the height of the Lenovo's over the M4400; the Dell is thicker making the fatigue a little more noticeable at least in my opinion.

 

I'm considering this laptop for architectural 3d cad work at university.
Can someone please tell me what the fan kick on and kick off temperature thresholds are for this computer? I hear say it is quiet when idle, ie word processing & internet. Is this true? is the fan really off most of the time during those tasks? Can you control the fans with i8fangui or a similar programme?

I've already returned 2 laptops because they were too noisy (including xps 16). In my opinion they were needlessly noisy. The fans would kick on at 45c and only kick off at 33c. I couldn't do anything to change these thresholds,
I hope this is better.

 

This thread may be of interest to you....http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=369145

Lot's of variable's to consider,which cpu....I know from personal experience an X9100 runs a lot hotter than a P8600,I know windows 7 RC idle's a lot hotter than XPP.....the bios revision A13 as in the linked thread make's a huge difference in fan usage,both start point,RPM,and cut off point.

I think it's very good with minimal fan usage myself,and I still use old A02 bios which has very aggressive fan usage compared to A13

 

Great thanks weegie for that reply. in the linked thread you said a good balance between the a13 bios and the a02 bios would be welcome. now that the a14 bios is out do you think this has happened? btw, what is the fan kick off temp? it wasn't really stated there, 40-42c?

Another thing I was wondering about was why does the m4400 comes with a 130watt power supply when the latittude e6400 only comes with a 90watt power supply? The computers are very similar aren't they? I wonder why all that extra wattage is needed. what's the voltage going in to the computer, is it the usual 19.5 volts?
I'd be getting the p8800 (2.66ghz) processor with the FX 770M 512mb with vista64bit and then win7 64bit. It's not that power hungry is it?

 

Hi joaomario

The M4400 has more powerful options, specifically the graphics card and CPU, so Dell ship a 130W PSU regardless of the config. There are some people here that use the 90W PSU with the M4400 without any problems, but they're not usually putting the system under full load.