M6400 Covet malfunction replaced with weaksauce base M6500

Yes just hire more normal intelligent wellmeaning people and many hassles would disappear I'm thinking.

Okay, well then here is another update:

I didn't originally mention it since I thought it was trivial, but there were actually two new orders that appeared in the My Account page online; both identical except one had the 9cell battery included, so the price was slightly more. The order # without the battery had been Cancelled. I mentioned it to the rep when sending him the 1st replacement return tracking # and today I have an email saying both those new replacements are still showing as active on his end... so I may end up with two units sent to me. Whups.

Well, if true I guess I will take my pick. And yep you are right FXi I am just hoping the thing is stable after all this. Too many horror stories of relentless dead replacements

 

You might also ask the M6500 to be configured with the ATI M7820 card (5870M). On the Dell M6500 customization pages, it's like $750 cheaper than the FX3800M and $250 cheaper than FX2800M and it should be on the same level or faster than FX3800M (unless you absolutely must have an Nvidia card for some purpose).

Then you might ask for a CPU upgrade for the difference in price (e.g. from i7 7XX to i7 8XX).

 

Nah it has to be 3800 b/c the original system was 3700 & it's got to be as close to the original as possible, so cannot "jump to ATI". I may still prefer the Nvidia for application stability anyway, not sure.

Maybe the Quadro 5000 will fit in there? /evil chuckle

It is in the new EliteBook so Dell can't be too much longer. If it shows up in the M6500 then...

CPU wise its already maxed out @ 940 extreme so other than SSDs not sure what else to do to it. I do need a screen calibrator but am hoping one of the shared ones posted here will be fine.

Will a mix of 1066 & 1333 RAM work, or will this mobo only accept 1333 & 1600MHz RAM?

 

Alright, after 200 years of "N/A" showing under the ESD, the Covet simply arrived today. Haven't put any apps onto it yet, other than a quick EZ Transfer thing for some basic desktop files. No dead pixels, everything is flawless so far. Not sure about inside, but the outside of the thing is immaculate, got to be new. Blue USB ports on the left side

More confusion/drama: there may be yet another base silver M6500 about to land as well. The Dell guy called to confirm all was well but when I mentioned this second one on My Account also showing as Shipped, well he just facepalmed & said I'll call you back Monday. LOL I hear you brother.

Main issue now is calibrating this screen. None of the .icc files from the main thread look any good. Real dark & purple tint. Maybe video driver version affects it. Not sure what to do... buying a calibrator isn't going to happen anytime soon.. the nuclear reds are frying my brain. Leaving it on sRGB profile it came with for now.