M6500, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

BIOS is very good, no issues. Loads very fast if you skip the memory test (quick memory test, takes a few seconds). All menus are well organized and well thought out. Options are many, and some are obsolete for 99% of users.

Keyboard is among the best, second or third only to the older Thinkpad models T60-ish iirc and Latitude E65**/E64** series). Only 1 part has flex, and should not be a problem even for the fastest of typists.

Now you want Pro's and Cons?
Sure no prob.
Cons (I'll list the petty/important stuff):
1. It's keyboard's finish wears out with heavy typing, specially during hot climate since your hands will begin to sweat. Palm rest's as well, although no where near as bad as the the keyboard's wear.

2. The speakers on the top can easily get debris stuck inside, wich causes a whitish appearance when looking at it from a 45 degree~ angle (when you are using the laptop). Get's a tad bit annoying, and cleaning it is almost impossible without dousing it in alcohol and picking at it with a toothpick.

3. Personally I find the mouse pad's off-center position to be bothersome, sometimes when I am typing/have to use symbols my left hand has to go more to the right then normal, thus I get annoying taps on the mousepad causing my cursor to move away. This is easily combated by using the Dell Trackpad software, and adjusting the trackpad to shut off while typing.

4. The keyboard's backlight bleeds quite a bit, which is not that good because I dont want to illuminate the corners of the keys, I want to illuminate the actual letters. Then again no one else has done this part right.

5. The two covers that hide the screws on the LCD panel are stupid. The only way to remove them to open the LCD bezel is to basically destroy them, or pick at them on the corner. So whenever you assemble it again, you have either two covers with large holes in them, or nabs on the corners of the covers. Very dumb on dell's part.

Major~ quirks:

1. The webcam is not that great. While the resolution is good, and the details are good the problem is with heavy contrast, tinting, and very bad color accuracy. You can tell the webcam's video is heavily interlaced to give you the "3.2 MP" camera. Overall still decent (average actually) for most situations, just not the best webcam I have seen specially on a laptop of this caliber and of course price range.

2. Dell uses two LCD's for their 1920x1200 WLED Ultrasharp screen, a Samsung (Forget model) and an LG (LP171W7 (TL) (D1). The Samsung version is complete garbage. It has horrible black scaling, horrible contrast, and bad vertical viewing angles which makes it difficult to use when your off centered from the LCD. Picture quality is bah, and color accuracy is meh. The only "good" thing about it is that it is a brighter then the LG, then again the LG version is plenty bright already.

3. I had a few issues with the screen/video card, however the new replacement seems to have solved that. (I suspect it was a bad DC input jack issue as the connection was not very fit but wasn't loose enough to cause concern.

4. Screws are very easy to thread. I mean easy. Some don't even properly screw in completely. So beware if you are disassembling to not overtighten the screws.

Personally there isn't a lot wrong with the M6500 in terms of serious issues like defecting parts from my understanding.
Personally I prefer the HP Elitebook 8740W for the IPS option, however I am not willing to pay the premium (I think they ask $500-$600 upgrade~), considering I can get an external eIPS panel (similar quality) for cheaper and larger in size.

 

I am more or less just trying to find out what negatives people will say about this machine.

What I am looking for is the easiest desktop replacement to be stuck behind 12 hours a day. The work I will be doing is not that processor intensive but the amount of wear on the machine will be large.

I want a machines that is not going to be fatiguing to use. One I can type on and work with on very long days.

I started this thread just to hear what people will say bad about it.

If the keyboard is great, if the ergos, are good, the screen clear and easy on the eyes, and the machine can handle a ton of use this makes it a good machine to me.

Portables tend to fall apart on me.

 

It is a well made and solid machine. I believe it would serve you quite well.

With a new laptop though you are going to have to spend some time setting it up the way you like. It is that way regardless which laptop you decide on buying.

If you plan to swap out the drive(s), installing SSDs for example, then you'll need to change the BIOS to AHCI (to enable TRIM) instead of RAID which is the default when ordering it with multiple drives. Then you'll need to reinstall the windows OS, assuming that Windows is what you will be running.

You may know this already, but if you switch from RAID mode to AHCI mode (required if you want to use TRIM) without then reinstalling Windows then windows will not boot, it will freeze at the swirling logo.

These are not issues with the laptop but just something that is part of setting up your system and probably the most time consuming.

The only fault I've had with the machine is the trackpad. On my machine the trackpad pointer will occasionally freeze. I've had the palmrest and trackpad replaced, tried numerous different drivers.. I've also had them replace the entire laptop and it still occurs. *It may be something in my windows installation since I'm using the same image that was on the previous laptop that was having the same problem.

I've not read of many others complaining about the trackpad so it may just be me. lol

It is one of my favorite laptops.

 

I dont think I've had issues with my track pad, other then the flex but that is never a problem since I dont press that hard on the pad.

The m6500 is built like a tank, that much is for sure.

 

Isn't there an update to the M6500 coming soon?

Looking like this will be my next lappy, but I don't want to get outdated in 2 months?

 

No they are moving on to the M6600 which will feature SB processors, nothing confirmed on the GPU. But with those SB processors comes the horrors of 16:9 screens..

 

Try this. Install the newest trackpad software from the Dell drivers page. Disable all of the scrolling and multi-touch options. See if you still see the problem.

 

Please stop saying that! You drive me into buying a 2nd M6500 just for spare parts.

 

Don't link the (crazy) 16:9 herd adoption with the (buggy) SB processors.

 

Actually, 16:9 screens _are_ linked to SB processors; apparently Intel drivers for the SB IGP will not support 16:10 screens, only 16:9 screens.