M6600 and M4600 are coming in Feb.

As far as I remember Sandy Bridge has 2 SATA III and 4 SATA II ports.
So I would hope that the hdd slots use SATA III.

 

Understood.
I was wondering: if you travel for work, don't you travel in Business class?

 

Dude. He wants good battery life. Who cares why?

 

For the most part frequent travelers can get upgrades but they are not what most businesses pay for. Certain types of banking / consulting / sales they will outright buy those tickets but it is quite rare as those tickets will be between $2500 to $8000 per trip domestically.

And business class does not guarantee an outlet. I travel every week (and am frequently (90%+) upgraded into first and many planes don't have outlets in first class.

 

Personal curiosity.

Wow, it seems air transportation is still behind the needs of the fliers...

 

As far as I can see, the Lenovo W520, HP 8560W and the M4600 have more or less the same innards, just in different cases.

I'd like to stick with Dell ("devil you know..." plus there are a number of small things that I prefer: Numeric keypad, backlit keyboard, Metal, ...), but I need one now and I'm finding it almost impossible not to go with the Lenovo: it's the only one that any real person has touched. Have any of these been delivered yet? Even to the press? In fact, has anyone, anywhere, actually seen one of these things?

Also, anyone know why the prices and config utility have been pulled from Dell's UK web-site. Doesn't inspire me with confidence regarding delivery estimates.

On another note, one thing I'd like to see from all the manufacturers: I'm after the processing power not the graphical power, so if I had a choice I'd stick with the in-chip graphics. In the UK, the NVIDEA 1000M seems to be the base spec and looking at the US site, this is a $225 option on top of the AMD card! Will I be paying a lot out for something I don't really need, or am I missing something?

N.

 

I am constantly amused by how people's requirements are different - I am horrified that Dell have put a numeric keypad in a 15" machine. I have recently retired a 4 year old Precision M65, and was very keen to replace it with another Dell. However, after the delay in the release of the M4600 I had to go with the W520 which (after some trepidation) I am currently very pleased with. This is even more the case after the release images showing the numeric pad on the M4600!

It is true that the battery on the W520 is not as snug a fit as it could be - but it's not dreadful. It is also true that the W520 has a nicely curved edge on the front of the machine where your wrists rub against which is far more comfortable than the sharp edge of the M4500 and (from the pictures) the M4600. It is these little things that make all the difference in this market.

It is of course everyone's personal preference - but I have been converted to my W520.

 

Dave, you are obviously not a number crunching type then ... a "creative"?

I need to run multiple development and demo databases so I need the cpus, the RAM, and to be honest a bit more HDD than seems to be available (750GB option has a 40 day re-stock time apparently).

Glad you like the Lenovo - everyone who has reviewed them seems to ... feels like I will have to go that route also.

 

Keep in mind that this is not the 15" machine you are used to -- it's wider and shorter so you have extra horizontal space into which you can fit the NumPad. It's small consolation for losing 10% of my vertical display, but better than nothing.

 

The main HDD is for sure SATA III. What I would like to know is if the opti bay is also SATA III. The new Macbook Pro's are not, and that pissed off a lot of people.

I've been looking into the mSATA SSD's and they seem like a waste of time/money. Swapping out the DVD for another HDD makes much more sense to me.

I work in VFX, so the Quadro's are worth it alone for PhysX.

Ideally, I would like to use two SATA III SSD's and maybe use one of the Intel 310 mSATA drives for a scratch disk (Photoshop, Nuke, Mari).