M6600 Owners Thread

OK, now it works for me. mSSD as a boot drive and 2x 750GB in RAID 0 as a storage. This is how I did this:

Take out HDD from your Dell. Install Windows on mSSD. Put in HDD. In BIOS go to System Configuration ( SATA option I think ) and change it to RAID. Then reboot your computer, press CTRL + I when the Intel screen appears. Set up your RAID 0 configuration and exit program. Now your computer won't boot but try it anyway. Go to BIOS and change RAID to AHCI in SATA configuration screen. Check that your mSSD is a booting device ( it is called mCard I think ). Then reboot computer, go to Control Panel-> Administrative Tool-> Computer Managment-> Disk Managment. Make new volume on your RAID 0 disks and then format it and wait about 30 seconds to complete. And it is done. I have got 95MB/s min, 212MB/s max in HDTune for RAID 0 configuration.

But be aware. After I configured RAID 0 in Intel program ( CTRL + I ) I was able to see only one internal HDD and one mCard option in booting menu in BIOS. But when I was able to see two internal HDDs and none mCard in booting menu, then I wasn't able to do that thing that I am describing above.

 

Hello everyone!
thanks to this thread and Bokeh's amazing review I chose to buy the M6600 and am mostly satisfied with it so far, here are a couple of thoughts:
I was really hoping to avoid the Chi Mei and possible replacement issues and was pleasantly surprised not only for that but for the AUO panel which is supposed to be better than the LG, but apparently wasnt used that much recently
As I expected Optimus wasnt working correctly on the original install, I even managed to get a BSOD while checking the system and the lcd before doing a clean install(which solved the problem). One funny thing is that hwinfo sensor status window will not show the quadro if it was off the moment hwinfo was launched and similarly it will not let quadro go off even if there are no programs using it and as a result the fan will continuously turn on for just a couple of seconds while hwinfo is running
Build quality is good overall but not perfect, the top left side of the bezel is a little loose and when closed, there is a little more space between the lid and the bottom on the left than on the right, but neither is a big deal.
Also when the laptop is closed, there is a noticeable room between the hinge and the body,but only in the center, right over the ethernet jack and when I pick the laptop,that space tightens under the pressure of my hand. I have found out that my old Toshiba laptop also has the same problem but I never noticed it because it its lighter and smaller than the m6600. I wonder if thats how it is supposed to be or its just my unit.
And there is one last weird issue - hwinfo shows a 2.9% battery wear which is not a big deal itself but raises many questions regarding what Dell puts in its new systems and even if the battery is from another, returned M6600 I wonder how intensive it was used since may/june that there is already that much wear, maybe it is from an M6500? (assuming it has the same battery of course)

 

So, yours is a refurb? How do you know the battery is from May/June?

 

I've run across that one before, unfortunately it is 12.7mm rather than the 9.5mm the M6600 requires.

 

No, mine is new and that's why it's weird to see a used battery in it, I am saying may/june because thats when the m6600 went on sale,so 6 months is the most that battery could have been used in another m6600 before coming to me

 

Thoughts on LG vs AUO:

1. The flickering with the LG will drive you mad. It only does it at the lower brightnesses. The AUO has zero flicker.
2. The vertical viewing angles are better on the AUO.
3. The AUO just looks better. It passed the wife test. The LG has perfectly acceptable picture quality it's just not quite as nice.

Almost forgot to mention the important part. As expected the flickering followed the panel. Even with the small hotspot I chose to keep the AUO panel and it is now in the new laptop. The LG is going back with the problematic refurb. I swapped panel and digitizer together, it was fairly straightforward. After seeing how they are sandwiched together I see that the only way to get a matte touchscreen is to use a matte digitizer or put yet another layer on top of it all.

To anyone with bulging trim along the bottom of the LCD:

Your tech is an idiot. It's simple to fix and takes 30 seconds to tweak the catches on the bottom of the bezel.

Thoughts on the new laptop as a whole:

My original problem stayed with the old laptop meaning it is the MXM card or MB, but I pretty much knew that already.

The keyboard and touchpad are different. They are much more 'clicky' and the backlit keyboard is much brighter on full brightness. The tradeoff is that the backlighting is not as even, with several keys noticeably dimmer than others.

All in all I now have a fully working M6600, even if it did take a bit of work on my part. For the price I paid I really can't complain too much.

 

Absolutely the same with my M6600 but that does not bother me.

You will notice that the wear level will increase rapidly for the first 10% but that is nothing to worry about because that is quite normal. Then at about 89% the wear level stagnates.

 

Yes, the backlit keyboard on my M6600 is uneven as well, especially the G and H keys, which are quite a bit darker. The backlit keyboard on our Vostro 3750 is very even, and looks better. Maybe it's the angle on a couple of the LEDs that causes it. The outlet pricing can be very good, but IMO, they need to work on their QC in the refurb area

 

Matsh-ita (without "-") BD-RE UJ242

 

it looks, that the best matt solution proposed by Dell for M6600 is AUO. Two key opened questions:

1. is it possible to change backlight frequency with BIOS update ?

2. is it possible to make it easy more matt ?

If not, have you tried with success some non-Dell proposed screens ? Are they better ?

Dell-Mano G - I think, that many people could be interested in some comment from Dell side on this (what could be done by company, what not, what was checked, what not, etc.).... I also want to make some decisions...