M6600 Owners Thread

I know, but was looking for "NEW" new machine

One thing you said in the thread i think i'm going to miss from my old notebook, and that i seemed to notice in the pics/specs of the M6600, are better soundcard/speakers

 

The CMO panel issues show that Dell DOES actively work to help people when an issue comes up. Dell flew an engineer to someone's home in a remote part of the U.S. to see the issue in person. Once the engineer reported back, Dell pulled the CMO panel from being sold and offered help to people that had received them. Hopefully the CMO panels will cycle out of the outlet store soon and they will be gone for good.

Other people have posted that Dell just keeps trying for cheaper parts so that they can keep prices down and that they don't care about the quality of their machines. This is just not true. Dell keeps prices down by keeping parts inventories down. Go read about "just in time" inventory management. Dell helped to pioneer it a decade ago. The idea is that you do everything that you can to keep parts inventories down so that you don't have to pay for the warehouse space to store it. The downside is that when there is a supply disruption, it has to be corrected since there is only a small pool of available parts to build machines. To protect against supply disruptions, you have multiple suppliers that all must meet the same specifications. This is why we usually see Seagate platter hard drives, but also see the occasional Samsung or Hitachi.

The problem that Dell had with CMO is that they didn't meet the spec. As a parts supplier they were not able to meet or exceed the color gamut, contrast ratio, brightness, and viewing angle values that Dell had specified. So, Dell chose to pull them instead of sending out an machine with parts that did not meet the spec.

Getting back to those specs, the FHD panels on the M6600 all cover 72% of the NTSC color gamut and 100% of the sRGB color gamut. All are around 300 nits (cd/m2) of brightness. Contrast ratios are 600:1. Viewing angles are only referred to as "wide", so I am not sure of what the exact spec is.

If you are new to laptop panels, this all may just go past without much fanfare. If you have been using them for a while, you will see that these specs are actually really good. Go read the reviews for consumer desktop monitors where the review includes measurements of the panel's color gamut. Most of them don't completely cover the sRGB gamut. Go look at a laptop that is 3 years old with CCFL backlighting that has a max brightness of 135 cd/m2 and a 35% or 40% color gamut. The FHD (1920x1080) WLED panels on the M6600 are actually very good.

The IPS RGBLED FHD panel is the best panel I have ever seen on a laptop. Just stunning.

Getting back to addressing the issues you raised. Out of the 15 brightness levels on the LG panel, which ones are showing a flicker? Is it just the lowest? The bottom 3? I have not seen the current generation of the LG 17.3" FHD WLED panels, so I can't see it myself. I know that Dell already released at least 1 Bios update that addressed screen flicker, but it could have been for the 1600x900 panel.

We have seen in the past that Dell does watch these boards. I am sure that if there is an issue that they are working on it. In the past Dell has not strung out a technical issue on a public forum. They fix the issue and then push that fix out.

Newer people on these boards may not realize how much help Dell has offered. They don't have to be here. They don't have to listen to us. I am sure that the more we call them out in bold red letters the less likely they are to keep helping. Maybe we should show them a little respect since they are showing us (the customer) respect.

 

The only unresolved screen issue that I know of on the M6600 is the LG panel having flicker at the lowest brightness settings. There may also be people still buying machines with CMO panels from the outlet or ebay.

Can you please let me know what the complaints on the IPS screen are? I am looking at one right now and want to see if I am missing something.

With the Precisions I have seen Dell go out of their way to fix issues. If there is a "f up" like CMO sending them bad panels, Dell really goes out of their way to fix it.

I get it, in this day we are all spoiled and we all want to pound our fists on the table and complain about how crappy we think something is or how we are just sure that something is taking too long. These are our modern problems. We also have these forums which are modern ways of telling anyone who wants to know about how bad we feel.

I am all for people expressing their dour opinions and voicing their complaints. Just make sure that you are actually contributing from facts and not just jumping on a bandwagon. Other product lines from Dell may "f it up like always", but this is not my experience with the Precision line.

Yeah, I know. You have to take what I say with a grain of salt since I am a Dell fan. It didn't just happen. They earned me as a fan over the last 2 decades. I honestly hope that your experiences with them are better in the future.

 

See my other two rants above about the matt display panel.

The M6600 does not throttle or overheat unless you do something stupid like put it on top of thick bedding materials that block the flow of air through the machine. Many people have posted about this.

Be careful not to lump Dell in with other brands. I know from my own experience that Dell really overbuilt the thermal hardware in the M6600. They could have likely gotten away with only half of the copper and heat pipes, but then again, they don't overheat. They don't throttle.

I have heard about issues with HP and Lenovo workstations, but have not seen it first hand. Have personally seen many throttling issues with the last two generations of Lenovo thinkpads.

If anyone has made their M6600 overheat - please let me know.

 

All of the video cards offered with the M6600 can output 10 bit video to external monitors. The ATI included.

The HP Dreamcolor uses a dedicated video processing board in between the video card and panel to convert the signal to the 8 bit color space that they choose. The extra board likely gives them the ability to use the ATI video card. We know that the Nvidia video card in the Dell drives the panel directly at 10 bits. It may be that since it can also run at 10 bits that an ATI option for the IPS panel will be coming later - I honestly don't know.

 

Thank you for the very detailed information. I wish I had read this sooner!

Do you remember how many of the lower brightness levels flickered? Were you running the video refresh rate at 40hz or 60hz? Were you running the video drivers that came with the machine? Did you update the Bios?

The tough thing to read is that you bought the machine from the outlet, and now it is likely back in the outlet. It could have been that the LG panel itself had issues, but now someone else will end up with it. I honestly wonder how much testing they do with the refurbs.

 

All very well said, Bokeh!

To the Polish standards, my M6600 has been extremely expensive - and yet I consider it worth every single penny I paid.

 

My LG flickered badly, even a few complete screen blackouts, more like a short, on the 3 lowest backlight settings. I updated the bios, and it went away, but then came back again. I flashed the bios again, and so far, it's still OK. I'm not too trusting of the bios fix. Dell service says they only know that a screen replacement is the fix.

I emailed Dell-Mano_G several times, he responded at first, then I heard nothing for 27 days. There was some chat in here about how others could not reach him, then he responded again, saying he was away on business, then a vacation. He told me there should be no flicker at all, and passed on my service tag info to the engineers

A refresher here on our outlet M6600s. 3 out of 4 needed repair.
1. M6600 had a bad touch screen, tech replaced it, but scratched the upper palm rest badly. Dell apologized, offered no fix, It went back .
2. M6600 came in with a bad video card. it went back
3. M6600 with LG panel flickers, bios flash may be a fix, but it did not last the first time it was flashed. Still an unknown.

 

I don't know about the M6600 but I received my new XPS on the first week of December and it came with the CMO panel, obviously they are still using it and many other XPS owners had reported that they received the same. They reconfigured a newly built unit for me and hopefully I'll get something better other than the crappy ChiMei screen. The only thing I like about it is the matte display.

 

We have to remember that XPS, Latitude, and Precision are all different product lines with different teams that work on them. Alienware is even more separate.