M6600 Owners Thread

It all depends on function of the machine, budget, specs and most importantly support. Assuming you are look for a business class machine.

Lenovo the think series is a good choice, a machine built with quality as far as I know before IBM sold the complete business to Lenovo.

The m6600 has much higher specs, is definately overkill if you plan to use Ms Office, Basic programming/engineering, basic consumer photo/video/audio editing or watch a movie.

For a similar spec have you tried considering M4600 or the much affordable Latitude. which is of similar class to the Lenovo w520.

m4600
Precision M4600 ? Lightweight, Performance Mobile Workstation | Dell

Latitide.
Dell Latitude Laptops & Notebooks for Business | Dell

 

Back to the first questions every techie will ask. Have you updated your Windows OS, Dell drivers and the Intel chipsets. Close all apps when ur running a patch and always reboot.

All else fails do a factory image restore - Dell Backup and Recovery app.

Or

Install EaseUs ToDo Backup (Free), use your 2nd partition as backup or external USB HDD. Just recovered from a last good image 2 weeks ago in less than 2 hours (saved me tons of time) from a disaster two days ago after updating "Reliability Update 2 for the .NET Framework 4".

 

Well, your answer made me wonder, so I tried using Fn+F5 only to discover it doesn't work at all

So I set the touchpad to "off when with PS/2 mouse" in the BIOS (even though my mouse is BT, not PS/2) - and voila - no more focus jumping!

But I don't like this scenario, as my BT mouse connection gets lost quite often which will leave me now mouseless (the Fn+F5 still doesn't work)...

Now I have 2 riddles:

1. Why doesn't Fn+F5 work -could my BT mouse cause this?
2. Why does the focus jump on me when the touchpad is on, even though I never even brush it while typing?

 

heh - I'm in a rather unique position to help you I was doing the exact same thing and bought the Lenovo W520.... then sent it back and ordered the M6600 that I'm typing this on.

The Lenovo is a nice machine. it is more rigid than the M6600, especially the screen (which imo is a little too flexible on the M6600... not enough for concern but enough to be noticable when compared to the W520). Another good point about the Lenovo is the fact it is 15.6, weighs less (I travel a lot) and comes with a smaller power supply.

edit - that said, the main chassis section of the M6600 is very solid, easily the best built Dell I have ever come across in over 10years.

However!!! The Lenovo is a piece of crap, let me explain why. Basically the CPU/GPU is throttled most of the time, even when plugged in I was getting throttling and after extensive research I just accepted there was nothing I could do about it. It isn't too bad on mains power (think 10%ish) but on battery the thing is useless.
I was seeing throttling of up to 50% for the CPU when the discrete graphics card was in use. Now while you could disable Optimus and force integrated graphics that means a reboot and BIOS change which imo is unacceptable.

I did a bunch of benchmarks using power and battery and the differences meant that essentially if I went to a meeting and wanted to do a demo involving anything significant (VMs or anything requiring the main graphics card) then I would need to fumble around under the desks to take the power supply just so it wasn't noticeably laggy...

I installed SQL in a VM on power = 3.5mins. Rolling the snapshot back and doing exactly the same task on battery = 12mins....

It was rediculous and Lenovo admitted on their website forum that it is not a bug and will not be changed. Essentially the battery cannot handle the maximum draw when both the CPU and the GPU are running at full power and so the system has MANDATORY throttling when on battery power.

Basically they needed someone in the design meeting that didn't put his hand up and say "erm... why don't we put a bigger battery in?". Sadly this didn't happen and the machine is crippled as a result.

I bought the M6600 and think it is fantastic. It might bigger, but it is very much worth it. Buy the M6600 (or its M4600 15" little brother) and do it with confidence.

 

also chaps - for those wondering, this is being brought to you via Windows 8 Consumer Preview which is running very successfully on the M6600.

Optimus is working fine
games are working fine (Starcraft2, WoW, SWtOR tested so far)
Mosts of the drivers install, including the mobile broadband card. Got a couple of unrecognised devices atm, such as fingerprint reader, but to be fair I havn't tried to install the driver and they are nothing essential)


I am having some issues with the Dell feature pack requiring .NET 4.0 and due to Dell's shoddy coding the pack won't recognise that .NET 4.5 is installed... but that is about it.

All in all... Windows 8 CP is nice, its a very VERY substantial UI change and although I like what they are trying to do and love Windows Phone I must admit that I am struggling liking it. Muscle memory makes me want to click the start menu. But hey - I'm running it as primary OS now so I'll soon either love it or hate it

 

Yes, I did a factory reimaging, and situation gets a little better, but the problem is still there. I just contacted DELL, they are sending a tech team to replace my graphic card.

 

Interesting! I tried that one, both the 32 and 64 bit version in the bin folder, and both crash my system as well! I suspect something is wrong with them since we have different CPUs and graphic boards?

 

Make sure you get Dell to bring a new heatsink for both the CPU and GPU. Don't allow the technician to scrape the left over paste and put it back onto the CPU and new GPU.

As the thermal paste is factory installed and comes pre-applied to a new heat-sink.

 

Hi moogleassassin, thanks for the info about the w520. I guess I'll stay with the dell m6600! Thanks again!

 

Hi sargent75, thanks for the info. I have looked at the latitude e6520 and the m4600, just liked the 2 hdd bays the m6600 has. Thanks for the info!