M6600 Owners Thread

Ah, so Dell is just trying to be sneaky and get that extra $3 from consumers then eh? Thank you very much Scott, I'll order my computer tomorrow and hopefully will not have any trouble ordering from the Small & Medium Business store. If you want I can keep you updated on what's going on with the order. Anyway, turning in for the night. Thanks again.

 

Seems my last post wasn't posted correctly.

I'm looking to upgrade my system with more ram and hdd's. Looking at 16gb and an ssd/hybrid drive as my primary and a fast hdd as a secondary. Primary drive will have os and professional programs and secondary will be mainly games. I'm not sure which ones to buy, and am trying to work with a limited budget so please don't go overkill on the prices (sales are good). ATM I am waiting for the Samsung 256gb ssd to drop in price, but wanted to know the communities opinion.

 

Current gen SSD are mostly stable enough, go with $/GB. Some may be allergic to sandforce/OCZ.

Ram wise, I would say order 2 x 8GB instead of 4x4 and you can continue to use the RAM that come with it. Consider 2x8gb is mere more expensive than 4x4gb.

 

Thanks for that. For the battery I assume you were referring to the "Wear Level" in the HWInfo, which is the only such measure of battery life that I could find in HWinfo. On my current netbook (which is more than an year old) the wear level shows to be 0% but according to your explanation it should be around 10% or so. Am I getting it right? I guess I am missing something here. please correct me here.

A sample image is attached for your reference.

Thanks !

 

Yes, that is the correct place to look - sorry.

It appears your HP battery may not be reporting all the needed data to show the true wear level. Try it again with the system plugged in on AC power. The M6600 will look like what is shown below. Of course, each battery reading will differ depending on the amount of use the battery gets. I was listing approximates based on six M6600 systems I have used or overseen since May 2011.

Scott-

 

Plugged in, it still gives the same reading. Anyways, I will try it over the phone with my friend when he gets back from work and will report back here.

I am still undecided about that 'dent' though. Even though Dell mentions that the refurbished laptops might have minor blemishes but it still irritates me. On the other hand, there's probably no guarantee that I will be able to get a perfect looking system if I return it and order another one, so it kind of makes me want to settle be done with this system. However, a similar machine with the same specs is still there for $200 more and only with the addition of a finger print reader. How much would I miss with the lack of a FP reader and how good are these readers anyway?

Thanks a lot.

 

I just installed a ADATA XPG SX900 128GB yesterday. It has a WEI score of 7.9, highest. I choose this drive over the 830 samsung because I got a $20 rebate with it and the reviews were great. I would have got the samsung if the price was the same. The samsung seems to have similar reliability compared to the ADATA drives.

 

How much did you end up spending? So far I have found the Samsung 256gb at ~$280.

Also in relation to the ram, I was thinking four dimms due to the I7 processor (supposed to help run faster, and each core has its own dimm) and because the manual states that 1600mhz can only be run with 4 dimms (16gb). I also doubt anything more will be needed for a few years at least.

 

I spent $80 after the rebate for the 128GB. Buuuut........ I am experiencing some boot issues now, and the HD hanging after boot. I think the intel chipset is not liking the sandForce. I'm going to have to try and resolve this, otherwise it will become storage or forsale, and get the SamSung 830 which has a different controller. sigh. The intel driver on here is so old 2006, but thats what everyone runs. The firmware update for the HD did not help.

I was going to get 8GB (4gbx2) of 1600mhz) for my i5. Will it not run at 1600mhz?

Personally I only need 8GB total. Right now I am running 4GB and its decent, but when I'm rarely using over 3GB the computer seems a tad slower. 32GB is just a waste of money imo.

 

Samsung 256GB 830 SSD's are just above US$200 here in the USA. I have a very stable and fast Crucial M4 256GB I will sell for only US$175 if anyone is looking.

In regards to RAM, to clarify, the only benefit in running (4) smaller SODIMM's vs (2) larger SODIMM’s is you can get the CAS latency down (to a point) with the smaller sticks, but overall, using fewer modules will put less of a load on the system memory bus and resources will be handled more efficiently. Regardless, since the memory is running in dual channel mode, there is no difference or need to install one SODIMM per CPU core. The Intel i7 CPU is simply not engineered in a way that would require this.

Likewise, the Sandy Bridge specification states up to 32GB of 1300MHz or 16GB of 1600MHz memory can be installed with the proper i7 CPU. Your mileage may vary in regards higher frequency memory, but Intel will not guarantee it.

Scott