New M6500 Discussion Thread

I have been lurking here for a while. Thought I'd chime in. I ordered my M6500 on Dec. 15th with a ship date of Jan. 7th. After numerous emailed delays which I responded to, it arrived yesterday. It's the 920, 4 GB 1600, 64 GB SSD (which I'll replace), XP 64x. Interestingly, I did get the 5150 WiMax. It looks like that is no longer offered.

First impression, it's fast. The touchpad is offset to the left. Not used to that yet. Touchpad is acting quirky. Set lid close to Standby. Closed the lid last night. When I opened this morning, got BSOD.

Oh well, lots to learn.

 

Make sure to install the touchpad software if you reinstalled from scratch. I have also noticed some quirkiness after using multi-touch gestures followed by single-touch use. An example would be using the multi-touch zoom gestures followed by normal touchpad use to control the pointer. Its still a rare issue that has only happened 3 or 4 times in 2 months. It could easily be contributed my very dry hands during a very harsh winter here not providing enough electrical interaction on the touch pad.

 

OK, one of you lucky guys or gals will get your m6500 sooner than expected as I just canceled my order, moving everyone up by one computer!
Don’t laugh, that’s the current weekly production quota of Dell’s flag ship mobile workstation!
After being in the cue for 6 weeks, with a delivery date of March 23rd. it was clear I wouldn’t meet my deadline.
I got screwed on this one. The rep canceled by mistake and when we reordered it went to the back of the cue.
Unfortunately if your rep won’t help you there isn’t much you can do.
I really wish they would bring the quality of their service up to the standard of their hardware.
M

 

Dell has an identity crisis. Many of their new machines like Z600, M6500 and the Adamo are niche market top notch machines that could rival Apple products in many way.

And they clearly don't have departments or management to treat those products or customers that way. Those products get lost in the shuffle of the rest of the mass produced items.

Secondly, Dell clearly has poor product planning and forecasting.
Buyers and planners must be over extended because I have issues daily with warranty parts and out of warranty parts being on long lead times.

Am I all complaints? No here is a suggestion, when you bring new products to market and you don't have the supply chain figured out and parts allotted for production release your products as pre-order only.

Basically a get in line notice for people.
Why release a product and not be able to fill orders and pissz people off.
It's managing expectations 101.

 

In all fairness to Dell, they were pioneers in just in time inventory controls. Feel free to Google jit for more info, but it means that the inventory they keep on hand is kept to a minimum so that they can deliver that shiney new computer to you ASAP for the least amount of money.

Now we are at a point where all companies arrange shipments from suppliers to arrive just as they are needed so that they don't have to pay for storage and warehousing. Not just Dell, but the people that supply Dell.

Dell says, hey Seagate and Samsung, we need a lot of RGBLED displays and and hard drives. Seagate and Samsung say ba da ba da we didn't expect this kind of demand ba da ba da recession ba da ba da we will get them to you. In the mean time, Dell has fewer parts on demand to keep costs low.

Why keep the costs low? Because Dell has to. We are entering the commoditazation of computers which means they all compete on price. This is why everything is manufactured overseas and shipped by air to Nashville. The other companies like Lenovo (that are majority owned by the Chinese government) keep their prices low by manufacturing in Asia, and so does Dell. Why do you think Dell had to close its facilities in the US? They had to compete on price.

But, here is the weird thing - Dell saw a huge 4th quarter and are probably seeing a huge 1st quarter. I heard on the news today, that Dell is keeping their North Carolina manufacturing plant online through at least July. That plant, which employs 500+ people was supposed to close in January, but it has stayed open. Why? Because demand for Dell machines is high.

So, for us, here is what this all means. Demand is higher than expected. This increased demand is for Dell and those that supply Dell. The M6500 is a brand new machine. Nothing from HP or Lenovo has been released, but we do have leaks from both. Dell has been shipping M6500s since early January and maybe December. Put both of those together - higher than expected demand from the only computer available of its type = less than desirable availability.

Maybe we should all be happy. Dell got more orders than it expected. HP and Lenovo are later to the party than expected. Overall demand for all systems is higher than expected considering the economy. Dell is having to keep plants online to keep up with demand.

Maybe the Lenovo's of the world have not won. Yet.

Dell has a machine like the M6500 out there. Everyone else has leaks and vaporware.

 

I'm in the same boat as you and will not wait much longer. I have a project that was thrown in my lap today and must be finished by the 10th of march. if my order is pushed back I'll cancel and buy a Boxx!

 

I agree with Bokeh and still am a devoted Dell user. I have bought many midrange machined that were shipped within 48 hours, credit where credit is due.
Most of the time I require no support from Dell, I order on line, pay they ship and the machine runs.
In this case I need the relevant information, to plan my research. These are not gaming systems; they are integral parts of our jobs
I have been very patience with dells problems; I wish they understood the importance of working with us.
I got better information from this list than I ever got from me rep.
Dell hardware rules.

 

I checked out the Boxx systems...laptops look like the Clevo's e.g. Sager 9280 behemoth ....I'm going to get _a_ Precision...doesn't have to be the m6500 for me, can be one of the other new ones...but I'm getting very impatient also.

 

This for everyone out there that has their laptops already, iv have reinstalled windows and drivers several times but the touch-pad driver doesn't seem to function properly and just want to ask you guys if your touch-pad driver works fine.

The Issue is i would like my touch-pad settings ( NOT POINTER ) to be on the fast setting ( touch-pad speed ) but every time i change the settings to fast, it would stay that way until i restart. After every restart of the system, it would revert back to DEFAULTS and i have to change it back to fast every time.

It is very annoying to swipe my fingers about 4-5 times to get the pointer on the other end of the screen.

Is anyone else getting the same thing?

 

Hey, which is a good or the best brand and model of HDD?
I plan to buy a 2nd HDD with 500gb and 7200rpm just to store my libraries, instead of using an external HDD.