New M6500 Discussion Thread

moogleassassin, I wanted to buy the M17x as well but due to the shortage in the ATI 4870 graphics card and the delay because of it, I'm going for the M6500 standard configuration with the ATI FirePro and a 64GB SSD. I will miss the cheaper 256GB SSD on the M17x and the 4870 though. Fortunately, my M6500 will come with the same RGB LED screen. Is yours coming with USB 3.0. Unfortunately for me, it's still not available in my country.

 

Moogle - Nice! that is good news. Are u based in the UK? If so, do you know where it is shipping from?

I ordered a M6500 as well on the 16/03. My last (and only laptop I have ever owned!) was the Sony TZ (1.1kg, ULV Core duo 1.2Ghz, 64gb SSD and 250GB HDD). Looking forward to trying out this beast, although am worried about weight and battery life :-( . There must be a way to extend battery life to 2.5-3 hours? Anyone have experiencve in this. Can you not downclock the graphics card and maybe even processor?

Any way, here is the spec:

M6500 Covet
Bloodorange edge to edge LED
820QM
8GB DDR3 1333
DVD
128GB SSD (Coming out to be replaced by 160GB Intel)
250GB FFS 7200rpm (to be replaced by 500gb 7200rom Momentus Seagate)
USB 3.0
Bluetooth
geforce quadro 3800m
5300 wifi


Cant wait to get it lol.

Who else ordered the covet from the UK? How long did it take to arrive once shipped?

Also, would anybody be interested in buying the laptop of me if I feel it is too heavy/big for my tastes (I have a beast of a desktop i7 920 at 4.3ghz on air, 6gb 20000mhz ram, 4xSSD raid 0 4TB space, 30inch screen, radeon 5970). So I already have power if I need.

My final spec came to almost £3500 lol...

 

Mine is USB3 yes I'm in the UK.

I don't much care about the RGB screen as won't be doing any graphics work - I went for the cheaper 1920x1200 WLED screen. Mine will be used primarily for work, virtual machine environments and gaming.
I've had it shipped with the 820QM and 12GB but will likely up it to 16GB at the first oppertunity. I ordered 1x 500GB disk as I plan to purchase a good 256GB SSD but didn't want the Samsung ones that Dell ship with. OS and games on the SSD and virtual machines on the 500GB seperate spindle I did the same thing with my Alienware but could never really run that many VMs as it only had 4GB as 8GB was very expensive at the time - but it could still only handle 8GB max. The 4 dimm slots in the M6500 are fantastic!

On the graphics front, from what I've read and the benchmarks I have seen the ATI7740 is a bit faster than the 4870 so I wouldn't worry about that - its just a price premium for the workstation version.

I'm jibbering now, I'll stop

 

I don't remember if anyone who had the ATI graphic card posted display calibration results with the RGBLED display yet, and I meant to do it ages ago. Anyway, I can confirm exactly the same findings as everyone else here found with the Nvidia card, and in the AnandTech review. Calibration doesn't seem to work for some reason with the settings most of us would want to use, so for instance selecting the Adobe RGB colour space mode in ControlPoint and targeting 2.2 gamma yielded unacceptable deltaE values peaking at over 14, completely useless for serious work, and believe me it looks awful too. Sticking to the native NTSC colour space AND targeting 1.8 gamma gives excellent results though, with deltaE consistently below 2, and it's all but as good as my pro displays for colour accuracy, although colour shifts with change in viewing angle are problematic (unless you sit a long way off) - although not bad for a TN panel.

I can't see how the calibration problem could be inherent to the panel - it must be possible to do a firmware or driver fix, unless I'm missing a configuration trick. Come on Dell, where's my 2.2 gamma?

 

UPDATE: The ATI M7740 (8.681, A01) driver FIXES THE GAMMA! Well, it does for me anyway. The calibrated profile is spot on with a 2.2 target using the native NTSC colour space mode selection in ControlPoint. You'd think they might mention that in the driver description. A 231 MB download and all it claims to fix is an HDMI detection issue. Anyway, anyone with the ATI card should download this one; I assume it does no harm even if you don't have the RGBLED display.

 

What's more, the calibration performed at 33% brightness or 121 nits white level (which is what I use for a domestic situation with subdued lighting) holds good across the full brightness range from 0% @17.8 nits) all the way up to 100% @302 nits - I use 50% or 181 nits at work with the brighter ambient conditions in an office environment. This calibration is with the NTSC colour space mode selected in ControlPoint. The other colour space settings don't fare so well I'm afraid, but with good calibration in the native colour space, I won't ever need the others. The knowledge that I can rely on the colour accuracy even when I adjust the brightness all the way up or down is very reassuring; not having to recalibrate too often is a good thing, although purists would have one profile the display for the ambient colour temperature, as well as brightness.

 

Hello again,

Will recieve the following spec early next week. I am putting it on ebay....

Please let me know if anybody is interested:


210-31618 Precision M6500 : Orange Base, Clarksfield, USB3
213-11097 Processor Clarksfield : One Intel Core i7-820QM(1.73GHz,8MB,Quad Core)
230-11432 Display : 17in Widescreen WUXGA (1920X1200) USB3, Truelife RGB with EdgetoEdge Blood Orange LCD Panel (Bluetooth included)
319-10481 Camera : Integrated 3.2 Mega Pixel Camera with Microphone for Edge to Edge Panel for Blood Orange Base
319-10387 Camera : Software for Integrated Camera (Only for standard Base
320-11076 LCD Back Cover : Blood Orange Edge To Edge
340-20318 Resource DVD : Mobile Precision M6500 Diagnostics and Drivers
340-15471 Documentation : English Shipping Docs
340-20324 Ship Accessory : English Set-Up and Features Docs for Graphic cards
370-16493 Memory : 8GB(4x2GB)1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
400-18838 Hard Drive : 128GB Solid State Drive
401-12135 Additional Hard Drive : 250 GB (7200 Rpm) Serial ATA (Free Fall Sensor)
405-10850 Raid Controller : All SATA Hard Drives, NON-RAID for 2 Hard Drive
641-10011 Windows Live
429-12469 Optical Drive : Roxio Creator 10.3 Software and Media Included
429-13981 Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive Tray Load no software
429-13273 Optical Drive : PowerDVD 8.3 Software and Media included
450-12419 Power Supply+Power Cord : UK/Irish 210W Slim AC Adapter with UK/Irish Power Cord
451-11195 Battery : Primary 9-cell 90W/HR for Blood Orange LCD Panel 1 S
490-11816 Graphics : 1 GB NVIDIA FX3800M (with 1GB dedicated memory)
555-12669 Wireless : EMEA Intel Pro Wireless 5300 (802.11 a/g/Draft-n 3X3) Mini Card
583-13289 Keyboard : Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Backlit Keyboard
613-10806 Software Driver : Mobile Precision M6500
619-19917 Operating System : English Genuine Windows 7 Professional (64Bit OS)
620-11940 OS Media : MUI Windows 7 Professional (64Bit OS) Resource DVD
650-13083 AntiVirus : English Trend Micro Internet Security 16.6(30 day Trial)AntiVirus Software
800-10902 Precision Order - United Kingdom
709-10011 Base Warranty
709-10187 3Yr Basic Warranty - Next Business Day

Total Cost from Dell £3,467.43

Will put a buy it now with around £550 discount from the above price.

 

Going for a Sony Vaio Z instead (boo boo - I know), but I need battery life and lightweight

 

Forgot to mention. I prefer a UK buyer as I based in the UK

 

Anyone one have any word on how the USB3 will get handled yet for us early adopters?

Thanks in advance!