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Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

Discussion in 'Dell Latitude, Vostro, and Precision' started by cnpt, Aug 28, 2008.

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  1. Sydalesis

    Sydalesis Notebook Enthusiast

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    This laptop sucks , no cooling, the battery charges when plugged in ac, the computer downclocks, the latest bios makes the laptop noisier than a dirty desktop, tons of buggy bloatware, abuse trained support, overpriced ram, dont buy dell you were warned, this laptop is a waste of money.
     
  2. afhstingray

    afhstingray Notebook Prophet

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    i agree about the buggy firmware/software.

    however the cooling is fine. its just not very tolerant. you have to make sure the vents are not blocked when ur doing something intensive.

    i dont get your complaint about the battery charging, you can disable it with Fn+F2.

    all notebooks have overpriced ram. its pretty normal. never max out the ram when you buy one!

    and to be fair, the first dell tech who attended to my laptop was brilliant. so you cant generalize.
     
  3. minibob

    minibob Notebook Consultant

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    I must say I had an issue with bios A09 when burning dvds but other than that, everything has been working like a charm. I am trying out bios A11 and so far so good. The fan is quiet and the battery charges when I want it to (I love using Fn + F2). I have had the computer on continually for a few weeks now. I rebooted a few times because I installed some updated drivers. No issues, no BSD. Photoshop CS3 boots up in seconds and video files transcode in minutes; not hours.

    I would suggest you go check out the new HP Qosmio (their top of the line gaming computer) at your local computer shop. Its specs are amazing but it looks like it was built by Fisher Price. You can actually see it bend when you lift it off the table with one hand. Not for me, Sir. I love my M4400. Heck, even the usb ports feel like they were carved out of stone ;)....
     
  4. mholloway

    mholloway Newbie

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    My M4400 is fine. I've had it for a few months and it's running Vista with 4GB of memory, Bluetooth, Wireless-N. I had an audio stutter problem but I swapped out the Dell/Broadcom Wireless-N for the Intel 5100 AGN and I do not have any stutter.
     
  5. theZoid

    theZoid Notebook Savant

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    Mine really does none of that...it's very cool and quiet, and doesn't downclock with hours of gaming at a time. What has DELL said about that re warranty?
     
  6. afhstingray

    afhstingray Notebook Prophet

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    that would be the Toshiba Qosmio......the top of the line HP's are elitebooks.

    yea, the M4400 does feel extremely solid. However dont ever open it up beyond the bottom panel. It wasnt made to be reopened, it just dosent fit back the way it used to once its been "violated" lol...
     
  7. minibob

    minibob Notebook Consultant

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    Yeah, you are right about it being a toshiba. I had a brain fart. While the elitebooks are indeed their top of the line, I think I said the Qosmio was their top of the line "gaming" notebook. Either way, I see it on sale everywhere. With its shiny red surface it's kinda hard to miss.

    When I got my 4400 I immediately swapped out the hard drive and memory. Like many here, it was cheaper to order those seperately from other shops than to get the dell ones. The lappy came with 1gb of ram and an 80 gig hard drive (base configuration). I got 4gb of Kingston memory 800mhz and a 7200 rpm 320gb hard drive with freefall sensor. I ended up saving about $300 Canadian.

    Back to my point. I was able to install that stuff and started to install my OS in minutes
    Last week I opened up my laptop again and removed the fan. I disassembled it and lubed it to make it quieter.

    Luckily, I never had to venture further than removing the bottom plate to do these things.
     
  8. afhstingray

    afhstingray Notebook Prophet

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    yea, i love that design of a huge sliding bottom panel. it feels solid and you can access everything. you only need to venture further if you're removing the mobo.

    thats probably why they felt confident about using a snap on palmrest. because they knew unless mobo/gpu/trackpad failure it would not need to be removed
     
  9. smckenna

    smckenna Notebook Evangelist

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    Has anyone tried Vista 64-bit on an M4400 yet? I'm getting mine with 4GB in a single DIMM, and buying a second one for a total of 8GB and purchasing the Vista-64 from Newegg.
    Anyone have any advice or road rash from trying this on an M4400?
     
  10. theZoid

    theZoid Notebook Savant

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    I think most are using Vista 64....it's pretty much built for it.
     
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