Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

just noticed something very curious, on my current m4400, the PCMCIA-CF adaptor with my CF card inserted does not really sit flush with the surface, its noticably sunk in by about 2-3MM

with my old one it sat flush with the surface.....


wth? is the slot deeper on this one???

 

I just got a m4400 and the fan is always on, high speed. A11 bios here. Does anyone know of a fix for this? I8kfangui turns it off every 2 seconds it gets turned back on...somewhat annoying.

Thx.

 

as far as i know there isnt, but it dosent come on high for me all the time.

it definitely comes on more than the older bios, but as a result my precision is as cool as a thinkpad lol.

on mine its on low most of the time unless i run anything that stresses the processor a bit like a skype video call, then it kicks up

i suspect your quad core might be generating a bit too much heat?

 

It's been a while since I last posted here. I had had two faulty M4400's delivered (first unit had chassis faults, the second trackpoint failure), and my third had an audible high pitch which was produced by the 2CCFL screen. To update this: a Dell technician came twice to try and repair this. He first replaced the inverter: this did not resolve the high pitch when the screen was set to anything but 100% full brightness. He came back a second time and replaced the entire screen unit, and unfortunately this still did not aleviate the problem. At that moment, his proposal was to replace the motherboard, but having been in a similar situation with unit #2, and after over a month of hassle, I decided to return all the units and ask for a full refund. Because this spanned the Christmas period, and Dell came to pick up the units in two batches, it took until the second week of January for them to receive them. There upon should follow payment of the refund, but as of yesterday, this had not happened. Dell have informed me that this should occur within a week.

I find it a real shame that this whole episode should occur with Dell. My first Precision P220 desktop workstation from 2000 still sits on my desk and serves like a true workhorse (though it will soon retire gracefully as it deserves). In my opinion, the M4400 on paper is still a fantastic machine: in reality, I think there are too many problems which have not been carefully considered and test-run before releasing the product. Quality control appears also to be completely lacking. However, the service level of technicians, in Holland at least (Getronics), was excellent and helpful throughout this period. Communicating with Dell via telephone remains a shade short of becoming an olympic sport in patience and memory (tip: always try to obtain a name and direct phone number). I even had a pro-support package, so I shudder to think how the 'normal' consumer support handles its customers.

Yesterday I became the very happy and proud owner of a MacBook Pro 15" (specifications below). My reasons for opting for this was primarily that a certified reseller and service center was within a comfortable distance from where I live. In other words, after all the hassle with phones and couriers, I wanted to have a real address with faces and people to which I could step if I had a problem with my laptop. Having said that, the MBP does not fail to impress with it's build quality. The screen is stunning (despite the lower resolution, I feel very comfortable using it), and it is completely silent in operation. For all my office and Adobe packages, I will run OS X. For AutoCAD, I will install Vista Business 64-bit using Bootcamp. I will post my findings somewhere on this forum, as I am sure M4400 and MBP users alike might be interested.

I would like to thank everyone here for making this thread so informative, generous, and helpful. I hope that none of the other M4400 users experience the problems I had, and wish you guys many fine hours of computing.

 

It would have been a good laugh if you had video'd it.
55kg?...I don't know any men that light,you could have had a career as a jockey?....glad I didn't read your post and go and jump on mine....just to see if you were right.lol

Dude...your too much:yes: ROFL
I think you need to get your Gf back from OSeas,before you go and get yourself into a situation that you didn't know existed

I would personally recommend trying bios version A02 before you do anything else.
Are you using any power management?powermizer,notebook hardware control?....personally I hate window's power management in XP and have used NHC for a couple of years and really like it.

Yes I8kfangui doesn't control the fans properly,mine does the same,in fact it hasn't worked properly for the last couple of years [on a few different notebooks]and is quite old and hasn't been updated for about that length of time.
It also misrepresent's GPU temp's unless you adjust the offset in the option's to match ntune,hwmonitor etc....mine has 7 deg offset added to match other temp monitoring software.

Sorry to hear about your extremely bad run with the M4400's,that's a real pity......sort of no option left but a refund when such thing's happen,hope your time with the macbook pro is better

 

If you are willing to go refurb, the outlet has a coupon available. Just picked up my M4400 for a bit over 1K. Running through the dell.com site, the MSRP would be about $2100. Since it still has a 3 year warranty with on site, I am not as worried about the refurb status.

GB

 

I found my first problem.
the eject button on my cd/dvd drive doesn't work, I gotta do it through w(indows

 

Temps are fine. I haven't tried nhc or powermizer as those haven't been able to control my laptop fans in the past. I was not able to install the dell control suite that controls your power and adds profiles. Do you have that installed?

 

That was some spike for MY coffee....LOL

 

Probably someone weighting more then 55kg jumped on it during the quality-testing