Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

It's not a matte
It's not a glossy

just like the edge2edge display on the M6400, they mix the worst of both. You get reflections and a bad contrast

 

Hi Janik,

especially the second picture is quite impressive (no blurring in it). So you would say, it is reasonable to work with the display outside? The reflections are a little bit too much for me and I think, it is not sunny at your site, isn't it? Would a further increase of the brightness help to compensate the reflections?
What do you think?

Thank you very much.

 

Jukefox:
well - a litlle hard fir me to decide - i rarely work outdoor so really not a big deal for me. If you are distubed by the reflection on pic 2, a glossy screen might not be the ideal option for you. I my opinion the reflection is very small. And yeah.. it's cloudy here today
I think raising the brightness might help a bit on it.

 

I can confirm the M4400 does output Digital Audio over HDMI using the DisplayPort-HDMI adaptor. It may be necessary to open the Sound Control Panel and set Digital Output Device (SPDIF) to Default. It may also be necessary to restart your media player application to reflect the change. No distortion noticed when running all levels maxed to the output. Tested using Windows Media Center and Zune Software App.

 

[cue Monty Burns] Excellent.

 

This is great news. I assume it does transport 5.1 audio from DVDs, is this correct? Thanks.

 

hi,

my m4400 arrived yesterday and as expected the the display is not matte but glossy.

for the comparism:
my brother happens to have a truelife xps dell. the xps truelife is definatly more reflecting than the rgb led - though i wouldnt call the display something between glossy and matte. it is glossy.
as soon as you've an angle that reflects a light source in your back you will notice it definatly. distracting.
otherwise the notebook seems fine. they sent me a grey ripple back cover too, though im not sure wether i like it or not .)

few more note on different aspects:

sound: so far i haven't tested it thourough - but i haven't got any sounds glitches. but the internal speaker have less deep''s (or bass) than any notebook i had before (ibm t41p, apple macbook pro 15"4).

fans: cooling definatly works well, the fan sucks air from the left bottom & middle bottom and throws it to the left.
from my point of view the fan is louder than expected. giving a constant background noise (thats without running any stress on the machine).
stressing the machine with a renderjob produces quite some noticeable heat (and noise, which is ok for a 100% working machine; yes its a quad)

power adapter: its definatly large, but flat, so i recon its ok. the cordle could be a little bit longer though


has anyone measured a height difference between the black flat and the grey rippled back cover? the website stats a 27-33mm height. from my measurement i'd say 37mm (without the feets)

 

Thanks for your statements, GordonHo.

So Thomas N seems to be the only person out there, who thinks he has a matte RGB-LED? A picture of it with a lamp shining on the screen would be perfect for comparison. So Thomas, come on and let us know, please. That would sort out the confusion about what kinds of displays with RGB-LED really exist.

 

I'm pretty sure that you don't have a choice on whether to ripple back or not... I think that the ripple back finish is the only option for the M4400.

 

To follow up on the audio problems I reported earlier, I have gone back, done a fresh install of XP, installed the drivers in the Dell recommended order, and tested the audio at various stages of driver installation, noting when the problems arise. All the gory details, including samples of the glitches and a reference tone you can use for your own tests, can be found at the following URL:

hci.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/mterry/dell

If you play back the reference tone on your machine, it should be pure, clean, and unwavering. If it varies at all, then you might be experiencing the same problem as me. (Note that I have only really rigorously tested on XP, and most folks here seem to be using Vista.)

I have contacted Dell about the problem, so hopefully they can get to the root of it (again, I don't think it's a hardware issue since Linux has no problems with the audio).