Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

I first had 2 320GB WD hdds in raid 0 but switched to a vertex 120GB + 500GB hdd. The SSD is very fast, especially when starting programs, well I didn't do any testings, but it feels much faster than the raid setup to me.

 

Which video drivers do you guys use?? I am trying to play wow and my pictures are all distorted, and when I play a few games for 40 minutes or so my machine reboots... video card??

 

I've read a lot of good things about getting your 'rep' to discount a price. My experience was somewhat different. Lenovo had a 20 + 10% discount on their W700 (with a built in Wacom pad) and the equilivant HP, I forget the model now but same specs as the Precision had a 20% coupon and Dell jerked me around with stuff like "their quote doesnt include 'complete care' (both quotes did) and such that as a long time Dell customer I expected them to "meet any quote from Lenovo or HP" like they said they would until the competitions coupons ran out. Then they told me the boss was on vacation till I went away and $500 off was their best price, so I wrote Michael Dell a rather explicit letter about his fiendish employees and some "Executive Response" person wrote back and told me they were holding a 'refurbished' what I'd swear is a brand new loaded (QX9300, 4GB and two320 gig drives) Covet from the Outlet Store for 2400 bucks. Put together in the retail store the same machine comes out at 5600 dollars and change. And that price includes a 7% sales tax. And whether my particular machine was a rigged deal to calm me down or not the price is close to other similarly equipped Outlet M6400s . My point being that in my experience Dell 'reps' can be total jerks and do lie. But after my experience and talking to lots of people who buy all their high end electronics 'refurbished' you can get the machine you want for about half the retail price. And when you're talking about laptops that top five grand it's worth thinking about. And on the Precision 6400 listings, I think all those that don't identify themselves as 'silver' are Covets, or at least orange. Find the ones that don't list a color and you'll see they all have the edge to edge screen, the FX3700 GPU and the slot load optical tray as well as the camera and whatever else comes standard with the Covet. Unless you get one from the outlet store you're just paying a few hundred dollars for a different color case. I like the orange but I'd never pay the price they're getting for it.

 

Hi, could I trouble you to say what your SATA settings are in the BIOS?
I have an M6400 with a single ssd hard drive -- 256 GB. I am going to install a second drive -- seagate momentus 500 GB. Right now, the bios has "RAID" as the chosen SATA Operation. Do I need to change this before I boot up my machine with the new drive in it? And what would be the best choice?

Below is what my choices look like in the bios. (A04)








-----SATA OPERATION---------------


O DISABLED

O ATA

O AHCI

X RAID


Disabled = The SATA controllers are hidden.

ATA = SATA is configured for ATA mode.

AHCI = SATA is configured for AHCI mode.

RAID = SATA is configured for RAID mode.

 

Dell just posted a new BIOS version.

 

Murphys law, I just updated to A04 on sunday

 

I bit, loaded up bios A05.

 

Anyone know what A05 is suppose to fix?

 

I can't find a change-log.

 

Fixes / Enhancements:
1. Added TCM support.
2. Updated PXE OPTROM.
3. Added BIOS option to enable/disable Camera.
4. Added Security Erase feature support for normal security HDD.
5. Improved support for Wi-Fi Catcher.
6. Added support to make Pre-Boot Authentication single sign on work with HDD password.
7. Updated to 640x480 resolution for customer logo POST screen.
8. Fixed issue where BIOS setting changes not saved with Admin password set.
9. Updated BIOS setup wording of Charger Behavior item.
10. Updated warning message when changing the SATA Operation field in BIOS Setup.

regards