Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

If you notice there's a lot of comments here on the M6400 owners lounge. Like close to 300 pages of questions and answers. Despite some early moaning and groaning in great part due to bad or non existent drivers (some legitimate, some people just ignorant on the basics) most people seem pleased with this model. I sure am. There have been a very few complaints about multiple component failures but all of them had the issues resolved pretty quickly. I managed to freeze the pointer in the BIOS setup and Dell was preparing to send a technician the next day to replace the motherboard, the keyboard and a couple other big items until I played around and took out the CMOS battery for a minute and that reset the bios and freed the cursor. But what's the point here is that I'm in a backwoods rain forest in Costa Rica and I'm not sure too many other companies would do that. And I'm on the Pacific coast and the Dell place is on the Caribbean. OK, it's a pretty small country but it's still a hell of a drive. This is my 5th or 6th Dell laptop and build quality has never been an issue with anything I've bought from them. Get complete care for as long as you can afford it, it's saved me thousands of dollars and it's nice when 3 years down the line some component dies or some idiot parks their car on it and Dell will send you a replacement pronto. I read a lot of complaints, not just about this particular Dell but about a lot of laptops that I think is undeserved and maybe a little uninformed. People talk about "too much flex" in the keyboard and I can't even begin to figure that out. It's a touch typing platform and unless you're trying to dig a bug or maybe dropped change out from under the keys you aren't supposed to put any pressure at all on it. But mine, even with a stiff finger pressing down on one of the home keys (f or j) pretty hard mine doesn't deflect more than 1/16th of an inch....if that. The alloy outer shell and a nice what appears to be a one piece frame of another light alloy also makes for a quality feel. And again the fit and finish is excellent. Even under the hood everything is neat and easy to access. Well as easy as can be expected with a lot of high grade components stuffed in what seems to me a very thin case. It feels sportier than a Lenovo W700, which with basically the same specs is a more or less equal contender for this new high horsepower semi portable work station market and feels twice the size and/or bulk of the Precision.

The actual components that make up the machine under it's case seem to me to be a well balanced and thought out design. Not that I wouldn't like to see a few things changed, but the present layout is fine. I've had lots of Dells and am used to the slide out drawers for the hard drives and would like to see them back and the offset touch pad can be a pain, in a couple of ways. And both are easy and quick to work around. And I absolutely hate the number pad, offset touch pad design

The RGB LED edge to edge screen, for me at least puts a whole new light on viewability and color rendering. I sit the M6400 next to my Name Brand P305 machine that has a not at all shabby display....until you compare it with this. As best I know you have the Precision, Lenovo W700 and the HP8710 are the only equal model workstations available though someone just said Sony is about to launch one. They are all priced similiarly (expensive) and I will tell you that my Covet is well worth the retail price. I paid less than half that and wouldn't be so keen on it if I was facing any of their retail prices. There's a lot of different and capable machines out there these days and unless you're not on any kind of budget you'd do well to consider if you really need this computer. I only mention it because it's just soooo capable that for most chores and work a less expensive alternative is out there. But if you want the best regardless of actual need, like myself, you get a lot of ponys for your money with the Precision, whether you wrangle a deal or pay retail it's quite an incredible machine.

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Precision M6400 - QX9300 - 4GB DDR3 - 64GB Samsung SLC SSD & Seagate 320GB drives - & the other standard Covet upgrades.

 

Actually it was with A05. I tried again after updating to A07 and the drivers installed successfully, but I couldn't get any sound out of the card... except for constant static.

 

Did you use the CD drivers or the latest from the Web? Other than that, I really don't have an idea what could cause this problem. It worked on mine on Windows 7 RC 64 and it's pretty much the same config (except I have 320 GBs in RAID and RGB LED, but not the E2E one). I just downloaded the latest drivers then and installed them as the ones on the CD were hopelessly outdated.

 

The 1920x1200 on the M6400 is just fine.
I have used my M6400 outsides in the sun, so yes, it will be fine indoors with ambient sunlight.

I have the non E2E version, and use it with Visual studio all the time - it is by far, the best workstation that I've ever had.

 

Thank you very much
Long Long post
Appreciate it\

Im now looking at the adamo
Because i dont have real requirements except build quality, and it to be able to perform regular tasks+ little photoshop without lags+ 1080p smooth playback

 

........

 

Glad to be of assistance with my short novel on The Precision Story. But don't let that last thought influence your decision. You never know what you may need next year, or next month for that matter. I've found that letting cost influence you, especially when buying a laptop, to be unwise. The Adamo is pretty and well put together. But it's no quad core Precision.

 

i will use 3ghz rarely
forget about quad

i will buy the adamo probably

 

Anyone using SDHC-compatible adaptor to read micro SD in the internal 8-in-1 card reader?

If so, where did you buy it (brand/model)?

Thanks

 

Yup - I am. Tis just a generic brand, it came with a camera of mine.