Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Dall Small Business emailed a "mystery" coupon for 20, 25 or 30% off small / large business systems. (This is in the US). Unfortunately -- the coupons expired 11/5/08. When they are issued -- folks usually post them on a several different deal boards. My own coupon originally emailed to me was only for 20% -- so I went on the hunt for the 30% one. My final cost after tax was just over $4,300 - a price I consider to be pretty good for this machine with with these specs.

 

Anyone know about the Upek or Fips question? I can find a definition of the difference. Thanks

 

Got my Covet in.. swapped the 160GB 7200 RPM drive to bay #2, put in an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD in bay #1.. loaded up Vista 64 Ultimate. The system is very fast. I experienced a weird driver issue with "C-Major Audio" though. I think I resolved it by updating the driver from support.dell.com. I have noticed very slight audio studdering when accessing my HDD. Strange! I would have thought the studdering would occur when I was utilizing my SSD. If I copy stuff from my external USB drive to my D:\ (HDD) drive.. I hear studdering in iTunes, Real Audio, etc. (I always listen to music while I work) Does this sound like the audio driver was not fixed or a problem with having a SSD for my main drive?

I have not done any "vista tweaking" yet. Here is my HD Tune results.

-nixx

 

C-Major Audio? do you use Triton USB headset? i've installed the drivers for it on my Studio 17 and it was quite buggy... could not get Skype to run...

 

I do not use a Triton USB headset. This was the full error message "idt pc audio stopped working and was closed. The problem was caused by c-major audio..."

 

Here is a video of the jog shuttle track pad in action. I have been using the laptop and never knew the track pad would light-up from behind! Very cool!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad6Q7DuGCQY

 

Very neat!

****... Nixx... you are killing me here... lol...

thanks for the video!

 

M6400 with 2x 7200rpm RAID 0.
Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

What would be the easist and fastest daily external backup solution?

 

My M6400 is on way home, dell is a kinda of peculiar company, my M6400 went from "In Production" this morning, to "Shipped" tonight, it was ordered on 10/12 with estimated shipping date 11/18.

 

I'd appreciate the opinion of people who have the Covet model. Does the E2E screen lag compared to the CCFL screens in terms of response times? I'd hate to have a lovely screen that was a step backwards. I use machines for both work and gaming so the response would have to be pretty good.

Thanks.