Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Just a quick update: I've had my machine for almost 2 days now. I'll post a thread regarding the issues I've had tomorrow (it is 1am here, and I need to go to bed!) Anyway, I just thought I'd say that if you want this machine to be solely for video work then you'll be very pleased. However, if you do audio work too then you may be disappointed. The built in speakers are tinny as hell, and the headphone jack picks up component noise.These observations are based on a comparison with a M1730. I also tried the game Left 4 Dead which has just been released, and the sound didn't sound right compared to the M1730 (not as clear). Hopefully it is driver related (my digital mic isn't working for example) or just a bad machine. Maybe it is because the M6400 has a IDT chip (never heard of them) and the other machine has a Sigmatel chip.

Anyway, I'd like to hear the opinions of others on this issue. Any noise using headphone jack with relatively decent phones? If it is a hardware issue then I'll need to see if there is some sort of sound card that fits this lappy otherwise maybe send it back. This is a pain, as the machine is so good on many levels.... I'll do more testing to see if I'm jumping the gun because of the noise on the line issue.

Cheers.

 

Looking forward to hearing your trials and tribulations Sleep well

 

Just did a complete image restore using TrueImage, and guess what? The line noise has gone! (I do notice 'pops' on the line that sound like the sound chip turning off though) Anyway, It is too late to test general headphone quality! Night!

 

just tried my headphones, playing some stuff using acid pro 7, sounds clear enough to me

 

I know; as you can see from the way I quoted your post, I was commenting on your incompetent Dell rep.

 

Any ideas why this would be? Are you using different sound drivers or something?

Regards,
Simon

 

Hi, received my M6400 on Friday here in Germany. Ordered it with one 80 GB HDD, had already two Seagate 320 GB/7200 laying on my desk for it.

Unfortunately I found the place for the second HDD empty - no screws, no cage, no SATA bridge "interposer" :-( That's bad because so many people mentioned it here in the forum - all seem to had this items in place. Well maybe a difference for Precisons shipping to Germany?
asked my Dell rep. for it - "we only sell the drive cage together with our drives ... but I can give you a tip look at einbaurahmen.de they sell it". Unfortunately the mentioned Shop does only sell the kit for a "Dell Studio 17" and I don't know if that also fits in the M6400 :-( Just emailed the Dell again for a quote about a second hdd as an option.

Also ordered the system with the RGB LED WUXGA display (not the e2e version). Unfortunately it arrived "damaged" it makes high frequency noise, does change colors if the panel is moved and at the bottom of the screen there are about 8 "RGB lights" visible so the gray/black Vista Taskbar looks like a "rainbow band" :-( Well Dell promised that tomorrow a technican will arive with a new display ...

Sorry for my bad english ...

Thomas

 

No idea. perhaps it is because I turned the HDs onto 'performance' mode. Or, more likely, it is because I reinstalled the webcam and audio software to try and solve the issue of my digital mic not turning on.

 

What do you mean by this? Is there some kind of option in the BIOS to make the drives run faster in 'performance' mode? Or are you just talking about setting it up as RAID 0?

 

OK, they finally shipped it last night, but no tracking number yet. FINALLY!
I was surprised to find out that Dell doesn't make the computers in Texas, but rather has off-shored the work to Malasia. There goes those 23,000 jobs! Something really needs to be fixed in this country (U.S.A.) so that we can keep some of these good jobs.