Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

My 240 watt slim power supply is currently pulling 59 watts from the wall with several apps running. Running apps the stress either the CPU or GPU you will only be up to 110-130 watts. To get up in the 200 watt range, you need to fully load the CPU and GPU.

You should be fine under most circumstances with the 240.

 

Mushkin is coming out with a 480Gb mSata!
Mushkin shipping 'world's first' 480GB mSATA SSD in January for $500

 

I need all the power you can give me Scotty! Still good?

 

I'm curious whether other m6500 veterans perceive the m6700 to be a significant DOWNgrade from the 6500?

After way too many service calls to deal with my system freeze-up problems on my 18-month old m6500, Dell finally caved and agreed to send me a brand new m6700 replacement. When I got the news, I was ecstatic - seemed like I was getting a major upgrade to the latest product for free, as compensation for my past hassles with my m6500. I was overjoyed.

I've only had the new system up and running for 12 hours, but so far I think this thing (m6700) is a piece of crap. I'm actually at the point of either asking Dell to take it back and give me another m6500, else selling it off on eBay and just buying a new m6500. The reviews here seem pretty positive, so I wonder if it's just me not being used to a different system, or if others have had similar experiences.

I find the system basically unusable with the touchpad enabled. It keeps thinking I clicked the mouse when I didn't. Just typing this post required a dozen fixes after the input caret was repositioned to the location of the mouse cursor because windows thought I clicked the mouse. I think this results from just barely brushing the touchpad with my palms while typing, but I never had this problem with the m6500, which has a nearly identical touchpad. I suppose I could just disable the touchpad and use an external mouse, but that means carrying another device around with me wherever I go.

The loss of 10% of my screen real estate is way more of a burden than I imagined. (The m6500 is 1920x1200 vs. 1920x1080 on the m6700). I had thought I wouldn't notice the difference that much, but it's very noticeable. I also didn't realize that the m6700 is much wider than the m6500. It doesn't fit in my laptop bag, and will require buying a new one. The keyboard feels flimsy and cheap in contrast to the m6500.

The cooling fan cycles on and off every few minutes, and the noise is very noticeable. I think it's actually quieter than the m6500 when it's quiet (m6500 fan ran continuously on slow speed), but the constant on-and-off cycling is very distracting and annoying. When it's on, it's much louder than the constant drone of my m6500 (still sitting on my desk). It's a really bizarre feeling. I spent many hours making backups, and moving my two hard drives, mSATA drive, etc. over to the new system. I was all excited while doing the change-over. But now that I'm sitting here using the new system, I just can't bring myself to put the m6500 in the box and send it back to Dell. Despite its reliability problems, it just felt like a much better system than the m6700.

I'm trying to decide whether I just need to give myself time to get used to a slightly different system, or if this thing is really as much a piece of junk as it seems. I have to believe the resale value is much higher (it's brand new, used less than one day) and I could probably dump it on eBay and buy two m6500s from the outlet with the proceeds.

Are there others here who migrated from m6500s? How was your experience? Did you not like it at first then get used to it? I know the m6700 has a much better reputation for reliability (I had the FX3800M graphics card on my m6500, which seems to be the source of all the problems with that model). I'd definitely like to stick with a more reliable platform, but so far the m6700 feels like a piece of junk compared to the m6500 which felt like a really well built machine. Am I crazy or have others experienced this?

Thanks,
xPat

 

I've always disabled touchpad tap-to-click, you can easily set that up. (Control Panel > Dell Touchpad > Sensitivity > Tapping > uncheck "Tap to Click" > Save)
I prefer to use the physical buttons, for the exact reason that I want to 'sense' that I actually clicked, because an accidental touch on the touchpad could cause allot of trouble when you're handling and typing allot of code. (web development)

 

A minor annoyance at most; and, one that is insignificant to me since I find all touch pad annoying. Nevertheless, it should work.

This is an industry standard decision. What does that have to do with Dell?

Let me see if I got this straight, are you suggestion that Dell's past machine is superior to its presents? Other than the very elaborate subjective remarks, have you run any performance tests to confirm any of this?

 

I have owned a 6500, 6600, and 6700.

I too have been disabling the touchpad for awhile now, it just gets in my way. I can always turn it on if I need it for an airplane, etc. I had this same problem of spurious mouse movements and clicks on the 6500 too!

The screen issue, as others have posted, is an industry issue. The fans do come on periodically, but for me this laptop runs far cooler and the fans are off quite a bit more than certainly my 6600, and probably 6500 too; I can't remember now. I seem to remember the 6500 running hotter than what I experience now with the 6700. This laptop runs very cool.

In summary the display on the 6700 is better than any I have ever seen on a laptop from Dell by far, including an incredible (to me) viewing angle. It's much faster in all ways (graphics, memory, disk), runs cooler, and with a 500GB SSD and gobs of memory it's truly a mobile desktop. It looks great too, I am just very pleased with this laptop. I wouldn't trade this for a 6600 or 6500 in a million years...

 

@rQcreative, @await

Thanks, guys. Very helpful.

I knew I could disable the touchpad entirely (really not a good solution for me), but had forgotten that I could disable tap-to-click independently. That change alone has made using the system tolerable, since it eliminated the extremely annoying unwanted mouse actions. The screen res and unnecessarily larger physical footprint are still negatives, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea that they may be worth it given the improved reliability and performance.

@Krane

Dude, are you always this charming?

I never suggested or implied it had anything to do with Dell, and it was already clear that it's an industry direction thing. The fact remains that a loss of 10% of screen real estate is a significant downside, regardless of the reason it occurred. When it comes with a much larger physical footprint while at the same time losing pixels, it's doubly negative.

What in the world inspired you to retort with this irrelevant, unrelated quip when my post was clear and I never said it had anything to do with Dell in the first place? I was just asking whether others who made the transition from 6500 to 6700 had similar initial experiences, and hoped to gain insight from them as to how their experience developed over time. Did you really think this confrontational retort served some useful purpose? If so, please explain what that purpose was.

My post was clear and yes, obviously, my point was that in terms of the most important features for my own use, the older model was superior despite its limitations in other areas. Is there any particular reason you felt it necessary to make sure you "got this straight"? It would seem the intent of my post was entirely clear to everyone else...

My objections were not performance-related. So although I had done considerable performance testing (and had definitely been wowed by the performance of my M4 SSD on a SATA III bus), I still had the good sense to keep my post focused on the matter at hand, and saw no need to add performance observations which would have served only to detract from the clarity of the question I was asking. Is there some reason that you think performance testing is relevant to objections pertaining to physical footprint and screen resolution? If so, please enlighten me; I'm missing the connection.

I hope that my answers to the confrontational questions you so politely posed have satisfied you. Please try to calm down so that you can actually form sentences again, correctly navigating difficult grammatical challenges such as whether to use the word suggestion or suggesting in order to make your point. But then again, that would assume you had a point to make in the first place. If that was the case, I'm afraid I missed it.

All the best,
xPat

 

This is known as an indirect inference.

The need to determine the nature of your denigration of the 6700. Can you provider any proof?

It was clear you don't like the 6700. Any proof why?

Incorrect. Proper pad operation is directly related to performance.

Don't try and claims the victim here. You entered the thread and made claims that Dell is producing an inferior product. You then went so far as to itemized them. Now, instead of providing proof I asked for, you attempt to redirect the focus of your negative ad campaign.

You made a serious derogatory statement about Dells product and bundled screen size in among them. Now, instead of providing any substantiation to any of them, you now resort to subterfuge. I think we're clear now. As for the performance, that's the bottom line, and what computers are all about.

 

Are you serious? Just because you have 10% less screen real estate and forgot to switch off tap-to-click on the touchpad, you call the M6700 a significant downgrade and a piece of crap? Do you actually prefer a laptop that was first released 3 years ago over the latest model?

If Dell offered me a brand new M6700 to replace an 18-month old M6500 that frequently freezes-up, I know what I would do...