Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

Yes.

Precisely. To be more specific, the CPU/GPU performance is clearly better, and the SATA III bus is a real benefit. But for my purposes, these benefits do not outweigh the loss of screen real estate, and the need to tolerate a much wider physical footprint.

Yes. If I didn't, I wouldn't have said I did.

As I said already, I was ecstatic when I got the news. But was then quite disappointed when I received the actual product. I only meant to inquire as to whether anyone else had experienced this anticipation of something much better, only to be disappointed. It's difficult to understand why this innocent inquiry has prompted the reactions it has.

xPat

 

I understand where you're coming from. There was actually a lot of griping on this board when the M6600 was announced with a 16:9 display, and before the M6700 announcement, there was no shortage of hoping that they would somehow manage to stuff a 16:10 into the M6700 even when it was pretty clear to most people that that was never going to happen. Myself, I was actually pretty upset to find that the 16:10 displays had gone away when I started shopping around for my new machine. I had similar hesitation during my previous cycle when I was forced to migrate from 4:3 to widescreen. But at least going from 4:3 to 16:10 didn't lose me any pixels (1600x1200 => 1920x1200).

But, 16:9 is the only way forward and you're going to have to switch to it eventually. 16:10 displays are not coming back to laptops. Might as well start getting used to it now. You could go back and buy another M6500 from the outlet but then you are just delaying the inevitable.

You can always get an external 16:10 display (if you spend a good amount of time working from one location). At least you won't be forced to dump it when you get your next laptop.

 

Yes, it's a shame, but they aren't coming back. The OEMs didn't say no to lcd panels manufacturers when they should have. Instead, they jumped on the 16:9 bandwagon, maybe because terms like Full HD can be a strong marketing point and because the consumer didn't care. Unfortunately, we have to pay for what the masses want or don't care to have. You eventually get used to it though, but it would help if software makers tried to make the GUIs less widescreen friendly. Just pray that 21:9 doesn't become the norm (yup Toshiba already makes a 21:9 notebook). The day 21:9 comes to most laptops, i'll have to organize a funeral for productivity.

 

I agree they aren't coming back, and I emphatically agree that it's a stinking shame. But as you said, the direction is clear.

Does anyone have any insight into what the next ADVANCE might be? 16:9 aspect ratio but with more pixels in each dimension probably won't happen, because all the HDTV standards are based on 1080 scan lines, and that stuff doesn't change nearly as fast as the computer industry does.

What I REALLY want is a true desktop replacement, which to me would mean an oversized "laptop" with a 24" 2650x1600 display and at least 4 or 5 drive bays. But sadly I think it will be a long time before there is sufficient customer demand to warrant development of such a product. Between now and then, I sure hope we get some kind of improvement over 1920x1080 pixels. Has anyone heard any rumors of such things being in the works by any manufacturer?

My other fantasy is a 3-panel 17" laptop. In other words, the "lid" is much thicker than the present models, and when you flip it up, two "side panels" flip out on perpendicular hinges, creating a display on 3 separate 17" panels, with the overall "system" now 3x wider than its original footprint. I know, I know, the market just isn't there and probably won't ever be there unless and until the displays get so cheap that this can be done for a couple thousand bucks. But hey, I'm allowed to dream, right?

xPat

 

Well, look at the retina MBP, i would say that is where displays are heading as in even more pixels.

 

I actually saw that someone was making a laptop with two displays. You open it up and it just has one. but you can slide another one out from behind the first one (and the first one slides over a little) and you end up with two side-by-side. Don't remember who was making it but it never took off. Just no market for this sort of thing.

(I also think that the world is going for smaller for the most part, so your 24" 5-drive "laptop" is unlikely to materialize at this point. :-\ I actually am just hoping the 17" market holds out because not many people want something even that large. Apple and Lenovo already dumped it, simply due to poor sales, leaving only Dell and HP making "business/workstation class" machines of this size.)

I agree that displays are heading in the direction of more pixels, probably going to 2650x1440 next, and then up to "4K" 3840x2160 sometime in the next few years. I don't think we'll see displays get still wider anytime soon. The industry seems settled on 16:9, I think only feature films tend to go wider. 16:9 seems pretty good for filling the field of vision.

In any case, 1080p will be the "go to standard" for a while. But it's shrinking. Surface Pro has a 1080p display and it's what, 11 inches? It's also showing up in smaller tablets and largeish phones. Apple is starting to push high-DPI displays on laptops and hopefully other manufacturers will start going that way too.

...Windows needs to make high-DPI development easier, or app developers need to get their act together, otherwise most apps will either be tiny or poorly scaled up...

 

17" workstations should hold up fairly well because it's a small niche market where there is a need for it, same for gaming notebooks. People who buy 17" workstations need the performance, screen size and reliability afforded by a workstation class laptop and that isn't gonna change. We'll also see improvements in power consumption, there's a reason Intel will start recommending certain components to go with Haswell (manufacturers were doing a poor job of keeping power consumption in check with other chips on the motherboard it seems).

17" is almost officially dead as far as consumer notebooks are concerned. Aside from the Inspiron 17R, have you seen a 17" notebook that wasn't either a workstation or a gaming notebook?

 

Make sure you install the touchpad software. By default, the software has a feature called "Touch Guard" that helps stop unwanted mouse clicks when you type. Even has a sensitivity slider. I would suggest that you use it.

Since you talked about moving your drives over to the new system, maybe you did not install all of the software.

The 120 pixels are never coming back. The same LCD panel manufacturers that were convicted of collusion and price fixing also changed over to 1920x1080 as a group. You can blame dell for your new burden all day. But you need to fire off emails to Samsung, LG, and AUO.

The M6500 came out in 2009. The panels available were very different.

Try the "Quiet" power plan.

 

Maybe Lenovo W700ds? It had a small second screen on the right side..

 

I'm in a similar boat with my M6400 (very similar to M6500, just with older tech CPUs and without the Nvidia graphic card crashes ) and considering whether to upgrade to M6700 - I need the stronger graphics, but I don't need the 16:9 reduction and a wider base. If they made the M6400/M6500 with the MXM 3.0b slot, I don't think I would consider upgrading in the considerable future.

The touchpad problems I can relate to, as I recently bought a Samsung NP900 X3C for my wife. Coming from the M6400, I found the touchpad unusable until I disabled the touch to click (which I often use while using a touchpad so that's not a solution) or at least disabled the sensitivity considerably. Perhaps there's a similar option on the M6700?